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HOSEA 8:1-14
(Readings: Deut.28:45-68; Gal.6:1-18)
The People Reaping A Whirlwind
Congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ…
How would you feel if you could see someone is heading straight into trouble?
What would your response be when you clearly know this is not going to end up well for them?
The difficulty with many of these situations is that even if we warned them they still wouldn’t listen!
The very reason why they’ve got themselves into such a dangerous position is exactly because of what their character is like.
They love being “on the edge” as they call it.
And never mind if anyone else could get hurt as well as themselves.
Just as long as they get that thrill out of it!
Mind you, these people are also the most likely ones not to live long either.
Because they keep on going beyond the well-defined boundaries of common sense and legal safety, there comes a day when they have that “accident” or that “unfortunate incident”.
Although, to be honest, it was never an accident or a bad piece of luck – it was what was going to happen all along.
You know, I love the slogan they often shout out to those who don’t follow their dangerous ways.
They call out, “You haven’t lived!’ when they’re just about to die!
Well, Israel certainly fits in this mould.
She’s been on the edge for a long time now.
Indeed, all the clearly defined spiritual boundaries have been broken many times by these people.
This is why we read such an extensive passage from Deuteronomy 28.
The Law of Moses was filled with many clear-cut rules for the people to be able to live in the right relationship with the Lord.
No one there could say that they didn’t know how the Lord had told them to live.
Not only were there huge slabs in the Law about this but they had had the prophets sent to them as well.
From Elijah through to Amos, and now Hosea as well!
And we shouldn’t think either that God’s commands were so detailed and heavy that they could never be kept anyway.
This was no socialist state with 23 speed cameras on a very short stretch of freeway!
In fact, when Israel was faithful to the Law because they loved the Lord there was the most phenomenal blessing!
You only needed to recall the reigns of David and Solomon, and later of Josiah over Judah.
Congregation, the first aspect of our text this afternoon is quite clear about this.
ISRAEL HAS DELIBERATELY GONE AGAINST GOD.
So, how can we know this from the text?
Well, verse 1 couldn’t be more clearer!
“Put the trumpet to your lips!” the prophet cries out.
The trumpet is used to sound the alarm.
That was what the watchman used to warn of danger.
And who was Hosea but the Lord’s own spiritual watchman?
And what danger is this?
Why the intense urgency here?
“An eagle is over the house of the LORD...”
Now, in some versions a “vulture” is mentioned.
And because of the word used it could be either.
That’s why the context is important.
So what is the action spelled out here?
Well, it would be something that happened suddenly.
An eagle has been timed at travelling more than 175 kilometres an hour.
And this action would have happened with definite decisiveness.
When this bird attacked it was ferocious.
Its talons and beak are sharp and strong.
This is why Israel is in great danger.
This is the most ominous sign.
But would they see it?
They certainly hadn’t chosen to respond so far.
Verse 1 continues in pointing this out.
In fact, it’s the reason that big bird is flying up there just waiting to pounce.
Mind you, they call out to God.
‘O our God, we acknowledge you!’ goes their cry in verse 2.
But that just goes into thin air.
They’re not actually talking to anyone.
God’s not going to hear that.
It’s all just an outward form, a façade.
Because if they really meant it they would have been a faithful bride to the groom.
It is the “good” of verse 3 which should have been the basis for Israel’s health and happiness.
If they had lived by that they wouldn’t be in the mess they are in now.
In fact, they had actively been consistently opposing that.
They had been bad – not good!
The next three verses demonstrate this.
They spell out the two key areas God’s law has been broken.
For Israel had set up rulers without God’s consent and Israel had made idols for themselves.
We see the setting up of rulers without God’s consent already happening at the beginning of the northern kingdom under Jeroboam I.
You see, Jeroboam was already planning a plot against Solomon before the Lord ever gave him the northern kingdom when Rehoboam followed foolish counsel in 1st Kings 12.
He had been scheming to overthrow God’s rightful authority.
And while Jehu’s family were given peace for four generations, after that it was all on.
As we have seen, of the next six kings four were assassinated and only one died in his own bed.
So the majority of their kings were illegitimate!
Making idols for themselves also started under Jeroboam.
Instead of obeying the law and continuing to worship at the temple in Jerusalem through the proper priests and ceremonies, he set up his own idols – the golden calves – and a whole new priesthood and ceremonies to go with that.
But equally these verses point out the inadequacy of the things man has set up.
These things are only extensions of the people themselves!
People have actually physically made them.
They’re natural – not supernatural.
How can they do anything for them?
Yet what the people do through them is the heart of this matter.
As verse 5 sharply states the word from the Lord, “My anger burns against them.”
He’s angry at their adultery against Him.
They have failed to be faithful.
To use the further words of verse 5, they were incapable of purity in this relationship.
So, just as much as those idols would soon be totally destroyed, so too will be any connection they have with Him!
The language Hosea uses in verse 6 is quite mocking.
He really rubs it in about their fixation with these idols.
But like we see around us today, people become easily wrapped up with the things of this world.
They even begin to give those things the worship that certainly doesn’t belong to them.
They fill up their lives in all kinds of depraved ways!
And yet despite how much Hosea and the other prophets ridicule these man-made images, they don’t get much of a hearing.
The people are so wrap up in this pagan lifestyle there’s no reasoning with them.
It’s beyond reason because it’s become superstition!
In this way we come to the second aspect in the text this afternoon.
For we now come to see how ISRAEL HAS SOLD OUT HER PLACE WITH GOD.
Congregation, verse 7 begins with a phrase well known in our language.
‘Sow the wind, … reap the whirlwind’ makes us think that when we put nothing in we get nothing out.
But it’s origin is actually about how something has turned out very badly.
And it’s because of who Israel looked to for help.
Because this is about their foreign policy.
For rather than depending on their own God who should have been right in the midst of them they went chasing one world power after another.
That was a flightiness which decimated them.
Thus the stalk has no head which means it will produce no flour.
Because playing off one major power against another only left Israel as the land that was definitely going to be invaded.
So rather than the meaning we may attribute to the expression, ‘Sow the wind, … reap the whirlwind’ today, it meant then something like what Paul said in Galatians 6 verse 8.
There we read, “The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life.”
Well, we certainly know the harvest Israel then had.
But what about Israel today?
Because we are the spiritual people of God in this age.
And while Christ’s coming meant the Spirit came upon God’s people in fullness, it doesn’t mean that we are being tempted to sin any less than His people then!
As Paul goes on in Galatians 6 verse 9, we must not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will receive a harvest.
That’s why we must do good – the very good Israel had rejected in verse 3.
The punishment in Hosea’s time would also be physical, though.
That would be when the fertility cult of Baal didn’t produce the goods, as the first part of verse 7 indicates.
But also it would be when the foreign armies stripped the land, as the last part of verse 7 says.
And in verse 8 the future of Israel in the then world is confirmed.
You see, with the fall of Israel any value it had has gone.
As it says, Israel is “like a worthless thing.”
She’s useless, no good whatsoever, and exactly because she had forsaken her Lord.
After all, it was only in the covenant God that Israel had its importance and worth for all nations.
Now that her witness for Him was gone what use was she anymore?
Some vivid word pictures are used here to describe this abandonment.
And you can well imagine how this would have been the situation under their last king, Hoshea.
The first of these images is that of a wild donkey wandering alone.
And that was what that animal would do.
They don’t think about keeping in groups but they try to maintain their independence, as stupid as that may be!
Yet here is one sillier still!
For here is a wild donkey trying to make friends with others.
And that’s definitely not her nature!
She’s going to lose out big time!
The next image affirms this.
Because Israel is described as having sold herself like a prostitute does.
In fact, so much has she sold herself out that she is paying the customers to have her!
Believe me, the words of the prophet then would have been most vivid.
No one could have escaped the meaning of what he said!
Well might the political leaders of Israel put much political spin on their alliances and their policies.
Well might they think they’re getting by, even though so much of their territory has already been swallowed up.
But God will take them away from all those connections.
The Lord will expose them for what they truly are.
For He will send them into exile.
There they will waste away.
There they will have plenty of time to rue this day.
But there they will soon be completely swept away!
So how could it ever come down to this?
It is very simple, congregation.
In the words of the third aspect to our text, ISRAEL HAS ONLY BEEN PRETENDING BEFORE GOD.
You see, a nation may seem religious and yet she’s completely empty.
“Though Ephraim built many altars for sin offerings” verse 11 begins.
And what does it remind us of?
How about the apostle Paul in Athens?
When he had noticed the many gods in that capital city what did he say?
As we read in Acts 17 verse 22, “Men of Athens!
“I see that in every way you are very religious.”
Congregation, for the word ‘religious’ here we need to read “superstitious’.
For it’s totally unrelated to true faith.
And, in fact, the more altars were put up the further away Israel went from the Lord.
We can compare this with another time of much superstition in the Christian church.
This was in the time just before the Reformation.
A time when people were being encouraged to venerate all kind of so called saintly relics and sacred shrines.
But it only served the devil’s scheme of lifting the Church’s eyes off her Lord altogether!
That’s why verse 12 goes on to bring out their disregard for God’s Word.
Because if the Law had been on their hearts they would have worshipped and served God quite differently that they were doing.
But instead the law is something alien to them.
Anyone quoting from it then would have been regarded as some strange weirdo.
Just like those prophets were!
This situation is not dissimilar to our day.
I’ve met people who know the Anglican Prayer Book backwards.
They even attend all the important services in the church calendar.
Well, the ones they think are important.
Yet the day the Lord sets aside every week for worship is despised by them.
And they certainly don’t have a personal relationship with Him.
In fact, they live no differently than those around them in society.
So you can imagine the scene verse 13 is picturing.
Here is a nation who had been rescued from slavery to be free in the Lord.
But they had chosen to be enslaved all over again by the Canaanite gods.
They were no witness whatsoever for the Lord.
No wonder this verse ends the way it does.
The Lord might as well send them back to Egypt.
And while it might not physically be Egypt it will be into exile.
Actually, it would mean being sent to a place far worse than Egypt ever was.
For Assyria has been described as the most ruthless empire there ever was.
What they did to nations they overran and to the slaves they took as a result of that doesn’t bear telling!
Verse 14 ends with showing us again and in the clearest way the physical thing they trusted in.
Because they thought their own defences could save them.
So rather than looking to the Maker of all things they depended on the works of their own hands.
It’s no different than the idolatry chapter 8 has condemned earlier.
We have seen the folly of this with what happened at The Tower of Babel in Genesis 11.
There men thought they could reach up to God with what they built.
Then they tried to put themselves on a divine-like level.
And it all fell apart as the Lord ripped them apart through the confusion of languages.
Now we meet the same in Israel.
And it’s not to say the Lord is against building palaces and fortifications.
It’s the reason why it’s being built that counts.
I mean, didn’t Nehemiah rebuild the city walls of Jerusalem?
But he showed the right priority by exhorting the people in Nehemiah 4 verse 14 to “Remember the Lord, who is great and awesome, and fight for your brothers, your sons and your daughters, your wives and your homes.”
In Hosea’s time obeying the will of the Lord was the last thing on Israel’s mind.
And also it didn’t come first in Judah’s thoughts either!
Verse 14 just as clearly condemns them.
When Sennacherib invaded and obliterated Israel, he took out Judah as well.
There were forty-six fortified cities in that country and they were all destroyed.
In 2nd Kings 18 verse 13 we read, “In the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah’s reign, Sennacherib king of Assyria attacked all the fortified cities of Judah and captured them.”
The only city to survive then was Jerusalem.
And that was only because of God’s special act of deliverance.
An act of deliverance which came after God had told Hezekiah in 2nd Kings 19 verse 20, ‘I have heard your prayer concerning Sennacherib king of Assyria.’
There, do you see it?
Judah still had a prayer!
But Israel had lost connection with the covenant God a long time ago.
They were looking to what they could do here below.
And they had forgotten altogether the One who does it all from above.
Israel was reaping her own harvest alright.
But it was a harvest of weeds and not wheat!
Amen.
PRAYER:
Let’s pray…
O Lord God, we thank You that we do pray to You.
We praise You that out of Your infinite grace You have moved in us by Your Spirit to be humble before You.
We pray that we will be warned by what we have heard that the Israelites of old did.
May we not rebel against You by disobeying Your Word and making our own gods.
Instead, may we honour and glorify You all the more with lives that exalt You and which hold out the gospel of grace found alone in Jesus Christ.
In His Name we pray, Amen.
* As a matter of courtesy please advise Rev. Sjirk Bajema, if you plan to use this sermon in a worship service. Thank-you.
(c) Copyright 2008, Rev. Sjirk Bajema
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