Sermon Series: Scandalous Grace (2)
Notes
Transcript
Sermon Title: Israel on Trial (Hosea 4)
Sermon Title: Israel on Trial (Hosea 4)
So last week pastor Chris preached from Hosea 3 1-5 and really dealt with sin and forgiveness. Here are a few points he made last week.
Our sinful condition is that of spiritual whoredom
Our acts of rebellion does not change Gods disposition towards us.
Our heart is restless until it finds its rest in Christ.
The reason we are slow to forgive others is because we don’t understand the depths of Gods forgiveness.
Sin breaks the heart of God (vs. 1-6)
In this passage we see the depths of sin and the damage that sin does especially in regard to our covenant with God. The people of Israel have not kept there end of the covenant relationship with God.
He speaks here of their contempt of the second table of the law; for by this the impiety of men is sooner found out, that is, when an examination is made of their life: for hypocrites vauntingly profess the name of God, and confidently (plenis buccis—with full cheeks) arrogate faith to themselves; and then they cover their vices with the external show of divine worship, and frigid acts of devotion: nay, the very thing mentioned by Jeremiah is too commonly the case, that ‘the house of God is made a den of thieves,’ (Jer. 7:11
God calls has a threefold accusation against His people: there is no faithfulness, no love, and no acknowledgment of God in the land.
1. No faithfulness
Faithfulness or truth or integrity involves being true to your word and responsibilities. Without faithfulness the bonds between people are weakened and society becomes unstable. In contrast, God’s promise in Hosea 2:20 “I will betroth you to me in faithfulness. And you shall know the Lord.”
2. No love
This is the term for covenant commitment or steadfast love. In other words, it refers to both affection and commitment. This is the marital love—a love that includes genuine affection, but which is also sustained by fidelity to covenantal promises. Perhaps you consider yourself a faithful member of the church, someone who is true to your obligations towards God. But do you love Him?
3. No knowledge
This knowledge is more than mere cognition. It is acknowledgment or a recognition of our obligations to another. The word was used in the Ancient Near East to denote recognition of an overlord’s rights.
They are all relational terms. They are marriage terms. They are covenant terms. You can readily imagine a distraught wife or husband saying, ‘He’s not faithful to me.’ ‘She doesn’t love me.’ ‘He doesn’t know me, he doesn’t understand me.’
Tim Chester, Hosea: The Passion of God, Focus on the Bible Commentary (Ross-shire, Scotland: Christian Focus, 2014), 84.
And this is what happens when sin is present in our lives it breaks the heart of our God.
Often we talk about what we think about God and how we see God in the book of Hosea It very much deals with how God sees us. We have seen since the beginning of this series in Hosea the faithfulness of God and the trifling behavior of his people.
This is why in this book the language used to describe the behavior of the people so vulgar and graphic. It uses descriptive like whoredom and even in Hosea 4:16 “Like a stubborn heifer, Israel is stubborn; can the Lord now feed them like a lamb in a broad pasture?”. The people in Israel have been called spiritual whores and stubborn heifers.
In Chapter 3 of Desiring God John Piper says “Concealed sin keeps us from seeing the light of Christ. Sin is like spiritual leprosy. It deadens your spiritual senses so that you rip your soul to shreds and don’t even feel it”.
Sin breaks the heart Of God because sin brings friction and separation in our relationship with him. Next time you find yourself not feeling close to The Lord ask yourself is there any sin in your life that is causing you to feel this way because it is never that God backs off from us.
This passage shouldn’t discourage you but rather humble you. We just don’t see sin the way God does and even despite his kndness we live in a way that is that of a spiritual whore, and very much trifling heifers God in Christ Jesus pursues us and keeps his covenant with us despite how jacked up we are. To many Christians in america read Hosea and think that they are Hosea when in reality we are Gomer, we are the people of Israel who were trifling. The hero of the story of the bible and the story of our lives is King Jesus the friend of sinners who took on a gory bloody cross.
Sin is a thief. It will rob your soul of its life. It will rob God of his glory. Sin is a murderer. It stabbed our father Adam. It slew our purity. Sin is a traitor. It rebels against the king of heaven and earth.
Charles Spurgeon
2. The Father disciplines us. (vs 7-13)
In 1 Corinthians 11:32 “But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world.”
In Hebrews 12:6 “For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives.”
Make no mistake we see much of the love, mercy, persistent covenant keeping grace of the Father in Hosea. But by no means will he turn a blind eye to the sin of his people.
A good dad disciplines his kids. It is loving for God to judge and discipline the people of Israel. It is far better for God to discipline us than to be an example of Romans 1:24 “Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves,” .
Growing up me and all the kids in my neighborhood we would do a lot of stupid things while playing outside. We use to put soda cans on our bikes so they would sound loud and jump steps all kind of crazy stuff I got stories for days. We were 13 years outside doing things on bikes we had no business everyday we would come home all bruised up and cut up from playing tackle football and riding bikes.
Anytime I came in with a really bad cut or cuts on my body from doing something stupid that I know my mom has told me numerous times not to do. She would pull out the alcohol and the peroxide. She would splash that alcohol on the cut then follow it up with the peroxide and the cut would be burning up and bubbling but during that the healing process has started and eventually I would be fine and this was a staple in our home.
365 Days with Calvin 5 March: Lovingkindness in Punishment (Psalm 89:32–33)
Whenever God punishes the sins of true believers, he does so with wholesome moderation. It is therefore our duty to take the punishment that he inflicts upon us as medicine for us. For God has nothing else in view than to correct the vices of his children so that, having thoroughly purged them of sin, he may restore them anew to his favor and friendship.
365 Days with Calvin 5 March: Lovingkindness in Punishment (Psalm 89:32–33)
For while God is correcting them for their profit and salvation, he does not cease to love them.
See God either has to cut you to grow you or in this case in Hosea cut you to discipline you. Or more-often let you do stupid unbecoming of a christian things that end up hurting yourself so that you can learn from your sin.
If God turned a blind eye to our sin he would not be just. A just judge calls it down the middle and calls right right and wrong wrong. So we see Hosea in these verse deal with the judgment of God on his people whom he loves.
Israel has turned her back on her head The Lord Jesus Christ. They have fallen head first in idolatry and feeding the desires of flesh and The Lord has to deal with that.
I am extremely grateful that God does not just leave me in my sin. I’m grateful for the ministry for The Holy Spirit who convicts me of my sin and makes me feel sick to my stomach when I’m walking in sin.
What really wrecks me in this passage is Hosea 4:10-11 “They shall eat, but not be satisfied; they shall play the whore, but not multiply, because they have forsaken the Lord to cherish whoredom, wine, and new wine, which take away the understanding.”
When people put down there bibles and start following the flesh this what happens.
Anything above God is idolatry.
Richard Sibbes
All who forsake the Word fall into idolatry.
John Calvin
The people of Israel made an idol out of the flesh and turned there backs on there first love as John says in Revelation 2: 4-5 “But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first. Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent.”
3. God hates sin but loves his people (vs. 14-19)
One thing we see in this passage which is a parable to describe the condition of the people of Israel is God still refers to them as “My people”.
This is the wonderful message of the gospel. That in Christ despite our wicked ways and despite when we sin we are still His.
The people of Israel didn’t realize that despite there idolatry and idol worship that God still saw them as his people.
Because of the work of the cross, because of what Jesus did we are afforded the faithfulness of God. In Christ we can find abundance of rest in knowing that despite our sin in Christ God still loves us.
This is why we make much of grace at Charis church. It is by His grace that we are saved and it is his grace that we walk in as believers even when we fall short and I fall short a whole lot. Chris says it all the time that grace wins the long game.
It is grace at the beginning, and grace at the end. So that when you and I come to lie upon our death beds, the one thing that should comfort and help and strengthen us there is the thing that helped us in the beginning. Not what we have been, not what we have done, but the grace of God in Jesus Christ our Lord. The Christian life starts with grace, it must continue with grace, it ends with grace. Grace, wondrous grace. By the grace of God I am what I am. Yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me.
David Martyn Lloyd-Jones
It is this very grace that should fuel us to walk in holiness and righteousness. All that we are in Christ we can boldly walk in and pursue. Grace was never a meal ticket to sin freely but father our rest and it is from this place that we can walk in Godliness.
We don’t have to try to be godly and righteous to earn God’s love in Christ we are afforded a endless fountain of grace and mercy and it is from that very place that in our everyday life we pursue godliness.
The people of Israel in this passage had forgotten who there God is. Don’t forget who God is and all that he has done for you. Don’t forget what he saved your behind from and all the mess he has gotten you out off
The ultimate test of our spirituality is the measure of our amazement at the grace of God.
David Martyn Lloyd-Jones
We are Gomer, we are the people of Israel and all the while God still cause you and I His people. Because of what Jesus did on that cross all of us who are in Christ will never lose our place as a child of God.
What Hosea has taught me is that the worst of me is not enough and never will be enough for God to abandon me, depart from me, and to break his covenant with me. The worst of me is never and will never separate me from his love.
“Whom do you perceive him to be, in your sin and your suffering? Who do you think God is not just on paper but in the kind of person you believe is hearing you when you pray? How does he feel about you? His saving of us is not cool and calculating. It is a matter of yearning not yearning for the Facebook you, the you that you project to everyone around you. Not the you that you wish you were. Yearning for the real you. The you underneath everything you present to others?”-Dane Ortland (Gentle and Lowly)
Grant, Almighty God, that inasmuch as we are so disposed and inclined to all kinds of errors, to so many and so various forms of superstitions, and as Satan also ceases not to lay in wait for us, and spreads before us his many snares,—O grant, that we may be so preserved in obedience to thee by the teaching of thy word, that we may never turn here and there, either to the right hand or to the left, but continue in that pure worship which thou hast prescribed, so that we may plainly testify that thou art indeed our Father by continuing under the protection of thy only-begotten Son, whom thou hast given to be our pastor and ruler to the end. Amen.