God Uses Fools

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Well, turn with me tonight to Hosea chapter 9, Hosea chapter 9, and I told you that tonight we’d be talking, I’d be talking to you about the subject of how God can use fools. And I can tell you that if I had to choose between some kind of dental surgery and looking foolish, and I have experienced both, I’d choose the dental surgery every day. Looking foolish is far and away one of my least favorite things in the whole world.

I’ve told some of you. A lot of you probably think I’m a pretty laid-back person, and I am most of the time. There’s not a whole lot you can do or say that’s going to make me just real mad until you talk down to me or make me look like an idiot.

I just don’t like it. That’s why I was so mad when they put in that new traffic circle up by the hospital. I went to college, and I can’t figure out what lane I’m supposed to be in. I hate that.

I liked it so much better when I still had the out-of-state plates on my car, and people just thought I was from out of town when I would get in the wrong lane here. I hate, I absolutely hate looking foolish. I hate when we get to the words and the names in the Old Testament and I can’t pronounce them, just push right on through them and act like you know what you’re saying.

I don’t want to look foolish. Or when somebody asks me a question, especially in front of people, that I can’t answer, I just hate it. And I think we all, you know, you might choose looking foolish instead of the dental surgery, it depends on who you are.

But I think most of us have at least some aversion to looking foolish. We don’t want people to think we’re as foolish as we know we are. And yet, I’ve come to realize that you don’t have to be Einstein for God to use you.

You don’t have to be a nuclear physicist. You don’t have to be a shrewd businessman. You don’t have to be a silver-tongued speaker or any of these things for God to use you. God uses regular people.

I think I preached on a similar subject a few months ago from 1 Corinthians, where it talks about that God has chosen the foolish things of this world to confound the wise. Because as much as I’d like to think of myself as one of the wise people, I know deep down in my heart I’m one of the foolish things of this world. Well, the world, ladies and gentlemen, looks at us like we are foolish, like we don’t know what we’re talking about when we stand for God’s truth in a day and age such as this.

And that’s not new as much as we would like to wail and moan and gnash our teeth about the circumstances in our country now, as bad as they are, and think, oh, no civilization has ever been as bad as this one. That’s not true. Man has been sinning since the beginning.

Didn’t intend that to rhyme. But man has been incredibly wicked since the beginning. And only occasionally has it gotten any better.

and that’s when God has really gotten the people to see what a fear of God is. Our society is not unique. It’s not unique where people who speak on God’s behalf are ridiculed.

It was true just as much as it is today, it was true in Hosea’s day, that those who stood for God were ridiculed. And we somehow think that if we moderate our message or moderate our tone just a little bit, we can avoid some of the mocking from the world, we can have the best of both worlds, we can have acceptance from the world and we can still stand for God’s truth, that’s a dangerous line to take because you’re bound to fall one way or the other and it’s usually on the side of the world. Folks, we cannot effectively stand for God and expect that the world is just going to love us and bow down at our feet.

Sad to say it doesn’t work that way. But the people that the world looks on and says, you’re fools, you don’t know what you’re talking about, folks, those are exactly the people that God can use. Those are exactly the people that God chooses to use.

In Hosea chapter 9, God contrasts just a little bit the difference between the people who thought they were so smart and really were the foolish ones versus the ones they all looked at and thought were idiots because they weren’t participating in the sins of the nation. In chapter 9 verse 1, it says, Rejoice not, O Israel, for joy is other people, for thou hast gone a-whoring from thy God, thou hast loved a reward upon every corn floor. Tells Israel, don’t rejoice, don’t have a party, there’s nothing here for you to rejoice about.

And they should have known, you know, now nine chapters in, their judgment from God was imminent because of the way they’d been behaving. So he tells them there’s nothing to rejoice about. You think you’re prosperous, you think you’re well off, and what you don’t realize is that you have abandoned God and you’ve run off with every other false god there is.

It says you’ve loved a reward upon every corn floor. The floor and the wine press shall not feed them, and the new wine shall fail in her. And again, not to be too graphic because that stuff embarrasses me just as much as it would embarrass you to hear me talk about it.

But God uses the pictures of adultery and prostitution to point at what Israel had been doing in their spiritual relationship with God as far as their unfaithfulness toward God. And to think about how foolish it really is the way Israel behaved, the God of the universe, the same God who’s more powerful than all the storms that we talked about this morning, The God of the entire universe, who created all the goods that this world produces, who controls all of it, and is a loving, benevolent Father, ready to give to His people and ready to provide for His people, Israel had God’s blessings and God’s bounty at her fingertips, and instead chose to turn her back on God, and chose to run after pagan gods and pagan kings for protection and provision. Doesn’t that seem foolish to you?

To beg for the scraps from some pagan king’s table when the God of the universe has promised to be their God and provide for them. Doesn’t matter how smart the nation of Israel thought they were at this point, they were the ones who were foolish. The floor and the wine press shall not feed them, and the new wine shall fail in her.

In other words, all their efforts, even though they’d been successful up to a point, up to now, all their efforts were going to come to nothing because they were ultimately not going to get the protection and provision they’d been longing for from these other gods. And as I’ve repeated over and over throughout this study of the book of Hosea, if we are looking for our needs to be met in anything other than the living God, in particular our spiritual needs, our trust is misplaced. Would you agree with that?

If we’re looking for salvation in any place other than the living God, through His Son Jesus Christ, then our hope for salvation, our trust is misplaced. And ultimately, and some may take exception to this, Some may disagree with this. That’s all right.

Everybody has the right to be wrong. Some might disagree with this, but ultimately, if we’re trusting in the job we’ve got, if we’re trusting in our own effort and our own work to provide for ourselves instead of trusting in God to provide for ourselves, our trust is misplaced because it was God who gave us the job. It was God who gave us the legs and the arms to work with, and it’s God who can take the health and strength away from us tomorrow if he wants to.

Folks, ultimately, our protection, our provision, all of the things that we need and desire, we are dependent on God for. And yet, I’m reminded as I read this, I’m not going to go tell you to rent the movie Braveheart. It’s bloody and anyway, not necessarily a family-friendly movie, but I remember the scene from the movie Braveheart, where all the Scottish nobles are arguing with one another about taking a deal from the English king, and Mel Gibson tells them, I forget his character’s name, but he tells them, you’re all spending so much time fighting over the scraps from the king’s table that you’ve forgotten about your God-given right to something better.

Folks, that’s how God’s people were behaving here. And I fear sometimes that’s how we act as well. We’re so worried about squabbling and scrounging after the world’s table scraps that we forget about our God-given right to something better.

And not our right because we’re so wonderful, but as God’s children, the things he’s promised to us. And he tells them, The floor in the wine press shall not feed them. the new wine shall fail in her.

They shall not dwell in the Lord’s land, but Ephraim shall return to Egypt, and they shall eat unclean things in Assyria. Now, some of the people undoubtedly fled to Egypt, but I don’t believe he’s literally saying the nation would be carried away into Egypt because we know from the rest of the story that they were taken captive into Assyria, and then the southern tribes were taken captive into Babylon. But what he’s talking about, like I shared with you a couple weeks ago, their captivity in Assyria and in Babylon was to be like their captivity in Egypt.

They would not be in their own land. They would not be in the land that God promised. They would not be a free people.

And they would remain in bondage because they’d wandered away from God. And they would eat unclean things in Assyria. Now, I can just imagine the people of Israel being taken to Assyria and saying, no, no, we can’t eat these unclean things.

It’s against our religion. When they’d been doing much worse when they dwelt in the land that God gave them. They shall not offer wine offerings to the Lord, neither shall they be pleasing unto Him.

Their sacrifices shall be unto them as the bread of mourners, and all that eat thereof shall be polluted. For their bread, for their soul, shall not come into the house of the Lord. Nothing they did.

They could go about their religious rituals, and they could try, but it would not be pleasing to the Lord, and it would be just an empty exercise. And I’ll ask you, when you go through, you don’t have to answer me out loud, as a matter of fact, don’t. But just think about it.

When our hearts and our minds are not focused on God and what He wants, and we just go through the religious exercises because we’re going through the motions, does it do us any benefit? Doesn’t do us any spiritual benefit and usually doesn’t even make us feel any better. It was going to be of no benefit to them that they just continued to go through the motions of making the sacrifices.

And God says at some point that wasn’t even going to be an option for them anymore because they were going to be in captivity again. And keep in mind, I know I talked to you about fools a minute ago. Keep in mind, this is the prevailing culture in Israel that thought it was so smart and thought it was so wise and looked down its nose at the prophets.

What will you do in the solemn day and in the day of the feast of the Lord? For lo, they are gone because of destruction. Egypt shall gather them up, verse 6.

Memphis shall bury them. The pleasant places for their silver. Nettles shall possess them.

Thorns shall be in their tabernacles. Folks, all of the wealth that they had gathered up for themselves, all of the things that they had put together to use in their religious rituals, the Bible says these pleasant places would be covered with nettles and thorns in their tabernacle. How many of you garden?

How long does it take? I really thought there would be more. I garden, but not this year.

How long does it take weeds to take over if they’re left untended? 30 minutes? Yeah, that’s about right.

But they’re so easy to get out once they’re there, right? No. You’re better off trying to keep them out in the first place than letting them go and then trying to get them out.

What he’s saying is everything nice they had built for themselves would be covered in weeds, in noxious growth. There would be weeds all in their garden. The days of visitation are come.

The days of recompense are come. Now, when God says the days of visitation, He doesn’t mean, oh, I’m going to come over to your house and we’re going to have game night. Ladies and gentlemen, He’s talking about judgment.

He says the days of recompense, that means the days of payback. Payday was coming. The days of visitation are come.

The days of recompense are come. Israel shall know it. In the day that judgment finally came, Israel was going to know exactly why they were being judged.

God had made it clear so far through eight full chapters and now into chapter 9 what Israel’s problem was and why there was judgment. And by the way, Hosea was not the only one prophesying about what was going on. They would have ample warning.

He says, Now look at this. The prophet is a fool. Now this is not God saying the prophet is a fool.

I don’t believe. There are different commentators who say different things about this verse. It doesn’t make sense to me here that God is saying the prophet is a fool.

No, instead the nation of Israel, who thinks it’s so smart, who thinks it’s so spiritual, when it has the access to God because he’s allowed it, and instead has been chasing after foreign pagan gods, this nation of Israel who really is the foolish one, looks at those who speak God’s truth and says, no, they’re the fool. He’s basically saying what Israel would say. And the spiritual man, the spiritual man is mad.

I’ll just point out, doesn’t our world look at us and say the same thing? And it’s only going to get worse, ladies and gentlemen. The prophet is a fool.

The spiritual man is mad. They locked Jeremiah in the stocks. At one point, they threw him down the well, down a well or a cistern, because he kept prophesying and saying, God was going to let the Babylonians conquer Judah.

You might as well not even resist. This is part of God’s judgment. so they threw him the stocks, tried to kill him, tried to lock him up. The prophet is a fool.

The spiritual man is mad for the multitude of thine iniquity and the great hatred. It was because, not because the prophet really was a fool, it was not because the spiritual man really was mad. It says here that it was because of their iniquity, the multitude of their iniquity.

Because of their sin, Israel looked at God’s people, at those who really were following God. God has always had his remnant. And they were looking at this remnant who were focused on God, and because of their own sin, they said, oh, these people are crazy.

And because of the great hatred, whether they would put it in these terms or not, it was a hatred of God and a hatred of God’s people. So many times, people who are most resistant to God’s truth are those whose lives least reflect God’s truth. And so they have something very personal invested in denying God and in denying God’s people, because if we have to take God seriously, or let’s just say if we have to take the churches seriously and what they’re preaching, then that means we have to take God seriously.

And if we have to take God seriously, something in our lives have to change. And you know what? We just love the sin too much to let it go.

And that’s not just me, the cranky old preacher, saying that. I know none of y’all would call me the cranky preacher. You might call me the cranky preacher.

Maybe not the cranky old preacher. I call myself that. I’m getting crankier in my old age.

that’s not just me being the cranky preacher saying that. I’ve heard people who’ve come to Christ say, that was the holdup for so long, I just loved the sin too much. The Bible’s clear in so many other places.

Jesus came into the world in John chapter 1, and men loved darkness rather than light. It’s human nature to love our sin. And the nation of Israel looked at the people who were speaking God’s truth and telling them, repent, God stands there ready to forgive.

Just repent. He said, no, we like what we’re doing. Still, the message makes us a little uncomfortable.

We’ve got to make some kind of decision here. It’s easier if we just call these people crazy, and then we don’t have to deal with it. It’s an old political tool, by the way.

If you can demonize the enemy, if you can make them look foolish, then you don’t have to take seriously what they say. Because you can’t argue with a crazy person. Well, you can try, but.

. . So we’ll just say they’re crazy.

God said in verse 8, the watchman of Ephraim. . .

He’s talking here about the true prophets again. the watchman of Ephraim, was with my God. Those who stood before Israel and preached the truth, those who lived in Israel and lived by the truth, no matter what the country around them was doing, says in verse 9 that they were with God.

Ladies and gentlemen, when we stand with God, we never stand alone. And I, for one, don’t believe that truth is up for a majority vote ever. Now, our country may be a republic for now, or a democracy, whatever you want to call it, But ladies and gentlemen, the universe is not a democracy, it’s a theocracy.

God is ultimately in charge. It’s not up for a majority vote. In spite of that, I’ve heard people say, and I kind of like the saying that you plus God is a majority, although I like to think that God is a majority in and of himself.

God is the whole vote. And so, when the watchman of Ephraim, the ones who stood for God and his truth, and it says he was with God, he was with my God, Hosea says, He’s indicating that those who stood for God’s truth never did so alone, because God was always there with them. But the prophet, now based on context, he switches here.

He’s not talking about prophets like Jeremiah and Amos anymore. He’s talking about false prophets. He says, but the prophet is a snare of a fowler in all his ways and hatred in the house of his God.

There were false prophets around like those who opposed Jeremiah and said, no, the country never can fall. Babylon, they’re not going to be able to conquer us. It’s a word from God.

And those people, those people who were sent there to oppose, they did not speak for God. They spoke in opposition to what God had revealed, and they did so because the people loved it, and that’s what they wanted to hear. They preached a feel-good message that people wanted to hear, and they were popular for it.

They were popular for it. But God says here through Hosea, Hosea, that those people were the snare of a fowler in all his ways. They were a trap from somebody who likes to catch birds.

It was a bird trap. Or if this was being written today, we might say it’s a bear trap. I don’t think they had that in those days, but with the big teeth that slammed shut, animals get trapped in that and they can’t get away.

Some of these people were getting trapped in Satan’s lies and couldn’t get away. He’s saying the people that stood in opposition to God’s truth were entrapping them and ensnaring them. He came with hatred into the house of God.

They have deeply corrupted themselves as in the days of Gibeah. Therefore, he will remember their iniquity and will visit their sins. They had gone and followed after the same idols, same golden calves that they’d worshipped for years.

And Hosea says, God remembers. In verse 10, the last verse we’re going to look at tonight, says, I found Israel like grapes in the wilderness. I saw your fathers as the first ripe in the fig tree at her time.

He says, once upon a time, the people of Israel were like these ripe grapes and figs. And if you’re wandering through the desert, which is what the picture is here, If you’re wandering through the desert and you’re thirsty and you see a bunch of ripe, juicy grapes, it would be refreshing, wouldn’t it? And yet he says, but they went to Baal Peor and separated themselves unto that shame, and their abominations were according as they loved.

He said they’ve gone from being refreshing to God and to God’s people, and now the nation of Israel. It says they went to Baal Peor. That means they went to this city that was sort of the headquarters of Baal worship in the country of Moab.

They weren’t supposed to be worshiping Baal, and they weren’t supposed to be involved in religious rituals with the Moabites. They weren’t supposed to be chummy with the Moabites. But they broke God’s law and committed abominable things, as it says they loved it.

And a society like this looked at God’s people and said, they are crazy. And a society like that looks at God’s people today and says, they are crazy. And as much as I want to be liked, and as much as I want everybody to be happy with me, that’s not going to happen if we stand for God’s truth.

We’re going to make somebody mad. I’m not saying we should be on purpose offensive, but we should stand for the truth of God’s word. Because it’s inescapable.

First of all, the world thinks we are foolish when we proclaim God’s truth. That was the job of the prophet. We think today of prophecy as being telling the future.

Now at certain times that was part of it. But prophecy means so much more than foretelling the future. It means forth telling the truth of what God has revealed.

And the prophets, that was their job. Whether they told what was going to happen in the future or not, the job of the prophets was to go to the people and tell them what God had said. Things like repent.

Things like turn back to God. Things like you’ve wandered away from Him. You know better than this.

And when we tell the world around us, hey, this is not right. We’re headed the wrong direction. Folks, even when we tell them they have sinned and need a Savior, sometimes they look at us and say, you’re foolish.

But folks, we cannot do our job as Christians and expect that we’re going to escape every label of being foolish. We just have to accept it as part of the job. The world thinks we’re foolish when we proclaim God’s truth, but that’s because they think God’s truth is foolish.

Would we agree with that statement? We wouldn’t agree that God’s truth is foolish, would we? If so, what are we doing here?

But if we don’t believe God’s truth is foolish, then what does it matter when they call us foolish for proclaiming it. And I’m not just talking about speaking out against things like same-sex marriage and abortion and some of the hot-button issues. Folks, I’m talking about even something as basic as telling people, sharing the gospel, starting from the point where we have sinned against a holy God and are in need of a Savior.

Unfortunately, sometimes that’s hard to swallow. Sometimes that’s hard for people to admit. And some people are going to call us foolish.

As long as we’re convinced that the truth of God’s word is not foolish, then it doesn’t matter what they call us, as far as I’m concerned. Second of all, the world thinks we’re crazy when we obey God’s will. What kind of people, based on a book, what kind of people based on a book would give up all the joys and pleasures of this world?

We must be crazy. Not really. Not really when you consider that we don’t believe this is just a book, but it’s the inspired word of God.

When we believe it’s an authoritative of revelation where God revealed His will to us, where He revealed His character to us, and we as people who love Him or profess to do so feel compelled to try to live in a way that’s pleasing to Him. The world looks at us and says you don’t, or at least you try not to lie and steal and cheat and kill and all the various things that the world enjoys doing. Christians aren’t supposed to cheat to get ahead in business.

We’re not supposed to lie to each other. In general, we’re supposed to do the things that God wants us to do, which sometimes are the hard things, and that are not always the fun things, and not always the things that are going to get us furthest ahead in the world, and people are going to look at us and think we’re crazy if we live according to God’s will. He said, the spiritual man is mad.

Folks, God’s looking for some mad men. God’s looking for some crazy people who are just out there enough to live according to what this book tells us to do, regardless of what the world tells us. Folks, the world hates God’s people because it hates God.

Hates God’s people because it hates God. Now, some of y’all are looking at me tonight like you’ve lost your best friend, like I’ve just depressed you all to bits. I hope that, well, the thought of the world hating God isn’t really comforting to me, but at least it’s not personal to us.

Jesus told us if they hate you, it’s because they hated me first. He says in verse 7 again that the multitude of their, what they had said about the prophets and the spiritual man was because of the multitude of thine iniquity and the great hatred. Folks, the reason, the very simple reason why we cannot stand for God in any meaningful way and not expect the world to ridicule us is because the world hates the God we serve. And it’s tempting to look at the world outside and respond in that kind of hatred too.

Just brush them aside and say, well, they’re worthless scoundrels or whatever words you want to use. But folks, Titus chapter 3, I believe it is, reminds us that we were once such as they are. For we were once also foolish, disobedient, serving diverse lusts and pleasures, hateful and hating one another.

I know I’m not quoting that exactly. It says, but then God’s mercy appeared to us. Reminds us we’re cut from the same cloth that the world outside is.

And our greatest hope should not be, well, our greatest hope should be, here’s what our greatest hope should be, that those who hate God are soft enough by His mercy that they’ll come to love Him and trust Him, and that maybe our ministry to them can work some good toward that end. And tonight, as a closing thought, folks, God is with those who serve Him in opposition to the world. He said that the watchman of Ephraim was with God.

And it’s not so much a matter of God be with us as we go out there. Folks, as we go out there, we need to make sure we’re with God. the watchman of Ephraim, was with God.

When we serve Him, when we stand in the middle of His will, as we talked about this morning, it may be dangerous, it may be costly, it may be uncomfortable, but we don’t do it alone. Folks, our God is there with us. Our God stands with us and behind us, regardless of what the world throws at us.

We as individuals, we as a church, may at times have to take unpopular stands because of the world we live in. Folks, I’m unashamed in my. .

. I don’t want to just give you a list of things I’m opposed to. I’d like to tell you what I’m for also.

But I’m unashamed in my opposition to things like same-sex marriage, things like abortion, things like drunkenness and adultery, and all sorts of things that tear our families and our churches and our nation apart. And I unashamedly stand, as much as I can, considering that I’m human and I fall short, I unashamedly stand for the truth of God’s Word, that it still does apply to us. It’s still inerrant.

It’s still authoritative. It’s still reliable. Sin is still sin.

God is still holy. And Christ’s blood is as sufficient as it ever was. And folks, those are not always going to be popular stands.

But folks, when we stand with God, we never stand by ourselves.