Hosea Lesson 14
God agonizes over
We’re going to skip around to various passages in the Old Testament so
that you’ll understand the force of what God is saying in Hosea 6, in the light
of the Law which we aren’t experts at but the original hearers of Hosea’s
preaching knew distinctly the Mosaic Law.
This was common knowledge. It’s
not common knowledge to us so we have to take time to work with it. Again, the book of Hosea is a book on
prophecy. It is a Nabiim, it’s not like
Daniel; the difference between the
Nabiim, which is the Prophets section of the Old Testament and the Kethubim,
which is the Writing section of the Old Testament is that the Kethubim are
books written to teach skills in living.
Included in the Kethubim is Psalms; Daniel is part of the Kethubim, the
Kethubim being how to train you to handle the details of living in the kingdom
of man. The book of Proverbs is part of
the Kethubim, that is, they teach the ways and skills of working with people,
working with situations.
When we come to the Nabiim, the Prophets, we have prophecy but that’s
still not the point even of the Nabiim.
With the Nabiim, or the books of the Prophets it is conviction of sin,
not to placate people but the conviction of sin to produce changes, to increase
sanctification, to move further along the line of Christian growth. This is the objective of the books of the
Prophets. So the application is that
when you are down and when you are struggling with a sin problem in your life,
the place to go is the Nabiim; Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, all those
books between Hosea and the New Testament, they’re all the Prophets, and those
are the books that you ought to read; those are the books that you ought to
meditate upon. On the other hand, when
you face just tacky problems in the life that come up as far as working around
situations and that, then the Kethubim are the books to read.
Last time we saw the famous prophecy that Hosea terminated the section
in Hosea 6:3 and tonight be begin with Hosea 6:4 which is a new division of the
book. This goes on through chapter 14,
these divisions become very subjective from this point on. So we won’t bother to divide it, we’ll just
say from 6:4 through the end of the book we have God or Yahweh, Jehovah,
appealing to the nation along with His lawsuit.
Up to this point he’s introduced the lawsuit. Now you are going to see the personal
infinite God of the universe act toward individual believers. This is the deep personality of our God, that
God when He addresses us, addresses us with emotion. God has emotion, God has intellect, God has
volition, but God is a person, and He doesn’t address you like a tape output of
an IBM computer in some monotone voice.
God has spirit and he has emotion when He speaks.
And you’re going to see this beginning in Hosea 6:4, you will see God
Himself agonize over His love affair with the nation
There are no active prophets functioning today and there hasn’t been
since the death of the Apostle John. But
when the canon closed God’s character did not change. Rather, what God has done, as He has said
very, very clearly in Hosea
So in Hosea 6:4 we have God reacting to
This is a short chapter and it’s divided roughly into two parts. The first part, extending down to verse 7 has
to do with a general principle. So
verses 4-7 is the general principle and then verses 8-11 deal with the historic
repercussions of that principle in the 8th century BC. Let’s look at the general principle.
Hosea 6:4, “O Ephraim, what shall I do unto thee? O
Sanctification occurs in various phases.
We have a positional sanctification, that is what Jesus Christ does to
us at the instant of salvation, versus experiential sanctification, what He is
doing with us moment by moment by moment.
One you don’t feel, one you don’t even know about apart from God’s
Word. It occurs instantly at the point
that you trusted in Christ, whether it was at age 4 or 40 it doesn’t make any
difference. When you accepted Jesus Christ certain things were credited to your
account at that point; that’s positional sanctification. Experiential sanctification is a training
period and for our purposes when we speak of sanctification we are, nine times
out of ten, talking not about positional sanctification but about experiential
sanctification.
Now what about sanctification?
What is its aim? The aim of sanctification,
according to Deuteronomy 6:5 is loyalty to God in every area of life. “Thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all
thy heart, with all thy might, with all thy soul.” “Soul” is the word for life, it includes the
details of life and it means I will express my loyalty to God in every
area. And the Hebrew word for loyalty is
chesed.
Chesed is a word that means married love, the idea is that you have
a covenant, and it is loyalty to that covenant.
So that’s the aim of sanctification.
God is training loyalty into our souls.
That is the purpose of sanctification.
The result of all this of course will be so that we can sing that
wonderful song in Revelation 4, “Thou art worthy, O God.” But the aim of sanctification is loyalty to
God. Keep that in mind because that is
the key point of Hosea 6.
The aim of sanctification; notice the aim does not say have great
spiritual experience. If you’re the kind
of person who has gone along this week and it hasn’t been a very spectacular
week, it’s been one of those dull type situations, don’t get too excited or
upset, that’s going to be the way the Christian life is most of the time, dull
and unexciting. Don’t buy this stuff
that some evangelist is going to give you that when you accept Jesus Christ
you’re going to be on a high from the point that you accept Him until the time
you die. You’re not going to be on a
high, you’re going to be depressed at times.
And sometimes it’s going to be very mundane.
But it’s the believers who can make it day by day, slugging it out
whether they feel like it or not, who are the ones who are really enjoying the
Christian life and the whiners and the crybabies that can’t stand a little
pressure, that fold out, like we’re going to see the “morning cloud,” they’re
the people who are always griping, they’re the people who always neglect the
Word and then wind up getting crunched and blaming God for getting
crunched. The key point is, the aim is chesed.
Keep that in mind the next time you feel, oh, another dull day. Yes, another day to subdue the earth by God’s
grace. You may not feel the grace coming
in great quantities but nevertheless, that’s what God told you to do and Monday
morning starts again and we’re off. That
routine sense, that frustration, the non-spectacular, that’s not any less
important spiritually than the other things in life. So the aim again is the day in day out slug
it out type sanctification.
You give me four believers who are just average, run of the mill, who
have the determination that no matter what they don’t understand about the
Word, they can’t even master the words in the English language, it doesn’t
matter, if they have the determination that they don’t care what’s happening,
they are going to learn God’s Word, period, they’re going to put out the
effort, a little bit each day, and they’ll make it. I’m not interested in somebody that says oh,
gee, isn’t this great and they have all this big spiritual experience and three
weeks later you never see them again.
Those are the flighty type and they have never in the history of the
Christian church done anything for Christ except get the church in trouble.
They had a group of them during the days of the Romans that professed to have
great spiritual experiences and they brought great spiritual experience on the
rest of the church—persecution. So we
don’t need those kind of believers around, we need the common, slug-it-out
type.
The doctrine of sanctification is to get chesed. The means of
sanctification, God uses two means in sanctification. Don’t get them confused; one is law and the
other is grace. He uses law in the sense
that law is the will of God. You have to
know the will of God or sanctification can’t occur. An officer can’t respond to an order if he
doesn’t get the order. His loyalty to
the organization isn’t tested unless he has been told what he is supposed to
do. An employee can’t be fired
righteously unless he has been adequately instructed to his job and then been
checked to see whether he’s performing his job.
Don’t blame the employee if he isn’t doing his job if you never told him
what it is you want him to do. It’s the
same concept here in the Christian life, you’ve got to know the will of God or
you can’t be blamed for not doing it.
God has to tell you His will and He has in His Word.
Grace is the enablement. Keep
that in mind, the two are different and they both fit together, not one without
the other but they both fit together.
Grace is that which enables. The
law that we live under is given in the New Testament under Romans 8:2, the law
of the spirit of life; Galatians 6:2, the law in Christ Jesus; in James 1:25,
in James 2:8 it talks about the perfect law of liberty, so the New Testament
does place the Christian under a law,
not the Mosaic Law but under the New Testament law in Christ.
Now what about grace? The Bible
also places grace for the believer, not just talking about the word but what
does the word mean, what are some things that God does for us. One of the great signs of grace toward us is
the intercessory ministry of Jesus Christ, Romans 8:34; Hebrews 7:25; Hebrews
9:24; 1 John 1:1-2. This is the fact
that God the Son is constantly making intercession for us. So God the Son constantly makes intercession
for us so we may forget to pray for ourselves, Jesus doesn’t. Jesus Christ constantly applies the finished
work to our account in heaven. We have
the intercessory ministry of the Holy Spirit in Romans 8:26-27, that’s something
that God has provided for you and it doesn’t depend on your feelings. You may have blue Monday but Jesus Christ
doesn’t have a blue Monday and the Holy Spirit never has a blue Monday. Then we have provisions like the filling of
the Spirit empowering us, Galatians 5:16 and Ephesians 5:18. This contributes to the gracious enabling
that we might fulfill the law.
Then sanctification has certain dimensions to it that must not be
confused. One is the immediate
dimension, you are either at any moment in fellowship or out of fellowship, and
the other dimension is the long term idea of growth. An analogy would be physical health; you can
have a baby who is sick or well, you can have a teenager sick or well, you can
have an adult sick or well. The concept
of immediate, the person is sick or well; a Christian is either filled with the
Spirit or he’s not, he’s either walking by the Spirit or walking by the flesh.
And the long term result would be analogous to baby, teenager, adult, the
growth process, it takes time.
Then finally we have in the Bible the enemies to sanctification. And the most beautiful thing about all the
enemies in sanctification is that they work together for good. God has allowed certain pressures to come
against us in order to fulfill the aim of sanctification which is loyalty to
Himself.
Now with that background let’s go to Hosea 6:4 and see why God is acting
the way He is. “O Ephraim, what shall I
do unto thee? O Judah, what shall I do
unto thee?” “What shall I do” has
reference to what am I going to do in your long-term sanctification. Here you are now, the nation was brought out
in 1440 BC by the Exodus, they have rocked along until 750 BC, so they’ve gone
on about 700 years. For 700 years God
the Holy Spirit has worked with the nation Israel, over and over and over
again. Why? Because He wants to form a nation with the
aim of chesed, a chesed that will be stable, a chesed
that will hang in there when the going gets tough, a chesed that will always reflect on the essence of God who can
sustain itself in times of adversity.
That’s God’s aim and that’s what He’s been trying to do.
But He’s frustrated in verse 4, He says what am I going to do, what kind
of pressures, what kind of lessons do I bring into your life to get this point
across? Why, because “For your
goodness,” the word “goodness” is precisely our word chesed, “for your chesed
is as the morning cloud, and as the early dew it goes away.” And it’s a picture that would be understood
readily by people in that day, just look out on your lawn, when you have the
ground cooling off during the night you have maximum moisture in the air
relative to the ground, you have chilling and if the wind’s up you’ll get cloud
form and if it’s not you’ll get dew. But
regardless of what the wind’s doing you’ll get some formation of visible water
vapor in the morning, whether it’s dew, whether it’s fog or whether it’s low
stratus, it doesn’t make any difference as far as the principle is goes, the
principle is that it will always burn off.
And what is it that burns it off?
The heat of the sun. And so what
is God saying here? He’s saying your chesed is just like that morning cloud,
apply a little heat and you vaporize.
It’s the same concept; you can’t stand pressure, you’re going around
giving glowing testimonies how great you are and what great spiritual experiences
you have but when it comes to the day in, day out procedures you can’t make
it. Just as soon as the sun comes up you
disappear, you’ve evaporated.
And so the problem here in verse 4 is just evaporated chesed. Where’d it
go? The water vapor becomes
invisible. It’s only four or five
percent of the volume of the air anyway, very small, it just disappears, you
can’t see it any more. So God is using
an agricultural illustration to get across the fact that for 700 years He has
trained these people to produce chesed
and for seven centuries He has failed; this is an admission of God’s program of
sanctification at this point. See, God (quote) “fails,” in the sense that it
takes God a long involved process to teach us lessons. For 700 years this nation failed to develop
national character. That’s what He’s
saying in verse 4, What am I going to do?
That’s the attitude.
Hosea 6:5, this is what He’s tried to do in the past. “Therefore,” therefore refers back to their
lack of chesed, the fact that sanctification
has not proceeded far enough to produce a loyal mental attitude, that is,
loyalty to God’s Word in every area of life, and so “I hewed them by the
prophets; I have slain them by the words of My mouth;” now the last part is
mistranslated and it’s a problem. It
apparently reads best as “My judgments are as light that goes forth.” And it’s
apparently a reference I the same light as Zephaniah 3:5, the idea is that
God’s judgments are clear, they can’t say that His judgments haven’t been
clear. They can’t say that God hasn’t clarified the issue, because God has sent
prophet after prophet to clarify the issue.
They have access to the Word of God, just like no one of us can make an
excuse, well God, I just don’t understand why I’m getting suffering or why I’m
getting this or that. God may not tell
us exactly the reason but He’s given us the principles in the Word. It’s always back to the Word.
He uses two verbs in verse 5 to describe this process, and from this
we’re going to see something about the use of the sword against believers, that
Jesus Christ uses the sword against His own people. God uses the sword, and in verse 5 it’s very
interesting, I wish I had come across verse 5 about two years ago. We had a group of people running around
Lubbock talking about getting slain in the Spirit, and they were describing how
they’d just walk up to so and so who was a great healer and he’d touch them and
boom, they’d lie flat on the floor and that was supposed to be slain in the
Spirit. Jesus Christ is not going around
punching people in the face so they fall on the floor; that’s not the way the
Holy Spirit works and He never has worked that way. But there is one place in Scripture, a
consistent theme of a genuine slaying by the Spirit, and it’s completely opposite
to what these people are talking about.
For them the slaying of the Spirit is a point of blessing, a great
power, a great spiritual experience and yet when we go to study the theme of
verse 5 it’s exactly the opposite.
That’s typical for this crowd, exactly opposite of the Word.
“Hewing prophets and slaying them by the words of my mouth” is not
talking about blessing, it is talking about conviction of sin so that 1 John
1:9 can be used. That’s the slaying by
the Spirit. The slaying of the Spirit is
exactly opposite, the Holy Spirit doesn’t want you knocked out; what does He
want to give you a punch for and knock you out, then you can’t respond, you
can’t do something. The Holy Spirit
doesn’t knock you out, He makes you perceptive so that you can make the changes
necessary in your life.
Let’s look at the theme of the sword; turn to Isaiah 49:2 and we’ll get
the true doctrine of the slaying of the Spirit.
“And he has made my mouth like a sharp sword; in the shadow of His hand
He has hidden me, and made me a polished shaft; in His quiver has He hidden me.
[3] And said unto me, Thou art my servant, O Israel, in whom I will be
glorified. [4] Then I said, I have labored in vain, I have spent my strength
for nothing, and in vain; yet surely the justice doe to me is with the LORD,
and my work with my God. [5] And now, saith the LORD,” and so on. Here he’s talking about Israel’s effect upon
the world. Israel has a ministry as a
sword that slays the world, so in Isaiah 49:2 we have one use of the word
sword, and the nation Israel is to bring conviction to the Gentile nations.
But there’s another use of the word sword in Scripture, besides Israel
bringing conviction to the Gentiles and to see that, turn to Revelation
1:16. Here is a picture of Jesus Christ
today, throughout the Church Age Jesus conducts inspections of local
churches. And in Revelation 1:16 He is
pictured in the vision of Patmos. “And
He had in His right hand seven stars; and out of His mouth went a sharp
two-edged sword;” the mouth of Jesus Christ pictured here symbolically with a
sword coming out of it. Now what does
the sword do? We just have to read the
context. Revelation 2:16, it’s talking
about a local church situation, a group of believers professing to have faith
in Jesus Christ. Let’s look at Revelation 2:12 to start with. “And to the angel of the church in Pergamos
write:” that’s apparently the pastor, “These things saith he who has the sharp
sword with two edges.” Now watch what
He’s saying to the church to get the context of what the sword means. [13] “I know your works, and where you dwell;
even where Satan’s seat [throne] is and you hold fast My name, and you have not
denied My faith, even in those days in which Antipas was My faithful martyr,
who was slain among you, where Satan dwells.
[14] But I have a few things against you, because you have there them
that hold the doctrine of Balaam, who taught Balak to cast a stumbling block
before the children of Israel, to eat things sacrificed unto idols, and to
commit fornication. [15] So hast thou also them that hold the doctrine of the
Nicolaitans, which thing I hate. [15]
Repent” Jesus says, or I will come to thee quickly, and will fight against them
with the sword of My mouth.”
Now Jesus Christ has given notice to the Church that if they don’t
straighten out He is going to come and discipline that assembly, and He is
going to bring adversity into the assembly and it’s going to be by the sword of
His mouth. So again, the “slaying” that
is spoken of here is for disciplinary purposes, not actually blessing.
Revelation 19:15, when Jesus Christ comes again, here again the sword
and the slaying is a judgment. “And out
of His mouth went a sharp sword, that with it He should smite the nations, and
He shall rule them with a rod of iron…” now what is the smiting of the
nations? The smiting of the nations is
the judging of the nations given in Matthew 24 and 25. So you have here Jesus Christ and His sword,
the sword the means of judgment; judgment upon believers in the sense of
discipline, judgment upon unbelievers.
So the connotation of the sword is judgment.
Now turn to Hebrews 4:12, here we have the sword analogy again spoken of
and here it has to do directly with something we want to use in the Christian
life. What is the primary thing that
upsets God the most about believers? If
we have a training instructor who has a sword and when he gets irritated he
starts swinging, we want to know what is it that irritates him so he won’t
swing; it’s that simple, survival. In
Hebrews 4:12 we have in context why Jesus Christ flings His sword. “For the Word of God is quick and powerful,
and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the dividing asunder of soul
and spirit, and of joints and marrows, and is a discerner of the thoughts and
intents of the heart.” Keep on reading,
don’t stop at the end of verse 12, “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.” In other words,
Jesus Christ is looking for something in believers and in the context of
Hebrews 4:12 what is it? Read backwards,
read up into verse 10-11, “He that has entered into his own rest, he also has
ceased from his own works as God did from His. [11] Let us labor, therefore, to
enter into that rest, lest any man fall after the same example of disobedience
[unbelief]” and the word “disobedience” is a word that in context is explained
as lack of trust.
So what is it that causes Christ to get out that sword and start
swinging? Minus faith. Keep that in mind because this is the
background for Hosea 6. In Hosea 6 he is
going to mention a principle and he’s not going to go too much on
specifics. And the same thing here, the
main issue that you can irritate Jesus Christ faster than any other thing is
not some overt activity; the major issue is your lack of trust that He is
sufficient for every need in life. That
angers God more than anything else. In
fact we can argue that that is behind every over sin. No matter what the sins are that are overt,
we have always, at some point prior to committing that overt act, we have
somewhere said in our heart, we’ve made the creed of idolatry, that God and man
are in the universe together both seeking their own destiny, that God is not
sufficient, He’s not the master, it’s God and something else. God plus my gimmicks. And I have to have one foot on the promises
and the other foot on my gimmicks, just in case the promises fail. There’s no burning of the bridges and trusting
completely on the promises. There’s
always some insurance policy of human gimmicks.
That’s what angers God.
And notice also in verse 12, we know how that sword works, it works
through taking in the Bible doctrine.
Look at that, it doesn’t mention anything about somebody putting their
hand on the head and falling backwards.
It’s the Word of God and you have to understand the Word of God because
the whole point of verse 12 is that the Word of God is understood in the depths
of the heart, it works in and through our conscience, the dividing asunder of
soul and spirit.
Now what else do we know about the Word of God and the connection with
the Spirit; let’s just summarize. The
slaying of the Spirit, since this term is used I’ll use it, I wouldn’t have
used it if it hadn’t been destroyed; the slaying of the Spirit has reference to
discipline administered by Christ to the individual believer to purge him of
unbelief. That’s basically a short
summary of the slaying of the Spirit.
Jesus Christ administering discipline to the believer against unbelief
and He uses the Word of God to do it.
Now let’s come back and now we can see why God says what He does in
Hosea 6. When He says “O Ephraim,” I’ve tried this, I’ve tried that, what am I
going to do with you, your chesed is
still unstable, you have no stability, “I’ve hewed them by the prophets; I have
slain them by the words of My mouth,” over and over He swung His sword at these
believers, over and over He has convicted them, and notice the parallelism in verse
5, “by the prophets,” parallel, “by the words of My mouth,” that is talking
about Scripture. “All Scripture is
God-breathed and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for
instruction in righteousness.” So the
Word of God is the means and God has used His word for 700 years. For 700 years they had the Pentateuch; for
700 years they knew the Law and God went over and over and over and over and
over and over and over and still the national character has not been
developed.
Now drastic actions were called for and this explains why they had to go
into such a severe thing called the Diaspora.
The Jew is still in the Diaspora.
It’s a horrible thing; Jews have lost their lives by the millions,
through the Spanish Inquisition, through Hitler, through all the persecutions
down through history the Jew has been a hounded individual. Why?
Because for 700 years he had an opportunity to respond to God’s Word and
he didn’t. He refused, and so God
lowered the boom. When you look at the suffering Jew and His suffering is very,
very real, it ought to produce in us as believers, hey, God’s Word is serious,
God is serious when He gives us promises, He wants us to trust Him implicitly
with what He has promised and if we don’t, He is so angry that He will sentence
people to what He has sentenced the Jews to.
That’s how He reacts to unbelief, so when you read history, when you see
these stories interpret it theologically, don’t just go along with the humanism
of your classroom teacher.
Hosea 6:6, “For I desired mercy, and not sacrifice,” this is one of the
most famous sayings of Hosea, it was used by Jesus, most people who have never
heard the Bible still know this somehow, “I desired mercy, and not sacrifice,
and the knowledge more than burnt offerings.”
Now let me caution you about something in verse 6. It’s not saying what you think it’s
saying. A lot of people read verse 6 as
though it says, “I desired mercy and not sacrifice, I desired knowledge of God
not burnt offerings.” You notice I changed
one word, “more than” and that’s the key to interpreting verse 6. Here’s the issue. Should verse 6 be interpreted as meaning God
wants love of Himself, loyalty, without the law, or should it be interpreted as
He wants love behind the law. And we have
had antinomians, or people who are interested in destroying God’s law say this
verse proves that the Mosaic Law is not first class will of God; they have said
all the law does, it weights you down, we’re not to get into this law business,
it’s all grace. And they misuse grace
and they’re misusing law.
That’s not what this says and it’s proved by “more than.” It doesn’t make an antithesis between
knowledge of God and burnt offerings; it says the knowledge is more
important. All it’s saying is that in
priority, love of God should be in back of the law, but it is not denying that
there is no law. And this should be
common sense. How could you tell whether
you were loyal to God if you didn’t have His will defined so you’d have a
measuring stick so you could measure whether you’re loyal or not. Suppose, for example, in the marriage
ceremony we didn’t insist that the couple take an oath. Suppose we said you can just trot down the
aisle here and we’ll play a few notes on the organ and have someone sing, and
kind of do what you want to. And after about 20 minutes we’ll just close it
out. Now just suppose we had something
like that; suppose that was the average marriage ceremony. That would give carte blanche to both parties to that
marriage; at no point no matter what they did from that point forward could
anyone ever accuse them of being unfaithful or disloyal, simply because they
never took an oath. There was no law;
you must always have law, law is your standard.
So this verse is not teaching against the Mosaic Law; all it’s trying to
say is God wants chesed, that’s His
main objective. He will tolerate all our
breaking of the law here and there because we’re sinful creatures, but the one
thing He wants from us is loyalty to Himself, that we’ll be centered upon Him,
trusting Him in every area.
So he says in Hosea 6:7, continuing the theme, “But they, like men,” or
some would say “like Adam, have transgressed the covenant;” see the word,
immediately in the context, there’s no mistake, it all fits together. The Scripture can’t be torn apart, they’re
one complete whole, they fit together; “they have transgressed the
covenant.” Now how would someone know if
he’s transgressed the covenant if there wasn’t a covenant? And what is the covenant? Isn’t the covenant law? So obviously you have to have law, law is the
only way you can measure the love.
“They have transgressed the covenant,
they dealt as a traitor against me.”
The word “dealt treacherously” gives you the concept in the Old
Testament of sin; the primary issue of sin is that it is treason, that’s the
imagery of sin in the Bible. When we do
not trust God we are acting as traitors.
So we have God convicting the nation, convicting the nation, convicting
the nation and God says all I wanted was chesed,
and your chesed is like the dew of
the grass in the morning, it hasn’t done a thing; the burnt offerings you’ve
done, I’m not that interested in the burnt offerings God says, I’m interested
in developing chesed for you. Watch something about this, God gives certain
things to do in the Scripture; “thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal,”
these kind of things. But there are
occasions in God’s Word where He orders murders to happen; there are occasions
when God tells them go ahead and lie, lie all you want to, and damn the
people. This is in holy war, and it is
legitimate for God to order some people to lie and other people never to
lie. Why? Because God is the author of right and wrong;
there are not standards in back of God that says “thou shalt not lie, thou
shalt not steal,” etc. The Ten Commandments aren’t in back of God, they’re in
front of Him. He spoke them, and like
God can suspend scientific laws in the physical and chemical realms, God can suspend
moral law in the moral realm if He so chooses.
Tomorrow if He says that murder is right, then murder by definition is
right. Now this is something that really
frosts people that are stuck in the 20th century, the fact that
there really, when you get down to it, aren’t moral absolutes in the sense of
independently existing things; it’s moral absolutes based on God’s
character. God is the absolute and what
He says goes. When he says to Abraham,
take that son of yours and slaughter
him, slaughter him like a sacrifice, it would be a sin for Abraham to back off
and say but God, you said I must not take life.
In that case God says I said take it, period, and you will take it.
Now why does God reserve the prerogative to do this? Because at certain points and places in
history it is necessary for God to remind us that we mustn’t make an idol out
of the Law either, that in back of the Law it’s His will, it’s His choice, that
ultimately we’re not related even to Bible doctrine, ultimately we’re related
to the God who speaks the Bible doctrine to us.
We’re not related to a set of principles, we’re related to a
person. And occasionally He forcibly
reminds us of this. This is why He will
lead you at some time, within the framework of what He has said in the New
Testament, He will lead you to sometimes do things which another believer might
consider, kind of… not in direct violation of the Word but just kind of
questionable. Sometimes He does this,
not usually, you have to be careful, you get into situation ethics when man
chooses when to break the Law, this is not that, it’s the opposite. God chooses when to break the Law and when
not to break the Law because He is the Law-maker.
So we have this concept and that’s why in verse 6 he’s saying, “mercy,”
it’s chesed that I want in you, and
if I tell the Israelites to sacrifice this many offerings on the sixth day of
the week that’s My business, that’s what I told them, and I’m telling you
people in the Church Age to do this, this, this and this. So don’t get all upset because I told the
Jews one thing to do and I’m telling you another thing to do. I just want you to follow Me; that’s what the
concept is, it’s not saying there is no law but it’s just saying that the
priority is mercy first, allegiance to God first, then to the Law.
Now in Hosea 6:8 and through the end of the chapter he’s going to give
some very, very practical illustrations of this. And this is going to surprise you,
particularly when we go to the Law to see what He’s saying. It looks like a very simple statement; it’s
not so simple when we come to the Scripture.
“Gilead is a city of those who work iniquity, and is polluted with
blood. [9] And as troops of robbers wait for a man, so the company of priests
murder in the way by consent; for they commit lewdness.” That looks, when you just read verses 8-9
that he’s talking about some city some place, that has a lot of murder in it,
and while that is true, that is not the whole story. So at this point to see fully, and to relate
these verses to the first principle, chesed,
see we have the chesed principle up
here, that’s the aim of sanctification, that says “thou shalt not kill,” or
“shall not commit murder,” that’s the simple statement.
Now let me show you from the Law what “thou shalt not kill” really
meant, in all the ramifications of the Law.
Turn back to Exodus 21:12, what we’re going to do now is we’re going to
study the concept of murder and taking life; it’s not quite as simple as you
might think. Keep in mind before we go
anywhere in this the chesed principle
operates, loyalty to God therefore I do not kill. Now watch it, if we call two people up here
there’d be two possible answers; if I called someone up here who would be a
consistent non-Christian and I said do
you or do you not believe that you should not kill, and the person says I
believe I should not kill. Why do you
believe you should not kill. Well,
probably because of the effects socially, or because men don’t like it, because
it’s the custom, I can’t stand blood, there’s some reason why he don’t kill and
it’s grounded on some social level. That
might be a reason, but in the Bible it’s all wrong; that reason is totally off
base. In Scripture there’s only one
reason why you do not kill; because God said so, period. Remember that next time somebody comes up to
you and says it doesn’t matter what you believe, as long as you’re
sincere. Everything matters in what you
believe. If a person didn’t believe that
God said “thou shalt not kill” the best thing to do is train ourselves and go
out and kill every radical we could find, it’d solve the problem, purge the
place. You couldn’t say it’s wrong, all
you could say is it kind of bothers you a little but you couldn’t say it’s
wrong because God was excluded from the picture to start with. Of course it matters what you believe; if God
isn’t there and God doesn’t speak you’re free to do what you want to. You can’t get this point across to modern
educators that try to educate the students in a neutral classroom. We don’t mention God here, it might offend
somebody. Well what’s the base?
I’ll never forget, one time we had a session at the school, when we were
arguing about sex education in schools in schools and they had this film on the
plumbing from the birds and the bees and it went on up to man. And they showed this film, this, this, and
this, and it’s very interesting, after it got to show man, then they said and
these are things we don’t do. So I raised
the question, why don’t we; the monkeys do it, the rabbits do it, the lions do
it, why don’t we do it? Oh, we’re
different. Oh we are? Your film didn’t show that, your film showed
man as an evolutionary product and now after indoctrinating the whole class in
the evolutionary concept then at the last minute we quickly tack on
morals. Where do the morals come
from? They’re tacked on, and a smart
student realizes this is and takes the conclusion, do what the monkeys do,
that’s where we came from, why not? It’s
not being facetious, it’s being very serious.
In Exodus 21:12, a very important concept about life and taking life in
the Bible. “He that smites a man, so
that he die, shall be surely put to death. [13] And if a man lie not in wait,
but God deliver him into his hand; then I will appoint thee a place to which he
shall flee. [14] But if a man come presumptuously upon his neighbor, to slay
him with guile, thou shalt take him from mine altar, that he may die.” Now this sentences, and I always like this
because this occurs right after the Ten Commandments, so it shows you very
clearly in the Bible that capital punishment is authorized for murder, but
notice there’s something in there in verse 13, that is the case of accidental
manslaughter, “I will appoint thee a place where he shall flee,” now in the Old
Testament Law there is an interesting point that comes out of all this that we
haven’t got time to go into but the point is this, that you either were
punished by capital punishment or nothing.
You either were capitally punished because you were morally responsible
for the loss of life or zero. In other
words, a fine is never given for murder in the Bible.
Now why is this: there’s a reason.
The price of life is infinite and therefore fining someone for murder is
pricing the life equal to the fine. So
the Old Testament Law, unlike other ancient law codes, where if you killed a
person in the lower class and you were upper class, you didn’t pay with your
life, you just paid them off, that’s all.
The Bible doesn’t price life, and that’s why capital punishment is in
the Scripture. The only thing that can
pay for life is another life; so we have the concept that life is infinitely
valuable and cannot be paid for. It also
comes out in Numbers 35:31.
Now the taking of life, murder in the Bible, has a negative side and a positive
side. I want to look at the negative
side because I don’t want you to go away thinking that murder is murder and
that’s all there is too it. Huh-un,
there’s a lot more details involved. The
concept of taking life shades off into various areas. For example, suicide is considered murder;
suicide is taking your own life? no it isn’t, it’s taking the life God gave
you. It’s the Job 1:21 principle, God
gave you the life and God will take it away and you’re not to butt in; it’s not
yours to take. People who commit suicide
or threaten to commit suicide are people who operate under the presupposition
that their life is theirs to take. It’s
not yours to take, it’s God’s. So suicide
is considered part of “thou shalt not kill.”
The reverence for your own life, and by the way, this is not reverence
for life in the Albert Schweitzer sense of the word. Albert Schweitzer and a few of the liberals
got together the concept that life is of precious value, you know, don’t step
on the ants, the grasshoppers, etc. we never execute anyone, we have (quote)
“reverence for life.” The Bible would
say wrong Albert, it’s reverence for God and what God says we do. So keep that in mind as we go through
this. This is not teaching reverence for
life in that sense. This is teaching
reverence for God and God happens to say this, but if God said something else
then that would be right too. So we’re
worlds apart from the Schweitzerian humanist at this point.
What else about it; not only is suicide prohibited in Scripture, but all
forms of masochism, particularly for religious purposes, are prohibited. Leviticus 19:28, religious people down
through history have always had this self atonement concept, that we take
pleasure in pain and by this we make atonement for ourselves, a technical word
for it is masochism. You’ll see this in
religious circles. “Ye shall not make
any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor
print [tattoo] any marks upon you: I am the LORD.” Your life must not be marred by
self-inflicted injury. So when we read
in Time Magazine about the Koreans and others when they cut their fingers off
and send them to the Japanese ambassador, we would say that that is a form of
masochism, it’s a form of inflicting injury upon yourself. And Leviticus clearly gives in God’s Word
that that too is part of “thou shalt not kill.”
Your physical life is God’s. I’m
showing you all these details because when you read “Gilead is a city of murderers”
I want you to realize that they didn’t have to literally murder people, they
could be doing any one of these things and still get caught under the prophetic
condemnation of murder, because they didn’t have true divine viewpoint view of
physical life.
Leviticus 19:28 and 21:5, “They shall not make baldness upon their head,
neither shall they shave off the corner of their beard, nor make any cuttings
in their flesh.” This is important
because all the ancient Near East religions had these cuttings. You remember what went on when Elijah went
up, 400 prophets were cutting themselves, and Elijah refused to do it, he was
not going to sit up there and cut himself, what was that going to do, he’s not
going to appease God by cutting himself.
Your blood as well as mine is cursed, what does God want to look at our
cursed blood for. There’s only one
person’s blood and that’s the blood of Jesus Christ, that’s the only blood He’s
interested in.
The other part and more subtle thing that’s included in the Bible as
part of murder in a negative sense is hatred.
The famous statement in Matthew 5, this is where it really gets close to
home because this takes it right down into the heart mental attitude, which
proves something; that behind all of these “thou shalt nots” is ultimately a
mental attitude sin. Mental attitude
sins always precede overt sins. Matthew
5:21, “You have heard that it was said by them of old,” Jesus said, “Thou shalt
not kill,” now that’s part of the bona
fide law but the Pharisees had added, “and whosoever shall kill shall be in
danger of the court room [judgment].” In
other words, they completely ruined the commandment; the commandment was “thou
shalt not kill” because physical life is a gift of God, that’s the concept, but
the Pharisees had taken that to mean don’t kill because you’re going to get put
in jail; completely trivialized it.
Jesus said, [22] “I say unto you that whosoever is angry with his
brother without a cause shall be in danger of judgment; and whosoever shall say
to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council; but whosoever shall
say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire.” The word “fool” here in the original is a
very strong word, much stronger than our word fool. It’s not equivalent, for example, to the word
“fool” in Proverbs. Then He goes on to
talk about reconciliation, [23] “Therefore, if you bring your gift to the
altar, and there remember that thy brother has something against you,” go
straighten it out, reconcile yourself.
So Jesus Christ points out that hatred is analogous, the mental attitude
sin of hatred is analogous to murder.
You could have a city filled with mental attitude hatred and it would be
just as foul in God’s sight as a city that literally carried the mental
attitude sin out into overt activity. So
just because the murder statistics are better for one city than another doesn’t
mean a thing as far as God’s concerned.
The mental attitude sins are [can’t understand word]. This is why there are warnings in Scripture,
warnings such as those in Ephesians 4 about “Be ye angry and sin not.” It’s possible to be righteously angry in
Scripture, anger itself isn’t a problem, it’s when the anger controls you
that’s the problem.
So we have the negative side, these are just some, there are others in
Scripture, but this shows you the expanse of “thou shalt not kill” and there
are murderers in the city of Gilead or the region of Gilead, it could be any of
these, suicide, masochism, hatred, mental attitude sins, all of that would fall
under God’s condemnation. But now here’s
another surprise; you may not have thought of all those negative expansions of
“thou shalt not kill” but there’s also a positive side to “thou shalt not kill”
and this means the believer is to be interested in furthering life, furthering
physical life; that also is included in the concept of murder. A person who is negligent, for example, is
considered in the Scripture as one who murders.
He has the same mental attitude toward life as one who would go out and
kill somebody.
Now let’s look at some examples; I’m going to give you six examples of
caring for life and these come under the category “thou shalt not kill.” If you look at them it doesn’t look like
that’s what it’s saying, but these are the positive side. If I am chesed
toward Jehovah, then I will have His evaluation of this person’s life, that
person’s life, someone else’s life, not reverence for life like choices but I
will have respect for what God has told me that life is worth. God has put a price tag on people; the price
tag has been dramatically illustrated by Christ’s death on the cross in history
but the price tag has been put on every member of the human race. Those that are mentally retarded are made in
God’s image, and the price tag on them is just as much as the price tag on you
and me. As far as God is concerned they
are just as worthwhile. The most
deformed child has just as big a price tag on him as any perfect specimen of
the human race. It doesn’t make any
difference.
Now let’s turn to Leviticus 13, the whole section beginning at verse 1,
these laws from Leviticus 13 to 15 are all what we call health laws. Now these laws were not enforced by the
state, all of them, they were enforced by the fathers of the families. Don’t make the mistake that just because
there’s legislation here it was always enforced by government. Some of this can’t be enforced by government;
how are you going to enforce mental attitude sin legislation. You can’t.
So all this isn’t enforced by the state but it is still law.
Leviticus 13:2, “When a man shall have in the skin of his flesh a
swelling, a scab, or bright spot, and it be in the skin of his flesh like the
plague of leprosy, then he shall be brought unto Aaron the priest, or unto one
of his sons the priests,” and it goes through a description of declaring this
person having leprosy or not. And just
quickly skim down it, a big long chapter, verse after verse and see how long it
goes on and on and on and on describing impurities, giving cleansing, telling
how to clean the wound, telling how to care for them. Keep in mind all this was done centuries
before medicine discovered this. In
fact, had these legislations been carried out during the Middle Ages we
wouldn’t have the abominable things that happened in Medieval medicine.
Leviticus 14 is the same thing, it just goes on and on, chapter 15 the
same thing keeps on going, it just goes on and on. Get a good look at that, that’s all health
legislation. What’s that doing in the
Bible? Is God interested in health? Yes
He is, He’s interested in the quality of physical life. And He’s interested in anything that furthers
that quality. And when a person says
“thou shalt not kill” and he says to himself, very narrowly, I’m not guilty of
that, I’ve never gone out and killed. Or
a person might even say well, I’m not guilty of “thou shalt not kill,” I don’t hate people, I’ve learned to control
myself in that area. They might saw
well, now I’ve fulfilled the Law. No,
the Law is ever deeper than that, the Law demands a positive action towards
furthering a physical life.
Leviticus 19:32, this is all skill in the category “thou shalt not
kill.” I’m just going to take six
sections, we’ve done one we’ve got five more, just samples to give you an idea
what the Law is all about; we very rarely read the Law so we’re kind of
ignorant about it. But the people who
heard Hosea knew the Law. “Thou shalt
rise up before the hoary head, and honor the face of the old man, and fear thy
God: I am the LORD.” What is this
talking about? Respect for the aged;
that’s considered “thou shalt not kill.”
If you don’t respect the aged then you’re guilty of “thou shalt not
kill.” The aged has as high a price tag
as the youngest infant, the infant that’s two breaths into this world is no
more valuable than the older person who has lived 70, 80 years, there is no
difference, the price on both of them is the same, not just the infant. People say well, the old people aren’t worth
it, that’s what Hitler argued so he carted them off in carts and put them to
death. The old people lived their life,
let the young people live theirs; bologna!
The old people are just as responsible and they have just as much price
tag for value as the younger person and Leviticus 19:32 is the statement in the
Law about it.
The third thing, the third positive thing [can’t understand word]
physical life is in Exodus 22:22, it deals with the widow and with the orphan,
they were particularly singled out because they had no one to defend them, no
one to hold their property, no one to care for their physical life, it’s not
just talking about the courtroom, it’s talking about their physical life, “Ye
shall not afflict any widow, or fatherless child.” As you read this legislation here’s something
else to think about. Next time you hear
this stuff about the God of the Old Testament, the angry God and so on, the God
of the New Testament is always goo and love stuff, just think back to this Law
and think of the compassion and the mercy that’s evident in this
legislation. It refutes that idea. “You
shall not afflict any widow, or fatherless child. [23] If you afflict them in
any way, and they cry at all unto Me, I will surely hear their cry; [24] And My
wrath shall burn,” I’ll hear their cry, do you see how that threat is in there,
God watches for them. Like it was said
back there, you come up and you show disrespect to an aged person you’d better
fear Me because I’m the Lord, that’s what He says. In other words, God puts His character on the
line, He doesn’t say it’s not good to do this, He says you just don’t do it
because I told you so. And it’s the same
thing here, you mess around with a widow, you mess around persecuting some
little orphan child I’ll hear about it, “and My wrath shall wax hot, and I’ll
kill you with the sword; and your wives shall be widows, and your children
fatherless.” He curses the person who dares interfere with the widows and the
orphans; still part of “thou shalt not kill.”
Turn to Deuteronomy 22:4, do you see why the Law has all these details
and sometimes you read it and you wonder, good night God, why did you preserve
all this stuff. It’s to illustrate
[can’t understand word]; this is where we find out, we go through life and we
think “thou shalt not murder” just refers to not literally murdering someone. Huh-un, it’s much, much more than that. This has to do with caring for your neighbor,
“Thou shalt not see thy brother’s ass or his ox fall down by the ay, and hide
thyself [withhold thy help] from them; thou shalt surely help him to lift them
up again.” And there are other passages
that go along with this, like Leviticus 19:13, 18, that speak of these things
as part of your brother’s nephesh. His property is part of his nephesh.
So if you see this, no policeman is going to report you. See, the Law here couldn’t be enforced by the
government; Deuteronomy 22:4, you’re not going to have police informants
running around, it’s just a command to the conscience of the families of
Israel, hey, this is the way we live around here. This is our culture, we are concerned for our
neighbor. Why? Because it’s a good thing to do? No, because I told you to do it, that’s why;
God says so. So there’s a positive side
to this. It even goes into verse 6 about
the bird’s nest, there’s a whole passage there.
Exodus 23:6, again the same category, respect for the physical well-being
of someone. “Thou shalt not rest [distort, deny] the judgment due the poor in
his cause. [7] Keep thee far from a false matter [charge] and the innocent and
righteous slay thou not; for I will not justify the wicked.” He’s talking there about the poor person, the
person who doesn’t have economic leverage, so you beat them down because you
have better economic leverage than he does; “thou shalt not kill” God
says. The poor person, the neighbor, the
widow, the orphan, the price tag on their soul is just as much as anyone else’s
and any time we do things to hinder the physical well-being of these people we
come under the wrath of “thou shalt not kill.”
Leviticus 19:33, “And if a stranger sojourn with thee in your land, ye
shall not vex him, [34] but the stranger who dwells with you shall be unto you
as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were
strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God.” See how that “I am the LORD your God” pops in
there? Do you see why He’s doing
that? Because it’s not a platonic idea,
this is a good idea to do this. That’s
not the point about it. The point is
God’s character demands it, so everywhere in the legislation, every so often
you have thou shalt do this, thou shalt not do this, “for I am the LORD thy
God;” thou shalt do this, thou shalt not do that, “for I am the LORD thy God,”
thou shall do this, thou shalt not do that, “for I am the LORD thy God.” See
the whole content of the Law rests on the character of God.
Now this stranger is a case which requires a little explanation, the
stranger in the ancient world was traditionally the person who was robbed, was
traditionally the person who suffered persecution because he had no power
base. He would always be victimized
because he was a citizen of another country and they didn’t have reciprocity
agreements in those days. In the Old
Testament times this was a problem, strangers would come in to sell produce,
they would be traveling salesmen, and they would have no protection under the laws
of the land. And so God makes… and this
is absolutely unique in legislation, where Israel protected strangers equal to
her own citizens… equal to her own citizens.
Would that the Gentile nations had followed that in their treatment of
the Jew, when the Jews were strangers in a Gentile country. But we haven’t done that. But the Jew was ordered that when a Gentile
stranger came into town you treat him just like a Jew; he is entitled to just
as much rights in this city as anyone else, it doesn’t matter about his race,
it doesn’t matter about his culture, he’s a member of the human race and that
makes him worthwhile, I said so. So
equal treatment for all men under the Law here.
You could go on and on but we won’t; we’ll turn back to finish Hosea
6. Now do you see when Hosea makes his
condemnation in verse 8, “Gilead is a city of those who work iniquity, and is
polluted with blood.” He could be
including murder, but in the language of the Old Testament he means a lot more
than just that. The city would have been
condemned for its mental attitude sins, Gilead, the area of Gilead not the
city, the area of Gilead might not have been taking care of the aged, may have
been plundering the widows and the orphans, it might not have been caring for
the strangers, and therefore Gilead is filled “with blood,” they don’t give a
damn about life, put in 20th century terminology. That’s the attitude the prophet has and you
want to notice that.
Then he concludes, Hosea 6:4, “And as troops of robbers wait for a man,
so the company of priests murder in the way by consent; for they commit
lewdness,” this could include literal murder but it included all those things
that I talked about. Now there’s one
final note in all this business about life and murder, and that is the word
“polluted with blood” in verse 8. One of
the last things we want to understand in our concept of life in the Scripture
is that when life is shed the land becomes polluted; the literal blood going
into the ground pollutes it as far as God is concerned, that when people are
murdered the physical soil is considered to be the recipient of the decay and
the corruption, and it’s cursed by God.
This is why you have atonement made for the soil, made for the ground in
the Bible. Why is that? Because the ground
is considered polluted. This is why when
God makes the earth again for the millennial kingdom He redoes things. The millennial kingdom would never function
in cursed soil. The cry of thousands of
people who have been murdered and slaughtered in the land cry up to God from
the soil, and therefore the soil has to be purified. That’s why it’s going to be by fire at the
return of Jesus Christ. This pollution
has to be handled, it hasn’t been handled by government, it hasn’t been handled
by community, the murder’s go unsolved and the people’s blood still cries.
He concludes, Hosea 6:10, “I have seen a horrible thing in the house of