Hosea Lesson 12
The Lord’s face is withdrawn - Hosea 5:1-14
The book of Hosea is a book of the Nabiim, the book of the prophets, one
of the book of the prophets. And because
it is that tells us certain things about how to use Hosea, how to read these
kinds of books in our Christian life.
When you read a book from the prophets you read it searching for ways
and means of sanctification. You read a
book like Daniel for wisdom, for principles, how to cope with various
situations. You read a book like Hosea
for another reason; you read it for the reason of finding and exposing areas
that need changing, areas that need sanctification. The Holy Spirit speaks through the words of
the prophets to bring conviction of specific sins, specific violations and
rebellions against God’s commands.
That’s the way we read these kinds of books.
In Hosea 5 we continue the principles that he began in chapter 4. Remember that Hosea is administering a rib; the word rib means lawsuit. And it’s
a lawsuit that God is filing against the nation
Now as we go through here to make it more practical for the Christian
I’m going to flip back between Hosea and the New Testament so we’ll be talking
in two places; we’re going to take a principle from Hosea and then I’ll show
you how it’s carried over into the New Testament and applied to the believer. Broadly speaking the principle in Hosea is
one that involves election; it involves our position is Jesus Christ. Looking at it from our point of view in the
Church Age, we are chosen “in Christ,” that’s Ephesians chapter 1. God the Father, God the Holy Spirit, God the
Son knew the plan of election for all eternity; they had determined it from all
eternity and so therefore anyone who is “in Christ,” a person who has trusted
in Jesus Christ for their salvation, the person who is born again, that person
is a member of this elect body. And
while it is true that being a member of the elect body conveys eternal security
it’s also true that there’s fine print in the contract. And the fine print, and the fine print is
amplified in Hosea, the fine print has to do with God’s jealous love. Election means God’s sovereign election love,
and when He elects objects for His love, when He chooses to love people, He
insists that this love be responded to.
And God becomes angry when that love is violated.
So if you can put it this way, Hosea is a book about the wrath of God’s
love, because He is an intense lover, therefore He is also intensely jealous
and He is intensely concerned about those whom He loves, and therefore He
administers discipline very severely.
The corollary is that election means discipline, there’s no escape. There’s no escape from salvation but the
corollary is there is also no escape from sanctification. And sanctification involves severe training.
So in Hosea 5:1 where we read, “Hear ye this, O priests; and hearken ye
house of
So when the condemnation comes in verse 1 it comes to the priests. They are the religious leaders, they are the
people who ought t have been teaching the Word of God and have not been. It comes to the house of
The people are never divorced from their leaders in the Word of
God. God collectively involves both
leaders and people. This is why, in
verse 1 he says, “for judgment is toward you, because ye” collectively,
singular, “you” includes all the levels mentioned in verse 1, “you have been a
snare on Mizpah, and a net spread upon Tabor.”
The idea of the snare and the net are always symbols of Satan circling
people. For example, Psalm 91 is one key
Psalm where the symbol of the snare of the fowler comes out; the snare of the
fowler is a particular trap that was used against birds and the reason why this
particular word, “snare,” occurs over and over again in the Bible is because
the bird is one of the freest animals, mobility in three dimension, and
therefore it is the snare that inhibits freedom. And so when you see the word “snare” and
“net” as you do here and as you will many times in the Psalms, think, it means
the destruction of freedom and the destruction of freedom always occurs when
the first divine institution of volition is attacked. God has created men with a power of moral
choice, and when we have people, governments and religious bodies either
manipulating that choice, preventing its exercise, you have a snare and a
net. In particular Satan is usually
involved and so the word “snare” has connotations about the demonic powers
behind the loss of freedom.
So collectively these people have lost their freedom; they have lost
their freedom because they have rejected God’s Word and freedom comes by
submission to God’s Word; always does!
The greatest attack on freedom was Satan talking to Eve in the Garden,
when he said to Eve, trying to get her to rebel against the restrictions of
God, Eve, God doesn’t have your best interests at heart; basically Eve all
restrictions are bad, therefore Eve, break restrictions. And Eve did; so did
Adam and the result is what we have today, a wonderful display of the loss of
freedom, loss of freedom to do what we could have been doing as sinless
creatures.
Hosea 5:2, “And the revolters are profound to make [gone deeply into]
slaughter,” I will not comment on verse 2 because it’s a very involved and
complicated thing and I’ve never yet made heads or tails out of it, so we’ll go
on to the last part of verse 2, “though I have been a rebuker of them
all.” Now that is not the rebuker, and
this translation, “I have been the musar,”
musar is the word that was used in
the book of Proverbs for intense training; it is not just intellectual
discussion, musar is the kind of
training, for example, you’d get in boot camp, the kind of training the Marines
get, severe training. It’s the kind of
training that
To see this let’s turn to the New Testament and watch how the principle
occurs in the Church Age. In Romans
So let’s look at verse 13 and what do we see in verse 13; if you look
carefully at verse 13 it says, “if you live after the flesh, you shall die,” so
you have this kind of a statement, life—death.
The next statement is, “if you kill, if you put to death the deeds of
the body, you will live.” So you have
the concept of life. Now the word kill
or “mortify the deeds of the body” refers to the –R learned behavior patterns. They are the sinful behavior patterns that
are picked up that must be eliminated in sanctification. So he says, “if you mortify” these practices,
for example, we all have our share depending on our background, but let’s just
say we have six learned behavior patterns that we’ve picked up, we weren’t born
with them, we just picked them up, and living in this world system, living
amidst apostasy, living in our own autonomous being we have generated these
patterns of response. They become
automatic with us. So we hit a situation
instead of trusting the Lord with it, instead of throwing it in the Lord’s
hands we worry about it. Instead of
working with guilt and confessing it and moving on we fret about it and walk
around with a big fat guilt complex. Or
there may be some other learned behavior patterns. What this verse is saying, “if you will put
to death” these patterns of behavior, then “you shall live.”
Now the living here is physical life; the implication is if you do not
put away the learned behavior patterns, you will die physically. This means that God the Holy Spirit is
administering a program of sanctification that is irreversible. Either we go along with the Holy Spirit or He
takes us home. Those are the
choices. God the Holy Spirit is going to
sanctify us; He has chosen us and He will accomplish the election, the goal for
which we have been elected.
And then we have verse 14; see verse 14 is an explanation of why verse
13 makes such a harsh statement. Why is
it such a harsh alternative; why is it that we either get of the learned
behavior patterns or we physically die, meaning that God brings into our life
discipline that can result in death. Now
why is this so harsh, because verse 14.
“For as many as are being led,” present tense, this is referring to the
time between the time you trust in Jesus Christ until the time you die; that
interval of time means we are constantly, present tense, “we are constantly
being led along by the Holy Spirit.” We
are constantly being led along means… it’s just like somebody holding your hand
and just moving you right along, and the Holy Spirit is constantly, it’s not
referring to divine guidance, it’s talking about the process of sanctification,
and because this process of sanctification occurs, because we are the sons of
God, that is we are “in Christ,” therefore only that option remains.
Now how is that option exercised?
Let’s take a look at some Biblical examples from the New Testament. Turn to Luke 22, here is again how God is the
musar. God is the One who calls the shots on the
training program, not man, not our gimmicks, not our little prayer meetings or
anything else. It is God’s program that
is involved and He is the one basically who has designed it. In Luke 22:31 we have the Lord saying
something to Peter, very famous, most people know the story of Peter and the
cock crowing three times and Peter blowing it.
But in Luke 22, in this narration a new feature is added to the usual
story, because most people read the story from Matthew and don’t read it from
Luke.
Now if you look carefully at Luke, you’ll notice something, “And the
Lord said to Simon, Simon, behold, Satan has desired to have you, that he may
sift you as wheat,” now here we have the method that God uses in musar; God is basically sovereign so He
is over the whole thing, it is not God and Satan, it is God over and using
Satan. But underneath God we have Satan
who is fixed in his negative volition; Satan and all his angels will not be
saved, never will be saved, they have made their choice and they have no second
chance. They are like people after
death, the time of their testing, however long it was, is over; there’s no
second chance for them now so their only hope is to try and stall off the
consummation of history. And the way
they have of that is by attacking believers.
So Satan and his demon hordes want to destroy the Church, as they want
to destroy the physical nation of Israel because any group that is associated
with the ongoing plan of God, that group, if destroyed, would stop God’s
planned program. So all that Satan has
to do is destroy. So Satan always wants
to destroy, he also wants to attack believers.
All right, but over Him is God, so Satan can never get permission to
destroy unless God first gives him the permission. And what this is saying is that Satan has
desired to have you, in other words, Satan does not have free hands to just
attack anyone he wants to; he has to get permission. He’s put in a request, Father, let me get
Peter. Now what’s the basis of the request? The basis of the request, Satan claims…here’s
Peter, and Peter, Satan says, is a sinner, Peter has gone on negative volition
like I have, Satan said, and since You condemned me to the lake of fire,
therefore you ought to condemn Peter to the lake of fire. So Satan makes his pitch on a legal basis,
but Satan’s legal side of his pitch is blunted by the finished work of Jesus
Christ. Although Peter is on negative
volition, Jesus Christ has paid for Peter’s sin and so therefore Satan does not
have legal claim on Peter. But
nevertheless God is going to use Satan’s ferocity anyhow and He’s going to turn
ferocity and cursing into blessing, and the means is musar.
Satan’s ferocity will be the means of administering a severe training to
Peter. Peter becomes demonically
attacked here at this point in his life; this is why later when he writes his
epistle in 1 Peter 5, he says Satan is as a roaring lion seeking whom he may
devour. Now Peter learned that from musar; Peter learned what Satan was walking around lying, he wasn’t
interested in drawing pictures of Satan, he wasn’t just working with imagery or
symbols, Peter knew very, very carefully and with very much experience and hurt
and suffering what it means to say Satan is a roaring lion.
So, “Satan has desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat,” in
other words, Satan wants to work him over real well. [32] “But I” Jesus says, and here’s a picture
of why we don’t all get clobbered, “But I have prayed for thee,” we may forget
to pray for one another but nevertheless, Jesus Christ does pray for us, and
for that reason we are secure, “I have prayed for you,” and now notice the
reason, and I want you to notice that Jesus’ intercession does not cause Peter
to avoid the trial; Jesus intercession only converts Satan’s ferocity and
hostility to a good end of musar type
training, “I have prayed for thee, that” purpose clause, “thy faith fail
not.”
In other words, Jesus Christ has said all right, Satan, I will permit
you to do certain things, and one of the things that is going to come out of
this is that Peter will be a strengthened believer after it’s all over, it’s
going to be tough riding while he’s going through it but at the end the trial
won’t destroy Peter, Peter is “in Christ,” Peter is one of the elect, and the
elect are not destroyed. So therefore
the trial and the ferocity of Satan will not destroy Peter, it will only edify
Peter. “I have prayed for you in order
that your faith fail not. And when thou
art converted,” that’s not talking about regeneration, that’s talking about
confession, when you confess your sin and you are restored to fellowship, then
Jesus says you’ll know Peter, you’ve been trained by musar, and then you’re going to take the result of that training
and you’re going to pass it on to other believers; you’re going to share musar with them, the results of musar.
So he says, “strengthen thy brethren.”
So there is a case in point of musar
applied to a believer through the means of Satan but supervised very
carefully by God the Father and the intercessory ministry of Jesus Christ, and
the purpose of musar again in
believer’s lives is primarily to edify the body, “strengthen thy
brethren.”
Let’s look at some more cases in the New Testament. Turn to 1 Corinthians 5:5. Get in mind the principle as we go through
these passages and then when we come to Hosea it’ll be very easy; it’s the same
principle back there. The principle
occurs again and again, just look at it enough times and you’ll grasp it and
then be able to see how it works out. We
have a situation in the Corinthian church and for some reason Paul picks this
one man out, he may have a lot of information about him, and apparently the
apostles had the authority, we don’t, to take a believer and isolate that
believer from much of God’s grace. Not
entirely but from much of God’s grace.
So Paul directs the local church at Corinth “To deliver such an one unto
Satan,” purpose, “for the destruction of the flesh,” that’s the physical flesh
of Romans 8:13-14, remember, if you don’t mortify these things you will die; if
you do mortify these things you will live; same thing here, same concept, the
destruction of the flesh means through sickness, through adversity, through
accidents, some way that person will die, “in order that the spirit may be
saved,” so there’s not a loss of salvation in verse 5, it’s simply a loss of
physical life in verse 5, and the loss is to prevent the spiritual loss. It turns out, by the way, in 2 Corinthians
this man went ahead anyway and confessed his sin and moved on and got back with
it.
Hebrews 1:14, a good promise in case some of you have tendencies to over
estimate Satan and the demonic powers, there’s always an imbalance, we have a
lot of Christians that pooh-pooh the whole idea, Jesus didn’t know what He was
talking about when He was talking to Satan, he must have been talking to
Himself, and then you have believers on the opposite end of the spectrum who
get so deathly afraid of Satan and they become in effect Satan
worshippers. Now Hebrews 1:14 gives you
the balance; neither position is correct, it’s just the in between. Now this is a tremendous promise to claim… a
tremendous promise to claim. “Are they
not all ministering spirits,” and that means both the elect angels and the
fallen angels, both Satan and all the demonic hordes, Michael, Gabriel on one
side, Satan on the other, they are all ministering spirits, “sent forth to
minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation.” So next time you feel like Satan has it in
for you, just thank him, he’s one of your ministers. That’s a tremendous promise to claim.
We could go but I think the principle is clear so let’s go back to Hosea
5 and watch how this principle came upon the nation. In verse 2 God says, Jehovah to the nation,
“I am the musar of them all,” don’t
blame, God says, the Assyrians when they come in and do as the Assyrians always
did, when they moved into an area they would stake out someone, spread eagle
them and take their knives and peel their skin off while they were still
alive. And when you see that, and when
you see your neighbors screaming as their skin is ripped off, don’t you blame
the Assyrians, I, God says, am the musar,
I’m the One that commissioned the Assyrians to do that, because I love you and
I’m furious with the way you’ve responded to My love. This is the personal, the intense personal
response of God in Hosea. Hosea is one
of the most famous books in the Bible for presenting the wrath of love.
Hosea 5:3, verses 3 and 4 is a pun on the word “know.” Notice how verse 3 begins, “I know Ephraim,
and Israel is not hidden from me;” notice how verse 4 ends, “but they have not
known Me.” The word is yadah; yadah doesn’t mean just
intellectual knowledge, it means knowledge of a personal relationship. When Adam had sexual intercourse with Eve it
is said he yadahs Eve. He knows Eve, there is personal
involvement. So when it says here, “I
know Ephraim, and Israel is not hidden from Me,” God is talking about the
personal relationship that exists between Him and His covenant people, I know
them, I have known them for all eternity, I know them in their position.
This is analogous to our position in Christ; Jesus Christ knows us,
that’s a theme also in Romans 8; the Holy Spirit is said to know us so well
that He prays for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. This is talking about groanings or actual
verbal petitions that the Holy Spirit is making which we cannot
understand. How does He make these. He makes them to the Father and notice what
happens in Romans 8:26-27, “Likewise, the Spirit also helps our infirmity,”
singular, that’s our weakness, capsulized as one because the Holy Spirit since
we are in Christ, He knows what we have to go through. Here you are, you have these kinks in your
soul, and the Holy Spirit knows you perfectly, He knows you backwards and
forwards, He knows perfectly your problem, and so the Holy Spirit helps your
infirmity. How does the Holy Spirit help
your infirmity? “…for we know not what
we should pray for as we ought;” that’s not talking about just normal every day
prayers, this in context is talking about sanctification of doing business in
trying to straighten our lives out. We
don’t know how to straighten out lives out is what the verse is saying; we
don’t know, should I concentrate on this, should I get rid of this, or should I
work with this, what problem do I work on first Lord? So “the Holy Spirit Himself,” literally, “is
making intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.” In other words, the indwelling Holy Spirit in
you, from the time that you were regenerated as a believer in Jesus Christ, the
Holy Spirit was sending a constant barrage of prayer. You may wonder why all of a sudden you got
hit with a trial; the Holy Spirit prayed for you. The trial was designed, it didn’t come about
by chance. Now verse 27, here’s the
knowing. “And he that searches the
hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because He,” the Holy Spirit,
“makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God.” So therefore we have the Holy Spirit praying
for us, “He that knows the heart” is the Lord Jesus Christ, He is the one who
examines the reigns, the emotional patterns, the makeup of us; He that searches
the heart knows the mind of the Spirit.
So we have a chain of command between the Father, Son and Holy
Spirit. The Holy Spirit makes a
decision, the Son knows what the Holy Spirit is doing, and the Son goes to the
Father; there’s the Trinity operating.
That’s what Hosea is talking about though in less detailed
revelation. “I know Ephraim, and Israel
is not hidden from me,” any more than we are hid from the Father in the Lord
Jesus Christ, “for now, O Ephraim, you have committed whoredom, and Israel has
become defiled.” Again, operating under
the analogy of the second divine institution of marriage, the principle is just
as you have a right man and a right woman, so also you have God and the nation
Israel, and since the right woman is designed to respond only to her right man,
only to that man inside the second divine institution, she is designed to be
his helper, she is designed to respond to him, and when she’s on negative
volition she’s always looking somewhere else, she’s not satisfied with what God
has provided, and so therefore the nation Israel is doing the same thing. The nation Israel was designed to respond to
God but the nation Israel has gone on negative volition, rejected God and
therefore God isn’t enough. So the idea
of whoredom simply is using the analogy of marriage for the Mosaic Covenant of
Sinai. “Israel has become defiled.”
Hosea 5:4, “They will not frame their doings to turn unto their God;” in
other words, there’s no motion, no movement whatever to confess their sins,
“for the spirit of whoredoms is in the midst of them,” the “spirit,” notice
singular, “of whoredoms,” plural, now why is this the singular word, ruach, ruach is singular, “of many,”
plural, “whoredoms.” That’s saying that
we have one spirit in the nation who is manifesting negative volition in a
dozen ways. In other words, in the nation
Israel, in the northern kingdom at that time, you had some people who were
self-righteous, they were the goody people, they were looking down their nose
at somebody over here; this person was the licentious type, they’d go out and
raise all kinds of hell and these people would say oh gee, look at that; but
yet from God’s point of view this was just another way of committing whoredom
because in this case they’re not trusting the Lord either, they’re just simply
trying to generate on their own energy their own righteousnesses. And so their own righteousnesses become their
idol.
So negative volition is expressed many different ways, so you have a
plural here, “the spirit of many different kinds of whoredoms,” and you
remember that, keep balance when you study God’s Word, sin crops up in 1008
different ways and the tendency we all have is to think of our ways as less
evil than our neighbor’s. Now what about
“the spirit,” “the spirit of whoredoms is in the midst of them.” It goes back to compound carnality analogy,
except in this case it’s not the chaos of one heart, it’s the chaos of a
nation. They’ve gone on negative
volition, they’ve experienced the darkening of their souls, they’re
experiencing the in draft of human viewpoint, and then it’s led to a hatred of
God and idolatry and when they get up into these upper levels of intense forms
of carnality you have demon influence of a tremendous degree and this statement
is saying that the nation, at this point, has so trained themselves in –R
learned behavior patterns, and has gone on and on and on, to the point that it’s
though we were building a piece of electronics, all this great circuitry has
been built, and now the demonic powers come along and boom, they apply voltage
to the circuitry. We build the
circuitry, the whole shape of the thing is ours, but the one that energizes it
are the demonic powers. Here “the spirit
of whoredoms is in the midst of them,” in other words, the entire northern
kingdom has come nationally under demonic influence, “and they have not known
the LORD.” Now of course most of the
nation was unregenerate.
Hosea 5:5, “And the pride of Israel will testify to his face; therefore
shall Israel and Ephraim fall in their iniquity; Judah also shall fall with
them.” Now verse 5 comes after verses
3-4 emphasis on “I know” them, “I know” them leads to destruction of them. Now that is a principle that occurs in the
New Testament and in Hebrews we saw that; Hebrews 4:12, the verse that is so
often looked upon as just referring to illumination by the Holy Spirit. “For the Word of God is quick and powerful,
and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of
the soul and spirit, and joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts
and intents of the heart.” People stop
there and see what that means, that means the Holy Spirit takes the Word of God
into the heart. True, but not enough of
a truth because in the context you
simply have to keep on reading. What is
verse 13 talking about, “Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in
His sight, but all things are naked and open unto the eyes of Him with whom we
have to do.” And the word “naked and
open” is a wrestling term that was used and the idea is that the person is
being by the Word of God and the person who is wrestling has grabbed their head
and pulled their head back and is about ready to cut their throat. That’s the imagery behind verse 13.
So how does this figure in? Is
the Word of God destructive? Yes, the
context of Hebrews 4 is a warning passage and what it is saying is that God the
Holy Spirit looks down and He sees our conscience and He sees our mind. Let’s take this person on negative volition
and compound carnality and the Word of God comes. Now in the day and age of Hosea how did the
Word of God come to the nation? It came
through the prophets actually speaking and preaching. Fine for then, what about now? How does the Word of God come to us as
believers today? It comes by study of
the Scripture.
Now I want to show you a principle and many have commented how they’ve
seen this principle operate in their life, and that is the Holy Spirit takes
the Word and as the Word is being beamed into the soul and it takes root over
here in the conscience, so the conscience starts building these norms and
standards that are solidly linked to the Word of God, what begins to
happen? The conscience is constantly
aware of everything in the soul, all the negative volition and so on. So the conscience naturally begins to
condemn, and so the conscience condemns three ways. Three channels are open to
the conscience. And the Word of God acts
as a sword to begin to cut, to cut away that which needs to be sanctified;
there’s a cutting action that begins and first it begins in mild form because
as we take in the Scripture we suddenly become aware of things that we didn’t
think were wrong before, suddenly oh, that’s wrong, that displeases the
Lord. All right, fine, you become aware
of that. But most of us, if you’re
honest with yourself, 90% of the time we’re able to turn off the conscience,
forget it. So the conscience has other
means of handling the situation.
The Word of God takes root in the conscience and if it can’t break
through in the mind it starts to break through in the emotion. So people begin to have emotional problems,
they begin to have depression, all sorts of things; never had this before,
what’s this, the more I get in the Word the more depressed I am. Things were great before I started taking the
Word; since I took in the Word everything is falling apart, God’s Word must be
at fault. There is another option; you
might be at fault, but we won’t mention that one. The mind is cut off so the Holy Spirit works
through the emotions, and then if the Holy Spirit can’t get us there He works
through body illnesses, 1 John 5; 1 Corinthians 5:5; 1 Corinthians 11. The Holy Spirit has lots of ways of working
but here’s the principle—the Word of God goes into the conscience and all
things are naked and open.
Why is God interested in that all things be opened to Him. So there won’t be any cover-up, so He can get
in there and start cleaning house, and this is what happens, and so whereas
somebody else might have rocked along fine for years in the Christian life,
staying away from the teaching of the Word, all of a sudden they start taking
in the Word and now they can’t get away with this stuff any more; now one thing
after another caves in, one disaster after another. I’ve seen this as a pastor, people who get
serious with the Word very frequently experience one reversal after another for
a while, until they get with it and move on and then everything turns out
okay. But it’s that Word of God that’s
beginning to take effect; it’s a sword.
So this is the same principle that we find back in Hosea 5.
What is he saying? “I have known
Ephraim,” they haven’t known me but I’ve known them and I’m going to make “the
pride of Ephraim testify to his face,” in other words, I am going to take what
Israel trusts in and I’m going to turn it right around. They’ve got a lot of business prosperity
under Jeroboam, see they’ve got the prosperity now, and He says they have
trusted in their riches, they have trusted in all their gimmicks and I’m just
going to turn it right around and I’m going to pull the props out from under
the whole thing and it’s going to collapse.
Hosea 5:6, “They shall go with their flocks and with their herds to seek
the LORD, but they shall not find Him; he has withdrawn Himself from
them.” In the Hebrew this is very
powerful, it starts out with a big long sentence, “They shall go with their
flocks and with their herds to seek the LORD,” long sentence, “but they will
not find him,” shorter sentence, and then it concludes in the Hebrew with just
two words, “He’s withdrawn Himself.”
It’s all just two words, He’s gone.
Now what is verse 6 talking about?
Who wants to take a whole bunch of flocks some place to seek the
Lord? Are they going out in the desert
to seek the Lord? No, the thought behind
verse 6 is precisely the same thought behind Hosea 4:19, that is
confession. The flocks are herds of
sheep; what were the sheep used for?
Slaughter. Slaughter for
what? Slaughter for the confession
ceremony, slaughter for the fact that they were to confess their sins. So what
they are going to do when they see the armies of the Assyrians come in 721 BC
they’re going to say hey, I think it’s time we confessed our sins. And so they’re going to go out and have
massive confession things, meetings all over the nation, come confess your
sins, bring your sheep, admission. And
all these meetings are going to go on and on but there’s going to be something
happen. The Assyrian armies keep on
marching in. The Hebrews keep on losing;
finally Samaria falls… hey, wait a minute, we confessed our sin, what’s the
deal. Because in advanced forms of
carnality confession of sin, while it restores us to fellowship does not remove
the results of discipline, it only transforms them, it turns cursing into
blessing, but David, for example, he confessed his sin, Psalm 51, Psalm 32,
Psalm 38, the Bathsheba incident described in 2 Samuel 12, but still David, for
the rest of the book of 2 Samuel experienced the fallout.
So whereas David was instantly restored to fellowship and in the Church
Age would have been filled with the Spirit, that did not take away musar.
When we, for our own good, just like that believer we read about in 1
Corinthians 5:5, “give him to Satan for the destruction of the flesh that the
spirit may be saved,” God, when He gets us in a situation where we’ve got
tremendous –R learned behavior patterns, scar tissue all over the place, when
He sees that kind of a thing the wrath of His love hates to see His vessels
that polluted, and therefore because He loves us He is angry that we are in
that shape, and He’s going to get us out of that shape. And therefore here comes musar, even though we confess.
You parents know that’s what happens, you’ve had a situation and you’ve
warned them and warned them that if they do that, they’re going to get
clobbered, and they give you this “I’m sorry” bit for a while, and finally they
do it, usually when company is around or in a public place, and it’s some
embarrassing situation and you’ve committed yourself, you’ve said if you do it
once more whack, so now you’re stuck, it’s happened. And then you start disciplining them and it’s
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” Well it’s too
late, I know you’re sorry but you’ve got to learn a principle and it’s the same
thing here. God says yeah, you confessed
your sin, that’s great, I like that, but you’ve still got to learn something,
so the musar still comes.
And that’s the principle here.
They’ll go and they’ll seek the Lord, and they won’t find him. They won’t find Him means they won’t find Him
in the sense that He won’t reverse the Assyrian invasion; it seems as if God
has withdrawn, nothing happens, they pray and nothing happens. It doesn’t stop the punishment.
Hosea 5:7, “They have dealt treacherously against the LORD; for they
have begotten strange children;” now this takes up the same theme of Hosea 1-3,
the theme of adultery. “Dealt
treacherously” is a Hebrew word to violate a covenant. That is the key issue, violate a covenant, in
the second divine institution. It is the
covenant, not what happens afterwards or before, it is the covenant. Once that covenant is made something is
established in God’s sight. And it’s
that which he holds; if people would just get oriented in marriage to the
covenant concept and get off this Americanized “I love you” business, now love
comes, love is a by-product but love is not the basis of marriage. It is the covenant that’s the basis of
marriage. Love may come and go, it
doesn’t make a bit of difference, the covenant is still there and the covenant
is the basis of stability. So “they have
dealt treacherously,” they have violated the covenant, in this case it’s not
the marriage covenant, the imagery of the marriage covenant points back to the
Mount Sinai covenant.
“They have dealt treacherously against the LORD, for they have begotten
strange children,” in other words, they’ve gone to bed with somebody and gotten
pregnant, that’s what it’s saying in case you couldn’t read that from the
translation. “…they have begotten
strange children” from zuwr, strange
means somebody outside the family, the kid looks like the mailman, that’s what
it’s saying. So “they have begotten
strange children,” now that is an image that’s carried over in Romans 7, so
again we’re not dealing with a concept just from Hosea.
Turn to Romans 7, exactly the same theme and here it’s explained in
deeper detail so we’re just not left with the symbolism. Romans 7:4-5, Paul picks up the same concept,
he says, “Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the
body of Christ, that ye should be married to another, even to him who is raised
from the dead,” not notice, purpose clause, “that we should bring forth fruit
unto God. [5] For when we were in the flesh, the motions of sins [sinful
impulses}, which were by the law, did work in our members to bring forth fruit
unto death.” Here’s the concept. At the time we are regenerated, the flesh is
our body and we are told to subdue the earth.
Remember the concept way back in Genesis, subdue the earth. The earth is Adamah, Adam is Adam, he
comes out of the earth. Our body becomes
an instrument of service and produces fruit; the fruit is what is produced by
the body in history, the actions, the contributions one makes and so on, so
Paul says there are two fruit that can be accomplished, the body can produce
fruit that emanates from a false pregnancy, in other words the concept is that
the flesh becomes pregnant and delivers fruit of death. Why is flesh connected
with death? Because back in Genesis what
is cursed, what bears the curse? The
flesh bears the curse, the flesh is made of the ground. And so therefore fruit is produced but it’s
dead, stillborn, there’s no life in it.
The baby never breathes Paul says.
But in verse 5 he’s saying when the Holy Spirit begins His work in our
body, our body produces fruit again but this fruit is not stillborn, it’s
living, it’s a living child. Now that’s
the analogy just to show you that this imagery is carried on and on in the
Bible, it’s a great theme of Scripture.
Back to Hosea and wee how we finish this chapter. The last part of Hosea 5:7, “now shall a
month devour them with their portions,” some wonder how a month can devour
them, the word “month” is an autonomy for festivals; in other words, they’ll go
for their festivals and it won’t do any good; while they’re having their feasts
the Assyrians will come in.
Hosea 5:8, “Blow ye the cornet, [horn]” or blow the shophar in Gibeon,
and the trumpet at Ramah;” that means give the alarm for national defense. They had an alarm system, they would start
blowing horns on various hills and they always kept each sentry within a radius
that could be heard by the next one. The
Romans had this system, they used light, Herod was the guy who designed the
Roman system for the Romans; he impressed the Romans with a lot of his
engineering, and he had an all weather system worked out where he had sentries
on hills and they’d start a fire, then the next sentry would start a fire, then
the next one, the next one, and that way they’d have communication day or
night. But in this day they just had the
idea of the horn, the horn was effective sometimes, if the wind was blowing
they had to stick them close together, or if they had a storm and couldn’t hear
the thing it was impeded. But they used
the shophar. So verse 8 means go ahead
and sound your national alert, go ahead and mobilize your army when you see the
Assyrian coming.
But I tell you the Lord says in Hosea 5:9, “Ephraim shall be desolate in
the day of rebuke; among the tribes of Israel have I made known that which
shall surely be.” “That which shall
surely be” is one word, it comes from the word that we use, amen, amen is a Hebrew noun, it means to be
steadfast or to be truthful. And it’s
this word used here and it’s a technical expression that refers to the
disciplinary provisions of the Mount Sinai covenant. The exact word occurs in this context in
Deuteronomy 28:59. So the amen, “I have made known what is amen-ed in all the tribes.” What does God mean by that? I have warned you that I am married to you,
we are locked into a covenant and when you are locked into this covenant, if
you ask for discipline you’re going to get it, it’s going to be very carefully
administered. Leviticus 26 says there’s
five degrees of discipline. All this is
that which is made sure, “that which shall surely be.”
Hosea 5:10, “The princes of Judah were like those who remove the
boundary; therefore, I will pour out my wrath upon them like water.” See, the northern kingdom is Israel, the
southern kingdom is Judah, in 721 BC the Assyrians come in and destroy the
northern kingdom but when they come in they can’t resist going down to
Benjamin; see Benjamin is a tribe on the border and they’re going to hurt
Benjamin a little bit and scare the Jews in the southern kingdom. So this is a prediction of this and it tells
them why, “the princes of Judah were like those that moved the bound
[boundary].” Now what does it mean to
move the boundary? It has to do with
landmarks. Take a piece of land in
Israel, here’s what happened, and here’s a lesson in economics.
Say you’d have your town located here.
Each Jewish family was given a plot of land, the land was divided;
family one, family two, family three, family four and so on. And at the corner of these fields there would
be stone landmarks. Some of these are
still visible in Palestine today. And those
landmarks were obviously important to settle legal matters. But they become very important for us to take
the principle of; what does the landmark really function as? What is it really doing there; it’s doing
more than just marking the land. It is staking
out the inheritance of believers. In
other words, it’s an economic inheritance that has been given, it’s a capital
investment that God has made to every major family. So it becomes not just a mark of the land but
it becomes that which has been invested in the nation. It has very important implications.
The landmarks were moved in order to cheat people of their
inheritance. Which introduces an
interesting concept which we can’t help but mention in passing. The Bible has a philosophy about inheritance
and land; and we in this country have violated this. Let me try to convey some of the principles
that are tied in with this without going through a big long thing in the
law. In the Mosaic Law this land, let’s
take family 5; family 5 comes down in history for century upon century; family
5 has an everlasting inheritance in that land.
This means several things; it means that family 5 will understand if
they rape the land with sloppy agricultural methods they’re not going to have
any more land. So it automatically
produced, or should have theoretically, a careful farming technology. The land was to be treated well. In fact, every seventh year that land was to
lie fallow so that the land could regain, all the bacteria and so on could
replenish themselves in the soil. So the
soil would be replenished and cared for.
Now it had another thing, it had the concept of family stability, so that the
first generation, the second generation, the third generation, the fourth
generation, the fifth generation, all those fathers and sons and their families
owned that land, it was an enduring ownership over generation upon generation
upon generation, and God was interested in preserving enduring ownership. And He still is. Now why is God interested in His creatures
enduring ownership. Why is it that it is
important from God’s point of view for the father to give an inheritance to his
children; why is it important for the children to take that inheritance as the
Jewish boys would take their dad’s land and farm it and make it even more
productive. Why is there that
endurance? Because that was the basis
for the stability of the third divine institution. So you see, all this stuff is not just
nonsense, it’s all tied in. The third
divine institution was the family and the family stability in the Old Testament
is related to enduring ownership of property.
Now in our day what do we do?
Inheritance taxes; now what are inheritance taxes to do? To destroy wealth; supposedly to break down
wealthy families. Why do you want to
break down wealthy families; you are judging them on the basis of wealth, not
their use of it. You are a priori saying that it is evil to be
wealthy; you have no right to that judgment.
Inheritance taxes are a modern way of destroying the landmarks. Inheritance taxes destroy endurance of
ownership. Property taxes, when they
become excessive, do the same thing. For
example, in every major city you can drive down areas, great homes, and now the
children that have inherited those homes can no longer maintain those homes
because of property taxes that have escalated to the point where they have to
release them. So what do you do? People hope to settle down and what happens?
The property taxes force them to give up the family property. So we have property taxes, inheritance taxes,
all of these economic forces working to destroy long-term ownership in this
country.
But there’s even more than that, the ownership carries with it
tradition. It was a tradition that the
landmark be there. In fact in the
English vocabulary is a word which means something that is associated with that
which is traditional, a landmark case is something that marks, say jurisprudence
for years to come. A landmark is
something that endures. And we can watch
how modern education destroys landmarks of tradition. Here’s a description written in 19th
century of America of the textbooks in the early 1800’s. You listen to this description and then
compare it with modern textbooks. “As we
look back on those years we can see that the school textbooks and the schools
themselves held the Puritan ethic as their basic moral principle. It was this ethic that shaped and unified the
nation. The value judgment, writes Ruth
Miller Elson is their stock and trade, love of country, love of God, duty to
parents, and the necessity to develop habits of thrift, honesty and hart work
in order to accumulate property; the certainty of progress, the perfection of
the country, these are not to be questioned.
Nor in this whole century of great external changes is there any
deviation of these basic values. All
during the Civil War, all during the economic ups and down for the latter part
of the 1800s in pedagogical arrangements the school textbook of the 1790s did
not differ from the school textbook of the 1890s, but the continuum of values
is totally uninterrupted. The child is to learn ethics as he learns information
about his world. His behavior is not to
be inner directed or other directed but dictated by authority and values.”
Now obviously we don’t have to read a contemporary version to realize
that the same people that are castigated in verse 10, “The princes of Judah
were like them who remove the boundary” are the people that tax, tax, tax and
destroy ownership of property in our own generation and God’s attitude toward
that is expressed at the end of verse 10, “I will pour out My wrath upon them
like water.” That’s God’s attitude for
people who destroy long-term ownership.
Hosea 5:11, “Ephraim is oppressed and broken in judgment, because he
willingly walked after the commandment,” it should be “his own
commandment.” [12] “Therefore will I be
unto Ephraim like a moth, and to the house of Judah like rottenness.” The idea is that God stimulates the result of
the curse, He just simply amplifies the curse, you’re rotten so I’ll let you be
more rotten. [13] “When Ephraim saw his
sickness, and Judah saw his wound,” the word “wound” here means a pus-filled
wound that is oozing, there’s a long-term infection in the body. “…then went Ephraim to the Assyrian, and sent
to King Jareb,” you see, they don’t trust the Lord with a thing, and that’s
another characteristic in verse 13 of compound carnality; when God the Holy
Spirit begins to administer discipline on a person in compound carnality, do
you know what that person always does?
He will always try to stave off the discipline by a gimmick. You’ll see that happen many times in your
life. It’ll happen to you, it’ll happen
to your friends. When you see someone
and the Lord begins to work in their life they’ll do everything except cast it
in the hands of the Lord. Trust the Lord
for He shall help you. “Cast your
burdens upon the Lord for He shall sustain thee. The thought never occurs to them to use the
faith technique in this situation, never.
Instead of trusting the Lord with discipline, what do they do? Try political international agreement, they
run to have a little détente with the Assyrians. “…he could not heal you, and he could not
cure you of your pus-filled wound,” because he doesn’t have healing power
within himself.
Hosea 5:14, “For I will be unto Ephraim like a lion, and like a young
lion to the house of Judah: I, even I, will tear and go away; I will take away,
and none shall rescue him.” Now that’s
another point and that is the philosophy behind many trials of your life. That last remark of verse 14 is basically why
God brings the kind of trials He will into your life as a believer. The reason is that every place that you have
props, in other words yeah, I trust the Lord here, but you build this big
platform, this part of the platform depends on the Lord but this part of the
platform you’ve got your own insurance policy, just in case the Lord
fails. Now what God does is He starts knocking
the props out, and He will design the trials to do that. That’s what gives you this feeling that
everything is caving in, and it’s deliberate.
It’s deliberate to get this point across in verse 14. I want you to see that none can rescue, those
props can’t stand the pressures of life. And to demonstrate that God will keep
increasing pressure, increasing pressure, increasing pressure until the thing
snaps.
Hosea 5:15, in verse 15 we have the great Messianic promise that is
continued in chapter 6, we’re going to go through verse 15 and stop but I want
you to remember that the promise continues through Hosea 6:1-2; it is actually,
you’re going to see, the place that Paul was talking about when he said Jesus
Christ is going to rise on the third day.
Nowhere else in the Bible does it talk anywhere about the third day
except here. This is a Messianic
prediction. God says in verse 15, “I
will go and return to My place,” that means God is going to abandoned them, and
He did in 721 BC, He abandoned the south in 586 BC, He abandoned the nation
again in 70 AD, “I will go to My place,” but more particularly now that we know
more historical data, what does that refer to, “I will go and return to My
place;” it’s almost verbatim of what Jesus told the disciples in the upper room
discourse, isn’t it. “I will go, and if
I go I will return again,” almost exactly the quotation.
This is a prophecy of the “abandonment” of the elect, “abandonment” in
quotes, a relative abandonment, of the elect in history. It happened in 721 BC, 586 BC, it happened when
Christ literally ascended into heaven; it happened in 70 AD as far as the Jew
was concerned. “I will go and return to
My place, until…” time, there’s a time in this prophecy, “until they
acknowledge their offense, and seek My face; in their affliction they will seek
Me early.” They will acknowledge their
offense, in other words God is going to stay and Jesus Christ is not going to
come until the Jews personally nationally recognize Jesus as the Christ, which
they will, prophesied in Zechariah 12.
And so when they come together in that future time, they’re going to
come together, probably in the day of atonement, and on that exact day of
atonement they’re going to suddenly realize that Jesus was more than a Jewish
carpenter; that in fact, He was the Messiah, and that they, in fact, crucified
Him.
So therefore, when they acknowledge this, “when they acknowledge their
offense and seek My face,” I’ll come back; “in their affliction,” the word is
distress, “they will seek Me early.” Now
the word “seek My face” for our own practical application in verse 15, this
verse 15 is applied to Israel, yes, but let’s finish by applying it to
ourselves as believers. When we go into
advanced carnality it’s as though God does turn away from us. Prayers don’t mean anything, the whole life
is screwed up, we can’t seem to get anything anywhere. Why?
God says the same to every believer, I leave you until you acknowledge
your guilt, just as soon as you do it I’ll return, but I’m going to leave you
until that point is reached.
I want to conclude by turning to 2 Samuel 21:1 for “seek My face.” Here is an example of a believer,
independent, not just the nation, but an individual believer to get a good
picture of how to apply the truth. “Then
there was a famine in the days of David three years, year after year; and David
inquired of the LORD.” The word
“inquired” is “to seek the face,” now what does it mean to seek the face? It is
a Hebrew idiom to get a response, that’s what it means. “David inquired of the LORD. And the LORD answered,” now there’s your
context for seeking the face of the Lord.
The demands that keep on going on until Lord, what is behind this, I
demand an answer. And the answer in this
age will come through a conviction of the Holy Spirit working in your heart by
study of the text of Scripture. You
study through and you come to say, Lord, what’s wrong, what’s wrong, what’s
wrong, and it’ll come, and suddenly the text will just stand out, that’s what’s
wrong, and there’ll be a truth of Scripture, a truth that will expose the whole
situation. That’s what it means to “seek
His face.” Today the Bible you hold in
your hand is the place where we seek His face.