The message
of Hosea: the nature and consequence of sin
This week and next, we are looking at the message of Hosea. For those who
don’t know where Hosea is in the bible, it is two books before Obadiah!
It is a two part sermon.
Today is heavy – we are looking at the message of judgement And so I do
urge you to come back next week!
We know very little about Hosea’s background. He was the son of Beeri,
and – basing this on the list of kings mentioned in verse 1, he prophesied for
about 40 years.
If you remember Matthew’s talk about Amos, you will recall him saying
that at this time the Jewish peoples were divided into two kingdoms – the
northern kingdom called Israel, and the southern – Judah.
Whereas Amos came from the South and prophesied God's judgement on the
North, Hosea comes from the North, and he also prophesies God's judgement against the North. Although he also has a message for the South.
And you will remember again that the North, at this time, completely
overshadowed the South. The South was nobody. The North was everything: it had
the wealth, the power and the empire.
But if we know little about Hosea’s background, we do learn a bit about
his personal life from chapter 1. He marries Gomer, and has at least three
children. We know the names of his children - Jezreel, Lo-Ruhamah and Lo-Ammi.
We know that Gomer is unfaithful to him and leaves him for someone else. The
someone else abuses her, and we next find her abandoned in the slave market,
about to be sold as a slave.
The reason that we know this is because Hosea is not only called to
preach a message from God to the people. His personal life is to be an
illustration of his message.
And his immediate message is pretty devastating.
God is going to abandon his people in Israel because of their sin, and
devastation is about to come.
And in this first chapter, we are given an insight into the sin of the
people of Israel.
Their sin is described in three ways
1. Unfaithfulness
2. Violence
3. Idolatry
1. Sin is unfaithfulness
This is the big message of Hosea. God loves the people of Israel,
but the people of Israel have been unfaithful to him.
Hosea 9:1, 'You have been unfaithful to your God; you love the wages of a
prostitute at every threshing-floor'.
As you probably are aware, last summer did some reading and thinking
about love: what precisely is love? And I came up with a working definition of
love - strongly based on the book of the Song of Solomon and also this book.
Love begins with a right vision. It is to 'see' someone or something as
created by God and it is to delight in them - both in who they are, but also in
what they can become. And love is to desire them - to desire a union with them
IN AN APPROPRIATE WAY to who they are.
So husband and wife delight in one another, and they desire one another -
physically, emotionally and spiritually. Two friends can delight in each other,
and the right desire is for union with each other - not that deep physical
union of husband and wife - but an emotional and spiritual union. The New
Testament speaks quite a bit about the shape of this sort of soul-union,
soul-friendship. Or a parent loves their child. They delight in their child,
but they know that before they can completely love their child fully, their
child has to become a fully grown adult. So part of their love for their child
is to grow the child and to release that child, in order that one day - maybe
not till eternity - they will be able to have full soul-union with the person
who was once their son and daughter, but who is now - like them - a full and
equal child of God.
The language that God uses in Hosea for his love for the people of Israel
is the language of the most profound illustration of love - marriage
love.
God loves the people as a loving husband loves his wife. And he had
lavished blessing on her: grain, new wine, wool and linen, celebrations, vines
and fig trees, rings and jewellery (2:9-13)
But despite his love and his blessing, the people of Israel have been
unfaithful to him.
Hosea is commanded by God to ‘Go; marry an unfaithful woman and have
children by her – for the people of Israel are like an adulterous wife’
(1:2). He marries Gomer, and she then deserts him.
'Hosea', says God, 'I don't want you to only preach this message. I want
you to feel this message. I want - when you preach - for you to know my pain
and hurt and jealousy when the people who I love turn from delighting in me,
from trusting me, from living with me, to delighting in the other gods, and in
the things that I gave them in my love.'
I don't know whether you realise this, but when we do not delight in God,
when we walk away from God, when we do not trust him, when we forget him
because we think we have more important things to do, when we ignore his
promises, and turn our backs on him - it is as if we are walking out on our
partner: because we have either become bored with them or because we think that
we have found someone who we think will make us feel better.
I am aware that my talking about this may bring up some very painful
memories. Some of you will have walked out on relationships - maybe for
justifiable reasons, maybe not. Others will have had people who walked out on
them. I'm not asking you to revisit the arguments. What has happened happened
and God is the God of the new start. We'll see that next week. But we are being
asked to remember a little of what we felt: the confusion, the anger, the sense
of betrayal, but most of all the pain - either the pain you felt, or the pain that
you know you caused someone else.
That pain, says God, is like my pain when you turn away from me.
He is actually here speaking to people who already are believers; who are
within the covenant; to whom he has shown his love and to whom he has given his
promises and his blessings. He is speaking to people who have made a
commitment, prayed the prayer, been born again, tasted of the Spirit, but who
have now - for whatever reason - turned their back on him. Maybe it was just
too much hard work; maybe we were being mocked, maybe other seemingly more
attractive things came in and we drifted away; maybe what was once a
relationship of love and intimacy is in danger of drifting into a relationship
of formality.
The greatest command in the bible is not the command to worship God, or
to obey and serve God. The greatest command is the command to love God with all
your heart, soul, mind and strength.
So sin, says Hosea, is unfaithfulness to God.
2. Sin is disobedience
We are on more familiar territory here. Sin is when we don't do what God
commands us to do. James writes, 'anyone, then, who knows the good he
ought to do and doesn't do it, sins' (James 4:17).
Hosea is called to name his first child, 'Jezreel - because I will soon
punish the house of Jehu for the massacre at Jezreel' (v4)
Jezreel was a royal city in Israel that had become synonymous with
violence - and particularly the violence of rulers. It was the place where Ahab
and Jezebel had murdered Naboth. It was the place where Jehu had carried out
his rebellion against them, and slaughtered not only them but also their family
and friends.
So Jezreel had become a symbol for everything that the people of Israel
did which broke the commands of God.
Hosea 4:1-2 state the charge of God: 'There is no faithfulness, no love,
no acknowledgement of God in the land. There is only cursing, lying and murder,
stealing and adultery; they break all bounds and bloodshed follows bloodshed'.
Or in 12:1, 'Ephraim .. multiplies lies and violence'.
And Hosea 4:6 indicts them: 'you have ignored the law of your God'
When people reject the idea that God loves them, they ignore his
commands. They think that his commands are there to stop them from having a
good time. They twist his laws to their own advantage. They either turn them
into heavy burdens which they place on others, or they ignore them and live for
themselves. If the king wants a vineyard and someone stands in his way, then
that someone is to be eliminated.
Again, please remember that Hosea is speaking to people who God had
chosen and called. He is speaking to people who were part of the community of
believers. And these verses fundamentally do not speak to the people 'out
there'. They are speaking to you and me.
We are guilty of disobedience, because we know what God would have us do
- love him with our whole heart and love our neighbour as ourself - and yet we
do not live that way, or do not even seek to live that way.
Hebrews 6:4-6 gives a stark warning, 'It is impossible for those who have
once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in
the Holy Spirit, who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers
of the coming age, if they fall away, to be brought back to repentance, because
to their loss they are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting
him to public disgrace'.
3. Sin is idolatry
The name of Hosea's second child is Lo-Ruhamah, which means 'Not Loved'.
And God says 'I will save Judah (but not Israel) - not by bow, sword or battle,
or by horses and horsemen, but by the Lord their God' (1:7)
The implication is that Israel had been looking to their military might
as their saviour. They had turned it into their god. 'You have', says God,
'depended on your own strength and on your many warriors' (10:13).
And elsewhere in this short book, we are told that the people have become
proud and complacent (10:1-2). And as a result they have rejected the living
God and put their trust in literal idols - in idols of silver and gold (8:4),
particularly the calf idol of Beth-Aven (10:5). And we are told that they
'offer human sacrifice and kiss the calf-idols' (13:2). But they also put their
trust in non-physical idols: in rulers (8:4), in foreign alliances (8:9), even
in religious rituals (8:11-14).
And when we put our ultimate trust in things that are not God, that is
idolatry. It is about worshipping something or someone who is not God.
Woe to the church when we put out trust in individuals: popes,
archbishops, church leaders and speakers; woe to us when we put our trust in
structures or courses or strategies or particular ways of preaching the bible;
woe to us when we put our trust in buildings, in celebrity believers or
numbers. I've been around the block enough times to be rightly sceptical when
people say, 'This is the thing that will save the church'. There is no-thing that
will save the church. The only one who can save the church is God, and he will
save the church as people in the church hunger and see after him.
What is the most important thing for you? The key words here are 'the
most'. What is the compulsion which drives you? Is it the desire to make more
money, to have a quiet life, to have a family or partner, to gain respect, to
do what you enjoy and to satisfy your physical desires, to do something that
will bring you glory? Those things are your idols, and they need to be brought under
the rule of Jesus Christ.
Do not allow yourself to settle, do not even begin to think about
becoming comfortable - until you are driven first and foremost by love for God,
and love for neighbour, and by your desire to see the Kingdom of God established
in your life and in the place where God has put you.
So sin in Hosea is:
Unfaithfulness
Disobedience
Idolatry
The consequence of sin is
devastating.
It is
devastating for the land.
Hosea is one of the most environmentally aware prophets. He sees the
connection between the sin of the people and the destruction of the land.
In very relevant words, Hosea 4:3 states: 'Because of all this the land
mourns, and all who live in it waste away; the beasts of the field and the
birds of the air and the fish of the sea are dying'. Or in Hosea 8:7, 'They sow
the wind and reap the whirlwind. The stalk has no head; it will produce no
flour'.
It is
devastating because of what is going to happen to Israel.
God is going to be to them like a ravaging lion. He will tear them in
pieces (5:14; 13:7). Politically Israel is going to be overwhelmed and utterly
destroyed by the Assyrians: 'The roar of battle will rise against your people,
so that all your fortresses will be devastated - as Shalmon devastated Beth Arbel
on the day of battle, when mothers were dashed to the ground with their
children. Thus will it happen to you, O Bethel, because your wickedness is
great'.
And within Hosea's lifetime the people will be taken away from the land:
'They will not remain in the Lord's land; Ephraim will return to Egypt and eat
unclean food in Assyria'. (9:3)
It was devastating:
But we need to realise that the devastation coming on Israel was not God
having a hissy fit because people are walking out on him. It is not the scorned
lover screwing his ex for as much as he can get out of her as an act of
revenge. Although if that was God's motive, who of us could blame him?
But that is not God's motive. God's anger against his people is - in fact
- an expression of his love for them. He has bound himself to them; he is
jealous - not only for himself, but also for them. Because he loves them, he
cannot bear to see them go with someone else who actually intends to harm them
and destroy them.
And in the end, because they persist in rejecting him, do you notice the
names of the last two children: Lo-Ruhamah (not loved) and Lo-Ammi (not my
people)? God is saying to the people of Israel, even though I love you, even
though I have bound myself to you - because you have chosen to reject my love,
I will let you go. 'You are not my people and I am not your God' (Hosea
1:9)
I said at the beginning that this is the first of two sermons on Hosea.
This really does need to be continued. There is much more to be said, and
God-willing, it will be said next week. But I want to leave us today with this
thought.
Sin is not a game. It has consequences: natural and eternal. These
words, 'You are not my people and I am not your God' are the
final dreadful consequence of continued sin. They should shake us to the
very core of our being. We are separated from the God who loves us. We file for
divorce from God, and eventually God agrees. They are the acknowledgement of
our created freedom but they are also the final terrifying declaration of our
eternal destruction.
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