A Culture Gone Astray
Notes
Transcript
Handout
Corrupt leaders (1-3)
Corrupt leaders (1-3)
The priests failed to teach the people and lead God-honoring worship
The King erected idols and drew people away from the true God.
The leaders have nowhere to hide and no hope of covering up their evil deeds.
I response to all of this, the Lord declares that He will discipline them all.
Hard-Hearted People (4-6)
Hard-Hearted People (4-6)
A refusal to repent (4)
A refusal to repent (4)
The Bible teaches that sinners can be restored to God through repentance and faith.
The Bible also teaches that sin can so harden hearts that people are unable to repent.
12 Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. 13 But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.
And this is what happened among the people of Israel: their deeds did not permit them to return to their God.
And why did they refuse to repent? (v. 4b) for the spirit of whoredom is within them, and they know not the LORD.
This speaks to the degree and depth of Israel’s spiritual corruption. We saw this idea in the previous chapter:
12 My people inquire of a piece of wood,
and their walking staff gives them oracles.
For a spirit of whoredom has led them astray,
and they have left their God to play the whore.
They were idolaters, a symptom of this spirit of whoredom.
Israel was entrenched in their sin. Unable to return to their God. Unwilling to repent. A manifestation of total depravity.
A brazen arrogance (5)
A brazen arrogance (5)
Here’s the reality of this nation
they descended into chaos
their leaders corrupt and taking advantage of them
helpless against the encroachment of Assyria
Hosea 5:5 (ESV)
5 The pride of Israel testifies to his face;
What was the consequence of Israel’s arrogance?
Hosea 5:5 (ESV)
… Israel and Ephraim shall stumble in his guilt;
Judah also shall stumble with them.
So Israel’s rebellion is its own testimony. She has no defense, no way to explain herself out of her guilt. Israel’s guilt was there as plain as day.
Deserved the judgement… Israel will stumble is his guilt
Notice the pronouncement of judgement on Judah at the end of verse 5
The Assyrians would wipe out the Northern Kingdom in 722 BC (about 10 years after Hosea’s prophecy) and then in 701 BC, Sennacherib would attempt to take over Jerusalem.
13 In the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah, Sennacherib king of Assyria came up against all the fortified cities of Judah and took them.
35 And that night the angel of the Lord went out and struck down 185,000 in the camp of the Assyrians. And when people arose early in the morning, behold, these were all dead bodies.
A pathetic display (6)
A pathetic display (6)
What does the reference to Israel going to seek the Lord with their flocks and herds mean?
They were continuing to offer sacrifices to Him. This is a contrived worship of God, not an expression of love and faithfulness to Him.
Verse 4 tells us that their deeds prevented them from returning to their God. Here, even the right deeds fall short.
7 But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”
8 “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
The Lord is not interested in empty ritual. So Israel’s presumptuous going through the motions alienated them from God, but they had another problem - end of verse 6: He has withdrawn from them.
They may have offered sacrifices, and claimed that they were being offered to the Lord but He was not pleased with them. He was not honored by them.
A sober warning to us even today.
Reminded me of what happened in the synagogue in Nazareth when Jesus taught the Word of God. He confronted the people with their sin, and the people responded:
28 When they heard these things, all in the synagogue were filled with wrath. 29 And they rose up and drove him out of the town and brought him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they could throw him down the cliff. 30 But passing through their midst, he went away.
keep in mind, after Jesus had proclaimed that He fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah, many of the people
22 And all spoke well of him and marveled at the gracious words that were coming from his mouth. And they said, “Is not this Joseph’s son?”
What’s the primary concern with human sin? It must be that it is an offense to God. Sin does disrupt our lives and can ruin our lives. But more fundamentally, our sin is a problem because it offends a holy God.
The people of Hosea’s day were oblivious to this, and as a result they were lost in their sin and God withdrew from them.
