Let Not Judah Offend

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⟦Transcript⟧ Turn with me to the book of Hosea, chapter 4. Hosea chapter 4. It’s always been interesting to me the way it’s always the bad things, or seems to be always the bad things that spread.

You know, viruses are contagious, but health, I guess, is not. You know, you can be around somebody who’s got the flu, and odds are you’re going to end up getting the flu. A lot of us can attest to that from the time around Christmas when we just sort of passed it back and forth around here.

Somebody got sick and passed it to everybody else, and it just spread. It was contagious. And yet we didn’t have healthy people walk in here, and suddenly from being around them, the sick people got well.

Don’t you wish it worked that way? It doesn’t work that way, though. There’s the old saying about the one rotten apple spoiling the whole bunch, or the whole barrel.

Apples don’t come in bunches, do they, like grapes? It spoils the whole barrel. It’s unfortunate you can’t get a barrel of bad apples and throw a good one in there and expect it to get better.

Sometimes when I go for a slice of bread, I’ll check the whole loaf, and if there’s one slice that has a little bit of mold on it, even if it’s at the far end, I throw the whole loaf away. Because you know if one of them’s got the spores on them, they all do. And it’s always the bad stuff that’s infectious.

It seems to be the bad stuff that we have to be on guard against. Now, people will talk about positive attitudes are contagious, that sort of thing. Enthusiasm for the Lord’s work is contagious. There are some certain exceptions.

but by and large it’s the bad things that spread most easily. It’s the bad things that we have to take care to keep them from spreading because that’s just what they do. Tonight as we look at the book of Hosea, now God continues on with his talking to Israel about the judgment that’s going to befall them for their sin, for their idolatry, but there’s also what I want to focus on here at the end of this chapter are a few verses where God turns temporarily to the southern kingdom of Judah and says, you’ve got to be on guard against the badness.

And we’re going to start where we left off last week in verse 12, where he says, God’s already been speaking to the people of Israel. As I’ve told you, he goes from one point he’s talking about judgment to the next point he’s talking about the hope of restoration. Then he goes back to talking about judgment, and then back to the hope of restoration, and it’s kind of like a roller coaster.

Well, previously in the chapter where we were last Sunday night, He was still talking about judgment, and that’s where we pick up again. He says in verse 12, my people ask counsel at their stocks. He’s talking about the northern kingdom.

He’s talking about Israel. He’s talking about these ten tribes who have been almost unanimous in their idolatry in their rejection of the worship of the true God. When he says my people, folks, they claim to be his people.

I explained to you last week where he made mention of them being his people. they eat up the sin of my people in verse 8. But folks, they were not his people.

They professed to be his people. They were sort of his people in name only. They were his people in name only.

By their actions, by their hearts, they betrayed the fact that they really didn’t belong to him. And so whether it’s in a tongue-in-cheek way or as a way of saying those who profess to be my people, either way, he’s talking about these people who say they’re his but are not. My people ask counsel at their stocks.

And I immediately thought of, you know, in New England where they would put somebody in the stocks. But I was pretty sure that they didn’t do that in biblical times. I don’t think they, you know, if there was a penalty to be paid, I don’t think they humiliated you.

I think they just stoned you a lot of times. So I thought that can’t possibly be what it is. And looking into it, they’re talking about wooden instruments, kind of like the stocks in New England in the Puritan days were made out of wood.

Well, these were wooden instruments, just the same, but he’s talking about the idols that they would carve out of wood. And knowing that the judgment of God is coming because they’ve been worshiping false gods, they turn to those false gods for counsel, for advice, for wisdom. Makes a lot of sense, doesn’t it?

The living God pronounces judgment on you that one day very soon there’s going to be a very real punishment for your country because of you seeking after false gods, and so you turn to the false gods for protection. Well, not only are you doing the very thing God is angry about in the first place, but those false gods aren’t going to be able to do anything to protect you. In all honesty, as I was reading this, I was thinking about having a tank barreling down on you.

I watched Patton again for about the 500th time this weekend. Loved that movie. But I was thinking about having a tank barreling down on you and turning to a water pistol for protection.

I mean, it’s just not going to do anything. And a false god carved out of wood something, this god didn’t make you, you made it. and it’s made of wood, it doesn’t speak, it doesn’t have any powers, it just sits there unless you move it somewhere else.

And to turn to that and think that that thing is going to be able to protect you against the living God is, in my estimation, the height of foolishness. And it tells you something about where these people were at. They were so bogged down in the lies and in the idolatry, they couldn’t even see the truth, they couldn’t even see common sense in front of them.

He says, My people ask counsel at their stocks, and their staff declareth unto them. They would use divining rods. Now, I’ve heard of people using divining rods in this part of the country and back home, you know, years ago when they would set up farms and want to go drilling wells for water.

I don’t know if they believed there were spirits in the water. I don’t know if it’s the same thing or not. I’ve never heard about people on the prairie in Oklahoma worshiping spirits, and please, spirits, lead us to water, that sort of thing.

But they would have these sticks that they would use to divine things, that they would use to determine which way the spirits were leaning that day. Kind of like a spiritometer, I guess, if you want to call it that. Which way are the spirits leaning today?

And they would use these sticks. And so they’re asking their idols for protection from God. They’re running to their idols for wisdom and refuge.

And folks, their sticks were talking to them. Now, do we really believe their sticks were possessed by spirits and they were talking to them? No, but in their imagination, they said, oh, the spirits are leaning this way, so we’ll lean this way.

And everything that they did, everything that they did in response to what God had told them was exactly the wrong response. Folks, when God convicts us of some kind of sin, the answer is not to imbibe even deeper of that sin. The idea is not to plunge even further into that sin and into that transgression to hide from God.

The answer when God convicts us is to deal with the Lord and anything to get right with God. And in our time, in the New Testament, Christ paid everything that was necessary for us to get right with God. But still, from time to time, I think the fellowship can be hindered when there’s sin in our lives.

And when God says, you shouldn’t have said that, you should quit saying that. When God says, you should quit watching that. When God says, you should quit acting that way toward him or her.

Folks, the answer is not to dive even deeper into that. The answer is to say, yes, Lord, and run back to him. For the spirit of whoredoms have caused them to err, and they’ve gone a whoring from under their God.

The spirit of idolatry, I talked to you last week about how destructive it was and the fact that God had a controversy. God had a bone to pick with Israel because of their idolatry. How destructive it was, how it led to all sorts of problems for them.

How it led to lawlessness, it led to immorality, and how they would abuse one another. They would murder. They would steal. They would do all these things because of their idolatry.

It started with a step away from God, and it ended in all these horrible ways. Folks, the spirit of whoredom, the spirit of idolatry carried them further than they ever intended to go. And I think I’ve said that to you before.

Sin will take you further. And I think that’s a song I came to find out. I thought for years my pastor over in Oklahoma had just come up with a brilliant thought, and I quoted him I don’t know how many places.

And then somebody here sang a song that said the exact same words. That sin will carry you further than you ever intended to go, will keep you longer than you ever intended to be there and make it harder for you to get back than you ever thought was possible. And a little step away from God led them into all these things to the point where when God even confronted them about it, they could not even understand what they needed to do.

They sacrifice upon the tops of mountains and burn incense upon the hills under oaks and poplars and elms because the shadow thereof is good So they went out and sacrificed even more to these idols when God confronted them. It says they went up to the mountains, to the tops of the mountains. We know, as the faithful Jews knew at that point, that God is spirit and God is omnipresent.

We’re not closer to God by being on the tops of mountains. That’s a pagan idea, that gods are finite, that gods are one place at a time, and that they’re physical beings and that you can get somehow closer to them by your geographical proximity. We know that’s not true.

We know that God is just as much God at sea level as God is on Mount Everest. And yet they would go up on the tops of the mountains thinking somehow they were getting closer to these spirits and to these gods that they worshipped. And folks, it was all futile. They went and burned incense on top of the mountains, sacrificed on the tops of the mountains, burned incense upon the hills, under oaks and poplars and elms because the shadow thereof is good.

So they went down to where there were big shade trees that they could hide under. And folks, God saw them even there. And they would go under these trees and they would burn incense and they would do all sorts of other depraved activities.

Because I’ve mentioned before that a lot of these pagan countries around them engaged in ritual prostitution as an act of worship to these false gods. And I’m not going to get into any more detail about it tonight. But ladies and gentlemen, they would go under these trees and not only burn incense, but out of the view of they thought God and out of the view of everybody else, they would commit unspeakable things.

Some of the pagan religions that they followed even insisted on the sacrifice of children. And I have no doubt some of that was going on as well. Unspeakable, horrific things as people abandoned the worship of the true God for these false gods.

Anything to placate these gods to get their protection against the true God when they couldn’t do anything to begin with. Therefore your daughters shall commit whoredom and your spouses shall commit adultery. And there’s debate, and I don’t know the answer, whether he’s talking about they actually would go out and become prostitutes and adulteresses, or if he’s talking about they would follow in the footsteps.

But what we do know is that when the leadership of the family embraces sin, the rest of the family generally is not far behind. And we cannot raise our children, we cannot be an example before our grandchildren, living lives of sin, never dealing with it before God, completely violating everything we can, everything we can think of of Scripture, and expect that they are not going to follow suit. And there are people all across the country, there are people all across the country who bring their kids to church on a weekly basis and spend the other six days of the week not living what the Bible says and wonder why when they turn 18 they go absolutely wild.

Now, folks, some of you, I know you’ve told me stories, your kids have gone wild, and I’m not saying that’s necessarily because of anything you’ve done. I’m just saying, we can’t. You can sometimes model it out for them as well as anybody could, and unfortunately, as I’ve said before, kids are born with free will.

I think that’s unfortunate. Maybe they should get it installed when they’re in their 30s and have kids of their own get free will then, but right now I feel like it’s unfortunate that Benjamin has a little bit of free will. But you can do everything right and still have your kids go astray, so please don’t feel like I’m attacking you if you’ve got kids that are not living the way you would like them to be living tonight.

But the fact is, people all over the country, people all over the world, raise their children with a smattering of Christianity and live in sin throughout the other six days of the week and wonder why their kids are following them into the family business. Whether we’re talking about actual adultery or whether we’re talking about spiritual adultery, because of their sin, their children and their wives were going to follow suit, God says. I will not punish your daughters when they commit whoredom, nor your spouses when they commit adultery for themselves, are separated with whores, and they sacrifice with harlots.

If any of these words sound harsh to you, and you think, why is he saying these words? It’s uncomfortable for me to say some of these words, but nevertheless, there they are in the Bible. God said them, so I just have to deal with that.

And they sacrifice with harlots, therefore the people that doth not understand shall fall. Thou, though Israel, play the harlot. Here’s what I want us to focus on tonight in the remaining time we have.

Thou, though, Israel, play the harlot, yet let not Judah offend. See, we’ve talked about Israel, and in case you’ve forgotten, at this period of time, the nation of Israel, as it was known under David, as it was known under Solomon, had split. When Solomon died, his son thought, I can crush these people under my boot just as much as I want to do.

I’m the king, and I can do whatever I want to do. And the northern ten tribes said, I don’t think so. We’re done.

We don’t want any part of this. The northern ten tribes broke away. They became the kingdom of Israel, and they, for hundreds of years, had not one good king, and not a lot of good things happened.

As a matter of fact, a lot of the prophets were sent to the northern kingdom of Israel, just as Hosea was, because the northern kingdom of Israel, by and large, was so wicked. Now, Judah, the southern kingdom, had some good kings and had some wicked kings. King Josiah, who absolutely turned the nation of Judah upside down in getting rid of the idols, getting rid of the priests of the idols, and restoring true worship to Jerusalem.

He was king in Judah. Whereas Ahab, we know about Ahab and Jezebel, Ahab and Jezebel ruled in Israel. And all sorts of wickedness took place.

They murdered people for their land and worshipped false gods and all sorts of other things. And those two are kind of examples of what was in general in their countries. You had some good kings interspersed with some bad kings in Judah, And as a result, the people weren’t quite so given to idolatry because they did from time to time have some good leadership in the palace.

They had some good leadership in the temple that would bring them back, would rein them in a little bit. The northern kingdom had no such thing. And spiritually, they had just run amok because the kings encouraged, the leadership encouraged pagan worship because the pagan worship justified whatever sin they wanted to be involved in.

And so God turns to Judah for a moment. And Judah was not perfect, but Judah was not completely given to idolatry the way Israel was. And God said, you need to be on guard and keep it that way.

You need to be on guard and keep it that way. There’s a rotten apple in the barrel, and you need to do everything you can to ensure that the rottenness doesn’t corrupt you. Let not Judah offend.

Though thou Israel play the harlot, yet let not Judah offend. And I shared with you, I believe it was the first message I preached on Hosea, that God kind of used the example of Judah to make Israel understand. Because God talked in chapter 1, I believe it was, about the way he was going to punish Israel and about the grace that he was going to have, the mercy he was going to show toward Judah.

And Judah and Israel, because of their closeness, had kind of a rivalry going on. They kind of disliked each other. They kind of competed with each other.

But when there were outside threats, most of the time, they were buddies. But when it came to just between them, there was a rivalry. It was like most siblings anywhere.

You know, I can say whatever I want about my sister, but don’t you dare say the same thing. That kind of thing. And so for God to begin to compare the two should have made Israel realize how far they’d fallen.

That God here is saying, quite honestly, I’m a lot more pleased with Judah right now than I am with you, Israel. And here he does it again. He says, though you’ve played the harlot, yet let not Judah offend.

And come not ye unto Gilgal, neither go ye up to Beth-Avon, nor swear the Lord liveth. Now Gilgal and Beth-Avon, and sometimes Beth-Avon is also called Bethel. Gilgal, these two cities were places where, I believe it was King Jeroboam I.

When the two countries split, I told you Solomon’s son Rehoboam said, I can do whatever I want to these people now that they’re my subjects. King Rehoboam, Solomon’s son. And he ended up ruling over the southern kingdom of Judah.

King Jeroboam I, I believe, started out as an army general and sort of led the rebellion of the ten tribes in the north and became their first king. And Jeroboam was so threatened by the idea of these mutual ties. If my people go back to Jerusalem in the southern kingdom every year to worship at the temple, if the priests come here, if people are connected to their families down there, if there are all these connections and ties between the northern and southern kingdom, and by the way, I’m just a military conqueror.

I’m not from the bloodline of David, at least not as far as I recall. My throne’s going to be in jeopardy. And so instead of letting his subjects go down to Jerusalem, as they should have done every year to do what they needed to do at the temple, he set up idols and shrines and temples to idols in these golden calves.

And we know how God feels about the golden calf, if you remember back to the story of Moses and Aaron. We’re going to set up these calves for people to worship at Bethel and Gilgal, and they would go down to worship. Now, I don’t know that the people from Judah came up to Bethel and Gilgal all that much to worship at these shrines, but the people of Israel went to them, and God tells Judah here, he says, Come not ye to Gilgal, neither go to Beth-Avon or Beth-el.

Not that he thought they were going to come to the north and worship their gods all of a sudden, but the thought that they could worship false gods where they were. See, this idea of going to Bethel or Gilgal, wherever they did it, was indicative of this fact that they would worship false idols and false gods. And God said, don’t do what Israel has done.

He says, don’t go unto Gilgal, neither go ye up to Beth-Avon, nor swear the Lord liveth. As far as I can tell from my reading of passages like this and places in the books of Kings, to say the Lord liveth was a greeting or an oath. You know, we would say today, so help me God, or we would say God bless America, and we invoke the name of God in all these ways that, by and large, in the popular culture, they’re said, they’re used, but they mean nothing anymore, unfortunately.

To say the Lord liveth, or as the Lord liveth, was a way of swearing. It was like saying, so help me God. Yes, I will be done by 7 o’clock tonight as the Lord liveth.

Okay, that’s not a promise, by the way. I will be done by 7 o’clock tonight as the Lord liveth. Well, somebody could say that and not really believe the Lord lives.

It was just an empty phrase. And it was part of the fact that Israel was swearing by God with their lips. They were professing their allegiance to God.

They said all the time that they were God’s people, and yet in their hearts they were nothing of the sort. And he says, so it wasn’t that they weren’t allowed to say the Lord liveth. It was that they were not to swear by God’s name in a deceptive, disingenuous way like the Israelites did.

He says, for Israel slideth back as a backsliding heifer. Now where I come from, that’d be fighting words if you called somebody a backsliding heifer. But he said, Israel slides back as a backsliding heifer.

The idea here of a cow or a large animal that has backed up and backed itself up against a wall or a corner and decided it’s not moving. And Israel had backslidden away from God. And we know what it means.

we hear the term from time to time, to be backslidden, means to slide back from what you’re supposed to be doing, not to be where you’re supposed to be in your walk with God. And they had backslidden so far that they had become like a stubborn cow that they were not going to move. And sometimes those big animals, I’ve never experienced it personally, I’ve just seen it on TV.

Some of y’all could tell better than I could. Sometimes these big animals, they get into a spot and they’re not budging and they’re stubborn. Donkeys and mules and things like that, from what I understand.

And he says they were just like that. They had backed into where they were going to be, and that’s where they were going to stay, regardless of what God said about it. They were not moving.

And so he tells Judah, don’t be like Israel in that. Don’t be like your sister. Now the Lord will feed them as a lamb in a large place.

Now that sounds like a nice thing, that the Lord will feed them as a lamb in a large place. A lot of this, a lot of the phrasing in the Minor prophets, though, as far as I could tell, it loses something when they translate it into English. The meaning just isn’t conveyed the way it is in the Hebrew.

And I don’t speak Hebrew. I could just pick apart the words and look them up. But this actually sounds like a lamb or a sheep that is kept away in a separate pasture from the others in the flock that the shepherd tends and watches over.

That, yeah, the shepherd still owns that flock. He’s still in charge of it. But while his flock is in the pen, under his immediate care, under his immediate feeding, he keeps that sheep out in the meadow, out in the pasture, where anything can get it.

And while this sounds in English like it’s a good thing, God’s going to take care of Israel like the lamb in the large place, folks, it actually, from what I can tell, is a very sobering thought that they were going to be out from under the protection of God, like a lamb left out to wander in the wilderness. Ephraim is joined to idols. Let him alone.

Who’s Ephraim? Ephraim’s one of the tribes of Israel. And God here is not singling out Ephraim and saying this one tribe is acting up.

Sometimes in the Bible and sometimes even in our own speech, we use a part as representative of the whole. I watched a BBC documentary this week on the Iran hostage crisis. And they kept talking about Washington is powerless to free the hostages.

Tehran is unrelenting. Well, it wasn’t like the mayor of Washington and the mayor of Tehran were at odds with one another. It was the country.

It was the American government. It was the Iranian government. And they simply used the names of the capital cities as shorthand, as representative of the whole.

When they’re talking foreign diplomacy and they said Washington today said this, you know, we never should assume the Lincoln Memorial just, you know, the stone started talking. That the physical city of Washington spoke. It was representative of the country as a whole.

So when he singles out the tribe of Ephraim, he’s talking about Israel. The country is joined to idols. They didn’t just worship these idols.

These idols had become a part of who they were, part of who they were. He says, let him alone. Their drink is sour.

They have committed whoredom continually. Her rulers, which shame do love, give ye. The wind hath bound her up in her wings, and they shall be ashamed because of their sacrifices.

It talks, folks, nothing in these last two verses is good news for Israel. what was coming their drink is sour there were bitter times ahead of them they were going to be ashamed because their sacrifices these things that they ran to instead of god they they weren’t going to find refuge in them they were going to be ashamed but in this in just the the few verses we look at the whole thing and see what god says about israel and then look at these two verses and see what god says for judah because again I I know we’re not perfect but by and large in this church I believe we try to follow what God says. And if we’re anybody in this situation, I see us kind of in the seat of Judah.

Again, not perfect. God has some things that he could say to us. God has some things to convict us on, but we’re not wholly given over to the idolatry of the world around us.

So I want us to focus in for just a few moments on three things that God, I believe, is saying to Judah about how they’re to respond when they’re the one good apple sitting in the barrel of the rotten apples. and saying, do everything you can to get out of this and to preserve yourself against the rottenness that just spreads. First of all, the remnant.

And what do I mean by remnant? I mean the faithful ones who are left. God has always had a faithful remnant.

Even when the majority of those who claim to be God’s people turn away, even when they become unfaithful, God has always throughout history had a few who remain faithful. Elijah remained faithful to God in the midst of the hundreds of prophets of Baal. Noah, when everybody laughed at him, the Bible calls Noah a preacher of righteousness. And Noah and his family were a remnant.

They were the few faithful that were saved. God has always had a faithful remnant left. And I’m not saying, that would sound kind of cultish if I said our church was the only faithful remnant.

I’m not saying we’re the only ones. But as faithful people, in the midst of an unfaithful culture that has turned its back on God, as part of the remnant, we need some instruction. and the remnant must not join the unfaithful in their idolatry.

The remnant must not join the unfaithful in their idolatry is my first point tonight. And I take that from verse 15 where he says, And come not ye into Gilgal, neither go ye up to Beth-haven. In other words, the people of Israel, the unfaithful, are worshiping these idols, these golden calves.

Don’t do it with them. And it’s easy for us to get involved in the idolatry of the world around us, and yet we can’t afford to even a little bit. Now I know we probably all have the things that we love a little too much, the idols, but when we find them, we’re supposed to deal with them, not plunge even further into the worship of them.

The remnant must not join the unfaithful in their idolatry. And in this world, it is so easy to get sucked in to the worship of things, to the worship of other people, to the worship of money, to the worship of fame, to the folks, the worship of all sorts of things that rob the true God of the worship that only he deserves. And we’re not to join those around us in that.

We’re not to imitate the culture around us. We’re not to partake in what they do. It will involve us standing out a little bit.

It’ll involve us sometimes being attacked. I couldn’t believe, I know he’s backed out now, but I couldn’t believe the way that Tim Tebow was attacked because he was going to go speak at First Baptist Dallas. Do you all know about that?

Anybody? Okay. Apparently the media outrage wasn’t as big as I thought it was, but I heard about it on the radio.

Tim Tebow, one of the NFL players, was going to go speak at First Baptist Church of Dallas where W. A. Criswell and some other great men have preached.

And at this conservative church, the media just flew into a frenzy and said it was the worst thing. This church was anti-Semitic because they said even Jews need to come to Christ for salvation. They’re anti-homophobic because they believe in traditional marriage.

All these things. They said, this church is radically conservative. And I thought they ought to look at BMA churches from time to time if they think First Baptist Dallas is hard-nosed.

But it was just the worst thing that had ever happened. And he came under tremendous fire just because he was going to go give his testimony at First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas. It’s incredible.

Ladies and gentlemen, in a situation like that, where we’re going to come under so much fire for standing for God and His righteousness, it would be so much easier just to give in to the temptations of the culture around us and worship the things they worship, but we don’t dare. Because God said, go not to Gilgal or Beth-Avon. Don’t go worship the things that they worship.

Stick with the worship of the one true God. The remnant must not join the unfaithful in their idolatry. Second of all, the remnant must not join the unfaithful in their hypocrisy.

Remember I said he told them not to swear as the Lord liveth. And folks, in that, they were swearing by God. They were giving lip service to the fact that they were his people, and yet in their hearts they were not.

the Bible talks about that people who would praise God or worship God with their lips and yet their hearts are far from him and he said not to do like them not to swear by him the way that they the way that the Israelites did he told Judah not to do that not to join in their hypocrisy it wasn’t the fact that they were swearing but he says in other words don’t pretend to be my people on the outside without being my people on the inside and I challenge you just as I challenge myself let’s not be God’s people on the outside and our own people or the world’s people on the inside there are plenty of people who are

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