Judgment Poured out

Listen Online:

Transcript:

Hosea chapter 5. We’re going to look at about 14 verses tonight, hopefully fairly quickly. And depending on how you look at it, this could either be a downer of a message or it could be a message that makes us leave here feeling joyful.

And what we’re going to talk about in Hosea chapter 5 is actually the judgment of God. And you may be thinking, okay, well, we’ve already made the choice that it’s going to be a downer of a message. And it very easily could be to talk about and to think about the judgment of God is not necessarily something that we as fallen sinful human beings think of as a good thing.

But ultimately, if we look at the world as, if we see the world in such a way that God is just, God is holy, and therefore everything God does is just and is holy and is right and God can’t make a mistake, then God’s punishment of sin is, in the long run, is a good thing.

But also it gives us reason to be thankful as we look at the judgment of God, as we look at the wrath of God, to realize what it is that he has spared us from in Jesus Christ. That the wrath that God here has promised to pour out on Israel at this time, for them a future date, for us a past date, when he would let the Assyrians come in and carry them off, that God’s judgment in this way, that he would actually turn his face from Israel, which is what we’re going to talk about in part tonight, his turning of his face from Israel, that when God would turn his face from them, folks, God’s turning of his face from sin is not something that we have to go through if we’ve trusted Christ because that sin has already been dealt with.

The Bible says that Jesus Christ took that sin upon himself on the cross, and it was there on the cross that he cried out, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? And so I believe God, if our sins have been forgiven in Christ, and if we’ve trusted him, they have been forgiven in Christ, then those sins have already been judged in Christ, and God has already turned his face away from those sins in Christ. And so what we see tonight, not only that they would suffer the earthly consequences, but there were spiritual consequences for Israel as well. Now, we may still have to suffer some of the earthly consequences.

We can’t involve ourselves in a life of drugs and expect that our bodies are going to hold up the way we want them to. Sometimes there are earthly consequences for our misdeeds. But the spiritual consequences, which quite frankly are far worse, have already been dealt with in Jesus Christ. And in that sense, the judgment of God is something that we don’t go through because it’s something He’s already gone through on our behalf.

And so we can look at this and say, my goodness, what a downer. But folks, we can also look at it if we’re in Christ and say, thank God that you’ve already paid the penalty that’s due here. In Hosea chapter 5 verse 1, he says, Hear ye this, O priests, and hearken ye house of Israel, and give ye ear, O house of the king, for judgment is toward you.

And there’s a comma there, the thought is not finished, but we’re going to stop there for just a second. He pretty much lays it out for everybody in the northern kingdom of Israel. The people, the political rulers, the priesthood, they were all guilty of the things that he’s accused them of so far.

The spiritual adultery where they would run off and worship the golden calf or they would run off and worship Baal or Asherah or any of the other gods that they chose to worship instead of the one true God alone. And as I’ve told you, they may have worshipped Jehovah or Yahweh, depending on how you want to pronounce the Hebrew. They might have worshipped him, but they worshipped him as one of many.

Whereas our God says, no, I’m to be the only one. And so to worship God in part is not to worship God at all. And he says they’d all been guilty.

He says the priests. And unfortunately today, there are still religious leaders that lead people astray. Somebody asked me a few weeks ago what I thought of a particular preacher.

And I would name the name for you, except I’ve already mentioned this guy many times, and rather than it look like I’m just picking on him. He said, what do you think about this particular preacher? I said, anybody who can’t answer the question when asked on Larry King Live Jesus Christ is the only way to heaven or not, does not deserve to stand in a pulpit anywhere.

I mean, where I come from, they won’t let you graduate out of Sunday school without knowing that. What is it, John 14, 6 that I quote all the time? I am the way, the truth, the life.

No man comes unto the Father but by me. These are not difficult concepts. And unfortunately, there are still preachers, there are still religious leaders who are willing to tell people whatever they want to hear to get themselves a following and leading the people astray and leading the people in the worship of false gods.

They may call it Jehovah, they may call it Yahweh, they may call it Jesus. But the picture they paint of which Jehovah, of which Jesus they’re worshiping is not the same as what the Bible teaches, and therefore it’s a false god. So he calls out the priests for leading the people in this false worship.

And hearken ye house of Israel, he calls out the people, and give ye ear, O house of the king. See, all this idolatry, all this idolatry we can trace back. I mean, yeah, the people had their golden calves with Aaron, but when this really got going, when this really got going full-blown in the northern kingdom, we can trace back to Solomon before the kingdoms split.

And it was Solomon when he brought in the pagan wives, and it was Solomon when he let them start building their shrines, and it was Solomon when he thought, I’ll worship here just a little bit. And ever since then, in the northern kingdom, it had been the kings who had led and pushed the pagan worship, and the people followed suit. For judgment is toward you, he says, because you’ve been a snare on Mizpah and a net spread upon Tabor.

There are several names in here. And I tried to look all these names up and figure out what is he saying because I know the readers of Hosea in Hosea’s day or the people who heard him would have understood what these things meant. We don’t have Mizpah and Tabor near here.

And there are some names. If you all saw me looking at my Kindle beforehand during the song service, I was not checking my Facebook. book.

There’s a name I looked down and I thought, I don’t remember what that was. And so I thought, I better look it up now as opposed to later telling people I don’t know what it means. But there are several of these names in here, and I’ll do my best to try to explain to you what they would have understood when Hosea gave these names.

Mizpah and Tabor, from what I’ve read, were these plateau-like places, big mountains with flat tops where the hunters would have gone out and laid traps and snares for the birds and the animals and tried to catch them. They were sort of the hunters’ paradises of their day. And they would go out there on their hunting trips and lay these snares, and they would come back with game birds and animals.

And so the picture he paints for them is that the people, the leadership of Israel, the political leadership, and the religious leadership all in cahoots with the people, they had been a snare on Mizpah and a net spread upon Tabor. In other words, they were catching people, snatching them up, dragging them astray into idolatry through their leadership. It wasn’t just the leadership in the sense of the religious and political leadership.

Yes, they were catching people and leading them astray, catching the people of Israel and leading them astray into idolatry, but the nation of Israel as a whole had been a snare and been a net spread. And they were constantly, their idolatry, constantly threatened to snare Judah and drag them in the same direction. Had it not been for a few kings along the way who got right with God and recognized the wrong direction of their country, had it not been for a few leaders along the way in Judah, that country would have been as bad as Israel.

But they were constantly, especially if they had weak leadership, especially if they had leadership who was not right with God, they were constantly in danger of being ensnared by the idolatry in Israel. And I’ve told you repeatedly, repeatedly, it seems like every time I talk about idolatry, that it is infectious, it is contagious, and if it’s left unchecked, it will destroy everything around it. If we allow a little bit of idolatry in our lives, before long it will consume the whole of our lives.

And so he says they’ve been a snare on Mizpah and a net spread upon Tabor. And the revolters are profound to make slaughter, though I have been a rebuker of them all. As I’ve told you before, it says in here that the people had decided that they were willing to break any commandment, they were willing to break any law, and so taking a step away from God not only led them into immoral actions, it led them into actually violent actions.

And people will sometimes justify their ungodly behavior by saying, well, who am I really hurting? Well, folks, it’s a slippery slope, and even if I don’t go from a little bit of immorality into violence, a society as a whole cannot divorce itself from God without descending into the kind of chaos and anarchy that these people had slid into. The revolters are profound to make slaughter, though I have been a rebuker of them all.

I know Ephraim, and Israel is not hid from me. Now, what I told you last week, if you remember, Ephraim was one of the ten tribes of the northern kingdom of Israel, one of the prominent tribes, and some of their religious and political institutions were headquartered there from time to time. And so it was like if we speak of the American government, if we speak of the U.

S. as a whole in foreign relations, and we talk about Washington, we’re not talking just about the city of Washington, we’re talking about the nation. And I gave you the example, I’d watched the documentary about the Iran hostage crisis, and they kept talking about Washington was powerless to do anything about the hostages, and Tehran was unrelenting when it came to U.

S. demands, and so on and so forth. And folks, it was not the mayor of Washington and it was not the mayor of Tehran who’d gotten sideways with one another.

It was the whole countries. But it’s just a way of shortening things or introducing a little variety into the way you talk to let a part represent the whole. For example, when I say missions is more than sending a check to Little Rock, we’re not sending a check to the city of Little Rock.

We all know that. But our missions department for now is headquartered in the city of Little Rock. So instead of saying the Baptist Missionary Association Department of Missions, it’s just sometimes quicker to say Little Rock.

Well, here he says Ephraim, and that was to represent Israel as a whole, even when they use Ephraim and Israel in the same thought. I know Ephraim, and Israel is not hid from me. God knew their hearts.

God knew everything that was going on in the country, even the things that they tried to hide under the big trees, as we talked about last week. God knew what was going on. For now, O Ephraim, now commitest whoredom, and Israel is defiled.

They will not frame their doings to turn unto their God, for the spirit of whoredoms is in the midst of them, and they have not known the Lord. When it says that they will not frame their doings, I’ve got to admit to you, I was at a loss. Why would they want to put a frame around?

Some of the things they were doing were not fit to talk about, let alone draw a picture of and frame it. That’s obviously not what it means. But it means they will not turn from what they’re doing.

and that means they would not stop and consider what they were doing and the effects of it and turn away from it. They would not frame their doings and turn unto their God. Because, again, the spirit of idolatry, the spirit of whoredoms, it keeps saying spirit of whoredoms. I say spirit of idolatry a lot.

It’s the same thing. Somebody went downstairs last week and told my wife, your husband’s up there preaching about whores and adulterers. Folks, when it says the spirit of whoredom, it’s talking about spiritually.

It’s talking about idolatry. Although, when you get into idolatry, there was some of the other as well. And they have not known the Lord.

And the pride of Israel doth testify to his face. Therefore shall Israel and Ephraim fall in their iniquity, and Judah also shall fall with them. You’ll recall last week, maybe you’ll recall last week, what we talked about was that Israel was so corrupt, and God at that point was telling Judah, you know, you’re not sinless, but you’re not corrupt like Israel, and you need to preserve yourself against the corruption.

And we talked about the faithful remnant that God always has. Well, folks, at this point, Judah, I don’t know what kind of time gap there is here between chapter 4 and chapter 5, but obviously God knew that Judah was not going to be able to restrain themselves from the idolatry of the northern kingdom. And so he says in verse 5, Judah also shall fall with them.

They shall go with their flocks and their herds to seek the Lord, but they shall not find him. He hath withdrawn himself from them. Folks, this is not a contradiction because God says several times, even talks about in the book of Hosea that when they go to look for him, he’ll be found.

He says in the New Testament, I believe, that he’s near to those who seek him. Folks, what we’re talking about here, this is not the end of it, where they were seeking him genuinely, where they’d been reproved and rebuked and they’d been punished and they realized their sinful ways and repented and sought the Lord. I believe what this is talking about is in the midst of their pagan worship and in their idolatry, they’re going to continue trying to worship God as one of many.

And when they try to worship God as one of many and go looking for him, guess what? He’s not going to be there. And I still believe in the omnipresence of God.

But I also believe that what we can know and understand of God is not because of our intellect, it’s because God condescends to let us know what he wants us to know. And folks, we could not find God if God didn’t want to be found. And so what he says is, I’m not having this half-hearted worship.

You come to me, you bring your flocks of sheep to sacrifice, and your heart’s not in it because you’re worshiping all these other gods. You know what? I’m not going to be there.

They shall not find him. He hath withdrawn himself from them. Verse 7, they have dealt treacherously against the Lord, for they have begotten strange children.

That’s not a sin to have strange children. Sometimes I look at Benjamin and I say, you’re so strange. And I don’t mean that as an insult.

It’s just sometimes things he does, it reminds me of myself, and I think, oh my goodness, we are in trouble. But it doesn’t mean that if your children are strange, it’s a sin. What he’s talking about is they had had children with the pagan countries they had intermarried with, and God had told them all along, don’t do that, because that would lead them again into idolatry.

And so he says, you’ve ignored me. You’ve gone and begotten strange children by marrying in with these other countries. Now shall a month devour them with their portions.

And some people have said this word month actually should be translated locust. I think it makes more sense that the Assyrians overran parts of Israel in a month. At least that’s what I’m told from the history books, that they overran the nation of Israel, the northern kingdom, in about a month, or at least parts of it, and the people were devoured in a month. Blow ye the cornet in Gibeah, and the trumpet in Ramah, and cry aloud at Beth-Avon after thee, O Benjamin.

He talks about Benjamin. And here again, Benjamin was one of the two tribes in the southern kingdom, the other being Judah. And both tribes were kind of prominent.

Judah was David’s tribe. It was the tribe out of which the Messiah would come. Benjamin was prominent as being the tribe that Saul, the first king of Israel, came out of.

But Benjamin had kind of a storied history with the rest of the nation of Israel. If you turn back, and you don’t necessarily have to do it now, and I’d encourage you to go read it later and make sure I’m telling you the truth. But if you turn back to Judges 19 and 20, Benjamin had had a run-in with the rest of the nation of Israel.

I won’t go into all the details, but suffice it to say, they had gotten sideways with the nation of Israel, and the other 11 tribes had nearly wiped them out in a miniature civil war, to the point where, if I remember the numbers correctly, there were only about 600 Benjamite men left. And they said, what have we done? there are supposed to be 12 tribes of our people, and this tribe is going to die out.

And so they all agreed they would give some of their women to the tribe of Benjamin so that they could intermarry with them and they could repopulate the tribe of Benjamin. This battle, where they had gotten sideways with the rest of the country, had taken place between Gibeah and Ramah. And so what he’s talking about when he talks about Benjamin in verse 8 and says, blow ye the cornet in Gibeah and the trumpet in Ramah.

Blowing the cornet and blowing the trumpet was a warning that something was coming. And to say especially in Gibeah and Ramah, where the near destruction of the tribe of Benjamin had taken place, would have been something that they would have remembered, because it had only taken place about three or four hundred years prior to this. And I know we forget the next day of what goes on, what goes on in our government and our history, but people in the Middle East, by and large, I don’t want to stereotype, but people in the Middle East tend to have a longer cultural memory of things.

So something that happened, some blood feud from three or four hundred years ago is just like what happened yesterday. And the people would have remembered the destruction at Gibeah and Ramah at that battle where the tribe of Benjamin was nearly wiped out. And he says to them, after saying that Judah would fall with Israel, he tells them, sound the warning at Gibeah and Ramah.

And they would have understood, oh, this is not good, what’s about to happen. To quote one of my favorite TV chefs, good things are not on the way for the tribe of Benjamin. And so he tells them, blow the cornet at Gibeah and the trumpet in Ramah.

Cry aloud at Beth-Avon. I’ve told you before that Beth-Avon was also, I believe, the same place as Bethel, which is where one of the golden calves was set up by King Jeroboam I, so that the people of Israel would not go south and worship at Jerusalem. Instead, they can worship God at these golden calves at Bethel and Gilgal. And evidently, the southern kingdom had fallen into some of the same idolatry.

And so God brings up Beth-Avon, Beth-Avon, or Bethel, and says, and he invokes Gilgal. I’m sorry, Gibeah and Ramah. There’s a lot of names. Sometimes these get confusing.

If I make a mistake, I’ll try to go back and fix it. Gibeah and Ramah, so that they would realize, here’s what we’ve done, and here’s judgment coming as a result of it. Ephraim shall be desolate in the day of rebuke among the tribes of Israel, which I have made known that which shall surely be.

Ephraim shall be desolate. To be desolate is to be like a desert. There’s no fruitfulness.

There’s no prosperity about it. Just desolate. We know what that word means.

And he says Ephraim, the northern kingdom, will be desolate in the day of rebuke. When God finally judges them, they will be desolate. Among the tribes of Israel have I made known that which shall surely be.

And so God says, I’ve already said it. and you can take it to the bank. You can be sure that when I say I will judge, that’s exactly what I mean.

The princes of Judah were like them that removed the bound. Therefore will I pour out my wrath upon them like water. Folks, I don’t want to see God’s wrath, let alone have it poured out on me like water.

That’s just a fearful thought. And one of the things that God had told them not to do was to remove landmarks because it was fraud. It was stealing.

There’s a verse, I believe, in Proverbs that says, remove not the ancient landmarks which thy fathers have set. That’s where we as missionary Baptists got the term landmarkism, because we said there are certain doctrines, certain teachings in Baptist history that we can’t give up, and they call them the landmarks, and said we’re not going to move those. That’s why sometimes people, especially if they don’t think like missionary Baptists do, they’ll call us landmarkists, I guess as though it It was, what do you call it, a derisive term, but I kind of like it.

Anyway, they were told, don’t move the landmarks. These landmarks were the signposts along the way or the fenceposts that said, okay, this is my land, and that’s your land on the other side. And if you went and moved the fencepost, if you went and moved the landmarks or the bounds, and you moved it further over into your neighbor’s territory, you were stealing his land.

You couldn’t do that. it was dishonest, I mean, completely dishonest. And in their culture, one of the bigger transgressions you could commit. And so he says, the princes of Judah are like the ones who stepped over the bounds.

They’re like the ones who moved the landmark. And in this case, they weren’t robbing Israel, they were robbing God because they had begun to engage in the same idolatry as Israel and they’d begun to rob God of the worship that was truly his. He says, therefore, I will pour my wrath upon them like water because by and large in this day and age when the way that the political leaders, the kings and princes went, the nation went along.

And if they worshiped the true God, then the people would by and large worship the true God. But if they started dabbling in idolatry, the people followed suit. And so great was their judgment.

Ephraim is oppressed and broken in judgment because he willingly walked after the commandment, not the commandment of God. Folks, you don’t get judged by God for obeying his commandments. obedience.

Obeying the commandment was, I believe, the commandment of Jeroboam I when he put up the golden calves at Gilgal and Bethel and said, don’t go to Jerusalem and worship there because you’ll be too tied to the southern kingdom. I don’t like that idea. So instead, I’ll put up these golden calves and you go worship there.

And he commanded the people to go and worship the golden calves. And you know what? They did so, and they did so willingly.

They willingly walked after the commandment. It would have been bad enough if they had been coerced into bowing. But folks, they went willingly into idolatry.

Therefore will I be unto Ephraim as a moth, and to the house of Judah as rottenness. To the house of Ephraim as a moth. That doesn’t sound very threatening.

But we’re not talking about God destroying the northern kingdom’s clothes. We know why moths are considered destructive. We’re not talking about him going in and destroying the clothes of the northern kingdom.

We’re talking about him destroying the northern kingdom as though he were those clothes. And so he says, I will be to the house of Ephraim as a moth. And folks, the first thing we can learn from this is that God’s judgment is devastating.

When you have a garment, say you have a suit or a nice dress that you’ve spent a lot of money on, and you put it in the closet and you pull it out after some time, what you don’t want to see is moths that have eaten holes in it. At that point, it becomes worthless, doesn’t it? Especially if they’ve eaten large chunks out of it.

It becomes worthless. And what God says here is that there will be destruction. There will be destruction on the house of Ephraim.

It will be devastating God’s judgment when he’s as a moth to the house of Ephraim. Folks, God’s judgment of sin is devastating. And when the world looks at God’s judgment of sin and says it’s not a big deal, it’s not anything to take seriously, something we can ignore or not think about.

They’re not thinking about the consequences. Sometimes we even as believers don’t think about the consequences, that sin in and of itself is devastating, but folks, so is God’s judgment on sin. He says here that I will be unto Ephraim as a moth and unto the house of Judah as rottenness.

This word that they translate rottenness means a rottenness of the bones, means of the bones deteriorating from the inside out, like a cancer that starts in the marrow and eats outwards. And this kind of disease he talks about is something that would not stop until the bone was gone. And when he says to the house of Judah he’ll be as rottenness, folks, it indicates a thoroughness of God’s judgment.

When it comes to judging sin one day, God will not leave any stone unturned. There’s not any act that he will not know about. There’s not any sin that will be hidden from God’s eyes.

God’s judgment of sin is thorough. And I remember back in October when I talked to you about the Reformation and talked about Martin Luther and his thoughts when he was a Catholic monk still and thought that there could be no forgiveness of sins if he did not remember every sin he committed and confess it. Folks, if those are the odds, if those are the odds with God, I can’t win with those odds because God remembers every sin I’ve ever committed and I don’t.

And there may be things that I’ve done, things that I’ve thought, things that I’ve said that I haven’t even realized were sin at the time. but folks God knows every thought and every intention of our hearts and God’s judgment of sin is thorough there’s nothing that escapes God’s notice and God’s judgment of sin will be thorough he says when Ephraim saw his sickness and Judah saw his wound then went Ephraim to the Assyrian and sent to king Jerob yet could he not heal you nor cure you of your wound for I will be unto Ephraim as a lion and as a young lion to the house of Judah I, even I, will tear and go away and take away, and none shall rescue him. It was King Jerob I was looking up earlier because I thought, I don’t remember what that name is for, what that name was about.

But what I do know is that the Israelites and the people of Judah both had a history of instead of trusting God to watch over them when they dealt with the Persians or when they dealt with the Assyrians or when they dealt with the Egyptians or any other country around them, they would turn to one of the other pagan countries around them and try to make an alliance when God had said, just trust me. And so for them to run to the Assyrian and to King Jerob, yet he could not heal you nor cure your wounds, folks, God’s judgment is not something we can escape because of the help of other men. It’s not something we can escape through human effort.

God’s judgment of sin, excuse me, is inescapable. I think also of the lion as well. And I’ve seen lions on television.

Never seen them in real, well, other than the zoo. I’ve never seen them in real life, thank goodness. But lions and young lions have a pretty good track record of being able to catch their prey, especially when they work together.

And I can assure you, sometimes, sometimes, the wildebeest or the zebra or whatever they’re chasing after will get away. Sometimes that’ll happen. But I can guarantee you, if God comes in judgment as a lion and a young lion, folks, the wildebeest and the zebra will not get away.

When he says he’ll come on Ephraim as a lion and as a young lion on Judah, Folks, God’s judgment of sin is inescapable. God’s judgment of sin is inescapable in human terms. There’s no way for you and for me and for the world outside of here to escape God’s judgment. And so we have to take sin seriously, and we have to take what God says about sin seriously, because the judgment of God on sin is devastating, and it’s thorough, and it’s inescapable, but for one thing, that God provided a way of escape.

I mean, he set up the rules. He set up the parameters how this works. There’s no way of escape except for the one escape route that he set up.

Now he talked to them in Israel, in Ephraim, throughout time that if they would just turn to him and trust him and serve him, that he would preserve them, that he would watch over them. Folks, to us, to them, that was a picture of things to come. When they did the sacrifices and they did the worship, that was a picture of the perfect sacrifice that would one day be made for sin.

And God himself, in their day, just as ours, provided the one and only means of escape.