The Dangers of Prosperity

Text: Hosea 10:1-15

Children’s Bible Page: 965

Introduction: Greatest Danger the Church Faces Today?

What is the greatest danger the church faces today?

As we have spent the first half of this year walking through the books of Zephaniah and Hosea, one thing I have wanted to point out over and over is how these prophetic writings are not written in a vacuum.

No, instead, they are all written as God speaking into His people’s history with the filter of His redemption out of slavery and His law representing His character and heart for us to love Him and love others.

In other words, we read of what God did to make Israel a people, redeem them from slavery, give them His law.

We then read how the people responded to all God did in their history.

Then, we in the prophets what God says about His people’s response to Him.

So, in order to introduce the sermon today, I want to direct our attention to a warning God gave in His law.

In this passage, God is warning them about one of the greatest dangers they will face.

It is a warning we would be wise to heed as it is still a great danger today.

Deuteronomy 8:6–14 (ESV)

6 So you shall keep the commandments of the Lord your God by walking in his ways and by fearing him. 7 For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and springs, flowing out in the valleys and hills, 8 a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey, 9 a land in which you will eat bread without scarcity, in which you will lack nothing, a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills you can dig copper. 10 And you shall eat and be full, and you shall bless the Lord your God for the good land he has given you.

11 “Take care lest you forget the Lord your God by not keeping his commandments and his rules and his statutes, which I command you today, 12 lest, when you have eaten and are full and have built good houses and live in them, 13 and when your herds and flocks multiply and your silver and gold is multiplied and all that you have is multiplied, 14 then your heart be lifted up, and you forget the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery,

The great danger God warns His people of is the danger of prosperity.

As Christians, we many times consider how to face adversity in Christlike ways, but how often do we consider how to face prosperity in Christlike ways?

If you were to read the gospel of Luke while asking yourself: What is the greatest hindrance to faithful discipleship?

You would have to answer based on Jesus’ teaching, the greatest hindrance to faithful discipleship is prosperity.

Luke 6:20 (ESV)

20 And he lifted up his eyes on his disciples, and said:

“Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.

Luke 6:24 (ESV)

24 “But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.

Luke 8:14 (ESV)

14 And as for what fell among the thorns, they are those who hear, but as they go on their way they are choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life, and their fruit does not mature.

Luke 12:15 (ESV)

15 And he said to them, “Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.”

Luke 12:33–34 (ESV)

33 Sell your possessions, and give to the needy. Provide yourselves with moneybags that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys. 34 For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

Luke 14:33 (ESV)

33 So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.

Luke 16:13–14 (ESV)

13 No servant can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.”

14 The Pharisees, who were lovers of money, heard all these things, and they ridiculed him.

Luke 18:24–25 (ESV)

24 Jesus, seeing that he had become sad, said, “How difficult it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God! 25 For it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.”

Consider:

Proverbs 30:8–9 (ESV)

8 Remove far from me falsehood and lying;

give me neither poverty nor riches;

feed me with the food that is needful for me,

9 lest I be full and deny you

and say, “Who is the Lord?”

or lest I be poor and steal

and profane the name of my God.

In our Hosea passage today, Israel has experienced a season of peace and luxury, and chapter 10 picks up on that theme as God continues to make His case against them:

Hosea 10 (ESV)

1 Israel is a luxuriant vine

that yields its fruit.

The more his fruit increased,

the more altars he built;

as his country improved,

he improved his pillars.

2 Their heart is false;

now they must bear their guilt.

The Lord will break down their altars

and destroy their pillars.

3 For now they will say:

“We have no king,

for we do not fear the Lord;

and a king—what could he do for us?”

4 They utter mere words;

with empty oaths they make covenants;

so judgment springs up like poisonous weeds

in the furrows of the field.

5 The inhabitants of Samaria tremble

for the calf of Beth-aven.

Its people mourn for it, and so do its idolatrous priests—

those who rejoiced over it and over its glory—

for it has departed from them.

6 The thing itself shall be carried to Assyria

as tribute to the great king.

Ephraim shall be put to shame,

and Israel shall be ashamed of his idol.

7 Samaria’s king shall perish

like a twig on the face of the waters.

8 The high places of Aven, the sin of Israel,

shall be destroyed.

Thorn and thistle shall grow up

on their altars,

and they shall say to the mountains, “Cover us,”

and to the hills, “Fall on us.”

9 From the days of Gibeah, you have sinned, O Israel;

there they have continued.

Shall not the war against the unjust overtake them in Gibeah?

10 When I please, I will discipline them,

and nations shall be gathered against them

when they are bound up for their double iniquity.

11 Ephraim was a trained calf

that loved to thresh,

and I spared her fair neck;

but I will put Ephraim to the yoke;

Judah must plow;

Jacob must harrow for himself.

12 Sow for yourselves righteousness;

reap steadfast love;

break up your fallow ground,

for it is the time to seek the Lord,

that he may come and rain righteousness upon you.

13 You have plowed iniquity;

you have reaped injustice;

you have eaten the fruit of lies.

Because you have trusted in your own way

and in the multitude of your warriors,

14 therefore the tumult of war shall arise among your people,

and all your fortresses shall be destroyed,

as Shalman destroyed Beth-arbel on the day of battle;

mothers were dashed in pieces with their children.

15 Thus it shall be done to you, O Bethel,

because of your great evil.

At dawn the king of Israel

shall be utterly cut off.

You know, what a person sows, they will also reap.

So, in the midst of Israel’s prosperity, we see in this passage five different types of sowing and reaping.

Consider for yourself what kind of sowing and reaping you are doing.

1. Sowing Luxury, Reaping Destruction 1-2

Verse 1 characterizes Israel as a luxuriant vine.

It’s ironic because the Hebrew word for luxuriant can hold the meaning of abundance and the meaning of destruction.

No doubt leading us to understand God to be saying: their abundance has led to their destruction.

The characterization of Israel as a vine is used by other prophets as well.

Jeremiah 2:21 (ESV)

21 Yet I planted you a choice vine,

wholly of pure seed.

How then have you turned degenerate

and become a wild vine?

Isaiah 5:1–2 (ESV)

1 Let me sing for my beloved

my love song concerning his vineyard:

My beloved had a vineyard

on a very fertile hill.

2 He dug it and cleared it of stones,

and planted it with choice vines;

he built a watchtower in the midst of it,

and hewed out a wine vat in it;

and he looked for it to yield grapes,

but it yielded wild grapes.

The vine is such a beautiful image for the people of God because a vine grows out from a source that it must be firmly connected to in order to grow.

And the story of Israel began when God called out Abram to be a new people and miraculously gave him and his wife a child.

They were to be a people whose source was God, signaled by the miraculous birth although Abram and Sarai were too old to have children when they had him.

Notice in verse 1, the vine yields its fruit.

And we need to understand that as long a vine is living, it is going to grow something.

It is going to bear some kind of fruit.

There is no such thing as a completely fruitless life.

You are always sowing to something, and you are always reaping the fruit of what you are sowing.

Notice for Israel, the more they had, the more they sowed what they had to build altars and pillars.

And that was sinful, because God had already designated one place for sacrificial worship, not many places.

But, the other nations who worshipped the false god Baal had many altars, so why can’t we?

It’s so much more convenient.

So, they took a little bit of Yahweh worship and mixed it with a little bit of Baal worship.

Isn’t it the best of both worlds?

Can’t we sacrifice to Yahweh, and also affirm the blessings that Baal worship offers us?

Notice, it is when people are prosperous and comfortable that an unfaithful mixture will most often creep in.

When they were relying on God to provide manna in the wilderness, while following the cloud by day and the fire by night, they didn’t have time or resources to build altars to other gods and learn pagan worship practices.

It’s when they became prosperous in their own land with a level of comfort to enjoy.

Do we not see this in our day?

You know what our brothers and sisters in Christ living in persecuted lands aren’t doing?

They are not trying to reinterpret the Bible in order to make God acceptable to the culture around them.

They have no illusion that following Jesus could possibly make life easier or more comfortable.

They certainly cannot expect any kind of representation or wordly defense of their religion.

Listen to this baptism questionnaire from a church in South Asia:

Before the church will baptize someone, these are the questions they go over with them:

Are you willing to leave home and lose the blessing of your father?

Are you willing to lose your job?

Are you willing to forgive those who will persecute you and your family and seek to share the love of Christ with them?

Are you willing to be beaten instead of deny the faith?

Are you willing to go to prison?

Are you willing to die for Jesus?

It’s a reminder to me that when Christ saves us from sin and judgment, He calls us to take up our cross and follow Him.

Sometimes in our context, I have to ask myself, am I really trusting God at all?

Do I trust that God is providing for our needs, or is it just, I’ve never worried about where my next meal is coming from?

May we not sow to our comforts and luxuries, and so water down our commitment to Christ.

For, I am confident, our commitment and faithfulness will be tested more and more in these days.

2. Sowing Distrust, Reaping Judgment 3-4

Verse 3 - For they now say, “We have no king, for we do not fear the Lord; and a king - what could he do for us?”

What? This is the same people that demanded that God give them a king like the other nations had!

Remember last week, verse 15 of chapter 9, every evil of theirs is from Gilgal.

It was at Gilgal that the people anointed Saul as king, which God said was equal to rejecting him as their rightful king.

Yet now, the very thing that they asked for is the very thing that has left them disillusioned with no hope at all.

Our kings can’t help us, because they don’t fear the Lord!

Notice, because trust in the king and fear of the Lord has broken down, the society is now littered with empty oaths and covenants.

Why? Because in a society where there is distrust and no fear of the Lord, you cannot cannot trust anyone’s word, so everything has to be dealt with through the legal system.

Sound familiar?

How many times have the very things that I asked God for, and then pursued and prioritized over God, become the very thing that disappointed me and disillusioned me to the point of no hope?

And listen, more than ever the world is filled with empty oaths and false promises, sometimes even our Christian world.

Advertisements, posts, videos all promoted their system of parenting, system of business success, system of working out and exercising, system of education, system of work/life balance, system of how to be happy, how to be satisfied, how to be successful.

Follow this law and you will finally get where you want to be.

You know, we live in the big brother world where our phones know what we are into and they feed us things based on that.

Like, I go to the Crossfit gym, so I constantly get adds on my Facebook feed about workout programs.

It’s crazy. Here’s why Crossfit is a big waist of time, just click on this link and give me your credit card information, and I will show you how to get the body you’ve always wanted while sitting on the couch and eating Doritos.

Or mom’s, having trouble with your child’s behavior, well just feed them these kinds of foods and remove this kind, and they will become angels.

So instead of being faithful to what we know, so oftentimes we entrust ourselves to some new system or shortcut believing it’s going to get us to where we want to be, and we end up disappointed and disillusioned.

Sowing distrust and reaping judgment because we trusted a system or a structure instead of trusting God and obeying His word.

Having a king and politics like other nations wasn’t going to solve their problems.

And you buying into a perfectly tight system is not going to solve yours.

We have to learn to trust and obey God understanding that He is in control in the midst of the mess, and our perfect systems don’t produce godly hope but godless legalism.

Sowing distrust, reaping judgment.

3. Sowing False Worship, Reaping Fear and Trembling 5-8

Verse 5 - The inhabitants of Samaria tremble for the calf at Beth-Aven.

It’s people mourn for it.

You’re not supposed to tremble for what you worship.

You are supposed to tremble at what you worship.

We should never have to worry that what we worship could be taken from us.

But, because in sin, we worship created things rather than the creator God, we are left trembling for what we worship.

Because we are afraid to lose it, and that’s a very real possibility.

When their idol that they worshipped was taken by an enemy nation, they wept for they had lost their god.

It ended up leading to shame and destruction to the point that when God’s judgment would come, the people would cry out for the mountains to cover them and the hills to fall on them.

What is it that if you lost, life would not be worth living any longer?

What do you sacrifice most for?

What do you think about most, pursue with greatest energy, daydream about?

If I could only have (you fill in the blank), then I’d be satisfied.

Is it God? Is your greatest pursuit a loving, trusting, satisfied relationship with God who has loved you and saved you and promised to never leave or forsake you?

Because you see, God is the only one who you can eternally tremble at but never tremble for.

Because He cannot be lost.

Jesus said, “What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world, but loses His soul?”

There is a strength, and a hope, and a confidence, and a joy in knowing and pursuing God above all things, because it keeps your heart from trying to satisfy itself from anything that could be so easily lost.

We must be careful to make sure that even good things like family, ministry, career, comfort, or security do not rise to the level of a god thing in our hearts.

Remember Jesus’ words:

Matthew 6:33 (ESV)

33 But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

Sowing false worship, reaping fear and trembling.

4. Sowing Injustice, Reaping Justice Against Them 9-10

Do not allow the culture to give you a skewed view of what justice is.

Justice is a wonderful characteristic of God that we are called to emulate.

Justice is bound up in the principle of seeing and treating others as image bearers of God with dignity, value, worth, and purpose no matter who they are.

It is treating others the way you desire to be treated.

It is standing on the truth, and believing there is good and right punishment against sin, evil, and wrong.

Verse 9 - From the days of Gibeah, you have sinned.

The days of Gibeah were mentioned last week in chapter 9 as well.

The final three chapters of judges records some of the most sinful, evil, and unjust things in Israel’s history, and they happened at Gibeah.

Injustice was rampant as selfish desires drove the people to treat others in the most unjust and inhumane ways.

So now, war will come against the unjust.

Remember, this who prophecy is warning the people of Assyria’s soon invasion.

This comes as God’s discipline, verse 10 says, as they will be bound up for their double iniquity.

Hosea’s contemporary prophet Jeremiah explains the logic of double iniquity:

Jeremiah 2:13 (ESV)

13 for my people have committed two evils:

they have forsaken me,

the fountain of living waters,

and hewed out cisterns for themselves,

broken cisterns that can hold no water.

Their great injustices toward one another are a sign of the fact that they have forsaken the true God, and they have given themselves to other gods and sinful desires that cannot satisfy,

So they devalue, disown, and devastate one another.

And soon justice will come.

We now see God’s heart and call to his people in the midst of all their sowing sinfulness and reaping destruction:

5. Sowing Righteousness, Reaping Steadfast Love 11-15

Verse 11 - Ephraim was a trained calf that loved to thresh, and I spared her fair neck.

Think about it: God had miraculously redeemed his people out of slavery,

Joshua 24:13–15 (ESV)

13 I gave you a land on which you had not labored and cities that you had not built, and you dwell in them. You eat the fruit of vineyards and olive orchards that you did not plant.’

14 “Now therefore fear the Lord and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness. Put away the gods that your fathers served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. 15 And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”

In other words, God had given them so much that they did not earn or deserve, but He gave as a gift of His grace.

They are bountiful, fruitful, and prosperous not because of something they did, but because of what God did.

He spared them from earning it all on their own.

But now, He will put them to the yoke as they return to slavery in a foreign land.

Yet, still now, in the midst of all the warnings of coming judgment, God calls His people to repentance anew.

He has in no way given up on them instead, He cries out in verse 12:

Sow for yourselves righteousness;

Reap steadfast love;

break up your fallow ground,

for it is time to seek the Lord,

that he may come and rain righteousness upon you.

You see, the amazing news about God’s mercy and grace is that no matter how far you have run or for how long, repentance, renewal, and return is always only one step away.

You’ve sowed in luxury and materialism.

You’ve sowed distrust.

You’ve sowed false worship.

You’ve sowed injustice.

But now, right now, sow righteousness and reap steadfast love!

Fallow ground is like ground that is hard and matted down and unable to produce and grow anymore.

In order for that ground to grow again, it needs to be broken up.

In the same way, our sinfulness and sowing to the flesh keeps us from bearing any kind of good fruit.

And in order to bear good fruit, you are going to have to break up that ground.

You are going to have to get serious about fighting against sin, rejecting sin, rejecting false promises, and false systems, being willing to mourn over the loss of sins that have been so ingrained that it seems they have become a part of you.

And you go about that by earnestly seeking the Lord.

that He may come and rain righteousness upon you.

It’s not too late to live a fruitful life of hope and joy in God!

Draw near to God and He will draw near to you!

A. W. Tozer in a book called “The Pursuit of God” says we so often seek to complicate and systematize relationship with God.

What is it I need to be doing? What is it I’m not doing? What if I’m missing something?

When the truth is the pursuit of God is very simple.

It’s not easy but it’s simple.

Reject sin, seek the Lord in relationship, sow what is right.

Like the old hymn says,

“Trust and obey for there’s no other way to be happy in Jesus than to trust and obey.”

Yet, the final verses of the chapter make clear that Israel did not heed God’s word,

They did not heed God’s warning,

They did not heed God’s invitation.

And war did come, and they and their king were devastated and utterly cut off because of their sin and unfaithfulness.

And the truth is:

We are Israel.

You and I have given ourselves to luxury and comfort in the midst of our prosperity.

We have rejected the simplicity and submissiveness of trusting God and instead we have trusted other systems of religions, success, and promises that never make good on their promises.

We have wanted something so badly then trembled at fear of losing the very thing we finally got.

We have showed partiality and looked on and treated some as though they are less than made in the image of God.

And we deserve to reap the destruction, the judgment, the fear and trembling, and the justice that is rightfully coming against us.

And even while we hear God’s call to sow righteousness and seek the Lord, we come to see that we are utterly incapable for:

Romans 3:10–12 (ESV)

10 as it is written:

“None is righteous, no, not one;

11 no one understands;

no one seeks for God.

12 All have turned aside; together they have become worthless;

no one does good,

not even one.”

We as Israel, deserve to be cut off, a fruitless vine who is going toward destruction.

But, there is hope, but just like the vine must be connected to a source to receive life, our hope is completely outside of ourselves.

You see, in John 15, Jesus taught:

I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser.

Just like Israel and we too have been cut off from our very life source because of sin and unfaithfulness in the midst of our blessings and prosperity,

Jesus Christ, the true vine, left the riches of heaven and came to earth and became poor for us, that we might become rich.

And Jesus lived a life in this world in complete trust and dependence on His Father God.

He always stayed perfectly connected and He bore much fruit.

Yet, when the time came, Jesus was cut off from His Father when He was crucified on a bloody cross and bore the punishment of the sins you and I deserved.

Jesus was cut off in punishment for our sin so that we could be grafted in to the vine by His goodness and His grace.

And three days later, Jesus rose defeating death, so that we might now have life in Him both now and forever.

And for those who repent of sin and trust in Jesus, they now have life in the vine.

Reconciled to God, their very life source.

And we have not just been saved and forgiven, but we have been given the Spirit of God that we might bear much fruit.

The fruit of following Jesus and leading others to follow Jesus.

Is that what you are living for?

Have you given your life to Jesus?

Are you walking with Him and so bearing fruit, making disciples, building up the church of the living God?

I end with words from another old hymn:

Come, ye sinners, poor and wretched, weak and wounded, sick and sore;

Jesus ready stands to save you, full of pity joined with pow’r:

He is able, he is able, he is able,

He is willing; doubt no more.

(Elder couch)

Let’s pray.