James Farrell Fisher

1936 โ€” 2024

Human Desperation, Divine Deliverance!

HOSEA – HUMAN DESPERATION,

DIVINE DELIVERANCE!

By: James Farrell Fisher

December, 2015 – January, 2016

“Soft Words for Serious Bondage? Or Hard Words for Eternal Deliverance?”

INTRODUCTION

I don’t know how you will relate to “soft words for serious bondage” or “hard words for eternal deliverance,” but the eternal truth is, “God’s eternal desire is the deliverance, healing, salvation of His chosen people!”

In fact, in Hosea 6:1-3, Hosea was inspired to write, “Come, and let us return to the Lord; for He has torn, but He will heal us; He has stricken, but He will bind us up. After two days He will revive us; on the third day He will raise us up, that we may live in His sight. Let us know, let us pursue the knowledge of the Lord.”

Oh, yes, thank God for the true remnant of holy faith who truly have been raised up from spiritual death and “pursue the knowledge of the Lord”! And the true pursuers, such as Hosea, longed for the restoration of God’s chosen people, just as he longed for the restoration of his own adulterous wife!

The prophetic word of Hosea is both an unveiling of the hideousness, horrible, repulsive, hellish rebellion of Israel, so untrue and defiant of Holy God! Like Hosea’s Gomer, Israel broke God’s heart! It’s so shocking, but the ‘chosen people’ chose spiritual adultery over devotion to Holy God, vile affections over the victorious atonement, idolatry over spiritual surrender to the true and only God of holiness and heavenly living on His earth, compromise in sin rather than forgiveness and victory over sin through Emmanuel’s shed blood, and even a denial of the very reality of God as they accept, choose, surrender to earthly vainness and fleshly bondage to sin’s powerful, destructive nature!

So God raises up His prophet, Hosea, whose wife chose adulterous paths, choosing her fleshly lovers, rejecting the husband as Israel’s ‘wives’ rejected Holy God! And God’s eternal mission is on! “Hosea, restore your wife, just as with the repentant nation Israel who can be restored to Me!” You didn’t miss Hosea 1:2 did you? It says, When the Lord began to speak by Hosea, the Lord said to Hosea: “Go, take yourself a wife of harlotry and children of harlotry. For the land has committed great harlotry by departing from the Lord.” Verse 3, So he went and took Gomer the daughter of Diblaim, and she conceived and bore him a son. Verse 4, Then the Lord said to him: “Call his name Jezreel, [or “God sows”] for in a little while I will avenge the bloodshed on the house of Jehu, and bring an end to the kingdom of the house of Israel.” [That’s the Northern Kingdom!].

God’s one desire was ‘restoration’, a return to His eternal will, but ‘whorish’ people, even religious in appearance, became so spiritually demented as to Holy God! But Holy God never gives up! So the Hoseas of the world, ancient or modern-day, reach out in love, grace, and mercy, yes, even sounding the alarm of God’s “wake-up call”!

Be assured: Holy God always gives the warning by the wooing of Calvary’s love, even by exposing the false veils of religious activities without any heart-change or devotion to His eternal Word! Holy God isn’t in the business of “white-washing” man’s dark nature, but offering “blood-bought atonement” and eternal reconciliation!

In Hosea 14 we read the prophet Hosea urging rebellious Israel to “return to the Lord your God, for you have stumbled because of your iniquity!” [Verse 1]. How do you view the message of Hosea to our needy ‘church-world’ and the ‘world-wide’ lost generations of ‘fallen’ humanity so enamored in its fleshliness and void of devotion to the God who made them, lost them, and then paid the supreme price of the Master’s “shed-blood” to restore us to Himself! I love the promise of Hebrews 14:4 when God said through Hosea, “I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely…”. Are YOU truly aware of God’s great love for YOU? Do you know that if YOU were the only created being to ever live, then fallen away, that what God did for the entire world of fallen humanity, He would have done what He did 2000 years ago JUST FOR YOU!!?? Join me in meeting, appropriating, and savoring the precious Book of Hosea!

OUTLINE

CHAPTER ONE: A TROUBLED WORLD – A MERCIFUL GOD

CHAPTER TWO:HOLY CONFRONTATION -HEAVENLY LOVE

CHAPTER THREE: ISRAEL’S ABANDONMENT – ISRAEL’S RETURN

CHAPTER FOUR: CONTROVERSY IN ISRAEL – CONVERSION IN CHRIST JESUS

CHAPTER FIVE: JUDGMENTS, SNARES, NETS, AND HARLOTRIES – AND GOD’S WITHDRAWAL!

CHAPTER SIX: REPENTANCE AND RETURN

CHAPTER SEVEN: RUTHLESS DECEPTION – RAMPANT WICKEDNESS

CHAPTER EIGHT:THE MESSAGE, THE MOANING, THE MADNESS

CHAPTER NINE: BANKRUPTCY BUT NOT BROKENNESS

CHAPTER TEN:FATAL FRUITLESSNESS – FULL CHASTENING

CHAPTER ELEVEN:THE AWESOMENESS OF GOD’S UNENDING MERCY

CHAPTER TWELVE: A RETURN TO DEVOTION OR A RETURN TO DECEITFUL WAYS?

CHAPTER THIRTEEN: RELENTLESS SIN – RELENTLESS JUDGMENT

CHAPTER FOURTEEN: FAITHLESS, FAILURES, OR FUTURE REWARDS?

CONCLUSION

CHAPTER ONE

Hosea 1

A TROUBLED WORLD – A MERCIFUL GOD!

If you personally become aware of what Paul said to the church at Corinth, and now seek to apply it to your life situation, does it encourage, enlighten, and enforce eternal hope in you and your life-circumstances? Are you aware of our “troubled world” just as Hosea viewed rebellious Israel in his day?

In 1 Corinthians 13:8-10 and Verse 13, Paul wrote: “Love never fails. But whether there are prophecies, they will fail; whether there are tongues, they will cease; whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect has come, than that which is in part will be done away…Verse 13, And now abide faith, hope, love, these three, but the greatest of these is love.”

Would you, yourself, call Hosea a “prophet of love”? [Read the entire Book of Hosea before continuing this study!]. Troubled worlds, troubled governments, troubled men, women, youth, and even children, troubled religions, troubled circumstances, troubled understandings of eternal purposes – and still, in the midst of dark days in human situations, God raises up a prophet of light, love, and liberty!

Don’t you find it so encouraging and enlightening to read in Hosea, Chapter One, Verse One, “The word of the Lord that came to Hosea the son of Beeri…,” and even identifies the very time period when both the Northern Kingdom of Israel and the Southern Kingdom of Israel needed God’s prophetic word?

Verse Two tells us, When the Lord began to speak by Hosea, the Lord said to Hosea: “Go, take yourself a wife of harlotry and children of harlotry, for the land has committed great harlotry by departing from the Lord.” Is God still speaking to men today, and when He does, do those who hear Him respond in obedient fashion? Holy God is enlightening Hosea through his own heart-breaking ‘life-event’ in his relationship to his own wife who committed harlotry and birthed children of harlotry, with God revealing to Hosea the very sickness of Israel, His chosen people, who “committed great harlotry by departing from the Lord”.

Is ‘untruth’ about Holy God still relevant in explaining ‘spiritual divorces’ from God today with ‘ungodly’ life-styles? Have you turned on your television day after day to be confronted with a man’s-woman’s vile affections, immoral life-styles, even shameless demonstrations of godlessness, with even revulsion at the mention of God’s Name?

Sin ushers in dark clouds, terrifying winds of personal, even family destructions; sin was Gomer’s testimony of marriage disobedience, rebellion, and shamefulness; sin marred, sin heightened, sin exposed man’s and woman’s desire to live life as they pleased, not God’s holy desire and atoning will for fallen men and women to be reconciled to Him; sin introduced blackness, darkness, sickness, mental diseases, blackening God’s ‘masterpiece’ of human existence into man’s unknown bondage to Satan and the demon powers; sin enslaved and enslaves men and women today to ungodly life-styles, sin introduced life-disasters, godless lives of chaotic ruin, because to be without God and His redeeming grace, mercy, and love is to choose life’s imitation not the reality of God’s “new-birth blessing”!

You do understand that modern men and women without God in their vocabulary or mind-set are much like Hosea’s day with a faithless, rebellious, religious people, determined to practice life in their own terms, without regard of God’s eternal intent!

In his “Essays: Of Atheism”, Sir Francis Bacon once wrote: “They that deny a God destroy man’s nobility; for certainly man is of kin to the beasts by his body; and if he be not of kin to God by his spirit, he is a base and ignoble creature.” But sadly, some accept the reality of God, the reality of Christ Jesus, the reality of the True Word of God, yet refuse repentance toward God and faith in the finished work of Christ at the Cross! There are those who have self-determined that their ‘sin’ and rebellion and unbelief, even determining for themselves, that God made a mistake in sending His Son to die on the Cross!

Hosea unveils the sadness of man’s rebellion against God, exposes Israel’s state of sinfulness, reveals God’s broken heart over fallen men’s spiritual stupidity, and reveals the awful marring of God’s creation by unwise, fleshly choices of sinful men and women out to satisfy their lusts with an attitude and life-style revealing they believe sin is not serious!

But God has never avoided facing and dealing with man’s avoidance of the reality of sin, the sin nature in all men, and facing the need of divine remedy, supernaturally changing the hearts of fallen men and women by the shed blood of the Lamb of God! Holy God is not a “compromiser” who “condones” men’s sin and sin nature because He is so loving and understanding! No! Holy God chose to send Jesus, His holy Son, to be sin for us and give us victory over our sin natures by taking them to the Cross where He suffered, bled, and died as God’s “Lamb-sacrifice” for man’s forgiveness of his sin nature and sin’s ‘just recompense’ by the Lamb of God’s voluntary sacrifice on the cruel Cross though He knew NO sin but became sin for US that we might have the opportunity of becoming sons and daughters of the Most High God!

This is why Hosea had the blessed privilege and insight given to him, and us, that [Hosea 6:1], “Come, and let us return to the Lord; for He has torn, but He will heal us; He has stricken, but He will bind us up.” What a promise from God’s Holy Word! Receive Dr. Ed Vallowe’s word in his book “Prophetic Preaching From Hosea,” pps.10-11, “God gives a strange command to Hosea, the prophet. He must take back to himself a wife who had forsaken him and who pursued other lovers. He must restore her to his heart and to his home again [So illustrative of God’s compassion for us as “fallen sinners”!!]. In so doing he will portray graphically and in a most melodramatic way God’s willingness to receive back to Himself the sinful nation [Israel] and restore her to His favor once more.”].

What did Hosea 1:2 tell Hosea and us? “Go, take yourself a wife of harlotry and children of harlotry, for the land has committed great harlotry by departing from the Lord.” Commissioned by Holy God! Unveiling the heart of Holy God! Holy God, through Hosea, amplifying His desire to see ‘the departed or defectors from the Lord’ restored to full blessing!

As you read Hosea, are you awed about God’s heart as you view His people in rebellion, in disobedience, in rejection of His call of Holy living in and through His holy people? But they played religious games without gaining heart transformation! They were ‘religious’ but spiritual award winners only in spiritual deception as they lived as a “sinful nation” – only a remnant were true to the faith!

The time period of Hosea’s prophetic ministry was during a ‘carry-over’ period of pagan idol worship, even Baal worship, as adulterous acts became common practice with no restraints on satisfying their lower, debased, godless sin natures, and that in the Holy Temple! One author I read spoke about their “morbid fears of guilt were erased by his offering;” and I wondered how many rebellious people in churches across America today believe “giving” financially heals the guilt of sinful rebellion!

The downward spiral of Israel was witnessed by Israel’s historians as men and women were unashamed of their lower sin natures, and when Hosea was called and appointed by God to prophetically challenge their compromised life styles, most of Israel ‘played’ the game of religious devotion before Holy God and a pagan god like Baal!

We’ll cover it more thoroughly when we arrive at Hosea 4:11-14, but for now look carefully at what God said about Israel’s idolatry, “Harlotry, wine, and new wine enslave the heart. My people ask counsel from their wooden idols, and their staff informs them. For the spirit of harlotry has caused them to stray, and they have played the harlot against their God. They offer sacrifices on the mountaintops, and burn incense on the hills, under oaks, poplars, and terebinths, because their shade is good. Therefore your daughters commit harlotry, and your brides commit adultery. I will not punish your daughters when they commit harlotry, nor your brides when they commit adultery; for the men themselves go apart with harlots, and offer sacrifices with a ritual harlot. Therefore people who do not understand will be trampled.” [Do you remember the New Testament Word: “If the light in you is darkness, how great is that darkness”?] People are “ruined” even if they ‘profess’ faith but walk unashamed!

In Chapter One of Hosea, Hosea married Gomer, and the Holy Word shows us three children birthed to the two: ‘Jezreel’ was the first, which means “God Sows”, and the question is, “What was Holy God ‘sowing’ in this historic time-period through Hosea and Gomer?”

Verse 4 tells us: “I will avenge the bloodshed of Jezreel on the house of Jehu, and bring an end to the kingdom of the house of Israel.” [That was the Northern Kingdom that faced destruction first!]. Verse 5 says, God speaking, “It shall come to pass in that day that I will break the bow of Israel in the Valley of Jezreel.”

Verses 6-7 tells us, And she conceived again and bore a daughter. Then God said to him: “Call her name Lo-Ruhamah, [which means “No Mercy”], for I will no longer have mercy on the house of Israel, [the Northern Kingdom], but I will utterly take them away. Verse 7, Yet I will have mercy on the house of Judah, [the reason? They’ll usher in the birth of the Messiah, through them came the seed of the Savior and Lord!], and, will save them by the Lord their God, and will not save them by bow, nor by sword or battle, by horses or horsemen.”

Examine Verses 8-9! Now when she had weaned Lo-Ruhamah, she conceived and bore a son. Then God said: “Call his name Lo-Ammi, [which means “Not My People”], for you are not My people, and I will not be your God.” Just how sobering do you find these words?!?

And I find these words so absolutely amazing that the majority of Israel, past, present, and future, never found or find the True Messiah but became foreigners, hostile to Holy God, even crucifying the Messiah! But then Hosea 1:10 declares, “Yet the number of the children of Israel shall be as the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured or numbered. And it shall come to pass in the place where it was said to them, ‘You are not My people,’ there it shall be said to them, ‘You are sons [‘and daughters’] of the living God.”

How did that happen? Because the true remnant remained faithful, even until New Testament times when men like Simeon and women like Anna held on to God’s eternal Promise!

Verse 11 then informs us, “Then the children of Judah and the children of Israel shall be gathered, and appoint for themselves one head; and they shall come up out of the land, for great will be the day of Jezreel! [Or Israel! There IS a true spiritual Israel devoted to Christ! Are you one of those chosen of God?]. It’s always been, yes, a true remnant that held onto and honored Holy God and His Holy Word and Eternal Promises!

I so appreciate what Fred M. Wood wrote in his book, “Hosea: Prophet of Reconciliation”, [ Copyright, 1975, CONVENTION PRESS, Church Services and Materials Division, Nashville, Tennessee]. On Page 14 Dr. Wood wrote: “People of every age need wise guidance. Sinful man and holy God meet in the statements of the Hebrew prophets, who realized the time was late in Israel’s history. The nation was rushing to chaos; someone had to call the people back. Although the prophet often seemed harsh, he had a good reason: his nation’s future depended upon his arousing his people. They had to know how serious things were. All the people were not equally guilty, but all had to be called to share in the task of helping the nation back. The prophet had to speak his message, even though it brought offense to those who heard. He was to do his duty as God laid it upon his heart. Whether the people heard or refused to hear, they would know a prophet had been in their midst.”

“Holy God, help us in America today! We need holy prophets challenging, convicting, and convincing God’s people, saved or lost, to repent and turn and surrender to the Lordship of Christ and to Your mercy and grace!”

CHAPTER TWO

Hosea Two

HOLY CONFRONTATION HEAVENLY LOVE

I don’t know where you are in your spiritual journey but one thing is sure: God wants YOU aware of whether you’re a part of the “devoted remnant of true faith” or a part of the religious who profess allegiance to God but are even also devotees of their “idols”! There are those who say, “we are God’s people” and “we care for one another”, and God says, “Contend for the true faith when you find even your mother to be an unfaithful deceiver” because in Hosea 2:2 God spoke, “Bring charges against your mother, bring charges; for she is not My wife, nor am I her Husband!”

Can you believe it? There’s been a “divorce” between God and His chosen, rebellious people! The second part of Verse 2? “Let her (Israel) put away her harlotries from her sight, and her adulteries from between her breasts,” as His chosen people had instituted ‘worship’ and ‘devotion’ even to Baal, living in spiritual adultery!

Oh, and then in Verse 3, God said, “Lest I strip her naked and expose her, as in the day she was born, and make her like a wilderness, and set her like a dry land, and slay her with thirst.” Do you understand that this is what will be the future of every unbeliever, every compromiser, every ‘professor’ who plays both sides of the streets of religious activity, saying, proclaiming they’ve been loyal servants when in reality they are ‘spiritual prostitutes’?

When Hosea proclaims the Word of Holy God, “bring charges against your mother,” it’s compassionate, merciful God who exposes sin and unfaithfulness so they might repent and put away their state of compromise, put away their continued sin, put away their brazen immodesty, because, maybe they hear: “God will strip you naked, Sinful Israel!” God will make Israel like a desert wilderness? Lives of rebellion will become as a deserted desert and a waste-filled wilderness, with Holy God “stripping her naked”?

Look at Verses 5-6 as God said and says even presently through Hosea, “For their mother has played the harlot; she who conceived them has behaved shamefully. For she said, ‘I will go after my lovers, who give me my bread and my water, my wool and my linen, my oil and my drink.’ Therefore, behold, I will hedge up your ways with thorns, and wall her in, so she cannot find her paths.”

Most people in the U.S.A. have no idea of what God means by “stripping her.” Most people have no understanding of a life of pitiful desolation without the presence, promises, or power of Holy God. And certainly most religious unbelievers can’t even fathom disciples confronting Jesus when the woman came with that flask of very expensive oil and poured it on the head of Jesus: “Why this waste?” Mixed-up understandings of biblical morality or heart-purity! No grasping of the cost of shameless idolatry or bowing before ‘foreign gods and idols’! “Thorns and briers” rather than the sheer blessing of “rich roses” and “heavenly fruit trees”, spiritual prostitutes even at God’s Holy Altar rather than engagement and marriage to the very Son of God, blind allegiance to the satisfying of their old sin natures, which, no doubt, was why Job 19:8-12 tells us, “He [Holy God] has fenced up my way, so that I cannot pass; and He has set darkness in my paths. He has stripped me of my glory, and taken the crown from my head. He breaks me down on every side; and I am gone; my hope He has uprooted like a tree. He has also kindled His wrath against me, and He counts me as one of His enemies. His troops come together and build up their road against me; they encamp all around my tent.”

And do you know why? Because Holy God was out to turn Job around and put him on the true highway of holiness, but far too many are satisfied with the stained streets of sin and self-indulgence, rejecting Holy God’s compassion! And do you realize that rejecting God’s judgment, with no restraint at all, will lead to a final judgment, a deadly doom, a “DEAD-END” street of eternal death that will not die! Israel and idols? Israel and Egypt? Israel and no desire to travel on the King’s Highway? Israel and scribes and Pharisees who crucified Christ Jesus?

Do you remember what King Jesus said in Matthew 23:23-28, 31-38? GET READY! GEAR UP! GIVE HOLY GOD HIS RIGHTFUL PLACE AS SOVEREIGN SAVIOR AND LORD IN YOUR LIFE – not a religious ‘game-player’! Jesus said: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! [“Play Actors!”], For you pay tithes of mint and anise and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. These you ought to have done, without leaving the others undone. Blind guides, who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel!…

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you cleanse the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of extortion and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee, first cleanse the inside of the cup and dish, that the outside of them may be clean also…

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness. Even so you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness…

Verses 31-38, Therefore you are witnesses against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets. Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers’ guilt. Serpents, brood of vipers! How can you escape the condemnation of hell? Therefore, indeed, I send you prophets, wise men, and scribes: some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues and persecute from city to city, that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. Assuredly, I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation. O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing! See! Your house is left to you desolate!”

Israel a desert wilderness? Israel a people without a passion to pursue the Holy Path to the Living God? Israel a nation deafened to hear the very Voice of God? Israel a people stripped of God’s grace and glory? Israel void of the holy gifts of God in and through the Holy Spirit? Israel a people who became so thirsty because of their own drought of desire for what Holy God had to say to them? Israel a nation void of heart desire to know the Resurrected Christ? Israel a nation so unstable because they willfully rejected God’s holy foundation, faith, and eternal future of continuous blessing out of the overflow of God’s goodness?

Can you even begin to fathom or understand or comprehend the blindness of God’s chosen people Israel as to their desire for union with Baal’s temple priestesses who would make sure Israel was fertile? In Hosea 2:9-13 we read sad, sad words, and even a warning for the modern-day religious deceived! It says: “Therefore I will return and take away My grain in its time and My new wine in its season, and will take back My wool and My linen, given to cover her nakedness. Now I will uncover her lewdness in the sight of her lovers, and no one shall deliver her from My hand. I will also cause all her mirth to cease, her feast days, her New Moons, her Sabbaths – all her appointed feasts. And I will destroy her vines and her fig trees, of which she has said, ‘These are my wages that my lovers have given me.’ So I will make them a forest, and the beasts of the field shall eat them. I will punish her for the days of the Baals to which she burned incense. She decked herself with her earrings and jewelry, and went after her lovers; But Me she forgot,” says the Lord.”

Isn’t it amazing and baffling to you that we read of God’s threatened judgment against ancient Israel, but modern-day America sees no threat from God toward us “because our nation is not sinfully sick like Israel was”? And over all of America today “dark clouds” are descending over us in, yes, the form of the idiocy of mental, moral, Messianic-deficiency, with even ‘kids,’ ‘teenagers,’ ‘young adults’, acting regularly with senseless, foolish, ungodly behavior, with no desire to trust in, believe in, be obedient to the Holy God who made them, lost them, then proved His love for them in the sacrificial death of the Holy Lamb of God!

I came across a statement by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, in his writing entitled “Faust, Prolog im Himmel,” [Der Herr,l.88], that says: “A good man, through obscurest aspirations, has till an instinct of the one true way,” and I couldn’t help but think, “That may have been true a hundred, two hundred years ago, but I’m not sure about that thought for today!”

Are you aware of how resentful modern-day minds are toward our Lord’s “blood atonement”? In the “Encyclopedia of Religious Quotations,” [Edited and Compiled by Frank S. Mead, Fleming H. Revell Com., Westwood, New Jersey, p13], there is an insightful statement by Donald Harrington. He said:

“It is part of the Jewish High Holidays that you cannot face the new year without having something deep and important take place inside you, a psychological process that religion has called atonement. Too many people are seeking a sense of “at-one-ment” with God without paying the price of atonement for their thoughtless, selfish and often wicked deeds. They cry out in anguish for peace – peace of mind, peace of soul, world peace – without understanding that these are not goals to be sought in and for themselves, but rather the by-products of just and righteous living.”

What did Paul tell us in Romans 5:10-11? [Holman Study Bible, NKJV], “For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be [being] saved by His life. And not only that, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation.”

Reconciled by good deeds? Reconciled by best efforts? Reconciled when ‘death’ reigns in us? Reconciled by hopeless, helpless attempts? Reconciled by monetary offerings? Is there still today fleshly attempts at reconciliation on man’s terms? What does Hosea 2:13 tell us, Holy God speaking? “I will punish her (Israel) for the days of the Baals to which she burned incense. She decked herself with her earrings and jewelry, and went after her lovers; but Me she forgot,” says the Lord.

And then Holy God spoke, beginning in Hosea 2:14-23, and we begin to understand the reality and extent of God’s blessed mercy on His people through Messianic prophecy! God spoke about ‘the divine drawing through His everlasting love,’ speaking about ‘comforting a troubled people,’ opening ‘a door of hope,’ and putting heavenly music on her lips like the days of her youth!

By God’s love and grace and mercy, their devotion to Baal, Israel’s Master, is set aside and in Verse 16, God says they’ll call Him, “My Husband”! Do you understand ‘deliverance’? Israel was ‘married’ to death, or Baal worship – by God’s mercy, the door to His eternal Hope was opened wide! “In that day”? That’s a future promise God made and makes even today, and, though national Israel always has and still does, reject their eternally anointed and appointed and activated Messiah, “Spiritual Israel” IS bowing to the King of kings and Lord of lords that is in infinite, even immeasurable, enormous numbers in every nation across the entire world!

No longer does Baal have to be one’s ‘foreign god,’ but “the blessed” have entered God’s “New Covenant,” and through repentance toward God and faith in the finished work of Christ at Calvary’s Cross, mass numbers have been betrothed to Him forever! [Verse 19-20].

Follow Hosea 2:23! God spoke! “Then I will sow her for Myself [have YOU been planted by God for Himself?] in the earth, and I will have mercy on her who had not obtained mercy; then I will say to those who were not My people,” ‘You are My people!’ And they shall say, ‘You are my God!’”

Do you understand that Holy God has opened the door of mercy and repentant sons and daughters can be eternally “married” to Christ? In Verses 21-23 Holy God appeals to you in four ways: “I will hear [YOU!] says the Lord;” “I will bless [YOU!] beyond measure;” “I will pour out on YOU abundant mercies;” and, “I will open-wide the opportunity of YOU sharing a glorious testimony: God says, “I am His people,” and they say, “God, You are my God!” Glory!

CHAPTER THREE

HOSEA 3

ISRAEL’S ABANDONMENT – ISRAEL’S RETURN

Are you aware of the shortness of Hosea 3 and yet so valuable and important as to ‘non-Israelis’ becoming a significant part of God’s “chosen people”? Again and again you’ll find heavy abandonment of true faith and faithful service of most of Israel, but “the remnant,” the “faithful remnant” remains true to the Promised Messiah!

Hosea 3:1 explains the rebellion of the most of Israel, but the heart of Holy God as He said to Hosea, Then the Lord said to me, “Go again, love a woman who is loved by a lover and is committing adultery, just like the love of the Lord for the children of Israel, who look to other gods and love the raisin cakes of the pagans.”

God’s intention is seeing ‘marriage’ of a man and a woman as the holy picture of the relationship between God and His chosen people as ‘the Godly Groom’ and ‘the chosen bride,’ Israel, but the marriage vows were broken by a wayward, rebellious people, and the holy ties were severed – with God challenging Hosea to go and graciously bestow his love on the rebellious, fleshly, faithless, godless wife, unveiling to her and through that relationship the very heart of God in loving, forgiving, reconciling, and renewing His love for all His wayward family! Does Hosea 3:1 tell us, “Go again, love a woman who is loved by a lover and is committing adultery…” with Hosea’s love being “just like the love of the Lord for the children of Israel, who look to other gods,”?

Consider carefully: The dramatic love of Hosea for his wayward wife, Gomer, is without a doubt the picture of God’s abiding love for wandering, wayward Israel! Gomer was an unfaithful wife as Israel, mostly, was an unfaithful nation to Holy God! But as Hosea never divorced Gomer, God had no desire to divorce Israel but held on, in His abiding love, if only for the “remnant”! Most of Israel had looked to other “gods”, but the “remnant” was devoted to the only True God!

If you didn’t know, God spoke of His wayward, betraying people as being ‘in love’ with Baal as He inspired Hosea to expose by sweet cakes and flagons of wine as objects directly used in Baal worship or giving their allegiance to the “gods”, as they were inspired by their devotion to the ‘flesh’ in the passions of an old, fallen sin nature and devotion to Baal stimulated by unashamed devotion to one’s carnal nature void on the divine nature – “anything goes!”

Gomer’s devotion was ‘faithlessness’ as many lives today are in chains of devotion to their fallen sinful, sexual debased natures! The opposite? Hosea was so inspired by God’s love for wayward Israel that he knew he must love and forgive his sinful wife! [I don’t believe Hosea lived without a broken heart just as he discerned God’s broken heart over Israel’s waywardness!].

Are you amazed when you read Hosea 3:2-3? “So I bought her for myself for fifteen shekels of silver, and one and one-half homers of barley. And I said to her, “You shall stay with me many days; you shall not play the harlot, nor shall you have a man – so too, will I be toward you.”

It’s amazing to me that there are some writers who’ve said that the price Hosea paid for Gomer was approximately thirty pieces of silver. If that’s true, and it more than likely is, the Lord Jesus Christ was ‘betrayed’ by thirty pieces of silver! Gomer, enslaved, but Christ Jesus frees! Gomer chose her sinful, reckless life – Christ Jesus offered His sinless life for our freedom from sin’s penalty that we, by His love, grace, and mercy, might become “the righteousness of God in Him”! (2 Corinthians 5:21).

Are you aware of Israel’s ‘law of the land’ that Gomer could have been stoned to death because of her violation of the law of Holy God, but Hosea chose to love and forgive her even though Gomer had rejected him?

Though Gomer was a ‘husband-rejecter’, a ‘God-rejecter’, a ‘decency rejecter,’ she showed her ‘true colors’ in her devotion to false gods, reckless drunkenness, and unfaithfulness to a Godly husband!

Hosea bought her out of sex-slavery? Hosea paid a small price? Redemption was necessary, but Hosea was willing? And what about our ‘spiritual redemption’ through the shed blood of Christ Jesus? In 1 Peter 2:21-25 we read: “For to this you were called, because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that you should follow His steps:

“Who committed no sin, nor was deceit found in His mouth”, who, when He was reviled, did not revile in return; when He suffered, He did not threaten, but committed Himself to Him who judges righteously; who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness – by whose stripes you were healed.

For you were like sheep going astray, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.”

Disciples of Christ as spiritual marriage? In Isaiah 54:5-6 we read: “For your Maker is your husband, the Lord of hosts is His name; and your Redeemer is the Holy One of Israel; He is called the God of the whole earth. For the Lord has called you like a woman forsaken and grieved in spirit, like a youthful wife when you were refused,” says your God.”

Disciples of Christ as devoted, faithful mates? Disciples of Christ, married to Christ, with absolute loyalty the hallmark of one’s devotion to the Loving Savior and Lord?

But then we read of the spirit of unfaithfulness in “the bride” to her husband? Why did, and why does betrayal of one’s spiritual marriage vows still occur today and become even rampant and unashamed, even treacherous toward the Lord and Savior?

Would you dare consider ‘financial gain’ as one’s idol rather than true devotion to the King of kings and Lord of lords? Hosea 2:5 says, “For their mother has played the harlot; she who conceived them has behaved shamefully. For she said, “’I will go after my lovers who give me my bread and my water, my wool and my linen, my oil and my drink.’”

Does the ‘rejection’ of Biblical knowledge play a part because some are o0f the mind-set that they are smarter than God? Oh, what an awakening verse is Hosea 4:6! “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I also will reject you from being priest for Me; because you have forgotten the law of God, I also will forget your children.” [What an amazing revelation, a heart-stopper, eye-opener, an awakening truth from fleshly deception!].

Does ‘pretense’ leadership affect any who start out sincere but are led astray? What does Hosea 5:1 tell us? “Hear this, O priests! Take heed, O house of Israel! Give ear, O house of the king! For yours is the judgment, because you have been a snare to Mizpah and a net spread on Tabor.”

Of course, we don’t have to be concerned in this modern-day of ‘mixing’ allegiance to Christ with fleshly idolatry! Right? Hosea 7:8 says, “Ephraim has mixed himself among the peoples…Verse 9, Aliens have devoured his strength, but he does not know it!”

Does ‘self-righteousness’, ‘self-promotion,’ ‘self-sufficiency ‘ still dominate many in the ‘religious’ community?

As I read Hosea 7:11, I couldn’t help but think of those who are so empty and unwise, or as Hosea said in Hosea 7:11, “Ephraim also is like a silly dove, without sense – they call to Egypt, they go to Assyria,” rather than yielding, submitting to Holy God and the King of kings!

And, of course, all around you, you will find those, not in love with God, but as Hosea said in Hosea 7:2, “They do not consider in their hearts that I remember all their wickedness; now their own deeds have surrounded them; they are before My face.” GOD IS NOT BLIND!!

What did God tell Hosea 3:1? “Go again, love a woman who is loved by a lover and is committing adultery, just like the love of the Lord for the children of Israel, who look to other gods and love the raisin cakes of the pagans.”

Holy God, the God of Calvary’s love, the Lord Jesus who is the Lord of forgiveness and amazing mercy and grace, has instilled in the hearts of men, like the psalmist, who wrote in Psalm 130:3-4 these words, “If You, Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? But there is forgiveness with You, that You may be feared (or held in reverential awe!).”

There is no doubt in my mind that the promise of God to Hosea has seen a few of Israelites, true to the Truth, looking for the Promised Messiah, who have found Him in Christ Jesus as the True Savior and Lord of redeemed mankind! In fact, in Galatians 3:29, we read: “And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.”

Thank God for Rabbi Marty who is of Jewish blood physically but Jesus’ blood spiritually who teaches seeking Jews two nights a week in our local church where my son, Scott Fisher, is pastor. Marty and his wife are a joy to be around as they reflect the Resurrection Life of the Lord Jesus and are committed to extending His Kingdom rule more and more – to Jews, unbelievers, strangers to the blood covenant of Christ! Amen?

Hosea 3:4 tells us, “Afterward the children of Israel shall return and seek the Lord their God and David their king. They shall fear the Lord and His goodness in the latter days.” That’s, I believe, the “latter days” of the Old Covenant as witnessed by Simeon, Saul of Tarsus, and Rabbi Marty! Amen?

CHAPTER FOUR

HOSEA FOUR

CONTROVERSY IN ISRAEL – CONVERSION IN CHRIST

It is absolutely amazing to me to read Hosea 4:1 when the prophet of God said, “Hear the word of the Lord, you children of Israel, for the Lord brings a charge (a legal case) against the inhabitants of the land. THERE IS NO TRUTH OR MERCY OR KNOWLEDGE OF GOD IN THE LAND!” [This ‘charge’ was written probably about 700 BC.].

Hosea 4:2 then says, “By swearing and lying, killing and stealing and committing adultery, they break all restraint, with bloodshed upon bloodshed. Verse 3a, Therefore the land will mourn.”

Could it be that what we read from Hosea in 2015-2016 is about “grease” and not the grace of God in the U.S.A. and other “professing” nations across our known world? Does God still bring charges against people who languish in their iniquities rather than inspired and loyal to His Holy Truth and eternal calling?

What we’re reading in Hosea 4 is without a doubt a court-scene where Israel is called to account before Holy God with a charge of iniquitous living in His name! Sadly Israel was on the “fast-track” of alienation from Holy God! Is every nation today held to an account before Holy God? Do you understand, realize, even sense, in your nation, the shutting down of ‘blessing’ and the open door of a frightening judgment of God because of hardened hearts toward Him, of moral depravity, of spiritual ineptness, of even open rebellion and moral depravity, of deathly defiance to Truth?

Several major truths we all must learn from Hosea: First, in Hosea 4:1-5, examine with me the controversy of Condescending Rebellion and Disobedience of Israel Then and Now! What does the Word tell us?

“Hear the word of the Lord, YOU CHILDREN OF ISRAEL, for the Lord brings a charge against the inhabitants of the land. There is no truth or mercy or knowledge of God in the land. By swearing and lying, killing and stealing and committing adultery, they break all restraints, with bloodshed upon bloodshed. Therefore the land will mourn; and everyone who dwells there will waste away with the beasts of the field and the birds of the air; even the fish of the sea will be taken away.

Therefore the land will mourn; and everyone who dwells there will waste away with the beasts of the field and the birds of the air; even the fish of the sea will be taken away.

Now let no man contend, or rebuke another; for your people are like those who contend with the priest. Therefore you shall stumble in the day, the prophet also shall stumble with you in the night; and I will destroy your mother.”

The word of the Lord concerning “pretender Israel”, the word of the Lord concerning the void in the land of Israel, the word of the Lord concerning “no truth or mercy or knowledge of God in the land”?

Israel, over centuries, became radicalized enemies of Divine Truth as they proclaimed their allegiance to Holy God, and at the same time prepared and executed through the scribes and Pharisees the very crucifixion of Christ Jesus! They became a nation of idol worshippers with the ‘fruit’ of “swearing and lying, killing and stealing and committing adultery, breaking all restraints, with bloodshed upon bloodshed!”

Controversy in Israel? “God wouldn’t judge His holy People?” “God wouldn’t come against those He loved?” “God wouldn’t waste away His chosen?” “God wouldn’t allow His chosen people to so descend in their chosen life-styles to the point they can’t do anything but mourn – how contemptuous is that, how despicable is that, how contentious is that! You, Sir, are off your rocker!”

And then God spoke through Hosea in Hosea 4:6, about “national judgment,” saying, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I also will reject you from being priest for Me; because you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children.”

Second, in Hosea 4:6-11, you’ll discover the Callous Ignorance That So Easily Multiplies In Self-Indulgent, Self-Induced, Self-Individualizing, Lack of God’s Saving Grace and Mercy! “Who needs God or His Law? We know what we want and we’ll pay a high price for what we want!” Sound familiar? You just read Hosea 4:6! Follow Hosea 4:7-11!

“The more they increased, the more they sinned against Me; I will change their glory into shame!!! They eat up the sin of My people; [The demons!], they set their heart on their [Israel’s] iniquity. And it shall be: like people, like priest. So I will punish them for their ways, and reward them for their deeds. For they shall eat, but not have enough; they shall commit harlotry, but not increase; because they have ceased obeying the Lord. Harlotry, wine, and new wine enslave the heart.” [Check Deuteronomy 28!!].

Though ‘harlotry’ was a physical reality, spiritual harlotry was worse as Israel sold themselves into bondage by devotion to their old sin nature rather than ‘true lovers’ of Holy God! ‘Wine and new wine’ was more than what came from grapes but what came from Israel’s cheapening of the Holy revelation of God!

Whether ‘Jew or Greek’, the grace and mercy of Holy God abounds as proven by the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ Jesus, but if deafened ears prevail, then Holy Judgment abounds! Romans 1:24-28,32, tells us, “Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves, who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.

For this reason GOD GAVE THEM UP TO VILE PASSIONS. For even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature. Likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful, and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due. And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind, to do those things which are not fitting;…Verse 32, who, knowing the righteous judgment of God, that those who practice such things are deserving of death, not only do the same but also approve of those who practice them.”

What did Paul tell us in Colossians 1:16-20? “For by Him [by Christ Jesus] all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist. And He is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He may have the preeminence.

For it pleased the Father that in Him all the fullness should dwell, and by Him to reconcile all things to Himself, by Him, whether things on earth or things in heaven, having made peace through the blood of His cross.”

What is it that unrestrained ‘lust’ has and is producing in America today? What is it when men and women avoid Biblical knowledge and ‘play’ in the darkness of biblical ignorance? What was it Hosea 4:6 told us? “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I also will reject you from being priest for Me; Because you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children.” Does ‘like father, like son’ ring a bell with you – and I pray an awakening ‘alarm-bell’!?!

Does ‘sin’ lie at your family’s door? Is ‘sin’ finding out the source of family commitment or lack of it? Are your ‘family’ sins ‘scarlet’ or ‘white as snow’? Is your family ‘saved from sin’ or covered in that old, devilish sin nature? Because ‘the wages of sin is death,’ what’s the aroma around your home? Is your ‘advocate’ active or has your ‘accuser’ prevailed? Is your family lifestyle ‘leading to death’ or are you dominated, inhabited, surrendered to resurrection life, hope, and power? Have you and your family been “washed from our sins” by the blood of Christ Jesus?

Third, What is Hosea 4:12-13 informing us about? What About The Insidious Idolatry Of Israel? “My people ask counsel from their wooden idols, and their staff [or rod] informs them. For the spirit of harlotry has caused them to stray, and they have played the harlot against their God.”

It was James Luther Mays, in his Book, “Hosea: A Commentary,” [ U.S.A publication, The Westminister Press, 1969], who wrote: “Israel can no more be ‘my people’ and worship the Baals than a wife can be married and be a prostitute.”

In Ezekial 6:8-10 God informs us that there will be a “true remnant” within Israel, although the majority breaks God’s heart and His eternal tears flow! He said: “Yet I will leave a remnant so that you may have some who escape the sword among the nations, when you are scattered through the countries. Then those of you who escape will remember Me among the nations where they are carried captive, because I was crushed by their adulterous heart which has departed from Me, and by their eyes which play the harlot after their idols; they will loathe themselves for the evils which they committed in all their abominations. And they shall know that I am the Lord; I have not said in vain that I would bring this calamity upon them.”

But remember, this “people”, Israel, was called “My people,” or God’s people in Hosea 4:12; but then it also says of “My people,” God speaking: “For the spirit of harlotry has caused them to stray, and they have played the harlot against their God.”

They became of “street-walker” fame, both men and women, with the prophet even saying in verse 13, “…therefore your daughters shall commit whoredoms and your spouses shall commit adultery.”

Do you understand that there are those who “leave the Lord” and live in adulterous relationships physically and spiritually! Are you shocked when you read about those who choose “spiritual whoredoms”? What does Hosea 4:14 tell us?

“I will not punish your daughters when they commit harlotry, nor your brides when they commit adultery; for the men themselves go apart with harlots, and offer sacrifices with a ritual harlot. Therefore people who do not understand will be trampled [or ruined!].”

What did Jesus say in John 3:19? “And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.” Didn’t Jesus tell us, “If the light in you is darkness, how great is that darkness?”

And, according to Hosea 4:16-19, if Israel was stubborn like a stubborn calf, foraging like a lamb ‘in the wilds,’ where does that leave modern-day ‘professors of faith’ who live their lives unashamed of their rebellious spiritual natures? Verses 17-19 says, “Ephraim is joined to idols, let him alone. Their drink is rebellion. They commit harlotry continually. Her rulers dearly love dishonor. The wind has wrapped her up in its wings, and they shall be ashamed of their sacrifices.” Holy judgment comes! “And God, awaken your people! God, awaken them right in their places of shame, lead them out of spiritual apostasy, let the very blood of Christ wash them from the consequences of their rebellious, sinful, darkened paths, and lead them by the Eternal Light of Christ, raising them up to soar with Him on the wings of healing and deliverance and freedom from their bondage of sin and death! Holy God, expose the serious influence and effect of evil, expose the deathliness of sin, unveil the devices of the devil’s ways and the consequences of captivity under his shameful ways! Give a clear picture of the exposure of shame and guilt and bitter sadness and disappointment when one chooses the devil’s perilous, perverse, and painful paths. Amen?”

CHAPTER FIVE

HOSEA FIVE

JUDGMENTS, SNARES, NETS, AND HARLOTRIES – AND GOD’S

WITHDRAWAL!

Are you aware of a ‘day of exposure’ when Holy God reveals the rebellious nature of fallen men and brings forth an hour of holy judgment and condemnation with grace and mercy blown away by the very breath of God, and all men held personally accountable before Holy God for their rebellion and disobedience, each being held responsible for their shaming of their Creator and Savior and Lord?

In Hosea 5:1-2 we read, “Hear this, O priests! Take heed, O house of Israel! Give ear, O house of the king! For yours is the judgment, because you have been a snare to Mizrah and a net spread on Tabor. The revolters are deeply involved in slaughter, though I rebuke them all.”

How do YOU respond when you read, “yours is the judgment,” because Holy God has a reason for it!?! Human existence is no excuse for feeding on the leaven of sin, being untrue to the Holy God who created them, or substituting divine reality for degenerate idolatry! Yet the religious, governmental, and personal leaders of Israel led the people down a path of hellish idolatry and personal pollution! And Holy God sent an anointed prophet called Hosea to announce to Israel, “Repent or else!”

Do you personally hear it, sense it, and have become aware that Holy God still gives a stern warning? In Hosea 5:1-2 we read, AGAIN, “Hear this, O priests! Take heed, O house of Israel! Give ear, O house of the king! For yours is the judgment, because you have been a snare to Mizpah, and a net spread on Tabor.”

Translated to our modern day? “Hear, preachers; take heed, church at large; don’t close your eyes or ears, political leaders of every community! FOR YOURS IS THE JUDGMENT because YOU have been a snare in Fort Worth and Dallas, and a net spread over all of Texas!”

If you haven’t read “the signs” of late, there has been across Texas and all U.S.A. states a willing, and selfish, and voluntary denial of the consistency of God’s glory and honor and praise, and a yieldingness to the selfishness of fallen human nature, with a desire for “darkness”, not the True Light of Resurrected Presence! I’m sure it’s why Robert R. Brown, (Encyclopedia of Religious Quotations, Fleming H. Revell Com. By Frank Mead. Westwood, NJ,p.398), who once wrote said: “It is part of our human nature but there is that within us which always wants to make self the center of its own universe and, in that selfish way, wants to tear God from His throne and deny his brother and advance his own ambition.”

But “deaf ears” have no desire to hear what God is saying! Hosea spoke loudly, personally, bravely, to religious priests, to royal princes, and to rebellious individuals, who really had no desire to hear what holy God had to say to them! Didn’t Hosea say, “Yours is the judgment, those of you who are a snare or a trap to others, and are like a ‘captive’ net over all the people around you?”

Did Hosea say, “God is ready to release His judgment upon you,” but many today say the same as Hosea’s very day, “It may be for some, but not for us”? And the sad reality is nations are defiled, nations are captured by the spirit of harlotry, and “they do not know the Lord”! Self-pride reigned then – self-pride reigns now! “They stumble in their iniquity”! And the sad end result for many peoples, even “professors of faith”? Hosea 5:6 says, “With their flocks and herds they shall go to seek the Lord, but they will not find Him; He has withdrawn Himself from them.”

In fact, in Jeremiah 5:18-19, Holy God spoke: “Nevertheless in those days,” says the Lord, “I will not make a complete end of you [YET!!]. And it will be when you say, ‘Why does the Lord our God do all these things to us?’ then you shall answer them, ‘Just as you have forsaken Me and served foreign gods in your land, so you shall serve aliens in a land that is not yours.’”

What did Hosea tell us in Hosea 5:7? “They have dealt treacherously with the Lord, for they have begotten pagan children. Now a New Moon shall devour them and their heritage.” Are you aware of “a day of reckoning” before Holy God when every man, woman, and child will stand before Holy God to give an account of their lives? What does Jeremiah 3:20 say to us all? “Surely, as a wife treacherously departs from her husband, so have you dealt treacherously with Me, O house of Israel,” says the Lord. What does “a day of reckoning” say to you personally right now?

Pause and reflect upon Colossians 3:5-8! “Therefore put to death your members which are on the earth: fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. Because of these things the wrath of God is coming upon the sons of disobedience, in which you yourselves once walked when you lived in them. But now you yourselves are to put off all these: anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy language out of your mouth.”

What you have just read are New Testament words but relevant to an Old Testament context! What was said to Hosea’s ‘holy people’ in his day can be repeated in most evangelical churches today – with consequences! But YOU are unsure violations of the Word today have the same consequences ? Have you witnessed the “decaying process” in one’s life, marriage, business , or even in ‘friend to friend’ relationships? I wrote following recently: “Sickness prevails, body, soul, and spirit, as ‘fallen men’ to hopelessness surrender; life’s choices, void of God, destined them for the sod, with the tombstone saying: ‘Absent from Holy God!’ No one seemed to care, as very few to the funeral attended, the many so aware of a life that pretended!”

In Hosea 5:8-15 we find words of warning for every man, family, or nation! It says: “Blow the ram’s horn in Gibeah, the trumpet in Ramah! Cry aloud at Beth Aven, ‘Look behind you, O Benjamin!’ Ephraim shall be desolate in the day of rebuke; among the tribes of Israel I make known what is sure.

The princes of Judah are like those who remove a landmark [or boundary]; I will pour out My wrath on them like water. Ephraim is oppressed and broken in judgment, because he willingly walked by human precept. Therefore I will be to Ephraim like a moth, and to the house of Judah like rottenness.

When Ephraim saw his sickness, and Judah saw his wound, then Ephraim went to Assyria and sent to King Jareb; Yet he cannot cure you, nor heal you of your wound.

For I will be like a lion to Ephraim, and like a young lion to the house of Judah. I, even I, will tear them and go away; I will take them away, and no one shall rescue. I will return again to My place till they acknowledge their offense. Then they will seek My face; in their affliction they will earnestly seek Me.”

Deaf ears to the voice of Almighty God unleashes holy judgment! Refusing the Word of God in one’s life opens the door wide to the awful end of God’s wasting disease of judgment and a holy wrath! When a man closes the door to God’s guidance, Holy God opens the very windows of heaven and releases a wasting rottenness that will not die – it is an eternal sapping, snapping, sickening disease of judgment that never dies but instills a never-ending eternal doom and darkness and deathliness!

If God is “like a lion, a young lion” that tears and never goes away, with no one to rescue, in covenant, is His Word telling us, even in one’s falling away, that only in Him is there any hope? I sense that when His judgment falls that there are ‘some,’ ‘a few,’ who turn back to Him in repentance and faith!

But what frightens me and causes me to cry out to God more and more is the vain hopelessness and faithlessness of most men and women who waste their young then aged lives on “false gods”! Reading recently “The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning”, from 1826-1844, [published by J.E.Beale, Book Department, The Fancy Fair, Bournemouth], I want to end this chapter with a portion of her writing entitled “The Soul’s Travailing.” She wrote:

[A portion initially of pps.76-77], “I dwell amid the city. The great humanity which beats its life along the stony streets, Like a strong unsunned river In a self-made course, is ever Rolling on, rolling on! –

I sit and hear it as it rolls, That flow of souls! The infinite tendencies, In the finite, chafed and pent, – In the finite, turbulent! – The long, drear monotone, Made of many tones that rise Each to each as contraries! -…

The poor man’s abject needs – The feet that wearily, wearily roam, Unquickened by thoughts of the fire at home – The cry of the babe unheard of its mother, Though it lie on her breast, while she thinks of the other Laid yesterday in tomb!-

The whine of voices that have made Their own grief’s sacredness a trade – The curse that rings hollowly The crime against the misery -…

I dwell amid the city, and hear the flow of souls! I do not hear the several contraries – I do not hear the separate tone that rolls in act or speech, For pomp or trade, for merrymake or folly – I hear the confluence and sum of each, [p.78-79], And that is melancholy! – The voice is a complaint, O crowned city, The blue sky covering you, like God’s great pity! –

You can hear them as they greet! You can hear that evermore Distance-softened noise, more old Then Nereid’s singing – the wave leant and joining soft up till the shore In harmony of discontent!…

]p.80-81], Always! Always! Must this be? Rapid Soul from city gone, Do you carry inwardly What does make the city’s moan? Must this deep sigh on your own haunt you with humanity?

Green visioned banks that are too steep To be over-browsed by the sheep, May all sad thoughts adown you creep Without a shepherd? – mighty sea, Can we dwarf your magnitude, and fit it to our straightest mood?

O fair, fair Nature! Are we this Impotent and querulous Among your workings glorious – Among your fullnesses that still leave us vacant and defiled, And wailing like a kissed child, Kissed soft against his will?

God, God! – With a child’s voice I cry, Weak, sad, confidingly – God, God! You know eyelids raised not always up Toward Your love (as none of ours are) droop, As ours, over many a tear!

You know, though Your universe is broad, Two little tears suffice to cover all! – You know – You who art so prodigal of beauty – we are oft but stricken deer, Expiring in the woods – that care for none Of those delightsome flowers they die upon!

O blissful mouth, which breathed the mournful breath, We name our souls! (self-spoiled!) by that strong passion Which paled You once with sighs – by that strong death Which made You once unbreathing – from the wrack, Themselves have called around them, call them back Toward You in continuous aspiring!

For here, O Lord, For here they travel vainly; vainly From city pavement to untrodden sward, Where the lark finds her deep nest in the grass, Unswept of its last dew! – Yea, very vain The greatest speed of all these souls of men, Unless they travel upward to Your Throne!

There sits THOU, the satisfying ONE, with blood for sins, and holy perfectings For all requirements – while the archangel, raising Toward Your face his full ecstatic gazing, Forgets the rush and rapture of his wings!”

What an amazing piece of poetry so full of insight to “lost souls”, and yet, an unveiling of the true faithful who know “the rush and rapture of His wings”! Amen?

CHAPTER SIX

HOSEA SIX

REPENTANCE AND RETURN

If you are familiar with Ephesians 2:1-6, you’ll find there the Biblical context of sin and death in comparison with biblical grace and resurrection life and eternal hope! It says: “And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others.

But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus…”

As we come to Hosea 6, and especially the first few verses, do you sense the very broken heart of both God and Hosea as you see and read of the call to “return” to the Lord? And that would be individually and nationally! And, of course, you KNOW there is no ‘return’ to God apart from ‘repentance’ before God out of a convicted heart, mind, and soul!

Hosea 6:1-3 says: “Come, and let us return to the Lord; for He has torn, but He will heal us; He has stricken, but He will bind us up. After two days He will revive us; on the third day He will raise us up, that we may live in His sight. Let us know, let us pursue the knowledge of the Lord. His going forth is established as the morning; He will come to us like the rain, like the latter and former rain to the earth.”

I’ve entitled Hosea 6 as “Repentance and Return,” but at the same time I sense it could be “The Pursuit of God’s Knowledge” or the pursuit of His biblical truth! “Come, and let us return to the Lord!” Why? Has there been a departure, a forsaking, even strong rebellion in His created people and nations?

Hosea 6:1-3 sounds very similar to Isaiah’s holy revelation in Isaiah 6:1-8! “In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, and the train of His robe filled the temple. Above it stood seraphim; each one had six wings: with two he covered his face, with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one cried to another and said:

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory!”

And the posts of the door were shaken by the voice of him who cried out, and the house was filled with smoke. So I said:

“Woe is me, for I am undone! Because I am a man of unclean lips, And I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.”

Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a live coal which he had taken with the tongs from the altar. And he touched my mouth with it, and said:

“Behold, this has touched your lips; Your iniquity is taken away, and your sin purged.” Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying: “Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?” Then I said, “Here am I! Send me.” And He said, “Go, and tell this people…”

The call to return to the Lord is as vital today as it was when Hosea called out: “Come, and let us return to the Lord; For He has torn, but He will heal us; He has stricken, but He will bind us up. After two days He will revive us; On the third day He will raise us up, that we may live in His sight. Let us know, let us pursue the knowledge of the Lord. His going forth is established as the morning; He will come to us like the rain, like the latter and former rain to the earth.”

Later, in Isaiah 55:6-7, the Lord spoke so compassionately, so convincedly, and so convincingly, when Isaiah wrote: “Seek the Lord while He may be found, call upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the Lord.”

What did Hosea say? “Return to the Lord – and He will heal us! Return to the Lord – and He will bind us up! Return to the Lord – and He will revive us and raise us up”, to be seated with Christ in the heavenly places around God’s Holy Throne!” Are you alerted in your own life to the need of the miracle work of Christ in healing the daily ‘messiness’ of fallen mankind? Have you looked into His radiant face of redeeming grace or sensed the loving arms of His royal reach or the reaching hands from the eternal stand He made FOR YOU as He died on the Cross in your place?

“Return”! Though ‘torn by Him,’ He will heal you! Though ‘stricken’ by Him in holy conviction,’ He will bind you up by tender mercy! Didn’t John tell us, 3 John 2, “Beloved, I pray that you may prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers”?

It was James Thomson, in his “Castle of Indolence,” [Canto ii, st.57], who wrote: “But what avail the largest gifts of Heaven, when drooping health and spirits go amiss? How tasteless then whatever can be given! Health is the vital principle of bliss.” Sadly, many walk with ‘blinded minds’ rather than God-blessed “blissful minds”!

From Hosea 6:1-3, look with me at Hosea 6:4-6! “O Ephraim [Northern Kingdom], what shall I do to you? O Judah [Southern Kingdom}, what shall I do to you? For your faithfulness is like a morning cloud, and like the early dew it goes away. Therefore I have hewn them by the prophets, I have slain them by the words of My mouth; and your judgments are like light that goes forth. For I desire mercy and not sacrifice, and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings.”

I’m sure at some point or points in your life that you’ve been aware of “morning clouds” or “as the early dew [that] goes away”, and Holy God has spoken by the “appearances” of a religious faith that is so temporary but not governing the fullness of every-day life and devotion!

The fullness of God’s revelation is so broad, so deep, so wide, but Israel’s ‘follow-ship’ was so minute – outer devotions without inner heart change! And, no doubt, this is why Christ Jesus looked over Jerusalem and wept over it! [Does Christ Jesus weep today as He overviews the spirit of the professing church?]

One thing is for sure: The Lord Jesus Christ “is not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance”! But today, are ‘prophets’ voiceless? Are the ‘messengers’ of judgment silent? Have the ‘good news proclaimers’ grown cold?

I think one of the saddest commentaries about modern church life today is when the prophet Jeremiah heard God say in Jeremiah 6:27-30, “I have set you as an assayer and a fortress among My people, that you may know and test their way. They are all stubborn rebels, walking as slanderers. They are bronze and iron, they are all corrupters; The bellows blow fiercely, the lead is consumed by the fire; the smelter refines in vain, for the wicked are not drawn off. People will call them rejected silver, because the Lord has rejected them.”

Religion, devotion, surrender, ‘like a morning cloud’? If faithfulness is absent, be assured you are witnessing a quickly-disappearing life of devotion because they are only ‘the morning dew’ that appears and then is gone as the Son of God is lifted up and exalted! Sacrifices were numerous but devotion was like imitation silver and gold!

You are aware that ‘faith’ can simply be a matter of orthodoxy that one has programmed himself in but be totally void of the ‘living faith’ that transforms, births, and inhabits the true repentant heart, giving faithful glory and honor to one’s True Savior and Lord and Master of life! Do you understand “salt of the earth” or “light upon a hill”?

In Hosea 6:7-9 we see Hosea writing about men and a covenant-relationship with Holy God – are you unfamiliar with the New Testament “blood covenant” through the sacrificial offering of Christ Jesus at Calvary as He willingly took the Cross unto Himself that through His shed blood for our sins we might find forgiveness and resurrection life, hope, and power for an eternal relationship with God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit?

But sadly Verse 7 tells us, “But like men [like Adam and Eve] they [Israel] transgressed the covenant.” “Pretense” is a horrible condition of many professing lives of ‘faith’ and ‘supposed surrender’, with God saying in Verse 7 also, “there they dealt treacherously with Me.” For many, it was ‘imitation’ rather than possession! Do you understand how sadly religious activity then and now cannot hide a depraved nature, sinful heart, or selfish mind?

Idolatry in Israel gained more attention than true devotion to Holy God! Idolatry defiled Israel more and more, deeper and deeper, even wider and wider, as that evil spirit captured more and more hearts and minds! Even the ‘priesthood’ became open defilement in sin, iniquity, and vile, superficial devotion to a man-made religion, with their ‘priests’ devoted to horrible lewdness with murder at altars becoming their main devotion!

Even Peter, in New Testament days, told us of the deceptions of false teachers when in 2 Peter 2:18-22 he wrote: “For when they speak great swelling words of emptiness, they allure through the lusts of the flesh, through lewdness, the ones who have actually escaped from those who live in error. While they promise them liberty, they themselves are slaves of corruption; for by whom a person is overcome, by him also he is brought into bondage.

For if, after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the latter end is worse for then than the beginning. For it would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than having known it, to turn from the holy commandment delivered to them. But it has happened to them according to the true proverb: “A DOG RETURNS TO HIS OWN VOMIT,” and, “a sow, having washed, to her wallowing in the mire.” Just how sad do you sense that spiritual condition or the absence of it?

When in the end of Verse 7 Hosea recorded God Himself saying of Israel, “There they dealt treacherously with Me,” how do you respond to that? God Himself said Israel willingly violated covenant, sacred vows, and shamefully looked upon His blood covenant as nothing important to them or vital for their spiritual health!

I don’t know how you personally respond to Verse 10, but when God said, “I have seen a horrible thing in the house of Israel,” I was personally shocked! The ‘Holy People of God’ involved in spiritual harlotry as well as physical harlotry in the Holy Place? Israel demonstrating defilement? Israel openly exhibiting wild lewdness before the Altar?

And I hate to disagree with a lot of ‘prophetic scholars’ (?), but I believe many have misinterpreted Hosea 6:11 when God said, “Also, O Judah, a harvest is appointed for you, when I return the captives of My people.” Oh, no doubt, there was the sacred remnant! Always has been – always will be! But the majority of Israel? The “harvest” was “a winnowing”, not a gathering in, like fruit off a tree that one gathered! Winnowing does mean, for some, “to subject to some process of critical analysis or separation.”

Dare I tell you? “Dead fruit has no value to Holy God!” Isaiah 5:16 says, “But the Lord of hosts shall be exalted in judgment, and God who is holy shall be hallowed in righteousness,” but when unrighteousness becomes the majority testimony, only the few pass through God’s “storm clouds of holy judgment”!

What did John declare in Matthew 3:7-12? But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, “Brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Therefore bear fruits worthy of repentance, and do not think to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I say to you that God is able to raise up children to Abraham from these stones. And even now the ax is laid to the root of the trees. Therefore every tree which does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance, but He who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fan is in His hand, and He will thoroughly clean out His threshing floor, and gather His wheat into the barn; but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”

You understand – there can be beautiful, luxuriant, abundant vines, but no fruit or rotten fruit, wilted, barren, sterile vines but unproductive as to what “the seed of God” produces!

“Trees without Good Fruit”? “Trees that are Godless”? You do remember what God said about Israel, His unfaithful people, in Hosea 2:8? “For she did not know that I gave her grain, new wine, and oil, and multiplied her silver and gold – which they prepared for Baal.” God’s blessing on His chosen people became gifts to the idols of Satan himself! Hearts divided in loyalty always produce, from the root of an evil nature, gifts to “the Baals” or gifts to “the demons,” with some even believing they were giving to God!

Foolish, unbelieving, idolatrous worshippers, are sadly blinded and deceived concerning their sin and its inevitable judgment, and even riotous and resentful when they learn, finally, their false devotion has been to demons and idols! And Hell awaits their coming forever!

CHAPTER SEVEN

HOSEA SEVEN

RUTHLESS DECEPTION – RAMPANT WICKEDNESS

How did God begin Hosea 7? It is still an awesome, inspiring, and yet painful word because God’s plea, God’s offer, God’s remedy, was rejected! Hosea 7:1-2 says, “When I would have healed Israel, then the iniquity of Ephraim was uncovered, and the wickedness of Samaria: for they have committed fraud; a thief comes in; a band of robbers takes spoil outside. They do not consider in their hearts that I remember all their wickedness; now their own deeds have surrounded them; they are before My face.”

Iniquity? Wickedness? Fraudulent faith? Fleshly theft, ruthless deception, rampant wickedness? Deceived hearts and minds? “But it’s OK because it’s all done in secret – nobody knows, not even God,” when God declares, “I remember all their wickedness,” “I’m not blind,” and, “Your sin is ever before My face”! And the reckless, rebellious, even ruthless sinners, who believe God IS blind to one’s inner, hidden sins, and He doesn’t know and never sees one’s ‘secret sins’, journey on thinking all is well because God couldn’t know the secrets of their hearts! But He does see and is fully aware of every step you take, good or bad, out of the flesh or through the Spirit, rejection of His Word or reception of His every command!

RUTHLESS DECEPTION AND RAMPANT WICKEDNESS continues to abound because fallen mankind, dark hearts, defiant wills, continue in unbelief that God couldn’t, wouldn’t, shouldn’t be concerned about what ‘sinners’ do – it’s their business, they assume, and why should God care? Hosea 7:2? “They do not consider in their hearts that I remember all their wickedness; now their own deeds have surrounded them; [and] they are before My face.”

Where does “surrounding one’s own deeds” come from? Could that be His holy presence “whose eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me”? Dare I tell you that God’s eyes are not dimmed, blind, or uncaring about where you are or are not in your spiritual journey ordained by Him?

But there are ‘thieves’ and there are ‘bands of robbers’ who desire to take the spoils of your life outside the rule of God’s Kingdom? Absolutely! Did Jesus tell us in John 10:10 that “The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy;” and how many cross your paths daily unconcerned about demonic thievery? And do you perceive the ‘devilish robbers’ who are on your highway of life, faith or not, who are out to ‘strip you,’ ‘wound you,’ and then seek to ‘leave you, even half-dead’?

Hosea was mightily used by God to paint the horrid truth of ruthless deception, rampant wickedness, and the awfulness of Israel’s deception about their continuous sin, shameful disobedience, and a bizarre unwillingness to repent and rest in God’s promise of forgiveness and reconciliation. It seemed that Israel was blinded to the holiness of the God they claimed to serve – or a mutual willingness to color over the blackness of their ‘spiritual anarchy’ as they willingly violated the very spirit and nature of God’s holiness and the call by Him on their nation to portray to the whole world around them His righteousness! Israel and their spiritual leaders became major transgressors of God’s law and Spirit, delighting in their lawlessness!

Doesn’t Hosea 7:4 declare, “They are all adulterers”? And be assured, Israel as a nation were physical adulterers, prophets, priests, kings, and general public, without shame – but Baal ‘worship’ erupted all over the nation, like physical adultery, inflamed with the ‘fires’ of idol worship, as fleshly devotion to idols overcame any true devotedness to the One True God!

It’s interesting reading a number of commentators who speak of Hosea 7:5 as Hosea commented on “in the day of our king” that “princes made him sick, inflamed with wine”; “princes” or spiritual overseers of their immoral devotions; religious leaders making God sick? The Sovereign Lord’s reign across Israel had been perverted as people and prophets lived in lawlessness and moral anarchy! Is it possible for you that Verse 5’s “he stretched out His hand TO [not with!] scoffers”, was King Jesus, even then, so desirous to make the difference in the chosen people’s walk and faith? But at the same time tyrannical ‘kings’ led in perversions, even in the temple, that shamed the very name of Holy God as they exhibited wickedness, corruption, debauchery, deceit, fleshly amusements with no self-restraint, idol worship, and woeful unrighteousness ! Yes, Hosea witnessed a time period of “ruthless deception and rampant wickedness”!

Examine Hosea 7:6-7 carefully, considering the rebellious hearts and minds that were overwhelmed by a ‘deadly spiritual virus’ of constant avoidance of submission unto Holy God, their lives like an unwatched oven that erupted in a flaming fire of destructive rebellion in defiance of the will, Word, and ways of the watchful God of mercy, grace, and love, as Hosea was inspired to announce to the nation, “None among them calls upon Me!”, meaning that none were aware that they were covenant- cursed!!

But the “exposure” of Israel didn’t slow down as Hosea identified their “mixture” of compromise and indifference to the Holy Word, Holy will, and Holy ways of God Almighty! Hosea 7:8-10 tells us, “Ephraim has mixed himself among the peoples; Ephraim is a cake unturned. Aliens have devoured his strength, but he does not know it; Yes, gray hairs are here and there on him, yet he does not know it. And the pride of Israel testifies to his face, but they do not return to the Lord their God, nor seek Him for all this.”

Israel ‘mixing’ himself among peoples who were not ‘of God’, trusting themselves and others rather than the Divine Creator! Does it strike a ‘high note’ of awareness that most people, like Israel, look to surrounding peoples, nations, and rulers, rather than the reality of God’s Holy Presence, the One desirous of redeeming and blessing and fulfilling His creations through available lives that ‘lean not to their own understanding, but in all their ways acknowledge Him’? No doubt Paul saw the danger of ‘flesh’ introspection rather than divine revelation when in 2 Timothy 2:7 he wrote to young Timothy telling him, “Consider what I say, and may the Lord give you understanding in all things.” Did Hosea mention that people can so mix themselves in human wisdom to the point that fleshly dependency is like, Verse 9, “Aliens have devoured his strength”, and he doesn’t even know what he lost!

Human mixture without God is not only a reckless, senseless recipe, but a spiritually, indigestible half-baked cake, suggesting what one writer described as ‘unbalanced development’ – or careless concentration or absence on matters of eternal significance that fulfill God’s everlasting plan, provision, and ministry that spells His blessing rather than one’s self-imposed curse because ‘moral, biblical, God-like instruction, limits one’s fleshly desires for freedom in self-indulgence, or one’s immoral desires to play with “fire”, even if one gets burned, or one not caring about immediate and long-term rotting and decay’!

Are you familiar with Judges 16:20 when Delilah had come to alert Samson after lulling him to ‘sleep’? And she said, “The Philistines are upon you, Samson!” So he awoke from his sleep, and said, “I will go out as before, at other times, and shake myself free!” But he did not know that the Lord had departed from him.

It was Horatius Bonar who once said, “In all unbelief there are two things; a good opinion of one’s self, and a bad opinion of God;” and, yes, even ancient Israel, in most corners, had a bad opinion of God as they majored on the rottenness of their own unbelief! In fact, I’m sure that most who read this would agree that most unbelief, found so clearly in the history of ancient and modern Israel, over-flowed in a stiffed-necked spirit resenting God’s Way! What did Hosea say in Hosea 7:10? “And the pride of Israel testifies to his face, but they do not return to the Lord their God, nor seek Him for all this.”

And what did Israel do, and even most nations across the world today? My NKJV calls Hosea 7:11-16 “Futile Reliance on the Nations”! Verse 11 tells us, “Ephraim also is like a silly dove, without sense – they call to Egypt, they go to Assyria.” And the end result of that? Verse 12 says, God speaking, “Wherever they go, I will spread My net on them; I will bring them down like birds of the air; I will chastise them according to what their congregation has heard,” and at least they had heard of God’s covenant whether they wanted to submit to it or not! And they didn’t!

There is a very strong reason and explanation of what God said. In Hosea 7:13-14 we read, “Woe to them, for they have fled from Me! Destruction to them, because they have transgressed against Me! Though I redeemed them, yet they have spoken lies against Me. They did not cry out to Me with their heart when they wailed upon their beds.”

To choose your way rather than God’s Way is to release a deadly destruction upon one’s life! To choose self-will over divine will is like a flighty dove that never sought a shelter! To choose your way over God’s will is like a dove captured in a net rather than safe under God’s divine protection!

So, here it comes! Judgment! Alienation! Separation! Captured by the enemies of God! Destruction! Hosea 7:13-15 tells us, “Woe to them, for they have fled from Me! Destruction to them, because they have transgressed against Me! Though I redeemed them, yet they have spoken lies against Me. They did not cry out to Me with their heart when they wailed upon their beds. They assemble together for grain and new wine, they rebel against Me; Though I disciplined and strengthened their arms, yet they devise evil against Me.”

What did God say about Israel in Hosea’s day before him, during, and after him? “They led from Me!” “They transgressed against Me!” “They have spoken lies against Me!” “They were heartless toward Me!” “They devised evil against Me!” “They disgraced God’s favor, brought shame on His Name, and rested in their lies not His blessing!”

God blessed them, but Israel rejected Him and robbed Him of His glory, honor, and praise! God blessed them, but Israel devised evil against His Holy Name as they bowed down before idols and worshipped them rather than Him! They placed Holy God in their ‘order of worship’ with devilish idols, thinking that should give Him praise enough!

Do you see that God brought judgment upon Israel because, through His blessings, Holy God expected submission, honor, and praise, as His blessed people bowed before Him in mutual, faithful admiration, because of His gift of righteousness, and His miraculous mercy – but they rebelled! Rather than the rain of righteousness, Israel received unfulfilled expectations, the exhaustive life of Holy absence, and a name without heavenly honor!

In Hosea 7:16 God said, “They return, but not to the Most High; they are like a treacherous bow. Their princes [spiritual priests] shall fall by the sword for the cursings of their tongue. This shall be their derision in the land of Egypt.”

Was Israel an exemplary picture of a true view of Holy God? What you just read in Verse 16 of Hosea 7 was God Himself saying, “They return, but not to the Most High.” Religious doesn’t mean re-born, but a feigned devotion to religious activity in a public pretense that had no true foundation of eternal life or nation transformation.

In fact, in Verse 16, God went on to say, “They are like a treacherous bow. Their princes [spiritual priests or leaders] shall fall by the sword [and I can’t help but wonder again]: “Fall by the sword of the Lord, His Holy Word?”

And the reason God gave? “Fall by the sword” because they made it “the cursings of their tongue” because of the lies they promoted in their religious scams and idolatrous devotions, even their abominable betrayal of the Coming King of kings and Lord of lords! They were certainly a religious people, though false and foreign to Holy God, cheapened imitations of the True Messiah, but no allegiance to what was birthed through them, even the Messiah!

Disobedience was natural and why they crucified Jesus – He said to them, “Why do you call Me Lord, Lord, but you do not do what I say?” Their devotion was to sexual immorality, moral impurities, social sins shameful to even repeat! Israel was, yes, opposition to God’s moral laws! Moral bankruptcy was the dark testimony of human history through Israel’s rebellion and, at the same time, the faithfulness of God in bringing forth unfolding judgment upon Israel’s faithlessness!

God turned Israel over to the enemies they tried to imitate as Israel’s judge and jury and executioner! Ever wonder who it is God turns the imitators over to in the time of His modern-day judgments?

CHAPTER EIGHT

HOSEA EIGHT

THE MESSAGE, THE MOANING, THE MADNESS

Though only fourteen verses Hosea 8 is packed with warning bells concerning judgment on a deceived, disobedient, denying nation who professed allegiance to Holy God while His Holy Word exposed their apostasy! Aren’t you thankful that God looks upon you and me, and mercy abounds – warnings ARE merciful!

Do you believe “Turn or Burn” is merciful? Yet multitudes, even like ‘religious’ Israel, are deaf to a prophet’s warning, deaf to the clear sound of God’s voice through the prophet, deaf even to the destructive, downward, deadly events that spoke of, yes, immediate judgment and divine retribution!

I’ve been in Africa a few times in my life, and hearing the roar of a lion near-by was certainly a wake-up call that danger was near. And when Hosea is told, “Set the trumpet to your mouth!”, be assured the trumpet sound is the sound of warning and possible rescue, IF!

It’s the voice of God’s prophet, not the literal blowing of a beautiful trumpet, but the voice of one sounding God’s alarm: “Israel’s on a downward spiral away from God! Holy God grants the gift of repentance and faith! But most of Israel rejected God’s plea!”

In Romans 10:16-21 Paul wrote, [Remember, Paul was a Jewish rabbi before his conversion to Christ!], But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, “Lord, who has believed our report?” So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” But I say, have they not heard? Yes indeed: “Their sound has gone out to all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world.” But I say, did Israel not know? First Moses says:

“I will provoke you to jealousy by those who are not a nation, I will move you to anger by a foolish nation.” But Isaiah is very bold and says: “I was found by those who did not seek Me; I was made manifest to those who did not ask for Me.” But to Israel he says: “All day long I have stretched out My hands to a disobedient and contrary people.”

FIRST, LET’S LOOK AT THE MESSAGE OF “EAGLE-DANGER”! Certainly, Americans have respect for the beautiful eagle that soars over the nation, but at the same time the eagle is seen as a vulture who devours! When the prophet Hosea spoke of a descending eagle of prey upon Israel, it was God’s message of impending doom upon His “chosen people” if they didn’t repent and return to Him!

The eagle represented God’s use of a warring people to execute judgment upon His disobedient people. What Israel saw as ‘special privilege’ became ‘specific punishment’ because of the distinct statements of ‘loyalty’ and ‘devotion’, though they spent more time with idols than surrender to the Sovereignty of Holy God! I love what Fred M. Wood said in his book, “Hosea: Prophet of Reconciliation,” [p.76], about Israel in Hosea 8:2, when “Israel will cry to Me, My God, we know You!”, Dr. Wood saying, “Wailing and taking part in excessive ritual, they would insist they were properly related to God. Their cry, “My God,” would be their way of claiming special privilege because of their heritage. Many people have this attitude. They ignore God until no other help is present, then fall back upon Him. They presume upon God’s grace.”

I don’t know how anyone can read what we’re seeing in Hosea 8 as Hosea was raised up by God to announce a release, like a consuming eagle, as God informs through the prophet, of a people He was sending upon a rebellious people to execute severe, swift, strong judgment, for Israel’s mistreatment of covenant grace and sacred mercy and holy will, similar to Jesus’ prediction of Jerusalem’s desolation, in Matthew 24:28, “For wherever the carcass is, there the eagles will be gathered.”

Carcasses and hungry eagles? As Jeremiah wrote “Lamentations”, it was not a gloating, ‘I told you so,’ but a grieving, heart-broken declaration, under God’s anointing to, yes, turn Israel from death unto resurrection life! Lamentations 1:1-2 says, “How lonely sits the city (Jerusalem) that was full of people! How like a widow is she, who was great among the nations! The princess among the provinces has become a slave! She weeps bitterly in the night, her tears are on her cheeks; among all her lovers she has none to comfort her, all her friends have dealt treacherously with her; they have become her enemies.”

And the sad declaration of Jeremiah’s words? Lamentations 1:8-9 tells us: “Jerusalem has sinned gravely, therefore she has become vile. All who honored her despise her because they have seen her nakedness; yes, she sighs and turns away. Her uncleanness is in her skirts; she did not consider her destiny; therefore her collapse was awesome; she had no comforter. ‘O Lord, behold my affliction, for the enemy is exalted!’”

“My God, we know You!” But God said in Hosea 8:3, “Israel has rejected the good; the enemy will pursue him.” Why did Holy God declare this through Hosea? Hosea 8:4-6, God speaking: “They set up kings [on their own authority!], but not by Me; they made princes [rulers], but I did not acknowledge them. From their silver and gold they made idols for themselves – that they might be cut off. Your calf is rejected, O Samaria! My anger is aroused against them – how long until they attain innocence? For from Israel is even this: A workman made it (an idol), and it is not God; but the calf of Samaria shall be broken to pieces.”

But as we’re reading Hosea 8, and we see a people living under their own authority though professing allegiance to God, what did God say about their ‘religious program’? Hosea 8:7-10 says, “They sow the wind [of words, lies, falsehoods], and reap the whirlwind. The stalk has no bud; [similar to the difference between wheat and tares?]. It shall never produce meal. If it should produce, aliens would swallow it up. Israel is swallowed up; [that’s the Northern Kingdom! The Southern comes much later, like 70AD!]. Now they are among the Gentiles like a vessel in which is no pleasure. For they have gone up to Assyria, like a wild donkey alone by itself; Ephraim has hired lovers. [Hiring both physical and spiritual adulterers!]. Yes, though they have hired among the nations, now I will gather them; and they shall sorrow a little, because of the burden of the king of princes.” A temporary sorrow that did not lead Israel to true repentance!

Hosea 8:11 explains God’s judgment! “Because Ephraim has made many altars for sin, [“golden calves!”], they have become for him altars for sinning.” Are you aware of any “golden calves” you bow before? What did John say in 1 John 5:21? “Little children, keep yourselves from idols. Amen?”

How convicting do you find Hosea 8:12 when God said of the famous religious people, Israel, “I have written for him the great things of My law, but they were considered a strange thing”? ‘A strange thing’? Verse 13 tells us, “For the sacrifices of My offerings they sacrifice flesh and eat it.” From Genesis through to the end of Revelation, Holy God unveiled one sacrifice for sin: the Holy Lamb of God, the Lord Jesus Christ! But you are aware: some choose “pigs” instead of the Crucified Christ lovingly given by Holy God the Father and True Redeemer!

You understand that most men ignore sin sacrifice in their lives or establish ridiculous alternatives to God’s Eternal Way! Oh, Israel was religious! They even made ‘sacrifices’ but selfishly, angrily, sinfully, crucified Christ, and ate what they deemed to be acceptable in their sight, “and God should be satisfied in the way we choose!” I don’t think so! And if you ever read the Holy Word, neither will you!

What does Hosea 8:14 then tell us? “For Israel has forgotten his Maker, and has built temples. Judah also has multiplied fortified cities; but I will send fire upon his cities, and it shall devour his palaces.” True believers today have a hard time understanding how a “chosen people” betray God’s calling? But simply and scripturally revealed, God says: “Israel CHOSE self-rule, self-will, the satisfying of their sexual, sensual desires in their way, even before My Holy Altar in and around My Holy Temple!” They even considered ‘foreign alliances’ more acceptable than the Throne of God!

It’s really interesting and informative when you read Deuteronomy 12:5-11! For those of us who are “in Christ”, it has illustrative meaning! It says: “But you shall seek the place where the Lord your God chooses, out of all your tribes, to put His name for His dwelling place; and there you shall go. There you shall take your burnt offerings, your sacrifices, your tithes, the heave offerings of your hand, your vowed offerings, your freewill offerings, the first-born of your herds and flocks.

And there you shall eat before the Lord your God, and you shall rejoice in all to which you have put your hand, you and your households, in which the Lord your God has blessed you.

You shall not at all do as we are doing here today – every man doing whatever is right in his own eyes – for as yet you have not come to the rest and the inheritance which the Lord your God is giving you.

But when you cross over the Jordan and dwell in the land which the Lord your God is giving you to inherit, and He gives you rest from all your enemies round about, so that you dwell in safety then there will be the place where the Lord your God chooses to make His name abide.”

Israel 8:14 said, “For Israel has forgotten His Maker,” while today Hosea might be asking our world around us, “Have you forgotten the Master? The Savior, the Redeemer, even called Emmanuel or “God With Us”! Is God with you?

In the old Broadman Hymnal dated 1940, published by the old Broadman Press, I came across an old hymn written by F. Whitfield from a Greek Melody. It says:

“I saw the cross of Jesus, When burdened with my sin; I sought the cross of Jesus, To give me peace within; I brought my soul to Jesus, He cleansed it in His blood; And in the cross of Jesus I found my peace with God.

I love the cross of Jesus, It tells me what I am – A vile and guilty creature, Saved only through the Lamb; No righteousness, nor merit, No beauty can I plead; Yet in the cross I glory, My title there I read.

I clasp the cross of Jesus In every trying hour, My sure and certain refuge, My never-failing tower; In every fear and conflict, I more than conqueror am; Living I’m safe, or dying, Thro’ Christ, the risen Lamb.

Sweet is the cross of Jesus! There let my weary heart Still rest in peace unshaken, Till with Him, never to part; And then in strains of glory, I’ll sing His wondrous power, Where sin can never enter, And death is known no more.” AMEN?

CHAPTER NINE

HOSEA NINE

BANKRUPTCY BUT NOT BROKENNESS

It’s amazing to me that the holy prophet of God came before His people Israel as they celebrated their identity, their harvest, their riches, but he came with God’s divine accusations of fleshly sins, spiritual betrayals, personal debauchery, blindness to His true Word, and bankruptcy without any brokenness!

The very first words of Hosea 9:1 were, “Do not rejoice, O Israel, with joy like other peoples, for you [God’s ‘chosen people’!] have played the harlot against your God. You have made love for hire on every threshing floor.” Could it be that Hosea was saying, “You have no reason to rejoice, to dance, to celebrate, to party, to sing, because your choice of lifestyles brings no honor or glory to the Holy Name of God? Israel, why rejoice when your chosen lifestyles are a disgrace to Holy God? Why dance when you’re so crippled? Why sing when your lifestyles are so off-key? Why celebrate when God’s voice is calling for the closing of your entrance into His “promised land”?

It’s almost like every word out of the prophet’s mouth is a word of ‘wake up,’ ‘repent,’ ‘return or burn’, ‘bankruptcy is your record,’ ‘poverty will be your end result,’ ‘your merry-ment will become your misery, your supposed peace will become your peril, your party-life will become your peril,’ ‘and your future will be steps into eternal disappointment’! And that’s from the prophet of God!

I often wonder how a religious world responds to a prophetic indictment! All over the modern religious world will the death of prophets still remain as a “just course of our action” because those prophets “insult” us? Might as well be, “Prophets insult us, so we kill them,” because God is the same yesterday, today, and forever; and He still looks for the next prophet in the modern day like Hosea!

And one cannot help but wonder about the future of the church at Ephesus after John had a visitation from “the First and the Last,” from “Alpha and Omega,” saying to ‘the angel of the church of Ephesus write,’ Revelation 2:4-5, “Nevertheless I have this against you, that you have left your first love. Remember therefore from where you have fallen [away]; repent, and do the first works, or else I will come to you quickly and remove your lampstand from its place – unless you repent.”

In my New King James Version of the Bible, as it begins Hebrews 6, it refers to “The Peril of Not Progressing.” Hebrews 6:4-8 says, “For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted the heavenly gift, and have become partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good word of God and the power of the age to come, if they fall away, to renew them again to repentance, since they crucify again for themselves the Son of God, and put Him to an open shame.

For the earth which drinks in the rain that often comes upon it, and bears herbs useful for those by whom it is cultivated, receives blessing from God; but if it bears thorns and briers, it is rejected and near to being cursed, whose end is to be burned.”

And the author of Hebrews added in Verse 9, “But, beloved, we are confident of better things concerning you, yes, things that accompany salvation, though we speak in this manner.”

No doubt some heard from Hosea because they understood ‘bankruptcy’ and its consequences, and no doubt some heard the Hebrews’ author’s challenge and turned away from a falling away destiny to God’s gravitational pull by His Spirit! The question of this moment is, “If you have fallen away, is it forever ‘bankruptcy’ for you, or a ‘grace-return and blessing’?

Hosea heard Holy God, in His compassionate love, grace, and mercy, and confronted Israel where they were in their gross spiritual state of falling away from Holy God! Compassion is even confrontation and exposure when one’s eternal destiny is hanging by a thin thread! So God spells it out simply and truthfully!

Holy God said to Israel and every ‘falling-away nation today,’ “You have no reason to be rejoicing, O Israel, BECAUSE: “You have played the harlot against your God! You’ve been making love for hire on every threshing floor or ‘Bourbon Street’!” Verse 3 then says, “They shall not dwell [or be ‘at home’] in the Lord’s land.” Oh, Jerusalem was occupied but that doesn’t mean that ‘they (Israel) were at home with God’!

Does Verse 3 also say, ‘but Ephraim shall return to Egypt, eat unclean things in Assyria, offer things to Holy God that are totally unacceptable, sacrifice but in no way please God,’ “ living by pretense and not possessed by God, the Savior, or the Spirit”?

Verses 5-7 should be “days of being awakened rather than days of eternal execution”! The Word says, “What will you do in the appointed day, and in the day of the feast of the Lord? For indeed they are gone because of destruction. Egypt shall gather them up; Memphis shall bury them. Nettles shall possess their valuables of silver; thorns shall be in their tents. The days of punishment have come; the days of recompense have come. Israel knows! The prophet is a fool, the spiritual man is insane (or demented), because of the greatness of your iniquity and great enmity.”

Follow Psalm 81! The chief musician sang, especially for this study, Verses 11-15! “But My people would not heed My voice, and Israel would have none of Me. So I gave them over to their own stubborn heart, to walk in their own counsels. Oh, that My people would listen to Me, that Israel would walk in My ways! I would soon subdue their enemies, and turn My hand against their adversaries. The haters of the Lord would pretend submission to Him, but their fate would endure forever.”

The end of Psalm 83:2 identifies “the proud opponents” of God! “ “…And those who hate You, God, have lifted up their head.” Arrogant unbelievers are easily identifiable – and they usually form a small army of opponents to the Truth and celebrate together their spiritual dumbness!

Even in Revelation 2:4-5 the angel to the church at Ephesus wrote, “Nevertheless I have this against you, that you have left your first love. Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent and do the first works, or else I will come to you quickly and remove your lampstand from its place – unless you repent.” What would our Lord and Savior say in these days of, sadly, profession without possession, works apart from the fruit of the Spirit, labor that does not overflow out of the heart of the love of God, a few spasmodic efforts apart from the divine infilling and overflowing of God’s anointing and aim! Are you aware that there are those who can speak about their “happiness” in church attendance but know nothing about being “blessed beyond measure”?

It would be advisable for every ‘professing believer’ to re-examine what they professed in the early days of turning to Christ Jesus, testifying of His grace, mercy, and love, truly resting in His finished work, living by the fullness of His indwelling life, knowing the overflowing blessing of Holy Spirit anointing, rich beyond measure in confidence and assurance and desire to please, honor, and bless His Holy Name, but NOW? Cold, indifferent, isolated, walking alone, away from the calling, away from obedience, away from pressing in, away from the fullness of the blessing of the gospel of Jesus Christ, away from the sharing of life, from the need of receiving from others and giving to others, away from prayer, from hearing His voice, from sensing the very beating of His heart and knowing the will of His mind – remember: “I knocked but you didn’t answer or open your heart’s door to Me?”

What does Hosea 9:8-9 tell us? “The watchmen of Ephraim is with my God; but the prophet is a fowler’s snare in all his ways – enmity [or hostility] in the house of his God.” Does modern-day ‘Christianity’ and their houses of worship see or witness both true prophets and false prophets? And are you aware that true prophets have very little ‘welcome’ in the houses of God, while false prophets are usually warmly welcomed!

“Flattery will get you nowhere?” Oh, yes, it will! And false prophets were experts at pleasing the crowds of evil-doers while true prophets were despised! But false prophets were opponents to the holy prophetic words of God and loved, especially by evil kings or rulers, deeply corrupted, drastically depraved, promoters of deception, “all-stars” of the wicked rulers!

And what did God say through Hosea in Romans 9:10-13? “I found Israel like grapes in the wilderness; I saw your fathers [Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob] as the firstfruits on the fig tree in its first season. But they [descendants of Israel’s initial spiritual giants] went to Baal Peor, and separated themselves to that shame; they became an abomination like the thing they loved.

As for Ephraim, their glory shall fly away like a bird – no birth, no pregnancy, no conception! Though they bring up their children, Yet I will bereave them to the last man, yes, woe to them when I depart from them! Just as I saw Ephraim like Tyre, planted in a pleasant place, so Ephraim will bring out his children to the murderer.”

Are you aware of how serious sin is in the example of “fruit trees” corrupted in “foreign lands”? Do you see what we read in Hosea 9:10-13 as chosen people of God exchanging their holy position for the practice of flesh worship, demon bondage, and facing sad and serious recompense? God said: “Israel, GUILTY! Israel, morally insensitive! Israel, separating themselves to shame! Israel, yielding to indifference to Holy God!” And ‘the glory departed!’

Do you grasp how serious substituting God’s grace for self-pride becomes in a “professor of allegiance” who wanders from God’s pleasant places to the hall or state of “the curse”, the downfall, the separation, the hell of exposing themselves, their wives and children, their destiny for a moment’s fleshly pleasure? Did you pause and reflect at Verse 12 when God said through Hosea, “Yes, woe to them when I depart from them!”

One would think that the “woe of God’s departure” would be a serious turning of acceptance of His will, His Way, and His wonder, but does Hosea 9:14-17 awaken you more and more about YOUR total submission to Holy God? What did Hosea say?

“Give them, O Lord – what will You give? Give them a miscarrying womb and dry breasts! [The curses of Deuteronomy 28?]. All their wickedness is in Gilgal, for there I hated them. Because of the evil of their deeds I will drive them from My house; I will love them no more. All their princes [‘religious leaders’] are rebellious.

Ephraim is stricken, their root is dried up; they shall bear no fruit. Yes, were they to bear children, I would kill the darlings of their womb.”

My God will cast them away, because they did not obey Him; and they shall be wanderers among the nations.”

Miscarrying wombs, dry breasts, open wickedness, evil deeds, driven from God’s house, rebellious religious leaders, stricken, dried up roots, no fruit, no children, cast away, wanderers among the nations, but YOU see them as “blessed of God”? The “blessed” are the holy remnant not the majority of Israel!

Always remember, “By their fruits you shall know them.” And that hasn’t changed! Spiritual barrenness is not a blessing! I believe I would thoroughly examine what Peter was talking about when in 2 Peter 1:5-10 he wrote: “But also for this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness, to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love. For if these things are yours and abound, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For he who lacks these things is shortsighted, even to blindness, and has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins.”

Dr. Ed Vallowe, in his book, “Prophetic Preaching From Hosea,” [p.65], wrote: He shall ‘Cast them away.’ To be cast out by human society is terrible: to be cut off and cast away by God is more terrible! She was set aside to become wanderers among the nations. Such has been her lot and her sorrows ever since. The poor, suffering, sorrowing, wandering Jew!…She was Rejoicing in Prosperity. She reaps Poverty.”

Tell me about your ‘journey’ with Holy God!

CHAPTER TEN

HOSEA TEN

FATAL FRUITLESSNESS – FULL CHASTENING

Can you imagine a time for a fruit farmer to do everything in his own power to produce a bountiful harvest of fruit, invites his family and friends to a “joyous” occasion, even fruit buyers arrived for the big day, but then the “Overseer” announced, “There are beautiful vines, adoringly beautiful, seemingly so healthy, but then the owner is humbled in having to announce to all, ‘There is no abiding fruit – the vines are all empty; they have failed concerning why they are fruit vines.’”

And the parallel truth is: “Look at the nation of Israel – she is an empty vine; though abounding in appearance with her beautiful vines, gorgeous in appearance as ‘fruit vines’, but non-productive in the growth and abundance of a fruitful harvest! Cut the vines down – they’ve failed in their eternal purpose!”

A “Chosen People” for an eternal purpose and plan, but her ‘spiritual leaders’ are blinded by their ‘fallen flesh’ and given over to corruption rather than given over to the honor and glory of God! There wasn’t the testimony of the high praises of God through them but the low, sinful nature of foolish purposes, selfish ideals, low-minded intents, as they were held captive to idol worship, held captive to corrupt satisfactions, and were held captive to demonic and devilish control!

Fatal fruitlessness was the stumbling stone and full chastening was the divine reality for a foolish, faithless, faulty, failing people who proclaimed allegiance to God but were deceived into idol worship and ‘fleshly playing’ with a fallen away desire to satisfy their lusts and sin natures! Let’s look together at these fifteen verses in Hosea Chapter 10 as Holy God exposed their inner manifestation of evil intent as He unveiled their spiritual state and fatal, faulty, foolish ‘religious game’ called “Deception Before God Who Is Not Blind”!

Hosea 10:1 says, “Israel empties his vine; he brings forth fruit for himself! According to the multitude of his fruit he has increased the altars; according to the bounty of his land they have embellished his sacred pillars.”

I don’t know how even an unbeliever could deny how Israel faced God’s judgment! The ‘emptying of Israel’s vine’ was self-imposed, self-centered paths they chose for themselves. And one thing should be learned by every Bible student if he/she doesn’t already know it: “Religious prosperity is not necessarily the blessing of Almighty God but the ‘best’ of a fallen sin nature and carnal expressions of pagan worship but not the true worship of Holy God!” Trees can produce beautiful leaves but be worthless for producing healthy fruits!

“Empty vines” are indicative of empty lives or nations, maybe churches or even marriages! I don’t know of a more convicting passage than God saying through Hosea, “Israel is an empty vine!” What a sad, heart-breaking analysis by God that should have brought Israel to brokenness, repentance, and true redemptive faith, but Israel worshipped more pagan gods, built more disgraceful altars, and plunged deeper into the depths of the sea of sinful satisfaction! The reason?

Hosea 10:2 clearly says, under God’s anointing, “Their (Israel) heart is divided; (that means ‘faithless’, ‘compromising’, or ‘trashing God’s Truth’!); now they are held guilty; He [Holy God] will break down their altars; He will ruin their sacred pillars.”

The New Testament parallel? Examine John 15:1-6 as Jesus spoke in His day: “I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit. You [Disciples of Christ] are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit, for without Me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered; and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned.” [That’s unbelievers, compromisers, atheists, agnostics, folks with head knowledge of Truth but no surrender to the Truth!].

“Their heart [Israel’s heart] is divided,” faithless, compromising, trashing God’s Truth!” And when you read that, does it suggest to you warped opinions about life, about purpose, and about the God who made us, then lost us because of our ‘greater love’ for the sinful nature and fleshly lusts? Is a ‘divided heart’ the distinct picture of ‘unbelief’? Is that a heart, mind, and soul, overcome by his/her unbelief, that so clouds one’s existence that Truth becomes a lie and a lie becomes their guiding light of life, which is nothing more than total darkness and spiritual blindness?

It was Horatius Bonar who once said: “In all unbelief there are these two things: a good opinion of one’s self, and a bad opinion of God.” [“The Encyclopedia of Religious Quotations,” Fleming H. Revell Company, Westwood, New Jersey,p.456]. And, there is no doubt, Israel came to the place of a bad opinion of God because they were so in love with their degeneracy, overcome and enslaved to their ‘divided hearts’!

Hosea 10:3-4 unveils even more of a nation’s rebellious heart! Verse 3, “We have no king, no fear of God! What could a God or a king do for us?” In their walk of fleshly pride, false gods, foolish devotions, though they ‘made covenants,’ they ‘swore falsely’, even as they made covenants with God and idols, and their false seeds sprang up like poison in the fields of their individual lives and corporate allegiances!

And their sad confession? “We have no king”! And, at this point in Israel’s existence, I find this a cry of desperation, even with no intent to look to Holy God to make the difference in their nation’s identity! Does it literally “blow your mind” to see a people divinely created with eternal purpose who finds itself in deep, deep trouble, but has no intent in “turning” but just excusing who they are and what they’ve done? “We have no king, nor any fear of God!” Is 2016 AD any different for Israel?

Hosea 10:5-6 amplifies the guilt of Israel as they admitted in the two previous verses that they had no king, no true lord, no master, “because we did not fear the Lord,” and then they berated their rulers who only “spoke words, swearing falsely in making a covenant”! Oh, and then Verses 5-6 exposes their guilt!

“The inhabitants of Samaria fear because of the calf of Beth Aven. For its people mourn for it, and its priests shriek for it – because its glory has departed from it. The idol also shall be carried to Assyria as a present for King Jareb. Ephraim shall receive shame, and Israel shall be ashamed of his own counsel.”

Do you understand ‘the calf of Beth Aven’? That’s an ‘idol’ and Beth Aven is ‘the wicked house’ – and Israel and her priests mourned over its emptiness and its priests cried out for it! And you wonder why God judged Israel? As their ‘idol’ was carried away, Verse 6b, “Ephraim shall receive shame, and Israel shall be ashamed of his own counsel”! Have you ever heard someone say to you, “What a fool I’ve been – how could I ever have fallen for that ‘garbage’?”

Remember: Hosea 10 relates to the sinfulness of God’s degenerate people bringing forth fruit for its self, and Verses 7-8 tells us, “As for Samaria, her king is cut off like a twig on the water. Also the high places of Aven, the sin of Israel, shall be destroyed. The thorn and thistle shall grow on their altars; they shall say to the mountains, ‘Cover us!’ and to the hills, ‘Fall on us!’

Does Revelation 6:12-17 seem to be an exact re-occurring in New Testament days as it was in Old Testament days, and especially through the ministry time of Hosea? It’s identical in God’s holy judgment! Do you think in these modern days the same context and judgment occurs? Follow the Beloved John’s word!

I looked when He opened the sixth seal, and behold, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became like blood. And the stars of heaven fell to the earth, as a fig tree drops its late figs when it is shaken by a mighty wind. Then the sky receded as a scroll when it is rolled up, and every mountain and island was moved out of its place. And the kings of the earth, the great men, the rich men, the commanders, the mighty men, every slave and every free man, hid themselves in the caves and in the rocks of the mountains, and said to the mountains and rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of Him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb! For the great day of His wrath has come, and who is able to stand?”

What did Hosea record in Hosea 10:8? The thorn and thistle shall grow on their altars; they shall say to the mountains, “Cover us!” and to the hills, “Fall on us!” So?

God addresses Israel’s sin and every nation and every man’s sin. THEY ARE AND WE ARE HELD ACCOUNTABLE! In Hosea 10:9-11, There IS confrontation! “O Israel, you have sinned from the days of Gibeah; there they stood. The battle in Gibeah against the children of iniquity did not overtake them. When it is My desire, I will chasten them. Peoples shall be gathered against them when I bind them for their two transgressions. Ephraim is a trained heifer that loves to thresh grain; but I harnessed her fair neck, I will make Ephraim pull a plow. Judah shall plow; Jacob shall break his clods.”

Merciful God, though angry with Israel, opens His heart for ALL to see, especially those who are as reckless and defiant as Israel was and still is! My wife and I have a dear, dear friend who has ministered in Israel for years. The only problem she has is that Israelites have no desire to hear what she has to say about their Messiah! And her ministry, in Israel, is primarily to Muslim women that she disciples regularly!

What is God telling us today through Hosea? I’m sure you’ve already learned, even through His patience with you, but especially as He dealt with Israel, the “chosen people,” century after century, clearly hesitating to bring His judgment upon them. Even though disciplined by the Lord, they continued in their rebellious, defiant ways, and then Verse ten tells us, “God will roar like a lion. When He roars, then His sons shall come trembling from the west…”. I’m sure you understand that there was a “remnant” in Israel as, no doubt, there is today, but the majority of Israel does NOT tremble before the Lord!

Do you know what God said in Ezekial 18:30-32? “Therefore I will judge you, O house of Israel, every one according to his ways,” says the Lord God. “Repent, and turn from all your transgressions, so that iniquity will not be your ruin. Cast away from you all the transgressions which you have committed, and get yourselves a new heart and a new spirit. For why should you die, O house of Israel? FOR I [GOD] HAVE NO PLEASURE IN THE DEATH OF ONE WHO DIES,” says the Lord God. “Therefore turn and live!” You ARE AWARE of “the wages of sin”!

Israel joined themselves to “two calves” and they plowed “two furrows”. Simply, Israel “bound” themselves with whatever seemed reasonable for them in their fallen state! These “two” unions may be what Jeremiah referred to in Jeremiah 2:13! The prophet Jeremiah stated God’s ,yes, broken-heart when He looked upon Israel and said, “For My people have committed two evils; they have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters, and hewn themselves cisterns – broken cisterns that can hold no water.” That was allegiance to idols! Not God!

But, do YOU desire the favor and blessing of Holy God on your life? Hosea 10:12 tells Israel and all seekers today: “Sow for yourselves righteousness; reap in mercy; break up your fallow ground, for IT IS TIME TO SEEK THE LORD, till He comes and rains righteousness on you.” Do you realize that’s God’s calling on every or any nation across our world today? Merciful God, compassionate God, seeking God has no desire for any to perish separated from Him! “God so loved the world” and still does!

What does Isaiah 55:6-7 tell us today? “Seek the Lord while He may be found, call upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the Lord, and He will have mercy on him, and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon.”

But, I pray, don’t skip over or read lightly Hosea 10:13! “Israel, you have plowed wickedness; you have reaped iniquity. You have eaten the fruit of lies, BECAUSE you trusted in your own way, in the multitude of your mighty men.” Plowing a field of iniquity, like a sinful life, always has the same result: a life of sin in bondage to the very nature and character of Satan himself! Sinners are blinded because they rest in themselves, their own abilities, their own strengths even in trusting their own weaknesses, and are assured, in themselves, that their abilities, their skills, their ambitions, will be all they’ll ever need! Self-will, self-power, self-ambition produces that demonic bondage, “fool’s gold,” and ‘fake’ pleasures! Without God is what John Greenleaf Whittier was writing about in one of his poems when he said: “Oh, doom beyond the saddest guess, as the long years of God unroll, To make thy dreary selfishness the prison of a soul!”

Without God man IS an imprisoned soul! What you sow in the soil of your life will have good harvests or failing fields – God-honoring lives or fallow, hard, unproductive results – plowed hearts sown with the good seed of God’s heart, will, and ways or unproductive fields sown with fleshly seeds of death and indifference to God’s will!

So what does Hosea wrap the tenth chapter up with? Hosea 10:14-15 says, “Therefore tumult shall arise among your people, and all your fortresses [YOUR strongholds] shall be plundered as Shalman plundered Beth Arbel in the day of battle – a mother dashed in pieces upon her children. Thus it shall be done to you, O Bethel, because of your great wickedness. At dawn the king of Israel shall be cut off utterly.”

Hear me! If it’s your strength to fight your own battles, like Israel, defeat is sure, with your future as dark as Israel is even today! Dr. Fred M. Wood said in his book on Hosea, “Hosea: Prophet of Reconciliation”, “The power Israel trusted would be the power that brought her down. She thought her safety was through treaties with foreign powers – a contradiction of everything God had taught through His prophets. Foreign powers were God’s means of judgment.” That still holds true today! Any ‘God-fearing” nation that looks to someone other than Him faces sure judgment! Where is YOUR nation or to whom is your nation seeking?

CHAPTER ELEVEN

THE AWESOMENESS OF GOD’S UNENDING MERCY

Hosea 11

Would you ever consider that God’s love and mercy and grace is conditional? When His Word says “God so loved the world…”, does it impress upon us that His love is limited? I tell you, I personally have a hard, hard time even attempting to unveil the awesomeness of God’s unending mercy and His never-ending love for all men!

Righteous preachers (?) so insist on righteous repentance and righteous restoration and righteous purpose in life that the love, grace, and mercy of God for all men is avoided, even teaching by some, “How could God love sinful people and a sinful world?”, neglecting the revelation of God’s Truth that Christ died on the cruel Cross for all men!

Maybe the words of Jesus Himself will help you understand how much He desired Israel to trust Him, rely upon Him, and rest in Him! Matthew 23:37-38 tells us, Jesus speaking, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing! See! Your house is left to you desolate…”

Hosea 11:1 says, God speaking, “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called My son. Hosea 11:2 then says, “As they called them [the prophets of God were calling Israel out!], so they went from them [that’s Israel running from the prophets and God to idols!]; they sacrificed to the Baals, and burned incense to carved images.”

The compassionate and long-suffering Spirit of Holy God is seen so clearly as one reads through this eleventh chapter of Hosea. Though God’s controversy with Israel still remains to this day, one cannot, must not, dare not, overlook the unveiled heart of Holy God for the nation of Israel – they were the nation that birthed Christ through Mary, yes, the chosen mother of Emmanuel!! And God still longs for their salvation as He does all the world!

What did God say in Hosea 11:1? “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called My son,” but Israel refused to answer or respond repentantly to Holy God. God’s mercy was denied, God’s grace was belittled, and His Holy love was ignored! Amazing love, how can it be, that God so great and compassionate and merciful, should be rejected by His chosen people! But He was!

In Hosea 11:8-9 hear the broken heart of God as He opens His bruised and battered heart by Israel’s rejection! “How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, Israel? How can I make you like Admah? How can I set you like Zeboiim? My heart churns within Me; My sympathy is stirred. I will not execute the fierceness of My anger; I will not destroy Ephraim. For I am God, and not man, the Holy One in your midst; and I will not come with terror.”

Long before Hosea arrived on the scene the history of Judaism was a history related to Holy God that was so shameful! God blessed Israel, and blessed, and blessed, and kept on blessing, but the nation was intent on idolatry, the nation was intent on a ‘fleshly religion’ satisfying their sinful lusts, unmindful of God’s unveiling of His eternal intent, unappreciative of all the miraculous deliverances, unexcited about His faithful provisions!

Look again at Hosea 11:1-2! “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called My son. As they [the prophets] called them, so they went from them; they sacrificed to the Baals, and burned incense to carved images.”

But one must respect and honor and bless the Name that is above all names even if the majority of the known world is in opposition to Holy God, although many will acknowledge Him and include Him in their list of ‘respectable gods’! But William Shakespeare really nailed it strongly when in his writing entitled “Henry VI”, Part 11, [Act 1V, sc.1,L. 124], wrote: “Rather let my head stoop to the block than these knees bow to any Save to the God of Heaven.” To whom are you bowing today? Every day one, yes, bows to the God or gods he serves!

Oh, but then notice what God said in Hosea 11:3-4! “I taught Ephraim to walk, taking them by their arms;” But they did not know that I healed them. I drew them with gentle cords, with bands of love, and I was to them as those who take the yoke from their neck. I stooped and fed them.

Isn’t it amazing to you how loving, merciful, ruling God, stepped out of Heaven and taught the Abrahams, Isaacs, Jacobs, Moses, the prophets, King David, and entrusted them with His Holy Word, Holy Laws, Holy Invitations, and their people found only the few who truly submitted to Holy God and His eternal Word and will? How do you respond to what God said in Deuteronomy 1:30-32? The Lord your God, who goes before you, He will fight for you, according to all He did for you in Egypt before your eyes, and in the wilderness where you saw how the Lord your God carried you, as a man carries his son, in all the way that you went until you came to this place. Yet, for all that, you did not believe the Lord your God…”

They didn’t know Holy God really knew them or cared about them; they didn’t know or understand or truly respond in submission and obedience to His every word; Holy God “set the captives free” and gave them a new destiny! He “broke the yoke of bondage, slavery, pain, and insignificance” – they were “children of God!” And that was all because of His great love, yes, for Israel, the world, and for you and me!

But even after the divine deliverance of being set free, rejection, rebellion, and resistance to God’s Holy leadership erupted! Examine Hosea 11:5-7 when, even after God’s marvelous, miraculous, merciful intervention, Israel turned away from Him, and “fell” into lust, lawlessness, no love for God, serving His enemies and their loathsome sin natures!

Hosea 11:5-7 says, “He shall not return to the land of Egypt; but the Assyrian shall be his king, because they refused to repent. And the sword shall slash in his cities, devour his districts, and consume them, because of their own counsels.

My people are bent on backsliding from Me. Though they call to the Most High, none at all exalt Him.”

Do you remember the Song of Moses in Exodus 15? Exodus 15:1-2 reads, Then Moses and the children of Israel sang this song to the Lord, and spoke, saying: “I will sing to the Lord, for He has triumphed gloriously! The horse and its rider He has thrown into the sea! The Lord is my strength and song, and He has become my salvation; He is my God, and I will praise Him; My father’s God, and I will exalt Him.”

Question of the day! “Have YOU refused to return to Holy God, to Jesus our Lord and Savior, refusing to bow any longer to His Kingship, Lordship, even resenting the truth that He forgives you?” Is that because you’ve chosen ‘lordship’ in yourself and your own ‘sovereignty’ and fleshly rule over self? Your choice: “my rule” over myself or God’s rule over me?” “My fleshly intent or God’s eternal purpose?” “Alliances with men or loyalty to Holy God?” But Israel refused, and still does, to yield and submit to Christ Jesus as Lord and Savior and Master over all of life!

Hosea 11:8-9 unveils the beautiful, blessed heart of Holy God! “How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, Israel? How can I make you like Admah? How can I set you like Zeboiim? My heart churns within Me; My sympathy is stirred. I will not execute the fierceness of My anger; I will not again destroy Ephraim. For I am God, and not man, the Holy One in your midst; and I will not come with terror.” In Genesis 18:25 Abraham asked the Lord, “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?” And He does! Consider the Cross of Christ?

Though a world strays, He still seeks! Though a world rejects, He still sent His Son! Though the world spirit crucified Him, God resurrected Jesus, and He still says, “Come unto Me, and I will give you rest!” And even as Israel and a sinful world was ready to nail Him to the Cross, He still could weep over the city, over the people, over a rejecting world, yes, dying of a broken heart because of man’s rejection of Emmanuel, “God in the flesh” dying for sin and all sinners!

In Hosea 11:10-11 Hosea opens the door of continuous hope for Israel, though most of Israel rejected God then and rejects God even now! The Word says, “They shall walk after the Lord. He will roar like a lion. When He roars, then His sons shall come trembling from the west; they shall come trembling like a bird from Egypt, like a dove from the land of Assyria. And I will let them dwell in their houses,” says the Lord.

God never did and never does give up hope for the true salvation of Israel, and all the world! To say it’s only ‘future’ for Israel is to close the door on God’s past, present, and future for Israel! I’m telling you, Christ Jesus always has been, forever is, and forever will be Savior and Lord of Jewish people who repent and receive, and rest in His finished work! Doesn’t Revelation 7:5 call Christ Jesus “the Lion of the tribe of Judah”?

It’s not God’s desire for any Jew, any man, of any nation to live in captivity, but to know Christ Jesus, the Lord of true liberation! But…

Examine carefully Hosea 11:12 where the prophet Hosea declared, “Ephraim has encircled Me with lies, and the house of Judah with deceit; but Judah still walks with God, even with the Holy One who is faithful.”

Do you understand, comprehend that a people professing a semblance of faith can be a people, even a nation, that ‘encircles God Almighty with lies’, yes, even deceit, professing one thing but doing another? But, praise God, for Judah who for a long period walked in faith and loyalty, and “the house of praise let God rule”, and loyalty became their name of true dedication to Holy God! How will your name be identified when you stand before Holy God to give an account of your faith or lack of it?

CHAPTER TWELVE

A RETURN TO DEVOTION OR A RETURN TO DECEITFUL WAYS?

HOSEA 12

Don’t you find it interesting that a people like Israel can verbally declare allegiance and faithfulness to Holy God and at the same time open the doors of Hell wide for easy entrance to sinful pleasures? But still they profess, “We are the people of God!”

Pretense is such a sinful rebellion that many people rest in and truly believe they are alright with God! Pretense is falsehood, pretense is religious sham and shamefulness, pretense is the ultimate exploitation of a holy life God intended for Israel to walk in, pretense is corruption with one’s whole life, even as a religious nation like Israel, sadly corrupted!

Holy God, the Living Lord, the inviolate Holy Spirit stand up! The Godhead is offended, the throne is shamed, the will and trust had been transgressed – Israel decided turning from God was their best solution, independence was legitimate, self-reliance was permissible and rewarding, and ‘trust’ in flesh and blood rulers, fleshly alliances, idolatrous nations, would keep them in safety, security, and the satisfaction of fleshly pleasures! Deceitful ways was Israel’s earthly choice! So Holy God sends an anointed prophet!

BUT NEVER FORGET THE “REMNANT”! That’s why in the last verse of Hebrews 11, Verse 12, we read: “But Judah still walks with God, even with the Holy One who is faithful.” Yes, even in the midst of a sinful, religious world, and a religious world professing allegiance, but living lives alienated from God, there are those true disciples, faithful priests, devoted servants, who will follow God even to their deaths if necessary!

Returning to their deceitful ways? It was Ezekial who wrote in Ezekial 18:1-2, The word of the Lord came to me again, saying, “What do you mean when you use this proverb concerning the land of Israel, saying: ‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.” Does “like father, like son” ring true for most of Israel? And what does Hosea 12:1-2 reemphasize again and again? “Ephraim feeds on the wind, and pursues the east wind; he daily increases lies and desolation. Also they make a covenant with the Assyrians, and oil is carried to Egypt. The Lord also brings a charge against Judah, and will punish Jacob according to his ways; according to his deeds He will recompense him.” Jacob? Or is it the descendants that God exposes? [Just check the years between Jacob in the flesh and his descendants many, many years later!]

I appreciate how Dr. Fred M. Wood discussed ‘Jacob’ in his book on Hosea entitled, “Hosea: Prophet of Reconciliation,” [p.113], using past history to highlight a present reality! He wrote: “The prophet did not mean to suggest Israel inherited the guilt of her forefathers. Hosea was no fatalist. The people made the choice themselves with their own free will. They were, however, following directly in the footsteps of the ambitious and tricky Jacob [or his later descendants!]. Although outward things had changed, Judah and ‘Jacob’s’ conduct were very much alike.”

There’s no doubt that in Jacob’s early days he was a shyster, a conniver, even trying to manipulate God, but Holy God saw eternal potential in Jacob, and just as spiritually visual for the early Jacob under God’s blessing, so the later line of Jacob was potential for the nation Israel! [Remember, it was Jacob, not Esau that God chose!]. As God waited on Jacob to mature, he’ll wait on you and me!

Hosea 12:6 says, “So you, by the help of your God, return; observe mercy and justice, and wait on your God continually.” What an awesome word of hope for any man, any woman, any individual!

But repentance, turning from self, the world, and demonic control, and trusting God’s faithful Word, one finds healing, deliverance, salvation and Holy Presence! What did Christ Jesus say in Revelation 3:18-21? “I counsel you to buy from Me gold refined in the fire, that you may be rich; and white garments, that you may be clothed, that the shame of your nakedness may not be revealed; and anoint your eyes with eye salve that you may see. As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten. Therefore be zealous and repent. Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me. To him who overcomes, I will grant to sit with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne.”

Doesn’t that word in Hosea 12:6 encourage, uplift, and raise you up because of “God’s help”? “So you, by the help of your God, return!” Dare I tell you? I don’t believe a man “returns” apart from God’s “help”! And I don’t believe you’ll find true mercy and justice apart from the very nature and character and heart of God Almighty! Did Hosea then say, “and wait on your God continually”?

In Isaiah 40:28-31 the prophet gives us all a word of eternal hope and heavenly help! “Have you not known? Have you not heard? The everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, neither faints nor is weary. His understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the weak, and to those who have no might He increases strength. Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall, But those WHO WAIT ON THE LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.”

“So you, by the help of your God, return;…wait on your God continually.” You WILL SEE HIM give power to the weak! You will see Him increase strength! You will see Him give you ‘wings’ like eagles to soar in the heavenly places! That’s “by the help of your God!”

Oh, but then “flesh” rises up, the “old sin nature” still seeks to control, manipulate, and dominate! Hosea 12:7-8 says, “A cunning Canaanite! Deceitful scales are in his hand; he loves to oppress. And Ephraim said, ‘Surely I have become rich, I have found wealth for myself; In all my labors they shall find in me no iniquity that is sin.’”

“I”, “I”, “I”, “I”, and “I” can do as I please; I am able; I am strong; I am wise, so who needs God’s help? You understand – Israel saw no need of “GOD” in fulfilling her fleshly or spiritual needs or desires! Like a lost, dying, perishing world today, God’s ‘holy help’ is unimportant!

The “blood redeemed” by Holy God were to be ‘point men and women’ (!), divinely appointed by Him to be “the holy priesthood”, “visible worshippers”, “instruments in God’s Hand” to touch their world with His love, grace, mercy, Holy Truth, heavenly mission through earthly presence, even heavenly examples of God’s eternal design for redeemed, restored, renewed, and divinely released spiritual sons and daughters of Holy God!

But Israel became examples of ‘business deception,’ ‘false scales,’ ‘costly apostasy,’ ‘unveiled, unashamed, fraudulent, God-dishonoring motives and intents,’ ‘examples of ill-gotten gains’ as if ordained by God Himself! “Nothing immoral about us! We’re God’s chosen! And we represent Him!” Really? So God continues to bless and honor the nation that crucified His Son? Or does He hold on to hope or to the few that became and becomes the “remnant” of His eternal desire for Israel and all nations and peoples of the world?

Alexander Maclaren, in his Expositions of Holy Scriptures that included Hosea in his Minor Prophets’ studies, shared a strong statement about Israel on Page 124, saying: “So obstinately unconscious are we of our ruin that even God’s voice, whether uttered in definite words, or speaking in sharp sorrows and punitive acts, but too often fails to pierce the thick layer of self-complacency in which we wrap ourselves, and to pierce the heart with the arrow of conviction. Indeed we may say that the whole process of divine education of a soul, conducted through many channels of providences, has for its end mainly this – to convince His wandering children that to be against Him, against their Help, is their destruction.”

That leads us to Hosea 12:9-11! God says, “But I am the Lord your God, ever since the land of Egypt; I will again make you dwell in tents, as in the days of the appointed feast. I have also spoken by the prophets, and have multiplied visions; I have given symbols through the witness of the prophets.” Though Gilead has idols – surely they are vanity – though they sacrifice bulls in Gilgal, indeed their altars shall be heaps in the furrows of the field.”

God says, “YOU may have forgotten, but I am the Lord your God; ‘tent days’ are on the way because of your sin! Israel, you’ve turned deaf ears to My voice, to the voices of My prophets, and you’ve ignored visions and dreams, settling in to iniquity, false idols, false visions, vain worship of false gods, receiving demons thinking that they are My angels! Wake up! Your plowed fields are producing only poisonous crops!

Then chapter Twelve of Hosea is closed out, Verses 12-14! “Jacob fled to the country of Syria; Israel served for a spouse, and for a wife he tended sheep. By a prophet the Lord brought Israel out of Egypt, and by a prophet he was preserved. Ephraim provoked Him to anger most bitterly; Therefore his Lord will leave the guilt of his bloodshed upon him, and return his reproach upon him.”

Israel was neither deaf nor blind concerning its history nor the history of Jacob and Moses. But through the years truth WAS compromised, true leaders were rejected, false religions and devotions to idols became the ‘main stream’ of radical Judaism, and willful transgressions erupted in severe retribution as the Eternal Judge issued His verdict and assured Israel of His recompense!

Are you aware of even teachings across the church world today that “God ignores the sins of believers”? I repeat Hosea 12:14 again in closing: “Ephraim provoked Him to anger most bitterly; therefore his Lord will leave the guilt of his bloodshed upon him, and return his reproach upon him.” Guilt and reproach are returned gifts that God bestows on every sinful man, unbeliever OR believer! God does not lie!

But one Holy Truth we find about the Author of Truth, Holy God: God is merciful and does not take delight in the spiritual death of any man! God warns, and yes, even threatens, hoping sinful men turn away from their fleshly lives, seeking Holy God’s mercy, grace, and Truth! That’s true of men AND nations! When His appeals to you are over, when His patience has appealed to the sinner, and when death comes, THEN there is no offer for the appeal – only the Judgment Seat of sentencing to Heaven or Hell!

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

RELENTLESS SIN – RELENTLESS JUDGMENT

HOSEA 13

How did you respond as you heard Julia Ward Howe’s “Battle Hymn of the Republic”, and especially the Verse that said, “He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat, He is sifting out the hearts of men before His Judgment Seat”?

It was Orin Philip Gifford who once wrote, “You may juggle human laws, you may fool with human courts, but there is a judgment to come, and from it there is no appeal.”

There is a coming “weighing” day, and I have no desire to be weighed in the balances, and ‘found wanting’!

But as Hosea 13 opens, in God’s judgment on faithless, disobedient, reckless, and unreconciled Israel, God unveils what is coming for the “idol worshippers”: “When Ephraim spoke, trembling, he exalted himself in Israel; but when he offended through Baal worship, he died. Now they sin more and more, and have made for themselves molded images, idols of their silver, according to their skill; all is the work of craftsmen. They say of them, ‘Let the men who sacrifice kiss the calves!’ [And the result of what you “kiss” or bow to?], Therefore they shall be like the morning cloud and like the early dew that passes away, like chaff blown off from a threshing floor and like smoke from a chimney.”

Are you aware of how merciful Holy God was to Israel in the early days of their history? But, over the years, a rising independence and a strong self-assertiveness began to control what Israel became, yes, even an enemy of Holy God! Do “ruptures” occur in spiritual living if one becomes careless of one’s devotion to Holy God and His will and His Word? Oh, and then, even ‘spiritual lives’ can deteriorate and mobilize a crowd of rebellious followers with nations, and churches, poisoned in disastrous choices! And the result? “Therefore they shall be like the morning cloud and like the early dew that passes away, like the chaff blown off from a threshing floor and like smoke from a chimney – brief appearances and then vanished from the Holy Presence by sinful attitudes and sin-sick choices!

I personally find it so astonishing that people can be introduced to Truth, follow it for awhile, and then slowly or boldly walk away from King Jesus and all He asks of a true follower: “Why call Me Lord, Lord, but not do what I say?” And the result?

Let’s examine Hosea 13:4-8! “Yet I am the Lord your God ever since the land of Egypt, and you shall know no God but Me; for there is no savior besides Me. I knew you in the wilderness, in the land of great drought. When they had pasture, they were filled; they were filled and their heart was exalted; therefore they forgot Me. So I will be to them like a lion; like a leopard by the road I will lurk; I will meet them like a bear deprived of her cubs; I will tear open their rib cage, and there I will devour them like a lion. The wild beast shall tear them.”

THERE IS NO GOD OUTSIDE THE REALITY OF THE GOD OF THE BIBLE, THE GOD CALLED EMMANUEL, THE GOD BIRTHED BY MARY WHO WAS NAMED JESUS, THE GOD WHO SAID, “I AND THE FATHER ARE ONE,” THE GOD WHO IS THE HOLY SPIRIT – THE THREE IN ONE: GOD THE FATHER, GOD THE SON, AND GOD THE HOLY SPIRIT, THE GOD CRUCIFIED, BURIED, AND RESURRECTED, THAT’S CHRIST JESUS, THE GOD WHO RULES AND REIGNS AND ALWAYS WILL!

And what did Hosea prophetically write about Jehovah, the Self-existing Ruler of the Ages? “I am..,” “I am the Lord your God,” “I’ve fed you day by day your whole existence,” “There’s no Deliverer but Me,” “I am your Protector, I am your Provider, I am your Defender,” “And you have no other God who hears and answers your prayers.” Did Hosea say that it is the Lord your God and “you shall know no God but Me”? No eternal needs are ever met by any person, any imagined ‘god’, any ‘self-determined’ individual , or a ‘self-ruling nation’ who senses only their “best”!

Are you familiar with Deuteronomy 8:11-20? Moses wrote: “Beware that you do not forget the Lord your God by not keeping His commandments, His judgments, and His statutes which I command you today, lest – when you have eaten and are full, and have built beautiful houses and dwell in them, and when your herds and your flocks multiply, and your silver and gold are multiplied; when your heart is lifted up, and you forget the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage;

Who led you through that great and terrible wilderness, in which were fiery serpents and scorpions and thirsty land where there was no water; who brought water for you out of the flinty rock; who fed you in the wilderness with manna, which your fathers did not know, that He might humble you and that He might test you, to do you good in the end – then you say in your heart, ‘My power and the might of my hand have gained me this wealth.’

And you shall remember the Lord your God, for it is He who gives you power to get wealth, that He may establish His covenant which He swore to your fathers, as it is this day. Then it shall be, if you by any means forget the Lord your God, and follow other gods, and serve them and worship them, I testify against you this day that you shall surely perish. As the nations which the Lord destroys before you, so you shall perish, because you would not be obedient to the voice of the Lord your God.”

What did God say through Hosea 13:8? ‘I will meet them like a bear deprived of her cubs; I will tear open their rib cage, and there I will devour them like a lion. The wild beast shall tear them.” Notice the “like a bear,” – symbolic wording but eternally true event for those who forget the Lord God!

In I Thessalonians 5:1-5 Paul wrote equipping a spiritual son in necessary wisdom. He said: “But concerning the times and the season, brethren, you have no need that I should write to you. For you yourselves know perfectly [Do YOU?] that the day of the Lord so comes as a thief in the night. For when they say, ‘Peace and safety!’ then sudden destruction comes upon them, as labor pains upon a pregnant woman. And they shall not escape. But you, brethren, are not in darkness, so that this Day should overtake you as a thief. You are all sons of light and sons of the day. We are not of the night nor of darkness.”

Did you notice in Hosea 8:7-8 about a people unwilling to yield or surrender to God with the result of Holy God wooing His people, willing to make an eternal difference in them forever, but Israel disavowed His wooings, denied His warnings, and willfully went away, “We do it our way!”

I remind you of God’s Word in Hebrews 10:26-31! “For if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful expectation of judgment, and fiery indignation which will devour the adversaries. Anyone who has rejected Moses’ law dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. Of how much worse punishment, do you suppose, will he be thought worthy who has trampled the Son of God underfoot, counted the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified a common thing, and insulted the Spirit of grace? For we know Him who said, ‘Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,’ says the Lord. And again, ‘The Lord WILL JUDGE HIS PEOPLE.’ It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”

And what is the further warning God laid down for Israel through Hosea in Hosea 13:9? “O Israel, you are destroyed, but your help is from Me.” How often did Holy God warn Israel about “acting presumptuously” without any consideration before Him of loyalty, love, obedience, and submission? Oh, there was a “remnant”, and still is, no doubt, who walk under His authority and Spirit, but the majority God has set aside! Disobedience is an eternal curse for nations, men, or families – and I believe even for some ‘churches’ (?)!

When you examine Hosea 13:10-11, you find God’s heart for Israel never changed in His desire to be their Lord and Savior, but Israel was unwilling! God said, “I will be your King; where is any other, that he may save you in all your cities? And your judges to whom you said, Give me a king and princes? I gave you a king in My anger, and took him away in My wrath.”

Whether it is Israel as a nation or a ‘man’ as lord unto himself, has that frame of reference changed at all? Are nations and men today determined to ‘walk alone’ without God as Lord, Savior, Master, and King over their hearts and homes? And the end result? Look at Hosea 13:12-13! “The iniquity of Ephraim is bound up; his sin is stored up. The sorrows of a woman in childbirth shall come upon him. He is an unwise son, for he should not stay long where children are born.” You just read in 1 Thessalonians 5 about ‘sudden destruction’ coming upon the disobedient and independent like a woman in childbirth with severe pains! And that doesn’t change in a man’s journey apart from resting in the finished work of Christ Jesus and the promises of Holy God!

Hosea 13:14 says what? God speaking: “I will ransom them from the power of the grave; I will redeem them from death. O Death, I will be your plagues! O Grave, I will be your destruction! Pity is hidden from My eyes.” Does Holy God still extend divine mercy as He did to Israel? “Mercy” is God’s middle name and eternal purpose, but, as Israel, so among most men, they turn deaf ears to His voice of “Mercy” and go on in self-destruction! And the end result?

Examine Hosea 13:15-16! “Though he (Israel) is fruitful among his brethren, an east wind shall come; the wind of the Lord shall come up from the wilderness. Then his spring shall become dry, and his fountain shall be dried up. He shall plunder the treasury of every desirable prize.” Fruitfulness among humanity is not the “fruit” of God’s nature, character, or Spirit! Humanity’s fallen fruit?

You understand: There is “the fruit of the righteous”, planted and cared for and watered by God Himself, but there is also the ‘fruit of the unrighteous’, coming out of one’s old sin nature, producing the ‘fruit of spiritual death’!

Do you remember what Jesus said in John 15:4-6? “Abide in Me and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit, for without Me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered; and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned.”

[Don’t YOU find it shameful that modern ‘Christianity?’ finds the “fires of Hell” that Jesus tells us about to be a sad and disgraceful interpretation of the Bible as to the future of every unbeliever or deserter of His True Faith?].

Fruitfulness among humanity fallen away from God comes from “drained springs”, “dried up springs”, “plundered springs by the devil and his armies”, even by stolen thoughts of Truth, stolen treasures of true redemption, even stolen thoughts of the reality of the love and mercy of God! And nations, lives, homes, families, and even some ‘churches’, experience nothing but droughts, desolations, and death, plundered by the enemy!

All of this picture of “sad futures” is because of ‘rebellion’ against God, desertion from His merciful calling, and the sad ending because of one’s fleshly pride and, yes, opposition to God’s eternal will and pleasure. “The wages of sin is death,” always has been, always is, and always will be.

I would hope that your “fleeing from the wrath to come” is because you understand Jesus’ call to “Come unto Me, and I will give you rest”! Do you understand that “YOU” can be weighed in the balances and found wanting? And “fleeing from the wrath to come,” is running to Christ Jesus in true repentance and faith in His finished work at the Cross!

I’m convinced that every person should live every day as if it were the last day! I love what James S. Stewart once wrote: “God judges a man not by the point he has reached, but by the way he is facing; not by distance, but by direction.”

Jonathan Edwards, in his “God’s Chief End in Creation,” wrote: “God aims at satisfying justice in the eternal damnation of sinners.” And YOU? Redeemed or condemned?

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

FAITHLESS, FAILURES, OR FUTURE REWARDS?

HOSEA 14

Confrontation by God through His prophets, churches, disciples, or missionaries is not an evil thing, but it is an awareness of His great love for every individual. Doesn’t His Word tell us that “God is not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance”? And when it comes to His pastors-teachers, it is the same spirit and voice that should be sounded out to a wayward society of fallen manhood, alienated and separated from Holy God!

Hadn’t God’s “chosen people” recklessly, carelessly, and unlovingly rejected His Word and His Spirit and His purpose for the nation except for the “few”? Didn’t Jesus tell us, after the villagers around Jerusalem asked Him, “Lord, are there few who are saved?” [Jews or a world population?] I would say both in comparison to the enormous size of world population!]. And in Luke 13:24-27, Jesus responded, “Strive to enter through the narrow gate, for many, I say to you, will seek to enter and will not be able. When once the Master of the house has risen up and shut the door, and you begin to stand outside and knock at the door, saying, ‘Lord, Lord, open for us,’ and He will answer and say to you, ‘I do not know you, where you are from,’ then you will begin to say, ‘We ate and drank in Your presence, and You taught in our streets.’ But He will say, ‘I tell you, I do not know you, where you are from. Depart from Me, all you workers of iniquity.’”

In Matthew 25:31-46 is the picture of the Lord Jesus “judging the nations, the peoples of the world,” and “separating the sheep from the goats.” I encourage you to pause, read carefully, and settle in YOUR hearts if YOU are a sheep or a goat!

But the strong emphasis of Hosea 14 for all today? That’s God’s compassionate, holy calling! Hosea 14:1 says, “O Israel, return to the Lord your God, for you have stumbled because of your iniquity!” Stumbled, fallen, forsaken, missed His calling and compassionate Word for YOU to return?

God then said in Hosea 14:2-3, “Take words with you, and RETURN TO THE LORD. Say to Him, ‘Take away all iniquity; receive us graciously, for we will offer the sacrifices of our lips. Assyria shall not save us, we will not ride on horses, nor will we say anymore to the work of our hands, ‘You are our gods.’ For in You [Holy God] the fatherless finds mercy.”

Is it possible that you, or those around you:[family, friends, employers, employees, governments, government leaders, schools, universities, teachers, professors, neighbors, fellow citizens of your community], have avoided, neglected, denied the reality of God’s exposure of their state of sinfulness and His appeal to them of reconciliation and the need of “blood redemption”?

Nothing takes place in anyone’s life of eternal blessing apart from “take words with you, and return to Him, saying with a broken heart, ‘take away all iniquity; receive us graciously, for we offer the sacrifices of our lips,’” believing in our hearts the faithfulness of Holy God when we come to Him in true confession.

But, in spite of faithlessness, failures, and no desire for future rewards, when the Holy Spirit of God moves on a person’s life, and divine conviction becomes so real and personal, Hosea is telling us that there is hope, eternal hope overflowing out of the very heart and mind of Holy God! Look at what Father-God said in Hosea 14:4-7, “I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely, for My anger has turned away from him. I will be like the dew to Israel; he shall grow like the lily, and lengthen his roots like Lebanon. His branches shall spread; his beauty shall be like an olive tree, and his fragrance like Lebanon. Those who dwell under his shadow shall return, they shall be revived like grain, and grow like a vine. Their scent shall be like the wine of Lebanon.”

I don’t know how you feel about natural rainbows, but I tell you, when God spreads His spiritual ‘rainbow’ over one’s life, get ready! All of a sudden, supernatural light, a spiritual rainbow of hope, a glorious and gracious presence envelops one’s life, and holy hope begins to resurrect the dead out of their spiritual darkness!

The Lord says “return”, but you say, “I don’t think so!” Give me a break! Are you so unwise that you would reject His eternal appeal ? ‘Stumbling is OK with you? Hanging on to your iniquitous ways with their deathly and disastrous results is OK with you? Rebellion before God is not man’s healing grace for himself but deadly results with an eternal impact that is not good at all!’

I believe that the Lord through Hosea is telling Israel and us that, though many reject Him and His saving Grace, the supernatural work of God begun through Israel has and will emerge as the great missionary endeavor God intended. Multitudes will come to Christ!

Lives, nations, individuals will stumble and fall away from God because ‘iniquity’ is the major stumbling block! Unbelief in ‘saving grace’ is disastrous! Denial of Holy Mercy is spiritually sickening in need of the Great Physician! Deaf ears must be supernaturally unstopped when God calls His wayward children home to Him! Doesn’t the Word of God tell us, Romans 10:9, that “if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved”?

Romans 10:10-11 then says, “For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. For the Scripture says, ‘Whoever believes on Him will not be put to shame.’”

One who opens his or her Bible to hear Christ Jesus will be awed by His words in John 5:28-29, “Do not marvel at this; for the hour is coming in which all who are in the graves will hear His voice and come forth – those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation.” Resurrection of life or resurrection of condemnation?

Do you remember how many of the Israelites brought gold and silver and laid it around their idols? And do you understand that ‘many’ would like to “buy” their way into the favor of God, unwilling to confess the true need of being washed in the blood of the Lamb? They want God’s favor without or apart from His “way of the Cross that leads home”! It’s not one’s contributions that buys one into an eternal relationship with Holy God, but his/her confession of sin that needs to be forgiven in God’s way alone, which is “blood redemption”!

Did God say in Hosea 14:4, “I WILL heal their backsliding, I will love them freely…For My anger has turned away from him”? Do you as a sinner or as a rebellious son find comfort in your stage of life that Holy God intervenes as His “anger is turned away” and you find hope of eternal reconciliation or do you just not care whether God cares for you or not?

But one thing is eternally certain: It’s God’s holy desire for willful reconciliation between Him and us! In the midst of darkness, God desires to usher in Light, in the midst of despair, God desires to infuse eternal hope, in place of fleshly ugliness God desires to impute eternal beauty, and in the places of sinful pleasures that end sorrowfully and shamefully, God desires to replace it with eternal joys and everlasting pleasures!

Oh, and then one sees the inconsistencies of his fleshly life and the unfulfilled potential of divine intent, encounters Holy Truth and Eternal Promises, and because of God’s intervention and gracious promises, he sees “the branches of his tree of life in faith spreading; transformed from fleshly ugliness to the beauty of a heavenly implanted tree, and the fragrance of his life exchanged from ‘sour tastes’ to “pure delights”, with one seeing, sensing, and celebrating, the divine transformation, evidenced by heavenly fragrances”!

What did Ephraim say in Hosea 14:8? “What have I to do anymore with idols? I have heard and observed him. I am like a green cypress tree; your fruit is found in Me.” He HEARD GOD SPEAK!

Some maintain deaf ears because they have no desire to hear God speaking to them, but Ephraim heard, received, and yielded to the God of eternal hope! Dwelling under God’s shadow opens the door to the reality of Holy Presence within the repentant heart!

Holy Presence then manifests Himself in gracious living, life-giving power, precious fruit, the purifying of the ‘blood of the Lamb,’ the path of life-giving Light, and the preciousness of oneness in constant communication, open doors, and eternal significance, as one dies daily to himself and lives through the eternal promise of resurrection life now and forever!

What does Hosea 14:9 say to us? “Who is wise? Let him understand these things. Who is prudent (or discerning)? Let him know them. For the ways of the Lord are right; the righteous walk in them, but transgressors stumble in them.”

‘Transgressors “stumble” over the ways of the Lord’? Thank God, Ephraim came to that holy place of divine conviction, saying in Verse 8, “What have I to do anymore with idols?” Oh, and then God said in the end of Verse 8, “Your fruit, Ephraim, is found in Me.”

Question! “What is the source of your fruitfulness, and is it the very fruit of God’s “Tree of Life”, or are you of the ‘wild trees and rotten fruit’ of self-importance and self-determination and self-will? That’s what a ‘life of sin’ is all about – and sin or sinfulness separates one from Holy God – and it’s the blood of the Lamb of God that washes one’s sinfulness and declares one righteous because of Christ’s finished work “At The Cross”!

Human lives, all over the world, are bound in the guilt of sin and their sinful natures, but through the faith in the finished work of Christ alone, Holy God declares the repentant heart free from the bondage of sin and death, free from guilt, free from the devil’s deception, free from ‘marred and scarred and branded with Satan’s declaration of ownership’, and, yes, free from one’s own inability to overcome his/her ruptured relationship with Holy God – it’s not self-effort but divine intervention and merciful action At The Cross that resurrects us from the penalty of death to the pricelessness, pleasurableness, peace, and power of oneness with Holy God through Christ alone!

Holy God mercifully equipped, divinely informed, and miraculously enlightened Hosea as to the Lord’s eternal mission to be reconciled to fallen humanity, and men today who are set aside by God to touch their world with His grace, mercy, and Truth, clearly understand that it is the power of God’s spoken Word that redeems, reconciles, and resurrects them out of spiritual death to His gift of eternal life and God’s royal purpose.

What did Hosea say in Hosea 14:9 once more? “Who is wise? Let him understand these things. Who is prudent [or discerning]? Let him know them. For the ways of the Lord are right; the righteous walk in them, but transgressors stumble in them.”

Tell me! A righteous walk for you or as a transgressor you “STUMBLE”? In Psalm 85:10-11 the psalm singers sang this: “Mercy and truth have met together; righteousness and peace have kissed. Truth shall spring out of the earth, and righteousness shall look down from heaven.” But ‘transgressors’ stumble through life, walking disobediently, usually erupting in repulsive attitudes, actions, and aims that please their fallen natures but dishonor the Holy Name of our True Lord and Savior!

Proverbs 22:1 tells us, “A good name is to be chosen rather than great riches, loving favor rather than silver and gold.” And “good names” that honor Holy God are those blessed in divine righteousness as God’s gracious gift, exemplified by Christ Jesus and His Indwelling Presence in us – not simply even avoiding the world’s vices as one majors on visual virtue before those around you, but the overwhelming, healthy, and blessed passion of submission and obedience to Holy God as He chooses you and me to honor, establish, and extend His Kingdom Rule worldwide!

“Mercy and Truth?” “Righteousness and peace?” Are you a partaker, a recipient, a true son or daughter of God? In 1 John 4:9-10 the beloved disciple wrote: “In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” John then said in Verse 14, “And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son as Savior of the world.”

Oh, and then in Jude 1, wrote to those of Jesus’ “redemptive faith,” “To those who are called, sanctified by God the Father, and preserved in Jesus Christ.” What an amazing revelation!

Reading Oswald Chambers recently in his famous book, “My Utmost For His Highest,” [p.255], for both the true, repentant, transformed believers and for the “stumblers”, he wrote:

“The entrance into the Kingdom is through the panging pains of repentance crashing into a man’s respectable goodness; then the Holy Ghost, Who produces these agonies, begins the formation of the Son of God in the life. The new life will manifest itself in conscious repentance and unconscious holiness, never the other way about. The bedrock of Christianity is repentance. Strictly speaking, a man cannot repent when he chooses; repentance is a gift of God. The old Puritans used to pray for “the gift of tears.” If ever you cease to know the virtue of repentance, you are in darkness. Examine yourself and see if you have forgotten how to be sorry.”

“Stumbling” or stepping up to the Throne of God in humility, in brokenness, in sorrow, over a life of rejected faith, tragic unbelief, and a life of fleshly pride! “Stumbling” or resting in the finished work of Christ at the Cross? “Stumbling” over the revealed Word of Holy God or “standing on His promises”? “Stumbling” is because fallen men see themselves as ‘superior’ of even God Himself – “we’re able without God’s help!” “Stumbling”? It was Charles Kingsley in his writing “The World’s Age” who said: “Fools! Who fancy Christ mistaken; Man a tool to buy and sell; Earth a failure, God-forsaken, Ante-room of Hell.”

As you’ve read Hosea’s prophetic message, even this book, would you see yourself as a “stumbler,” a “foolish man,” an “unbeliever,” or a man of true repentance, walking like Hosea, in the ‘ways,’ the ‘will,’ and ‘the revealed Word of Holy God’? I love what St. Augustine once said: “Before God can deliver us we must undeceive ourselves.” There are some who come close to “new life in Christ” because they have a sense of remorse, but that’s not true faith! True faith is a repentant heart willing to give up his sin, sinful, non-sorrowing heart, falling before Christ Jesus and the Throne of God in abandoning one’s old life and ‘resting’ in Christ’s Resurrection Fullness! I believe that is Holy Spirit conviction, Holy Spirit conversion, and Holy Spirit consecration, with sins blotted out and God giving you by His grace, yes, the very nature of Christ, as your old sin-nature was “crucified with Christ” and YOU are raised up to be seated with Christ in heavenly places!

“Stumblers”? Or men and women in God’s ordained righteous walk in mercy, love, and faithfulness to His Holy intent, honoring Him through your “laid-down life”, just as Jesus the Son laid His life down “At The Cross”! Life-stories of redemptive faith are not stories of possibilities or probabilities but certainty as one leans not in his own understanding, but always yielding, acknowledging, and letting God be God in us and through us! It’s not pretense but divine certainty! John Dryden, in his writing, “The Hind and the Panther,” wrote: “To take up half on trust, and half to try, Name it not faith, but bungling bigotry.” And just how true do YOU find that statement?

Again, Psalm 85:10! “Mercy and truth have met together; righteousness and peace have kissed.” Are you a “stumbler” or one “kissed by God”? A “stumbler” is one ‘self-possessed’ rather than a ‘life’ redeemed by the blood of the Lamb! A “stumbler”?

Years ago in one of our mission’s newsletters, or maybe a quote in one of the earlier books I wrote for India pastors, I wrote the following: “In the absence of a true faith, men established religions, [not an eternal relationship, personal between a man and the Risen Savior and Lord and His anointed, appointed leaders and spiritual family!], and all of a sudden realized, by their own efforts, they’ve established ‘gorilla cages’!”

Why would men choose a ‘religious faith’ that does not daily identify with the Savior of the world and His Lordship, but by best efforts and dull habits promote human egotism? A ‘religious man’ may have a number of ‘religious friends’, but void of the “Friendship of God”, because there’s no relationship daily with the King of kings and Lord of lords! Men with ‘religions’ do so in the absence of the very Sovereignty of God and the Servanthood Spirit of Jesus and the Fruit of the Holy Spirit leading their lives daily as they submit to the Eternal Will of Holy God! “We’ll just establish another religion.” Right? Wrong! Religious activities, yes, void of the Resident Spirit of Christ Jesus, will even seek to end the lives of true servants of Christ who deny themselves and daily take up their cross to follow Him!

How many do you know who were persuaded about ‘baptism’, but never taught to take up their crosses and follow Jesus, daily? How many do you know who week by week are religiously tossed by the waves of men’s religious inventions, but know nothing about the life of “standing on the Rock” daily to the Glory of God? Religion is “pretense” while the Cross, daily death, burial, and resurrection, is the supernatural presence and power of Christ Jesus in us!

But do you sense that indifference, infidelity, insignificance, wrap themselves around most men and women concerning their earthly journeys, totally unaware of the need, the significance, the blessing, and, yes, the eternal rewards of looking unto Jesus, daily, the Author and Finisher of our faith?

What are YOU about? Hosea 14:9, yes, again and again and again! “Who is wise? Let him understand these things. Who is prudent [discerning]? Let him know them. For the ways of the Lord are right; the righteous walk in them, but transgressors stumble in them.” You? Walking in His ways or “stumbling”?

In closing this chapter, I want to share a quote by Leo Tolstoy from his writing, “The Kingdom of God”. He said: “The only significance of life consists in helping to establish the kingdom of God; and this can be done only by means of the acknowledgement and profession of the truth by each one of us.” The sad truth is that most “religious” folks have no understanding of the establishment of, yes, the earthly kingdom of God! Do you?

CONCLUSION

IF “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,” how does one ever come to the place of biblical, eternal, and divine wisdom, if there is no fear of God? Bible-fear is standing in awe at the greatness, mercy, and love of God, yes, as one is confronted by an ordained, sent, inspired prophet like Hosea.

God’s heart is calling ALL out of death into eternal life, out of darkness into Light, out of bondage into liberty and freedom, out of fleshly ignorance into divine wisdom, out of earthly allegiances to heavenly loyalty, out of Satanic deception into the Savior’s ever-abiding, liberating, and loving purpose!

In Matthew 25:34-40 the Lord Jesus reveals the “fruit” of a blessed life, reconciled to the Lord, and willingly laid down as His servant daily in touching our world with His love, grace, and mercy. Jesus said: Then the King will say to those on His right hand, ‘Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave Me food; I was thirsty and you gave Me drink; I was a stranger and you took Me in; I was naked and you clothed Me; I was sick and you visited Me; I was in prison and you came to Me.’

Then the righteous [what have you seen through Hosea about righteousness?] will answer Him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry and feed You, or thirsty and give You drink? When did we see You a stranger and take You in, or naked and clothe You? Or when did we see You sick, or in prison, and come to You? And the King will answer and say to them, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.’”

Tell me about your “righteous” walk as you heed, not only the words of the prophet Hosea, but the true words of the Eternal King of kings and Lord of lords, and the true words of His calling to us through faithful, prophetic voices today across our modern world so in need of reconciliation with Holy God, with the loving Lord Jesus, and with the empowering Holy Spirit enabling us to live an overcoming, victorious life in and through Him!

In the old “Broadman Hymnal” of 1940, published by Broadman Press, Nashville, Tennessee, [B.B. McKinney, Music Editor], I wanted to share the hymn written by Mrs. Cecil F. Alexander and William H. Jude that says:

“Jesus calls us; o’er the tumult Of our life’s wild, restless sea, Day by day His sweet voice soundeth, Saying, ‘Christian, follow Me.’

Jesus calls us from the worship Of the vain world’s golden store, From each idol that would keep us, Saying, ‘Christian, love Me more.’

In our joys and in our sorrows, Days of toil and hours of ease, Still He calls, in cares and pleasures, ‘Christian, love Me more than these.’

Jesus calls us: by Your mercies, Savior, may we hear Your call, Give our hearts to Your obedience, Serve and love You best of all.”

Have you heard God’s precious and powerful and convicting and loving voice through His prophet Hosea? I pray a moment will not pass without YOU yielded to His eternal intent for YOUR earthly walk and heavenly ministry of proclaiming even prophetically His wooing, wonderful, winning words of your life to eternal allegiance, devotion, and service! Amen?