2017-03-26 (what do we do)


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Sermon Transcript March 26, 2017 Hosea: God’s Persistent Love What Can We Do? Hosea 6:1-8:1

This message from the Bible was addressed originally to the people of Wethersfield Evangelical Free Church on March 26, 2017 at 511 Maple Street, Wethersfield, CT, 06109 by Dr. Scott W. Solberg. This is a transcription that bears the strength and weaknesses of oral delivery. It is not meant to be a polished essay. An audio copy of the sermon on CD is available by request at (860) 563-8286. An audio version of this sermon may also be found on the church website at www.wethefc.com. 1

Sermon Text Hosea 6:1-8:1 Hosea 6:1 “Come, let us return to the Lord; for he has torn us, that he may heal us; he has struck us down, and he will bind us up. 2 After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will raise us up, that we may live before him. 3 Let us know; let us press on to know the Lord; his going out is sure as the dawn; he will come to us as the showers, as the spring rains that water the earth.” What shall I do with you, O Ephraim? What shall I do with you, O Judah? Your love is like a morning cloud, like the dew that goes early away. 5 Therefore I have hewn them by the prophets; I have slain them by the words of my mouth, and my judgment goes forth as the light. 6 For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings. 4

But like Adam they transgressed the covenant; there they dealt faithlessly with me. Gilead is a city of evildoers, tracked with blood. 9 As robbers lie in wait for a man, so the priests band together; they murder on the way to Shechem; they commit villainy. 10 In the house of Israel I have seen a horrible thing; Ephraim's whoredom is there; Israel is defiled. 11 For you also, O Judah, a harvest is appointed. When I restore the fortunes of my people,

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Hosea 7:1 when I would heal Israel, the iniquity of Ephraim is revealed, and the evil deeds of Samaria, for they deal falsely; the thief breaks in, and the bandits raid outside. 2 But they do not consider that I remember all their evil. Now their deeds surround them; they are before my face. 3 By their evil they make the king glad, and the princes by their treachery. 4 They are all adulterers; they are like a heated oven whose baker ceases to stir the fire, from the kneading of the dough until it is leavened. 5 On the day of our king, the princes became sick with the heat of wine; he stretched out his hand with mockers. 6 For with hearts like an oven they approach their intrigue; all night their anger smolders; in the morning it blazes like a flaming fire. 7 All of them are hot as an oven, and they devour their rulers. All their kings have fallen, and none of them calls upon me. Ephraim mixes himself with the peoples; Ephraim is a cake not turned. 9 Strangers devour his strength, and he knows it not; gray hairs are sprinkled upon him, and he knows it not. 10 The pride of Israel testifies to his face; yet they do not return to the Lord their God, nor seek him, for all this. 8

Ephraim is like a dove, silly and without sense, calling to Egypt, going to Assyria. 12 As they go, I will spread over them my net; I will bring them down like birds of the heavens; 11

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I will discipline them according to the report made to their congregation. 13 Woe to them, for they have strayed from me! Destruction to them, for they have rebelled against me! I would redeem them, but they speak lies against me. They do not cry to me from the heart, but they wail upon their beds; for grain and wine they gash themselves; they rebel against me. 15 Although I trained and strengthened their arms, yet they devise evil against me. 16 They return, but not upward; they are like a treacherous bow; their princes shall fall by the sword because of the insolence of their tongue. This shall be their derision in the land of Egypt. 14

Hosea 8:1 Set the trumpet to your lips! One like a vulture is over the house of the Lord, because they have transgressed my covenant and rebelled against my law. Introduction This morning we are primarily in Hosea 6-7. And “the stuff” of Hosea 6-7 is “the stuff” that tends to occupy Sunday news shows like Face the Nation or Meet the Press or FOX News Sunday. Had these news shows existed back in the day of Hosea, no doubt, the topic of these two chapters would have been the focus of the talking heads of the day of Hosea. Who knows, perhaps this vocal prophet, Hosea, would have found himself as a guest analyst from time to time on these shows. At least we know, from these two chapters, what he would be saying about the religious institution and the political structures and the international concerns of his day. What you are going to discover in these two chapters is that this is a time of great turmoil in the land of Israel. Kings are being overthrown and assassinated at an alarming rate. Priests are in collusion with those positioning for power and are participants in the shedding of blood. International pressures are bearing down on the nation and they are bouncing around from one international alliance to another, just trying to maintain some kind of national security and identity. In his commentary, Andrew Dearman says of these two chapters that they “suggest political treachery with religious motivations, violence, and murder with the collusion of priests.” And the he says this, “It is a picture of the society coming apart.”1 Just to give you some historical bearings on the context of our passage this morning, I would like to introduce you to a king of Israel by the name of Pekah. His story unfolds in 2 Kings 15. We mentioned in the first sermon of this series that at the beginning of Hosea’s ministry the dynasty of Jehu came to an end with King Jeroboam II. After the long and prosperous forty-one year reign of Jeroboam, Israel went through kings at a 3

record pace. In the span of twelve years, they had five kings. Four of those kings were assassinated. Pekah was the fifth of these kings and he came to power when a band of fifty men from Gilead came to the king’s house in Samaria and struck down his predecessor, Pekahiah, who reigned for only two years. Comparatively speaking, Pekah sat on the throne for a long time, twenty years. But when he came into power, he was under the thumb of the Assyrians, and much of his time was spent forming alliances to resist this international pressure. Consequently, he too came to a bloody end and his successor was the final king the northern kingdom would ever have. By the time we get to Hosea 6-7, Israel is going down the slide and there is no putting on the breaks. These institutions that hold a society together, both religious and political, have come unglued. Now we know that there is more going on here than what we read in the headlines. We know that there is a spiritual reality behind the “current events” we read of in these chapters. To explain why things are coming unglued for Israel, two times in our passage this morning it is said of Israel that they “transgressed the covenant.” You see this in Hosea 6:7 and 8:1. In Hosea 8:1 it says, “Set the trumpet to your lips! One like a vulture is over the house of the LORD, because they have transgressed my covenant and rebelled against my law.” The horn here is a shofar, a ram’s horn, often blown to make public announcement. In this case, it is the public announcement of judgment. The bird here, most likely is not a vulture, but can also be translated as an eagle, a predatory bird, which would picture well the coming “predatory-like” army of Assyria against Israel. In Deuteronomy, before Israel entered the promised land, God rehearsed with them the covenant God made with them. He promised to be their God and they made covenant to be God’s people. With that covenant came the promises of God’s blessing if they were faithful. In fact, Moses wrote a psalm in Deuteronomy 32 and in verses 11-12 he reminded Israel what God had done for them. Reminding them of his faithful care for them those forty years in the wilderness, he likened it to “an eagle that stirs up its nest, that flutters over its young, spreading out its wings, catching them, bearing them on its pinions.” Like this eagle, Moses sings, “the LORD alone guided him, no foreign god was with him.” And yet, this same image of an eagle is used in Deuteronomy 28:49 to describe what will happen if they abandon the covenant between them and God. It says, “The LORD will bring a nation against you from far away, from the end of the earth, swooping down like the eagle, a nation whose language you do not understand.” Why? Why does God go from the picture of an eagle tenderly carrying her young to the predatory bird swooping down upon its prey? Why does God say to his people in Hosea 1 that their kingdom is coming to an end and that he will no longer have mercy on them and that he is not their God and they are no longer his people? Why do we have this 4

dark picture in Hosea 4 of God now standing opposed to his people like in a courtroom where God is presenting his case against them? The question was asked last week, “how did we get here?” Why is there such corruption at the highest levels of their society? Hosea tells us the reason why. It is because Israel has transgressed the covenant. In fact, that is what Moses says in the answer to the question “why?” Anticipating Israel’s hard heart, which Moses was very well acquainted with, he said that when people will ask, “What caused the heat of God’s anger against his people?” Moses answers in Deuteronomy 29:25, “It is because they abandoned the covenant of the LORD, the God of their fathers, which he made with them when he brought them out of the land of Egypt.” How so? How has Israel transgressed the covenant between them and God? There are five word pictures in these two chapters that capture the spiritual, moral and political decay of the nation of Israel. And clearly for the nation of Israel, a people in covenant with God, the spiritual and the moral and the political are not isolated entities. The spiritual has impact on the moral and the moral has impact on the political. Now I understand, in our country, we make much of the separation of church and state. I think that is a good thing. Originally, this was established to keep the state out of the church and preserve the freedom of religion. It allows us to come here each and every Sunday as we choose, to worship God. In the most technical sense, we were never a Christian nation, a nation like Old Testament Israel in covenant with God. And yet, at the same time, we are a nation founded on Christian principles. Our Declaration of Independence declares “these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.” And so the principle holds true for us as well. The spiritual fabric of a nation impacts the moral fiber of a nation and that plays out in the political governing and well being of a nation. It has been hard for me to come to this passage and not put it up against the angst many are feeling about the spiritual, moral and political plight of our own country. As a pastor, I am keenly aware of the fact that I can’t make a one to one comparison between the political entity of the Old Testament people of Israel and the United States of America. Today, the people of God are not defined by geographical boundaries and national allegiances. The people of God is the church that spans the globe, wherever the name of Jesus is embraced and worshipped. And yet, at the same time, when it comes to the spiritual, moral and political environment of our day, I can’t help but see our country mirrored in what we read of Israel in this passage. And so as we look at these five word pictures describing the spiritual, moral and political decay of Israel, I can’t resist pondering what this means for us as the people of God living as citizens of this country. I have been asking myself from this text, “What can we do?” 5

Five Pictures of Israel No Love and Knowledge of God: The first word picture we encounter describing Israel at this time is a word picture that describes the spiritual state of the people. In Hosea 6:4, he likens Israel’s love for God to be “like a morning cloud, like the dew that goes early away.” It is a very interesting statement, given what comes right before it at the beginning of the chapter. Chapter 6 actually starts out sounding rather hopeful and promising. If you recall from last Sunday, at the end of Hosea 5 there was this little tiny glimmer of hope, in an otherwise pretty dark passage. God described himself as a lion who has come to tear his people. But this tearing is a severe mercy that is designed to cause them to come back to God. God says in Hosea 5:15, “I will return to my place until they acknowledge their guilt and seek my face, and in their distress earnestly seek me.” The assumption is that when they earnestly seek God, God will be found by them and will heal them. And so Hosea 6 begins with this unexpected cry from the people of Israel, “Come, let us return to the LORD, for he has torn us that he may heal us, he has struck us down and he will bind us up.” It almost sounds as if the prophet got through to them. They even say in verse 3 “Let us know, let us press on to know the LORD.” These are common expressions that describe a heart of repentance. Repentance is a turning away from sin and turning back to God. Now there is some debate as to who is speaking in this passage. Some think it is the prophet, Hosea, speaking on behalf of the people and urging them to return to God. Others suggest that this is actually the cry of the people of Israel. After hearing the somber words of Hosea 5, they can now be heard crying out to God. I tend to think it is the voice of the people crying out to God here because of God’s response to them in verse 4. Here God says, “What shall I do with you, O Ephraim? What shall I do with you, O Judah? Your love is like the morning cloud, like the dew that goes early away.” In other words, their cry and their religious activity is not really genuine. Their commitment to God is likened to the dew on the morning grass that quickly fades away. In verse 6, God describes the kind of repentance he is seeking from those who worship him. “For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God, rather than burnt offerings.” It is not just the ritual of religion that God seeks in those who worship him. But absent of a love and knowledge of God, the ritual is empty. The fact that Jesus quotes from this verse two times in Matthew tells us that this is a timeless warning for us. Each time Jesus uses this verse, he is talking to religious leaders. In Matthew 9 he 6

uses this verse to explain why he eats with tax collectors and sinners and in Matthew 12 he uses this verse to explain why he and his disciples do not abide to the rigid traditions that the religious leaders established for keeping the Sabbath. In each case, their religious rituals prevented them from meeting the needs of the people of their day. Can I just say this, before we move on to the next word picture. If there is anything this country needs from the church is for the church to be the church. Russell Moore, President of the Southern Baptists reminded us in an article in First Things that our “first identity is as part of the global body of Christ.”2 Before I am an American, I belong to Jesus. And to be quite honest with you, as Christians, no matter where we live or what country we come from, we are not part of the majority culture and never have been. Rather, what we are to be is salt and light no matter where we are in this world. And we can only be that if what we are doing this morning is more than just a ritual. Our songs of worship and our prayers can’t be like the morning cloud, like the dew that goes early away when we leave this building. This hour needs to mark us and our love for God needs to be steadfast and we must press on to know the LORD.” Living in a post-Christian culture, playing Sunday church won’t cut it. What must we do? We must love God and press on to know God with all of our heart and soul and mind. Loss of Spiritual Leadership: The second word picture that describes the state of Israel at this time is found in Hosea 6:7. Here God says, “But like Adam they transgressed the covenant; there they dealt faithlessly with me.” I am sure that when you read this, your mind immediately goes to Genesis 1-3. That is where my mind went when I first began to dig deeply into this passage. In fact, I thought this is a pretty easy point to make. The point being that just as Adam broke covenant with God in the Garden of Eden when he ate of the forbidden tree, so Israel too broke covenant with God by not loving or knowing God. But I am discovering that nothing is easy about Hosea! Actually, on the east bank of the Jordan River there was a city called Adam. It is mentioned in Joshua 3:16. In Hebrew, there is a little particle in front of the word Adam in this verse and it can be translated, “at Adam.” In fact, it seems to make more sense with the rest of the verse because he says that “there they dealt faithlessly with me.” We really are not told what the incident was that took place at this city, but one thing seems to be sure. This incident included the shedding of blood, namely murder. In verse 8 it says, “Gilead is a city of evil doers tracked with blood.” If you recall from earlier in the message, we learned from 2 Kings 15 that it was fifty men from Gilead who assisted Pekah in the assassination of King Pekaih. And it seems that this bloody trail of footprints led right to the feet of the priests. “As robbers lie in wait for a man, so the priests ban together; they murder on the way to Shechem; they commit villainy.” Whether 7

they actually physically took part in the taking of life, or were simply complicit with these bloody regime changes, is uncertain. One thing we do know is that the spiritual leaders of Israel were no longer voices for righteousness. When I think of where we are in our country, we need prophetic voices to speak into our culture, yes. But more importantly, we need righteous and prophetic voices to speak into the church. You get a sense for how people felt about Hosea in Hosea 9:7. Here we read, “The prophet is a fool; the man of the spirit is mad.” But in verse 8, he reminds them that “the prophet is the watchman.” He is someone who sits on the wall and watches for coming danger. Sometimes that prophetic voice doesn’t just poke and prod at the culture, but it is most needed to poke and prod the people of God. We know from Hosea 6:5 that prophets were sent with a word from God. We need prophetic voices in our pulpits and we need prophetic voices in our homes. These prophetic voices need to teach us how to live in this culture so that in time we might renew culture. So what do we do? We band together in community. We embrace the church. We embrace a community of families. We embrace the family. And together, we learn what it means to live counter-cultural lives. It is not just me concerned about my family. Rather, it is us as family of families, invested in each other. Plotting for Power: The third word picture is found in Hosea 7:4. Here Hosea says of Israel that “they are like a heated oven whose baker ceases to stir the fire, from the kneading of the dough until it is leavened.” Perhaps a modern day expression would serve us well to help us understand what is being said with this word picture. Basically he is saying these political entities are “cooking something up.” They are plotting. They are hatching a devious plan. As you read on you discover that this is a plot unfolding in the palace of the king. It is the plot of the princes taking their stand against the king. In verse 6 it says, “For with hearts like an oven they approach their intrigue; all night their anger smolders; in the morning it blazes like a flaming fire.” Dearman says, “this political intrigue is compared to a fire that smolders at night and heats up in the morning.”3 That sure sounds a lot like Washington to me. Though at times you even wonder if it ever smolders. It seems to me that the heat is up 24/7. But more directly, through this picture, Hosea is describing the plotting and the scheming that has become common place in the king’s palace through all these bloody revolts against the king. He says in verse 7, “All of them are hot as an oven, and they devour their rulers. All their kings have fallen, and none of them calls upon me.” It is a picture of a political system where everyone is scratching and clawing for power and in this setting it seems that they are willing to do anything to get it. In the end, this grasping for power is self-serving and does not serve the people well. 8

We could make a lot of comparisons with this picture to our own political system. Obviously, government is God-ordained and of itself it is a good and necessary thing for the stability of a country. We are to pray for our governing officials. But there does appear to be a lot of plotting and a lot of scheming with the motive of holding onto power instead of serving the country. It can be discouraging and disconcerting. But that is not really my major concern this morning. My concern is when the church sees the answer to be Washington and it is easy for us to become intoxicated with the same quest for power through our alliances that we lose our ability to honestly speak righteousness when it needs to be spoken. Because access for power is enticing, I have seen the church let slide for one candidate what they vilified the other for. Rev. Mika Edmondson reminds us out of Psalm 118 that our hope is in God and not in princes. He said that while governance is important, “we go wrong when we think and behave as though the power of God unto salvation is the American government rather than the eternal gospel.” He said, “Much of the misplaced hope and angst in the evangelical world today is because so many Christians have forgotten that we are pilgrims. . . When campaigns, elected officials, and even our country has come and gone, his life-giving reign and eternal kingdom will stand. This eternal perspective should keep Christians from becoming overly optimistic or anxious about the results of any election.”4 It is a sobering thing to read at the end of verse 7 after all this upheaval in the halls of power that God says, “and none of them calls upon me.” Unfit to be used by God: The fourth word picture is found in Hosea 7:8 and here he says, “Israel mixes himself with the peoples; Ephraim is a cake not turned.” For this picture, think of a pancake on a skillet. One side is cooked, but instead of flipping it to the other side to fully cook it, you don’t flip it. Who would eat that? The cake is nice and cooked on one side, but the uncooked batter on the other side makes it inedible and no one can serve that kind of cake to be eaten. It is unfit to be served. This picture is describing Israel who is seeking one alliance after another for their own security. First they gave themselves to Assyria, thinking that would stabilize them. But then, they sought out Egypt to shake free from the oppressive hand of Assyria. Instead of seeking and trusting God, they sought these alliances that in the end, made them unfit to be the people of God in this world. It led to them compromising in many ways, most notably, they compromised their fidelity to God. We are more impacted by our culture than we realize. It is hard to critique it from the inside. Hosea describes this covert influence in verse 9 when he says “Strangers devour 9

his strength and he knows it not, gray hairs are sprinkled upon him, and he knows it not.” Gary Smith says of this verse, “The surprising thing is that the people do not see how this creeping compromising (like the slow process of getting gray hair) is gradually undermining their identity.”5 It is like the frog in the kettle not knowing that he is about to be boiled to death. Looking at our culture, Bruce Ashford has observed that clearly God and the church has been what he calls “decentered.” That has impact on the church and the country. The temptation is to form alliances to regain power. Sadly, evangelicals are now more known as being a voting block than a gospel witness. Unhealthy alliances have been formed. Ashford asks, “Can we minister to our culture from a position of weakness?” Here is what he said, “We can, and we must. Instead of resenting our cultural moment, slouching into withdrawal, or changing into angry activism, evangelicals should accept the challenge of our era and serve our nation out of a position of weakness, even if we seem to have power. After all, this is how the kingdom comes.” And then he said, “If our Lord reigns from a tree, then we can minister from a tree.”6 If we want to be of use to God in this world, we must make sure our primary goal is to be a long-term witness for Jesus Christ to this world. That is who we are. False Security: The final picture is found in Hosea 7:11. “Ephraim is like a dove, silly and without sense, calling to Egypt, going to Assyria.” Have you ever sat on a park bench to feed the pigeons? The game is to see how close they will come to you. You scatter some bread crumbs a little closer each time, and the next thing you know, their defenses are down and they are sitting on the bench practically eating from your hand. They have no sense of possible danger. That is how Israel is with the allure of Assyria and Egypt. Looking for security, without sense, they go running to these unholy alliances and when they least expect it, God says, “As they go, I will spread over them my net.” I think the saddest commentary in all of this is that God is waiting for them to turn to God, but they fail to do so. He says in verse 14, “They do not cry to me from the heart, but they wail upon their beds; for grain and wine they gash themselves; they rebel against me.” And so even though the spiritual and the moral and the political structures are coming unglued, they still do not turn to God. I heard Walt Kaiser, a renowned Old Testament professor, speak one time. Of course, he was speaking from the Old Testament. I don’t remember what passage it was, but he was referencing natural disasters and political upheaval, much like this passage. And do you know what he said about these catastrophic events? “God is calling! God is calling!” I can’t help but think that is a good reminder for us this morning, as the people of God living in these times. 10

God is calling! God is calling! And, he calling the church to cry out to God for his kingdom to come and for his will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. And do you know what? These hardships and these cultural and national uncertainties may be the best thing for the church. Because, quite honestly, the church does the best when the church lives on the margins of power. God is calling! God is calling his people to cry out to God from the heart. If anything, we should be moved to pray! Conclusion The message of Hosea is that God is going to do it! We saw at the beginning of this message that Israel broke covenant with God. But in Jesus, there is a new covenant established and it can not be broken. Jesus, the true Israel, did what the nation could not do and he brought the kingdom of God into this world through his life, death and resurrection. Therefore, God’s kingdom is here and it is eternal. So what can we do? That is the question. Be the church! Ban together and be that righteous and prophetic voice. Embrace the call of the gospel and embrace a position of weakness. And by all means, call upon God for the effective work of the gospel. Let us not forget that God is at work in and through us. May we embrace this call for such a time as this. What an honor it is to serve the King of kings and the Lord of lords in this day and in this place. All for the glory of God! _______________________ J. Andrew Dearman The Book of Hosea, NICOT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010) 199 Russell Moore “Can the Religious Right be Saved First Things January 2017 https:// www.firstthings.com/article/2017/01/can-the-religious-right-be-saved 3Dearman, 205 4Mika Edmundson “4 Unique Perspectives on Politics” November 30, 2016, https:// www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/4-unique-perspectives-politics 5Gary Smith Hosea, Amos, Micah: NIV Application Commentary (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2001) 123 6Bruce Ashford “Powerful Witness from a Position of Weakness” December 1, 2016, https:// www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/powerful-witness-from-position-of-weakness 1 2

© by Dr. Scott Solberg - All rights reserved 11

Sermon Title: What Can We Do? Sermon Text: Hosea 6:1-8:1 Sermon Date: March 26, 2017

Getting To Know Me Questions 1. If you could choose your age forever, what age would you choose and why? 2. What news event were you most drawn to this week? What concern did it raise in you? How can you turn this event into a matter of prayer? Spend time praying about it. 3. Share something you took from the sermon this week.

Diving Into The Word 4. Read Hosea 6:1-6. How do you relate to the picture in verse 4? Read Matthew 9:10-13 and discuss how Jesus uses Hosea 6:6 in this passage and what this teaches us about what God desires of us. 5. Read Hosea 6:7-7:7. What do you learn about the religious and political environment of Israel in this passage? How can you relate? As Christians, why shouldn’t we be overly optimistic or unduly anxious about elections? 6. Read Hosea 7:8-16. Where does Israel look for security? Read Psalm 118:8-9 and discuss what it means to find our security in God. How does this help you navigate the political realities of our day? 7. Read 1 Timothy 2:1-7. What instruction and encouragement do you gain from this passage when it comes to matters of church and state?

Taking It Home 8. What adjustment in your thinking do you need to make in light of your conversation? 9. As a Community Group, how can you help each other be salt and light wherever you go?

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