When Rights Are Wrong.

Now concerning food offered to idols: we know that “all of us possess knowledge.” This “knowledge” puffs up, but love builds up. If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know. But if anyone loves God, he is known by God.

Therefore, as to the eating of food offered to idols, we know that “an idol has no real existence,” and that “there is no God but one.” For although there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth—as indeed there are many “gods” and many “lords”— yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist. However, not all possess this knowledge. But some, through former association with idols, eat food as really offered to an idol, and their conscience, being weak, is defiled. Food will not commend us to God. We are no worse off if we do not eat, and no better off if we do. But take care that this right of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak. For if anyone sees you who have knowledge eating in an idol's temple, will he not be encouraged, if his conscience is weak, to eat food offered to idols? And so by your knowledge this weak person is destroyed, the brother for whom Christ died. Thus, sinning against your brothers and wounding their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ. Therefore, if food makes my brother stumble, I will never eat meat, lest I make my brother stumble. – 1 Corinthians 8:1-13 ESV

With the opening words of this chapter, Paul reveals that he is answering yet another one of the questions sent to him by the church in Corinth. It had to do with food offered to idols. To modern, 21st-Century Christians, this will sound like a strange discussion that has nothing to do with us, and little in the way of practical application. But Paul’s primary point has to do with knowledge and what we do with it, especially in our interactions with “weaker” or less spiritually mature Christians and with the lost.

There are two major views as to what was going on in the Corinthian fellowship that caused them to raise this question with Paul. The more traditional view is that there were former pagans in the church who had come to faith in Christ and who were still buying meat in the marketplace that had been sacrificed to idols. It was a common practice for pagan priests to offer sell in the market some of the meat left over from a sacrifice to their god. This was considered good, high-quality meat. The converted pagans in the church knew that the meat was good and they also knew that there was no such thing as idols. So their conclusion was that it was perfectly acceptable to buy and eat the meat and even serve it to their believing friends. And Paul confirms their conclusion when he writes, “we know that ‘an idol has no real existence,’ and that ‘there is no God but one’’ (1 Corinthians 8:4b ESV). Their “knowledge” or understanding of the matter was correct, but that same knowledge was a source of pride. It was causing them to look past the negative influence they were having on their fellow church members. There were younger, less mature believers in the church who did not yet understand the truth regarding idols. Paul writes, “not all possess this knowledge” (1 Corinthians 8:7a ESV). These people were confused by the actions of their fellow church members. And when they saw what they were doing, they were tempted to sin against their consciences. They could not help but eat that same meat and feel like they were being unfaithful to God. The spiritual arrogance of their brothers and sisters in Christ was causing them to stumble in regard to their faith.

But there is a second view regarding what was going on in Corinth that carries an even more shocking indictment on those who were eating meat that had been sacrificed to idols. It seems that this was more than just a case of buying meat at the market and serving it for dinner in your home. The problem involved a continuing practice of eating meat sacrificed to idols in the very temple dedicated to that idol. In verse 10, Paul writes, “For if anyone sees you who have knowledge eating in an idol’s temple, will he not be encouraged, if his conscience is weak, to eat food offered to idols?” It seems that there were those who had gone back to celebrating at the feasts as part of the worship of the false gods. These were common affairs in the Greek culture and were well-attended. They were social gatherings where the community came to worship their god and to share a celebratory meal together. Evidently, there were believers in the church in Corinth who were attending these meals and justifying their behavior based on their “knowledge” regarding the non-existence of idols. Their reasoning was that if idols do not exist and God is the one true god, then what difference does it make whether we eat meat in the temple of an idol or not. And while their logic made perfect sense, they were leaving out the Savior’s admonition that we love one another. They were disregarding the spiritual well-being of those within their fellowship who might be confused by their actions and caused to follow their lead.

For Paul, the issue had little to do with meat sacrificed to idols, eating in temples, or spiritual knowledge. In fact, he simply states, “this ‘knowledge’ puffs up, but love builds up” (1 Corinthians 8:1b ESV). Their knowledge had led to pride and arrogance, rather than love. They cared more about their so-called rights than they did about the spiritual well-being of their fellow believers. They enjoyed eating meals in the temple. The food was good and the fellowship was great. They got to be with all their pagan friends and act as if nothing had changed in their lives. They may have even used the excuse that being in the temple with their lost friends and neighbors gave them the opportunity to share the gospel. But Paul knew that their actions were motivated by selfishness, not selflessness. They were doing what they did for themselves, not for the sake of others.

Paul makes it clear that the issue has nothing to do with meat. He writes, “Food will not commend us to God. We are no worse off if we do not eat, and no better off if we do” (1 Corinthians 8:8 ESV). But the issue is about rights. “But take care that this right of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak” (1 Corinthians 8:9 ESV). For Paul, it was simple. He would rather give up meat altogether if it was going to cause a brother to stumble. It wasn’t worth it. If our freedoms in Christ cause a brother or sister in Christ to become enslaved to their own sin, we have missed the whole point of the gospel. Not only that, Paul says that we have actually sinned against them and against Christ. We have become a stumbling block in their spiritual path. As Christians, we have certain rights based on our newfound freedom in Christ. But when we let those rights tempt our brothers and sisters in Christ to do wrong, we stand as guilty before God. My rights should never deter another believer in their pursuit of righteousness. It would be better to die to my rights than to die for them.

Wholly His To Be Holy.

“All things are lawful for me,” but not all things are helpful. “All things are lawful for me,” but I will not be dominated by anything. “Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food”—and God will destroy both one and the other. The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. And God raised the Lord and will also raise us up by his power. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never! Or do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For, as it is written, “The two will become one flesh.” But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. – 1 Corinthians 6:12-17 ESV At the heart of Paul’s ongoing discussion with the Corinthians was his defense of and belief if the centrality of the gospel. For Paul, the gospel was about far more than a guaranteed place in heaven. There is no doubt that Paul looked forward to the day when he would be with the Lord in His heavenly kingdom. In his second letter to the Corinthians, Paul states that he “would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5:8 ESV). Speaking of our earthly bodies, Paul says, “For in this tent we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling” (2 Corinthians 5:2 ESV). He knew that the day was coming when he would receive a new body, a spiritual body, created by God for eternal life. “For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens” (2 Corinthians 5:1 ESV). But even with that assurance of a redeemed body and a reserved place in eternity, Paul lived with his sights fully set on the present. It was his aim to please God with the life he had been given and to do the work to which he had been assigned by God. It was this view that led him to write, “whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil” (2 Corinthians 5:9-10 ESV).

But what does all this have to do with the passage above? It seems that there were those in the church in Corinth who were living as if what they did in their earthly bodies didn’t matter. As Greeks, they probably held the view that the body was unimportant, acting as nothing more than a receptacle to hold man’s soul. “The Greeks always looked down on the body. There was a proverbial saying, ‘The body is a tomb.’ Epictetus said, ‘I am a poor soul shackled to a corpse’” (William Barclay, The Letters to the Corinthians, p. 22.). Evidently, it was this view of the body that was leading some of the believers in Corinth to commit acts of immorality. And Paul used some of their arguments against them. There were those who were justifying their actions by saying, “All things are lawful for me.” In other words, they argued that they were free in Christ. As Paul even taught, they were no longer required to keep the Mosaic law and its host of restrictions in order to be justified before God. But they were taking their newfound freedom in Christ to an inappropriate extreme, replacing legalism with license. They were combining their freedom in Christ with Greek dualism, that said the body didn’t matter, because we are spiritual beings. This viewpoint went contrary to the gospel. Christ came to redeem body and soul. He died to free us from the future penalty of sin, but also from the present power of sin over our lives. That is why Paul was able to say, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20 ESV). 

While, as believers, we do experience a newfound freedom in Christ, that does not mean that everything we are free to do is the right thing to do. Paul said that no all things that are lawful for us are helpful. For Paul, the gospel was about life change. It was about becoming other-oriented rather than self-focused. In fact, it was about dying to self and living for others, just as Jesus had modeled. Paul will raise this same issue later on in his letter. “‘All things are lawful,’ but not all things are helpful. ‘All things are lawful,’ but not all things build up. Let no one seek his own good, but the good of his neighbor” (1 Corinthians 10:23-24 ESV). Living the Christian life is not about what is best for me, but what will benefit the body of Christ and honor God. As Paul so clearly states, “whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31b ESV).

There is a sense in which the Corinthians did not understand the full impact of their conversion. When they had accepted Christ as their Savior, they had been joined to Him. They now shared His nature. They had been inhabited by His Spirit. As Paul states it, “your bodies are members of Christ” (1 Corinthians 6:15a ESV). The Greek word for “members” was commonly used to refer to a limb of the human body, such as an arm or leg. As Christians, we are members of the body of Christ. We have been joined to Him and He is the head of the body. We do not exist for ourselves. What we do affects the entire body of Christ. Which is why Paul asks, “Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute?” (1 Corinthians 6:15b ESV). And he answers his own question with an emphatic, “Never!” What we do in our physical bodies has a direct impact on our spiritual lives. We are not dualistic in nature, but holistic. The Hebrew word for “blameless” is תָּמִים (tamiym) and it means “complete, whole, entire, sound, having integrity” (“H8549 - tamiym - Strong’s Hebrew Lexicon (KJV).” Blue Letter Bible). We are to live our lives before God with integrity or wholeness. What I think with my mind matters. What I do with my body makes a difference. What I see with my eyes impacts my soul. Christ died to redeem all of me. He came to save me from what Paul refers to as “this body of death” (Romans 7:24). He came to give me new life here and now, and to miraculously re-purpose my body for the glory of God. So Paul would remind us, “Do not let any part of your body become an instrument of evil to serve sin. Instead, give yourselves completely to God, for you were dead, but now you have new life. So use your whole body as an instrument to do what is right for the glory of God” (Romans 6:13 NLT).

Sin In The Camp.

It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is not tolerated even among pagans, for a man has his father's wife. And you are arrogant! Ought you not rather to mourn? Let him who has done this be removed from among you.

For though absent in body, I am present in spirit; and as if present, I have already pronounced judgment on the one who did such a thing. When you are assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus and my spirit is present, with the power of our Lord Jesus, you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord. Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.– 1 Corinthians 5:1-8 ESV

Paul has threatened to come to Corinth, wielding a rod of discipline like a father to his disobedient children. And there is more going on within the congregation there than simply their prideful bickering over who is following which leader. While they were busy arguing over whether Paul was better than Apollos or Cephas was a better leader than Paul, a other sins had crept into the congregation. They had been so busy boasting over their spiritual superiority, that they had failed to recognize what happening right under their noses. In fact, according to Paul, it didn’t even bother them.

Paul had received word that there was a man in the church who was having sexual relations with his father’s wife. It seems that this involved the man’s stepmother, not his biological birth mother. And their is some indication that the man’s father was no longer alive. But Paul still referred to what was going on as “sexual immorality.” The Greek word he used is πορνεία (porneia). The Greeks primarily used the word to refer to prostitution or the act of going to a prostitute and paying for sexual pleasure. But the Jews had adapted the word and given it a much more robust meaning. For them, it covered “adultery, fornication, homosexuality, lesbianism, intercourse with animals etc.” (“G4202 - porneia - Strong’s Greek Lexicon (KJV).” Blue Letter Bible). Paul seems to be using the word with its Hebrew meaning in mind. He describes what is going on as a form of porneia “that is not tolerated even among pagans” (1 Corinthians 5:1 ESV). The unbelieving Corinthians would never have condoned a man sleeping with his father’s wife, even if she was a widow. And yet the church was not only tolerating it, they were evidently proud about it.

“It is this lack of a sense of sin, and therefore of any ethical consequences to their life in the Spirit, that marks the Corinthian brand of spirituality as radically different from that which flows out of the gospel of Christ crucified. And it is precisely this failure to recognize the depth of their corporate sinfulness due to their arrogance that causes Paul to take such strong action as is described in the next sentence.” – Gordon D. Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, p. 203

They displayed no remorse, regret or repentance as a fellowship. Their understanding of Christianity was missing any ethical or moral dimension. It seems that they had allowed their faith in Christ to become nothing more than a pursuit of knowledge, but without any ramifications on their behavior. Paul calls them proud and arrogant. It is as if they believed that their moral tolerance was somehow a badge of honor. They were distorting the concept of grace by turning a blind eye to sin in their midst. They had become accepting and tolerant of anything and everyone. They had somehow rationalized the man’s behavior, deeming it not only acceptable, but normal. But Paul had a radically different view. He demanded that they “throw this man out and hand him over to Satan so that his sinful nature will be destroyed” (1 Corinthians 5:5 NLT). Paul practiced a zero-tolerance policy when it came to sexual sin. It seems clear that this man showed no repentance or even remorse. He had not divulged his sin to the congregation asking for forgiveness and pledging a change in his behavior. He was arrogantly practicing his immorality right in front of them and they were readily accepting of it.

Paul’s recommendation that they turn this man over to Satan simply means that they were to cast him out of their fellowship and allow him to suffer the consequences of his immoral decision. Paul firmly believed in the truth that you reap what you sow. He told the Galatian believers: “Those who live only to satisfy their own sinful nature will harvest decay and death from that sinful nature. But those who live to please the Spirit will harvest everlasting life from the Spirit” (Galatians 6:8 NLT). He also told the believers in Rome: “But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death” (Romans 6:21 ESV). Just two verses later, he wrote, “the wages of sin is death.” While sin ultimately leads to physical death, it can also bring about a death to our life here on earth, even while we still draw breath. Paul was suggesting that they remove this man from their midst and allow him to reap the full consequences of his immoral choices. The English Standard Version translates verse 5 as “you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh.” There are certain commentators who believe Paul is referring to the man’s physical death. The Greek word Paul uses is σάρξ (sarx) and while it can refer to the physical body, it was also commonly used to refer to “the sensuous nature of man, ‘the animal nature’” or “the animal nature with cravings which incite to sin” (“G4561 - sarx - Strong’s Greek Lexicon (KJV).” Blue Letter Bible). It would seem that Paul was interested in seeing this man suffer the consequences of his immoral lifestyle. In a sense, it recalls the words of Paul in his letter to the Romans, when he spoke about the sinfulness of mankind: “Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves” (Romans 1:24 ESV).

For Paul, the issue was the moral state of the church. This man’s sin was like yeast that, if tolerated, was going to spread through the entire congregation. Undisciplined sin in the body of Christ is like a cancer that will eventually permeate its way, leaving a path of destruction. The prideful permissiveness of sin in the body of Christ is dangerous. Our willingness to tolerate unacceptable behavior among fellow believers usually has little to do with the practice of grace. But it has everything to do with complacency and a lack of understanding about the corporate culpability of sin. The church is an organism and, like the human body, every part has an influence on every other part. There really is no such thing as individual sin. And Christ’s call for us to love one another includes the kind of love that cares about the spiritual well-being of one another. To think that the sin of a brother or sister in Christ will not eventually impact the body is naive at best. The overall health of the body of Christ is completely dependent upon the health of its members. When we tolerate sin, we allow the enemy to have a foothold in our midst. Which is why Paul so boldly demanded, “Get rid of the old ‘yeast’ by removing this wicked person from among you. Then you will be like a fresh batch of dough made without yeast, which is what you really are” (1 Corinthians 5:7 NLT).

Foolish, Weak and Despised.

For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.” – 1 Corinthians 1:26-31 ESV The division taking place within the church at Corinth was based on pride. They were boastfully claiming, “‘I follow Paul,’ or ‘I follow Apollos,’ or ‘I follow Cephas,’ or ‘I follow Christ’” (1 Corinthians 1:12 ESV). They were each seeing themselves as somehow better or more spiritual because of who they followed. They were even bragging about who had baptized them, claiming to have been baptized in their name. Which had led Paul to say, “I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, so that no one may say that you were baptized in my name” (1 Corinthians 1:14-15 ESV). Even those who were claiming to follow Christ were emphasizing His teaching more than His role as Messiah. They had become followers of men and adherents of their particular teachings, rather than followers of the very one whose death had made their salvation possible. 

So Paul felt compelled to remind them of pre-conversion state. For the most part, none of them had been wise, wealthy or powerful. They had not been from the upper crust of society. They weren’t known for their intelligence and erudition. Their influence and power had been minimal. In fact, Paul flatly states that they had been foolish, weak and despised. Not exactly a flattering assessment. But Paul’s objective was to get them to see the “foolish” nature of their salvation, not stroke their egos. There had been nothing about them that warranted what God had done for them. Even from an worldly perspective, they had not been deserving of God’s amazing grace and mercy. They had not been the brightest and best, the richest and wisest, the movers and shakers of society. When Jesus ministered on the earth, it was not from among the wealthy, wise and powerful that His disciples had come. They had been lowly fishermen, tax collectors and common men. Those that had followed Him during His three years of earthly ministry had been, for the most part, from the peasant class. And this trend had continued long after Christ’s resurrection. Paul reminded them, “God chose things the world considers foolish in order to shame those who think they are wise. And he chose things that are powerless to shame those who are powerful. God chose things despised by the world, things counted as nothing at all, and used them to bring to nothing what the world considers important” (1 Corinthians 1:27-28 NLT).

None of them had cause for boasting. They had done nothing to deserve their salvation. And their pride over who it was that they followed was misplaced. Later on in this same letter, Paul will tell them, “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ” (1 Corinthians 11:1 ESV). It was only as Paul displayed Christ-likeness that they were to emulate his life. It wasn’t supposed to be about Paul, but about the Christ-like character he displayed. Paul wanted them to remember that their status as children of God had been the work of God. It had been God who had called them, which is why Paul tells them, “consider your calling.” The Greek word Paul used was βλέπω (blepō) and it means, “to turn the thoughts or direct the mind to a thing, to consider, contemplate, to look at, to weigh carefully, examine” (“G991 - blepō - Strong’s Greek Lexicon (KJV).” Blue Letter Bible). Paul wanted them to take a long, hard look at their calling by God. So he reminds them three times:

God chose what is foolish…

God chose what is weak…

 God chose what is low and despised…

God chose. It was His doing. Not based on any merit or worth on the ones chosen, but solely based on His divine mercy and grace. And Paul reminds them that it was “because of him [God] you are in Christ Jesus” (1 Corinthians 1:30 ESV). Not because of themselves and not because of Paul, Cephas or Apollos. Those men had been nothing more than instruments in the hands of God. It had been God who had made it possible for the believers in Corinth to have a relationship with Jesus. And it had been Jesus who had revealed to them the wisdom of God. By His death on the cross, Jesus had opened up the way for men to enjoy righteousness, sanctification and redemption. With His death on the cross, Jesus had taken on the sins of mankind. Those who place their faith in Christ have had their sins imputed to Him and His righteousness imputed to them. They now stand before God as righteous because of Christ. And they are going through the process of sanctification, their ongoing transformation into the likeness of Christ, through the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit. And ultimately, they will enjoy their final redemption or release from the power of sin in their lives, when God glorifies them.

There is no man who can make these things possible. No human teacher can provide us with righteousness before God. No pastor can transform us into the likeness of Christ. No evangelist or theologian can make our glorification possible. These things are all the work of God, just as our salvation was. He called. He chose. He justified. He is sanctifying. And He will redeem. So if we are going to boast, we need to boast in God. We need to brag about all that He has done, is doing and will do in the future. He made our salvation possible. He has made our daily sanctification obtainable. And He will one day accomplish the seemingly impossible: our glorification. We owe it all to Him.

Calling Out the Called Out.

Paul, called by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus, and our brother Sosthenes,

To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus, that in every way you were enriched in him in all speech and all knowledge— even as the testimony about Christ was confirmed among you— so that you are not lacking in any gift, as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. – 1 Corinthians 1:1-9 ESV

Paul began this letter as he had most of his others. First, he introduces himself. This was not because they did not know him. He had actually lived among them for 18 months after he had helped found the church there on one of his missionary journeys. Paul’s point in re-introducing himself was to establish his calling as an apostle of God. This will become an important factor as his letter unfolds.

Paul was cordial, even complimentary, in his greeting to the believers in Corinth. But there was a subtle, underlying purpose behind his words. He referred to them as “the church of God in Corinth.” This too will prove to have a purpose behind it. Paul wanted them to understand that they belonged to God and no one else. He was preparing the way to deal with a problem of division that had made its way into the church there. Paul also referred to them as “sanctified in Christ Jesus” and “saints.” Paul used two words, ἁγιάζω (hagiazō) and ἅγιος (hagios) to describe the believers in Corinth. First of all, at salvation they had been set apart as God and dedicated for His purposes. They belonged to Him. And this made them saints, or set-apart ones ("G37 - hagiazō, G40 - hagios - Strong’s Greek Lexicon (KJV)." Blue Letter Bible). They no longer belonged to themselves or to this world. And yet, as Paul would eventually point out in his letter, they were not living up to their calling as saints. Their actions were not reflecting their set-apartness.

Paul’s emphasis in the opening of his letter was on God. He even thanked God for all He had done in bringing the Corinthians to faith. It had been God who had extended His grace to them by making the good news of Jesus Christ known to them. The “testimony about Christ was confirmed” among them (1 Corinthians 1:6 ESV) as they came to faith in Christ and had their lives radically transformed. The believers there in Corinth had received the gift of the Holy Spirit and, along with Him, the gifts of the Spirit. In fact, Paul said that they were “not lacking in any gift” (1 Corinthians 1:7 ESV). God had been good to them. He had called them and He would be faithful to them as He continued His work among them. He would sustain them to the end. The problem, Paul seems to be saying, was not with God, but with them. It was the Corinthians who were proving to be unfaithful. They had lost their focus. They had lost sight of their unique standing as God’s holy people. The calling of God on their lives had taken a back seat to their own selfish agendas and worldly outlooks on life. They were missing the point.

Paul was preparing to deal harshly with his readers. He was setting them up so that he might call them out. He was not going to tolerate their behavior. The honor of God and the integrity of the gospel was at stake. Their behavior was not in keeping with their status as God’s chosen people. Rather than living as set apart and distinctive from the world around them, they were allowing themselves to blend in and take on the ungodly characteristics of the society in which they lived. Their professed beliefs and practical behavior did not seem to match. There was a disconnect between their faith and their daily practice. Their spiritual talk and their daily walk were in conflict. So Paul started his letter reminding them of who they were and to whom they belonged. Paul will remind them a little later on in this same letter, “do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body” (1 Corinthians 6:19-20 ESV). 

Paul was about to call out the called out ones. He was going to sit down the set-apart ones and give them a piece of his mind – in love. He would not tolerate their actions or excuse their sinful attitudes. God had sacrificed His Son on their behalf. He had paid a high price for their salvation and Paul was not willing to sit back and watch them waste God’s grace or bring shame to His name. It was essential that their profession of faith show up in their walk and talk. Their conduct needed to match their confession. Their status as sons and daughters of God was to be reflected in their actions and attitudes.

We Don’t Grow Alone.

Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted. Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. For if anyone thinks he is something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself. But let each one test his own work, and then his reason to boast will be in himself alone and not in his neighbor. For each will have to bear his own load. - Galatians 6:1-5 ESV The two extremes of legalism and license both tend to encourage lifestyles of self-centeredness and selfishness. Law-keeping becomes a competition, where we compare our “spirituality” with others. The measure of our worthiness becomes a somewhat subjective determination based on our spiritual success compared to that of others. A lifestyle of license is inherently self-absorbed, where the individual’s wants and desires come first and others become tools or pawns to get what you want. Legalism and license are both flesh-based and produce harmful and hateful outcomes.

Yet Paul wants his readers to know that a life based on the power of the indwelling Spirit of God is something different altogether. It produces fruit that is beneficial to all those around us. It is anything but self-centered and self-absorbed. An apple tree does not produce fruit for itself, but for the benefit of others. And in the same way, the Christian’s life is to be lived selflessly, focused on meeting the needs of those around them, including other believers, as well as the lost. And Paul provides a practical, everyday life example. He describes a situation where a fellow believer is overcome by some sin. The word Paul used to describe this individual’s situation refers to someone being overtaken or surprised by sin. It would be like a slower runner suddenly being overtaken or caught by a much faster runner. The idea is of a believer’s sin suddenly catching up with him. He didn’t see it coming. Rather than being premeditated and planned, it caught him completely by surprise. This is not describing someone dealing with an ongoing, unrepentant sin issue, but an individual who suddenly and unexpectedly sins. In a case like that, we are to “restore him in a spirit of gentleness.” There is a humility and tenderness that must accompany our confrontation. Pride has no place in a situation like this. Exposing the other believer’s failure should produce no joy or create any sense of self-satisfaction in us. We are not to see ourselves as the holier Christian confronting the less-spiritual brother in Christ. When Paul says, “you who are spiritual,” he is talking about someone who has the Spirit living within them. The Greek word he uses is πνευματικός (pneumatikos) and it refers to “one who is filled with and governed by the Spirit of God” (“G4152 - pneumatikos - Strong's Greek Lexicon (KJV).” Blue Letter Bible).

Those who are living according to the Holy Spirit within them will naturally care about those around them. They will have a supernatural sensitivity to the spiritual condition of their fellow believers and a Spirit-led desire to get involved in their lives. If we see a fellow believer suddenly caught up in sin, we are to lovingly lead them back on to the right path. The confrontation is to be done lovingly and constructively. The goal is repentance and restoration. But Paul warns us to be cautious and careful, “lest you too be tempted.” This is a reminder to not forget our own sin natures and our susceptibility to falling into the same trap. It was John Bradford who said, “There but for the grace of God, go I.” That needs to be our approach when coming alongside a struggling brother or sister in Christ.

Paul tells us that if we share one another’s burdens, we are fulfilling the law of Christ. Most likely, he is referring to the words of Jesus when He described the greatest commandment:

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets. – Matthew 22:37-40 ESV

Christianity is not about a lengthy list of dos and dont’s. It is also not about a lifestyle of self-absorbed freedom to do what you want. It is about loving God and loving others. It is about living in the grace of God and extending that same grace to all those around you. We are fools if we think we are somehow better than someone else. Our right standing before God is due to His Son’s work on our behalf, not our own self-effort. We have no right to think ourselves better than another human being. If we do, we are self-deceived. Christianity is not about comparison or competition. It is not about the level of my spirituality as compared with another believer. And I am not to compare my sins with anyone else either. As a believer, I am called to examine my own life, with the help of the Holy Spirit, and allow Him to show me my sin. If I do so, I will find I have no reason to boast or be prideful. But if I compare myself with others, I will always find someone who appears to be a worse sinner than I am and, ultimately, that results in pride. Each of us is responsible for our own sin. It is not a competition. But we have a God-given responsibility to come alongside one another and encourage godliness. Christianity is a community activity. It is a team sport. We don’t grow alone. Which is why Paul told the believers in Thessalonica, “So encourage each other and build each other up, just as you are already doing” (1 Thessalonians 5:11 NLT).

Paul ends this section of thought with the admonition to, “Bear one another’s burdens” and then follows that with, “each will have to bear his own load.” It might appear that Paul is contradicting himself. But his point is a simple one. We are to be willing to bear or carry the burden of another. He is speaking of the burden or weight of sin. If we examine ourselves rightly, we will see that we are no better than the other person. We have the same propensity for sin, and we could just as easily find ourselves in the same situation. We are not to all the sin of another to make us feel better about ourselves. Instead, we are to allow the Holy Spirit to examine us and reveal the true nature of our hearts. If we have any ground for “boasting,” it will be because of what Christ is doing in us, not because we are comparatively better than someone else. When Paul tells us that “each will have to bear his own load,” he is reminding us that we are ultimately responsible for how we live our lives. When we stand one day before the Judgment Seat of Christ, our works will be judged based on their merit alone, not in comparison to those around us. We have a responsibility to live in obedience to the will of God and in submission to the Holy Spirit. We will each answer one day for the manner in which we have lived our lives. But in the meantime, we are to come alongside the struggling brother or sister in Christ and lovingly restore them to a right relationship with God, so that they too might walk in obedience and loving submission to His Spirit.

Free To NOT Sin.

For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another. But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.– Galatians 5:13-21 ESV Freedom from the law results in license. That was one of the accusations the party of the circumcision leveled against Paul and his message of grace and freedom from the law. They most likely used Paul’s own teaching as evidence against him. In his letter to the Romans, Paul wrote, “where sin increased, grace abounded all the more” (Romans 5:20 ESV). And yet, Paul went on to say, “What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?” (Romans 6:1-2 ESV). Grace was not a license to sin. The freedom it provided from the Mosaic law was not a ticket to live as one pleased. It freed people from having to keep the law in order to earn favor with God. The law held men captive to their sin, in bondage to their own weakness and incapable of doing anything about it. But the salvation offered in Christ set men free. It was William Barclay who wrote, “the Christian is not the man who has become free to sin, but the man, who, by the grace of God, has become free not to sin.”

That is why Paul warned his readers to not use their new-found freedom as an opportunity for the flesh. They were free from having to keep the law, but not free from having to live in keeping with God’s expectation of holiness. At one point in His ministry, Jesus was asked what the greatest commandment of God was. He responded:

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets. – Matthew 22:37-40 ESV

Paul used these very words of Jesus to admonish his readers. Loving God meant living according to His holy will. Loving others required loving them selflessly and sacrificially, which is why Paul said, “through love serve one another.”

In his letter to the Corinthians, Paul provided an entire chapter on the subject of love. In it he wrote:

If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don’t love, I’m nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate. If I speak God’s Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, ‘Jump,’ and it jumps, but I don’t love, I’m nothing. If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love. – 1 Corinthians 13:1-7 MSG

But this kind of love is only possible through the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit. Without His help and our complete reliance upon His power, we will tend to live in the weakness of our own sinful flesh. We will become selfish and self-centered. We will tend to gratify the desires of our old nature, which Paul describes with painful accuracy. These fleshly desires are the exact opposite of what the Spirit wants to produce in us. They are counter to the will of God and reflect a love for self more than a love for Him. They most certainly don’t model a love for others. Look at Paul’s list: sexual immorality, impurity, lustful pleasures, idolatry, sorcery, hostility, quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, dissension, division, envy, drunkenness, and wild parties. Each of these “works of the flesh” reveal a disdain for God and a disdain for those around us.

The moral, ceremonial and civil sections of the Mosaic law were designed to regulate the lives of the people of Israel regarding their relationships with God and with one another. But as Jesus said, all of the commandments could be summed up by two simple commands: Love God and love others. Loving God meant not loving other gods. Loving others meant not becoming jealous of them, getting angry with them, lusting after them, or taking advantage of them. Notice that his list has more to do with our relationships with one another than our relationship with God. There is a reason for this. The apostle John wrote, “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen” (1 John 4:20 ESV). The greatest expression of our love for God is to be found in our love for those whom He has made. When we love one another, we are loving God. When we live selflessly and sacrificially, we are exemplifying the very character of God. When our lives are marked by self-control and a focus on the needs of others, we reflect the nature of God. But all of these things are only possible when we live according to the power of God’s indwelling Spirit.

A life continually characterized by the works of the flesh is a life devoid of the Spirit of God. Those who have placed their faith in Jesus Christ have received the Spirit of God. They are no longer slaves to sin, incapable of living righteous lives. They have been given the Holy Spirit and have the power to love God and love others. That’s why Paul told the Romans, “But you are not controlled by your sinful nature. You are controlled by the Spirit if you have the Spirit of God living in you. (And remember that those who do not have the Spirit of Christ living in them do not belong to him at all)” (Romans 8:9 NLT). The presence of the Spirit within us does not guarantee that we will live sin-free lives, but it does mean that we don’t have to live sin-dominated lives. Living according to our own sinful flesh will always produce bad fruit. But living according to the Spirit of God produces good fruit that pleases God and blesses others. We have been freed from the penalty of sin and from the power of sin. Because of Christ’s death on the cross and His Spirit’s presence within us, we are free to not sin.

By Faith.

For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, “Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them.” Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for “The righteous shall live by faith.” But the law is not of faith, rather “The one who does them shall live by them.” Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree”—so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith. – Galatians 3:10-14 ESV

In Paul’s own inimitable style, he begins to weave Old Testament Scripture into his defense of justification by faith. First he quotes from Deuteronomy 27:26 using the Greek Septuagint translation: “Cursed is everyone who does not continue in all the things written in the book of the law, to do them.” And he concludes that those who attempt to keep the law to achieve justification before God are cursed because they are incapable of keeping ALL of the law perfectly and completely. So for Paul, “it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law.” And it is clear to him that even the Old Testament Scriptures teach that “the righteous shall live by faith.” Here he quotes from Habakkuk 2:4. In Paul’s understanding of the Old Testament, even the great saints of the past achieved righteousness before God through faith in Him. The passage from Habakkuk that he quotes could better be translated: “The one who is righteous by faith will live.” In other words, our righteousness is achieved by faith in the word of God and, as a result of our faith, we live. It is NOT our living that produces righteousness. That was the false message of those who were troubling the Galatians and distorting the gospel of Jesus Christ (Galatians 1:7).

Once again, Paul appeals to the Old Testament Scriptures, this time quoting from Leviticus 18:5: “The one who does them shall live by them” (Galatians 3:12 ESV). Here Paul addresses the problem with law-keeping. If you’re going to use the law as your basis for justification before God, you will have to spend your entire life keeping them. It will be a never-ending task of trying to live up to and keep every single command given by God. There will be no room for mistakes. You can’t afford to have an off-day. Every single sin will count against you. In fact, the apostle James puts the gravity of this point in fairly disturbing terms: “For the person who keeps all of the laws except one is as guilty as a person who has broken all of God’s laws” (James 2:10 NLT). So if you want to make law-keeping your preferred method of maintaining a right relationship with God, you will have your work cut out for you. And that work will never achieve its desired goal.

Paul brings out an important point. The law is not of faith. Keeping the law has little to do with faith in God. It is all about faith in self. It is based on self-reliance and depends upon self-sufficiency. God has given the rules, now it is up to man to live up to them. And in order to make the task more attainable, man, in his law-keeping, begins to justify or rationalize his law-breaking. Sin becomes subjective. Man develops loop holes and work-arounds to somehow make his sin seem less sinful. He begins to compare his sins with those of others. He attempts to find others whose sins are more egregious than his own. It becomes a case of righteousness by comparison. Somehow we convince ourselves that God will grade on the curve and excuse those sins we’ve committed. He will simply reward us for having tried hard. But Paul would have us remember that “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23 ESV). Our sin demands a payment. Our rebellion against a holy God brings us under His wrath and condemnation and, in His justice, He must punish our sin.

This is where Paul brings in the good news. “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us” (Galatians 3:13 ESV). In other words, Jesus took our place on the cross and suffered in our place. The punishment for man’s sins fell on Him. The prophet Isaiah predicted the death of Jesus and the impact it would have on mankind:

Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. – Isaiah 53:5-6 ESV

In his letter to the Corinthians, Paul wrote, “For our sake he [God] made him [Jesus] to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21 ESV). It is interesting to note that the Mosaic law had a requirement regarding the death of a law-breaker. “And if a man has committed a crime punishable by death and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, his body shall not remain all night on the tree, but you shall bury him the same day, for a hanged man is cursed by God” (Deuteronomy 21:22-23 ESV). Paul refers to this passage when he says, referring to Christ’s death on the cross, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree” (Galatians 3:13 ESV). Even the method by which Jesus died illustrated the curse of God He took on in order that men might be made right with God. He endured what we deserved and did for us what we could never have done for ourselves. His death gave us access to life. Our death would have led to eternal separation from God.

We are made right with God through faith and faith alone. Law-keepers don’t live by faith, they attempt to live by keeping the law. Their hope is in themselves and their ongoing efforts to live up to God’s holy standard, rather than in the finished work of Jesus Christ.  Faith requires dependence upon God. We must accept His means of salvation rather than attempting to rely on our own. We must recognize our incapacity to live holy lives and place our trust His Son’s death on the cross in our place. He was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities. And by His wounds we are healed.

No Ransom. No Redemption.

He destroys you, O Israel, for you are against me, against your helper. Where now is your king, to save you in all your cities? Where are all your rulers—those of whom you said, “Give me a king and princes”? I gave you a king in my anger, and I took him away in my wrath.

The iniquity of Ephraim is bound up; his sin is kept in store. The pangs of childbirth come for him, but he is an unwise son, for at the right time he does not present himself at the opening of the womb.

Shall I ransom them from the power of Sheol? Shall I redeem them from Death? O Death, where are your plagues? O Sheol, where is your sting? Compassion is hidden from my eyes.

Though he may flourish among his brothers, the east wind, the wind of the Lord, shall come, rising from the wilderness, and his fountain shall dry up; his spring shall be parched; it shall strip his treasury of every precious thing. Samaria shall bear her guilt, because she has rebelled against her God; they shall fall by the sword; their little ones shall be dashed in pieces, and their pregnant women ripped open. – Hosea 13:9-16 ESV

If God does not intervene, man is helpless and hopeless to do anything about his condition. Without God’s help, man is incapable of delivering himself from the inevitability of sin’s ultimate outcome: death. The Israelites, even before the division of the kingdom, had proven themselves unfaithful to God by exhibiting their ongoing unwillingness to honor Him as God. Soon after they had entered the land after their 40-year of wandering in the wilderness, they exhibited their propensity to disobey God. The book of Judges chronicles their repetitive cycle of sin, which started with their unwillingness to obey God and completely remove the pagan nations from the land.

Manasseh did not drive out the inhabitants of Beth-shean and its villages… – Judges 1:27 ESV

Ephraim did not drive out the Canaanites who lived in Gezer… – Judges 1:29 ESV

Zebulun did not drive out the inhabitants of Kitron… – Judges 1:30 ESV

Asher did not drive out the inhabitants of Acco… – Judges 1:31 ESV

And on and on it went. The entire book of Judges is a sad chronicle of their on-again, off-again relationship with God. The people would turn against Him, and God would punish them by allowing their enemies to defeat them. The people would cry out in despair and God would provide them with a judge to deliver them. There would be a short time of repentance, and then the cycle would repeat itself. The book of Judges ends with the sad statement: “In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Judges 21:25 ESV).

It was not long before they demanded that God give them a king just like all the other nations (1 Samuel 8:5). And God gave them exactly what they asked for – King Saul. He would prove to be a faithless king who God would remove and replace with King David. And David would be followed by his son, Solomon, who would prove to be a wise and successful king, until the latter days of his reign, when he, because of his many pagan wives, allowed the worship of idols to make its way into the nation. God split the nation in two, and Israel, the northern kingdom, would end up with a king just like Saul. Jeroboam would prove unfaithful as well, leading the people into idolatry and away from the worship of Yahweh. And now that God’s judgement was coming, He sarcastically asked of them, “Now where is your king? Let him save you! Where are all the leaders of the land, the king and the officials you demanded of me? In my anger I gave you kings, and in my fury I took them away” (Hosea 13:10-11 NLT). God had given them ample opportunity to repent, but like a child in the womb, they refused to come out when the pains of delivery increased.

So God asked, “Should I ransom them from the grave? Should I redeem them from death? O death, bring on your terrors! O grave, bring on your plagues! For I will not take pity on them” (Hosea 13:14 NLT). This verse should jump out at us. Because ransom and redemption is exactly what God has accomplished for those of us who are in Christ. He has paid the price for our sins and ransomed us from the death sentence that was hanging over our heads. He has redeemed us from death through the sacrifice of His own Son, who died in our place. As a result, we no longer need fear death or the grave. Paul quotes from this very passage when he writes,

But let me reveal to you a wonderful secret. We will not all die, but we will all be transformed! It will happen in a moment, in the blink of an eye, when the last trumpet is blown. For when the trumpet sounds, those who have died will be raised to live forever. And we who are living will also be transformed. For our dying bodies must be transformed into bodies that will never die; our mortal bodies must be transformed into immortal bodies.

Then, when our dying bodies have been transformed into bodies that will never die,^j this Scripture will be fulfilled: “Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” – 1 Corinthians 15:51-55 NLT

It is God who ransoms and redeems. There is no help or hope without Him. The Israelites were going to learn that deliverance was impossible without God. Their kings would prove impotent. Their armies would be exposed as incompetent. When destruction came, their gods would be non-existent. They would learn the hard way that deliverance comes only through the Lord. Trusting in kings, chariots, allies, weapons, wealth, wisdom, false gods or anything other than God would prove fruitless and devastatingly deadly. Their destruction would be complete. No ransom. No redemption.

As Peter said in his defense at his trial before the high priest and the other religious leaders, “Let me clearly state to all of you and to all the people of Israel that he was healed by the powerful name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene, the man you crucified but whom God raised from the dead. For Jesus is the one referred to in the Scriptures, where it says, ‘The stone that you builders rejected has now become the cornerstone.’ There is salvation in no one else! God has given no other name under heaven by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:10-12 NLT). Salvation comes only through the Lord. There is no salvation through anyone or anything else.

Our Gracious God.

Jacob fled to the land of Aram; there Israel served for a wife, and for a wife he guarded sheep. By a prophet the Lord brought Israel up from Egypt, and by a prophet he was guarded. Ephraim has given bitter provocation; so his Lord will leave his bloodguilt on him and will repay him for his disgraceful deeds. – Hosea 12:12-14 ESV

Jacob, whom God later renamed Israel, had twelve sons. These sons became the twelve tribes of Israel. And tend of those 12 tribes made up the northern kingdom of Israel after the nation had been split apart by God after the reign of Solomon. Only Judah and Benjamin made up the southern kingdom of Judah. But long before the nation of Israel divided and even before they were a kingdom at all, Jacob had fled to the land of Aram in order to escape the wrath of his twin brother, Esau, whom he had cheated out of his inheritance. It was there that Jacob (Israel) had to serve Laban as a shepherd in order gain his daughter, Rachel’s hand in marriage. After seven years of service, Laban tricked Jacob by giving him his older daughter, Leah, instead. It would take another seven years of service as a shepherd for Jacob to earn the right to marry Rachel. This story was to serve as a reminder of the nation of Israel’s humble beginnings. They had started out in the land of Aram, as nothing but sheepherders. Then God providentially arranged for Joseph, one of Jacob’s sons, to be betrayed by his own brothers and sold into slavery. He ended up in Egypt, but eventually, through the sovereign hand of God, would become the second-highest official in the land. And when a famine struck the land of Canaan, Jacob sent his 11 remaining sons to Egypt to seek aid. There they discovered their long-lost brother and were shown grace, forgiveness and love. Rather than punish them for their acts against him, Joseph provided them with a place to live. It was in Egypt that Jacob and his sons would live and work as shepherds, tending the flocks of the Pharaoh.

Over time, the lot of the descendants of Jacob changed dramatically. Their numbers increased remarkably and the Pharaoh, fearing they might one day rise up against him, ordered that they be enslaved. And they would remain slaves for 400 years. That is, until God sent His prophet, Moses, to lead them to freedom. With the help of God, Moses would guide and protect them, helping them not only escape the slavery of Egypt, but discover the freedom and blessing of their own land, promised by God to their ancestor, Abraham, many centuries earlier. As with Jacob in Aram and the Israelites in Egypt, the ten tribes that made up the northern kingdom of Israel in Hosea’s day would know what it meant to live in a foreign land as little more than slaves. They would discover the humility of living under the control of another. They had chosen to reject God as their leader. And so Hosea announced, “But the people of Israel have bitterly provoked the Lord, so their Lord will now sentence them to death in payment for their sins” (Hosea 12:14 NLT).

Theirs would be a spiritual death, a forced removal from the land of promise and the subsequent separation from their God. They would find themselves living in exile in a foreign land, far from home and experiencing the feelings of loneliness and abandonment that so often accompany disobedience to God. Like King David, they would know what it means to cry out in desperation: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer, and by night, but I find no rest” (Psalm 22:1-2 ESV). Their lips, once accustomed to fine wine and the art of lying, would cry out:

Awake! Why are you sleeping, O Lord? Rouse yourself! Do not reject us forever! Why do you hide your face? Why do you forget our affliction and oppression? For our soul is bowed down to the dust; our belly clings to the ground. Rise up; come to our help! Redeem us for the sake of your steadfast love! – Psalm 44:23-26 ESV

From their perspective it would seem as if God was distant. But it was they who had abandoned God. They had walked away from Him. As Isaiah, the prophet so aptly described, “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way” (Isaiah 53:6a ESV). That statement, part of a Messianic prophecy, not only describes the sad state of the nation of Israel, but the condition of every human being who has ever lived. Isaiah went on to say, “and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 43:6b ESV). Jesus, the Messiah, would serve as the sacrificial substitute, bearing the punishment of God against mankind, paying the penalty for their transgressions.

But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. – Isaiah 53:5 ESV

Jacob’s years in Aram, the 400 years of slavery by his descendants in Egypt, and the captivity of the kingdom of Israel in Babylon are all examples of God’s punishment against the sins of man. But they also illustrate God’s grace and mercy. Jacob was ultimately restored to his family in Canaan. His descendants were set free from their bondage in Egypt. One day, God will return the people of Israel from their exile in foreign lands and restore them to a right relationship with Him. And through His Son, Jesus Christ, God has made it possible for all men to be made right with Him.

because he poured out his soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many, and makes intercession for the transgressors. – Isaiah 53:12b

Undeserved mercy and grace. Unmerited favor. Unearned forgiveness. Unfailing love. The story of Israel is the story of mankind. They had returned God’s blessings and bounty with ingratitude and unfaithfulness. But God continually conserved a remnant. He refused to destroy them completely. As Joseph told his brothers, “God sent me before you to preserve life. For the famine has been in the land these two years, and there are yet five years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvest. And God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors. So it was not you who sent me here, but God” (Genesis 45:5b-8a ESV). As isaiah told the people of Israel, “I will preserve a remnant of the people of Israel and of Judah to possess my land. Those I choose will inherit it, and my servants will live there” (Isaiah 65:9 NLT). And as the apostle Paul wrote, “It is the same today, for a few of the people of Israel have remained faithful because of God’s grace—his undeserved kindness in choosing them” (Romans 11:5 NLT).  Our God is merciful and patient. He provides a way where there was no way. He offers forgiveness where none is deserved. He gives grace when none is due. He provides salvation in place of condemnation. He is our gracious God.

The Lord is compassionate and merciful, slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love. He will not constantly accuse us, nor remain angry forever. He does not punish us for all our sins; he does not deal harshly with us, as we deserve. For his unfailing love toward those who fear him is as great as the height of the heavens above the earth. He has removed our sins as far from us as the east is from the west. – Psalm 103:8-12 NLT

God-lessness Leads To Ungodliness.

A merchant, in whose hands are false balances, he loves to oppress. Ephraim has said, “Ah, but I am rich; I have found wealth for myself; in all my labors they cannot find in me iniquity or sin.” I am the Lord your God from the land of Egypt; I will again make you dwell in tents, as in the days of the appointed feast. I spoke to the prophets; it was I who multiplied visions, and through the prophets gave parables. If there is iniquity in Gilead, they shall surely come to nothing: in Gilgal they sacrifice bulls; their altars also are like stone heaps on the furrows of the field.– Hosea 12:7-11 ESV

The people of Israel lived a lie. They seriously thought they were able to pull the wool over the eyes of God, that He was somehow ignorant of their sinfulness. They even believed that their many blessings, in the form of wealth, power, abundant crops, and growing families, were a sign of God’s approval of them. Yet, like a dishonest grain merchant who cheats his customers by using rigged scales, the Israelites were guilty of deceit and dishonesty. They simply saw themselves as clever and resourceful, and they believed their success was a sign of God’s approval. They prided themselves on their wealth and arrogantly believed their sins were somehow hidden and undetectable by others.

Like so many Christians today, the Israelites saw their material abundance and wealth as a sign of God’s approval. They believed their affluence could be directly attributed to God and His pleasure with them. But they were in for a rude awakening. God was about to radically re-align their perspective. They were going to go from living lives of abundance and wealth to abject poverty. They would find themselves living in tents just like their ancestors had done while slaves in the land of Egypt. No more plush, comfortable homes. Gone would be the days of sumptuous clothes and delicious meals. Once a year, at the Feast of Booths, the Israelites would build temporary shelters made from branches in order to commemorate the years their ancestors spent wandering in the wilderness. Now they were going to experience what it was like to live in these shanties 365 days out of the year. Their sudden fall from grace would be a rude awakening, shattering their ill-conceived notion that affluence was somehow a sign of God’s approval.

God had sent His prophets, and they had warned the people to repent or face His coming judgment. They had had visions, spoken in parables, and repeatedly pleaded with the people to hear what they were saying and return to the Lord. But the people had rejected their messages and, in some cases, killed the messengers. Even Jesus declared of the city of David, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!” (Luke 13:34 ESV). The people of Israel were unwilling to return to God. They had stubbornly refused His prophets, rejected their message, and remained committed to living life on their own terms. But God warned, “they shall surely come to nothing” (Hosea 12:11 ESV). Their altars to false gods would become like heaps of stones lying at the side of a plowed field. Their entire way of life was going to come to an end. Everything they put their faith and hope in – their wealth, material assets, false gods, fruitful fields, prolific families, and foreign alliances – would prove unreliable and no longer be available.

Ungodliness is essentially God-lessness. It is attempting to live your life with God removed from the center of it. It is the result of refusing to include Him in every area of life, of not giving Him access to and influence over the everyday affairs of life. When we convince ourselves that God doesn’t care about what we watch on TV, what we purchase with our money, how we spend our time, or where we place our hopes, we become ungodly. That doesn’t mean that everything we do is immoral or sinful. It simply means that God becomes less and less an influence over the everyday decisions of life. Our lives become essentially God-less. And it doesn’t take long for a God-less life to manifest itself in godless decisions and ungodly behavior. The Israelites had long ago left God out of the everyday mix of life. He had become an afterthought. He was their god in name only. They gave Him lip-service but not heart-allegiance. They wanted His blessings, but not His influence over their lives. As God declared through the prophet Isaiah:

These people say they are mine. They honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. And their worship of me is nothing but man-made rules learned by rote. – Isaiah 29:13 NLT

God went on to declare:

What sorrow awaits those who try to hide their plans from the Lord, who do their evil deeds in the dark! “The Lord can’t see us,” they say. “He doesn’t know what’s going on!” How foolish can you be? He is the Potter, and he is certainly greater than you, the clay! Should the created thing say of the one who made it, “He didn’t make me”? Does a jar ever say, “The potter who made me is stupid”? – Isaiah 29:15-16 NLT

God-lessness can take the form of us deliberately leaving God out of our lives or simply assuming He is oblivious to what is going on. But any thought on our part that God does not care or that we can keep Him in the dark is misguided and, ultimately, dangerous. God wants to be engaged and involved in every area of our lives. But when we deliberately decide to leave Him out, our decision making will become God-less and our lives will gravitate toward ungodliness. And while we may experience what appears to be success and enjoy what feels like happiness, we will soon discover that abundance, without God, is actually poverty. Happiness, apart from God, will only result in misery. The call of Jesus to the church in Laodicea applies to many of us today:

“You say, ‘I am rich. I have everything I want. I don’t need a thing!’ And you don’t realize that you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked. So I advise you to buy gold from me—gold that has been purified by fire. Then you will be rich. Also buy white garments from me so you will not be shamed by your nakedness, and ointment for your eyes so you will be able to see. I correct and discipline everyone I love. So be diligent and turn from your indifference.” – Revelation 3:17-19 NLT

You Reap What You Sow.

You have plowed iniquity; you have reaped injustice; you have eaten the fruit of lies. Because you have trusted in your own way and in the multitude of your warriors, therefore the tumult of war shall arise among your people, and all your fortresses shall be destroyed, Shalman destroyed Beth-arbel on the day of battle; mothers were dashed in pieces with their children. Thus it shall be done to you, O Bethel, because of your great evil. At dawn the king of Israel shall be utterly cut off. – Hosea 10:13-15 ESV

At times, even as believers, we are surprised at the outcomes of some of our decision making. We are somehow amazed that our lies have consequences. We are shocked when our love affair with materialism leaves us struggling with greed, envy, covetousness, worry and anxiety. We wonder why we are so angry, yet never connect the dots to our daily consumption of violence-filled media. We wrestle with lust, but never seem to associate it with the sexually explicit programming that fills our TV screens each and every night.

The Israelites were also oblivious to the cause-and-effect nature of their lives. So God made it clear to them: “you have cultivated wickedness and harvested a thriving crop of sins” (Hosea 10:13 NLT). In other words, they were reaping exactly what they should have expected. No surprises. Just the natural consequences of living their lives apart from God. They had consumed a daily dose of lies about everything. They had been told that God would not punish them for their sins because they were His chosen people. They had been promised that alliances with foreign powers would protect them from destruction. They believed that the gods of pagan nations were anything but false. But while a steady diet of lies may taste good going down and make you feel good for the moment, it will leave you spiritually weak, malnourished, and starving to death. 

Self-reliance and misplaced trust were behind the behavior of the Israelites. “Claiming to be wise, they became fools” (Romans 1:22 ESV). The prophet, Jeremiah, recorded a similar indictment from God against the people of Judah. “My people are foolish and do not know me. They are stupid children who have no understanding. They are clever enough at doing wrong, but they have no idea how to do right!” (Jeremiah 4:22 NLT). They thought they knew better than God. They rejected His commands and ignored His warnings. They lived life according to their own terms. They stopped trusting God and, instead, placed their hope in false gods. When things got tough and they found themselves threatened by outside forces, they turned to alliances with countries like Egypt. They refused to rely on God. He had become small, insignificant and insufficient to meet their needs. The God who had delivered them from captivity in Egypt and given them the land of Canaan had become too weak to meet their needs. They had long ago forgotten the words of David:

Now I know that the Lord saves his anointed; he will answer him from his holy heaven with the saving might of his right hand. Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God. They collapse and fall, but we rise and stand upright. – Psalm 20:6-8 ESV

Not only did they doubt God’s salvation, they denied His judgment. They really did not believe that they could fall. They were so confident in their status as God’s chosen people, that they believed they were invincible. And yet, they never seemed to recognize the fact that their protection by God was based on their obedience and faithfulness to him. He had warned them that disobedience would bring His discipline. Unfaithfulness would have consequences. So God gave them the bad news: “Now the terrors of war will rise among your people” (Hosea 10:14 NLT). Their army would be impotent. Their alliances would prove useless. Their fortresses and defensive measures would be insufficient. And their false gods would be exposed for what they were: non-existent and, therefore, no help in time of need.

The devastation would be horrific. Referring to a past battle, God warned them that their fall would be brutal and merciless: “as Shalman destroyed Beth-arbel on the day of battle; mothers were dashed in pieces with their children” (Hosea 10:14b ESV). The Assyrians were going to show no mercy. Their destruction of the nation of Israel would be complete and no one would escape their wrath. From king to commoner, priest to prostitute, the influential to innocent infants – all would feel the wrath of the Assyrians and the judgment of God.

These kinds of passages make us uncomfortable as believers. They paint a picture of God that seems to contradict our view of Him as loving, gracious, forgiving and merciful. But too often, our understanding of God can become one-dimensional. We prefer to emphasize His love while downplaying His holiness and hatred of sin. We find comfort in His grace, but don’t want to think about His righteous wrath and divine obligation to punish sin. In doing so, we diminish the value of the gift of His Son. But it is in understanding the severity of sin’s offensiveness to God and His just and righteous obligation to punish sin that we fully comprehend the magnitude of what Christ has done for us. “God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners” (Romans 5:8 NLT). Jesus “was handed over to die because of our sins, and he was raised to life to make us right with God” (Romans 4:25 NLT). The inescapable reality was that “even though we were dead because of our sins, he gave us life when he raised Christ from the dead” (Ephesians 2:5 NLT).

Our sin was real. God’s judgment against our sin was deserved. And yet He showed us mercy – in spite of our sinfulness. Grace does not diminish the gravity of sin. It actually reveals the amazing love of God as He provides a means of salvation that is capable of satisfying His wrath against sin. He gave His Son. It was the death of Jesus alone that could propitiate or satisfy the just judgment of God against the sinfulness of mankind. Nothing else would do. No other payment could have been made that would have paid the debt that was owed. So when we elevate God’s love while ignoring His wrath, we actually diminish the amazing nature of that love. He loved us in spite of us, not because of us.

And yet, we continue to sow and reap, sin and suffer, because we don’t fully appreciate the gravity of sin and the greatness of His grace. We justify our actions, rationalize our sinful behavior and then wonder why we reap discontentment, dissatisfaction, anger, joylessness, envy, greed, and immorality. It is an accurate understanding of the grace of God that should produce in us the fruit of righteousness. As God told the people of Israel, “Plant the good seeds of righteousness, and you will harvest a crop of love. Plow up the hard ground of your hearts, for now is the time to seek the LORD, that he may come and shower righteousness upon you” (Hosea 10:12 NLT).

Evicted From the Land of Promise.

Rejoice not, O Israel! Exult not like the peoples; for you have played the whore, forsaking your God. You have loved a prostitute's wages on all threshing floors. Threshing floor and wine vat shall not feed them, and the new wine shall fail them. They shall not remain in the land of the Lord, but Ephraim shall return to Egypt, and they shall eat unclean food in Assyria. They shall not pour drink offerings of wine to the Lord, and their sacrifices shall not please him. It shall be like mourners' bread to them; all who eat of it shall be defiled; for their bread shall be for their hunger only; it shall not come to the house of the Lord. What will you do on the day of the appointed festival, and on the day of the feast of the Lord? For behold, they are going away from destruction; but Egypt shall gather them; Memphis shall bury them.

Nettles shall possess their precious things of silver; thorns shall be in their tents. The days of punishment have come; the days of recompense have come; Israel shall know it. The prophet is a fool; the man of the spirit is mad, because of your great iniquity and great hatred. The prophet is the watchman of Ephraim with my God; yet a fowler's snare is on all his ways, and hatred in the house of his God. They have deeply corrupted themselves as in the days of Gibeah: he will remember their iniquity; he will punish their sins. – Hosea 9:1-9 ESV

The land of Canaan had been meant to be a land of promise, blessing and abundant provision. Even before they had entered it and taken possession of it, Moses had told them, “The Lord your God will soon bring you into the land he swore to give you when he made a vow to your ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. It is a land with large, prosperous cities that you did not build. The houses will be richly stocked with goods you did not produce. You will draw water from cisterns you did not dig, and you will eat from vineyards and olive trees you did not plant. When you have eaten your fill in this land, be careful not to forget the Lord, who rescued you from slavery in the land of Egypt. You must fear the Lord your God and serve him” (Deuteronomy 6:10-13 NLT). God had kept His word and had given them the land as their possession, but they had forgotten all about Him. They had failed to fear Him and serve Him. So now, God was bringing curses upon them for their disobedience. The land that had once provided them with abundant provision would no longer do so. “So now your harvests will be too small to feed you. There will be no grapes for making new wine” (Hosea 9:2 NLT). Not only that, they would no longer be able to stay in the land. They would be forcibly removed by the Assyrians and taken into captivity. They would experience the indignity of slavery in a foreign land just like their ancestors had. There in the land of Assyria, they would attempt to appease God with sacrifices and offerings, but it would do them no good. It would be too little, too late. Hosea warned them, “None of your sacrifices there will please him. They will be unclean, like food touched by a person in mourning. All who present such sacrifices will be defiled. They may eat this food themselves, but they may not offer it to the Lord{ (Hosea 9:4 NLT).

Even if they could somehow escape the Assyrians, they would suffer defeat at the hands of the Egyptians. There was no way out. Their destruction was inescapably inevitable. For years, they had rejected the warnings of God’s prophets. Men like Hosea had been pleading with them to repent and return to the Lord, but they had said, “The prophets are crazy and the inspired men are fools!” (Hosea 9:7 NLT). They could not imagine that God would actually destroy them, because they were His chosen people. They wrongly believed that they were untouchable and immune to God’s judgment. And yet, God had warned them for generations that failure to obey His commands would have dire consequences. And He had given them ample warning and more than enough opportunities to repent. But God’s sad prognosis was, “The things my people do are as depraved as what they did in Gibeah long ago. God will not forget. He will surely punish them for their sins” (Hosea 9:9 NLT). To understand just how bad God viewed their sinfulness, we have to go back and see what happened in Gibeah. A Levite and his concubine were traveling and stopped in the town of Gibeah to rest. They were greeted by an old man in the town square and he encouraged them to stay with him, but not to remain at overnight night in the open. That night, some men from the town surrounded the house.

While they were enjoying themselves, a crowd of troublemakers from the town surrounded the house. They began beating at the door and shouting to the old man, “Bring out the man who is staying with you so we can have sex with him.”  The old man stepped outside to talk to them. “No, my brothers, don’t do such an evil thing. For this man is a guest in my house, and such a thing would be shameful. Here, take my virgin daughter and this man’s concubine. I will bring them out to you, and you can abuse them and do whatever you like. But don’t do such a shameful thing to this man.” But they wouldn’t listen to him. So the Levite took hold of his concubine and pushed her out the door. The men of the town abused her all night, taking turns raping her until morning. Finally, at dawn they let her go. – Judges 19:22-25 NLT

This story is very reminiscent of what took place in Sodom and Gomorrah during the days of Abraham. Gibeah, an Israelite town, had become as immoral and corrupt as Sodom. God ended up destroying Gibeah for what had happened. And now Hosea warns that God viewed the entire nation of Israel as evil as He had the people of Gibeah.

There are times when we believe our sins are not all that bad. We somehow think that what we are doing is not offensive to God and we justify our actions as somehow acceptable and tolerable to Him. But God desires holiness and He has given us His Spirit to make the life of holiness possible. He wants to bless us and abundantly provide for us. But like the people of Israel, we can be guilty of turning our backs on Him, rejecting His will in favor of our own. We can become disobedient and stubbornly resistant to His warnings to return to Him. Yes, He is gracious and merciful. God is ready and willing to forgive. But we must always understand that God cannot tolerate sin. As believers, we will never have to suffer the penalty of sin, because of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on our behalf. But we will always have to face the consequences of our sinful behavior. We can miss out on the blessings of God and fail to enjoy the joy, peace, comfort and provision He so richly offers us. Like the Israelites being evicted from the land of promise, we can find ourselves living in exile from His blessings and suffering the consequences of our stubborn refusal to live in submission to His Spirit and according to His gracious will for our lives.

Forgetting God.

For they sow the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind. The standing grain has no heads; it shall yield no flour; if it were to yield, strangers would devour it. Israel is swallowed up; already they are among the nations as a useless vessel. For they have gone up to Assyria, a wild donkey wandering alone; Ephraim has hired lovers. Though they hire allies among the nations, I will soon gather them up. And the king and princes shall soon writhe because of the tribute. Because Ephraim has multiplied altars for sinning, they have become to him altars for sinning. Were I to write for him my laws by the ten thousands, they would be regarded as a strange thing. As for my sacrificial offerings, they sacrifice meat and eat it, but the Lord does not accept them. Now he will remember their iniquity and punish their sins; they shall return to Egypt. For Israel has forgotten his Maker and built palaces, and Judah has multiplied fortified cities; so I will send a fire upon his cities, and it shall devour her strongholds. – Hosea 8:7-14 ESV

Futility. That is the message in these verses. Sowing to the wind. Headless grain. No flour. Useless vessels. Stubborn wild donkeys. Impotent allies. Cash-strapped kings. An ungrateful, unfaithful nation.

Years of idolatry and rejection of God’s grace, goodness and mercy were going to catch up to the nation of Israel. Their stubborn unwillingness to keep their covenant with God was going to result in their own destruction. While their kings were busy building palaces and erecting idols to their false gods, God was plotting their destruction at the hands of the Assyrians. Thinking they could somehow prevent the inevitable from happening, they made alliances with other nations, like Egypt. And the irony of that should not escape us. They were turning to their former slave masters as their source of deliverance.  Little did they know that they would end up back in slavery just like they had experienced in Egypt, but this time in Assyria. Their sad, sordid history was about to come full circle.

They had had their chance. When they entered the land of Canaan after 40-plus years of wandering in the wilderness, God had commanded them:

When you drive out the nations that live there, you must destroy all the places where they worship their gods—high on the mountains, up on the hills, and under every green tree. Break down their altars and smash their sacred pillars. Burn their Asherah poles and cut down their carved idols. Completely erase the names of their gods! – Deuteronomy 12:2-3 NLT

But rather than follow God’s orders, they did things their way. They failed to rid the land of idols. They intermarried with the pagan nations, accepting their false gods as their own. They compromised their standards and treated God’s commands with contempt. Somehow they thought they knew better than God. They rationalized their behavior and justified their attempts to model their lives after the nations that occupied the land. And now they were going to have to pay for their insolence and insubordination. God’s laws had become superfluous and somehow optional. They felt no obligation to obey God. They saw no compelling reason to believe that God would keep His promise to bring curses on them if they failed to obey His commands. But they would soon discover just how wrong they were.

Sure, they were still offering sacrifices to Yahweh, but not on His terms. In fact, their offerings to God were little more than reasons to enjoy a good meal. They would sacrifice a bull or a lamb, not with a mind to receive forgiveness for their sins, but to satisfy their own sinful appetites. Feasting had taken precedence over forgiveness. Self-gratification was more important to them than God’s grace and mercy. Israel had forgotten its Maker (Hosea 8:14). They had turned their back on God. They had long ago forgotten His miraculous deliverance of them from slavery in Egypt. His provision for and protection of them during their wilderness years was a distant memory. The memories of their God-ordained conquest of the land of Canaan had faded a long time ago. The glory days of King David and the nation’s preeminence as a major power were things of the past. They had long ago become God-less and self-sufficient. They were God-followers in name only. In fact, their sinfulness had become so bad that they were actually worse than the pagan nations around them. God would later say of the southern nation of Judah, “You people have behaved worse than your neighbors and have refused to obey my decrees and regulations. You have not even lived up to the standards of the nations around you” (Ezekiel 5:7 NLT). God was appalled at the obstinate attitude of both Israel and Judah. Their unfaithfulness to Him was unprecedented. The prophet Jeremiah wrote, “Has any nation ever traded its gods for new ones, even though they are not gods at all? Yet my people have exchanged their glorious God for worthless idols!” (Jeremiah 2:11 NLT). Even the pagan nations would never have considered turning their backs on their gods. They were more faithful to their false gods than Israel and Judah had been to the one true God.

The Israelites were guilty of forgetting God. It had begun with them taking Him for granted. He was their God and they were His people. They felt a certain sense of security and smug superiority. They somehow believed God was obligated to care for them and to continue to forgive them, no matter what they did. The sacrifical system had become little more than a get-out-of-jail free card, requiring God to forgive them whether they were repentant or not. They thought nothing of offending God by their actions. Worshiping false gods just seemed to make common sense. Putting their trust in foreign governments for protection was just good governmental policy. Intermarrying with the pagan nations around them was profitable and preferable to God’s unrealistic policy of isolation. They had become wiser than God. And in time, God’s goodness, holiness, love, power and mercy faded from their memories. They forgot God. And it’s a lot easier to do than we might think. Because God is invisible, He can easily become indiscernible. Since we can’t see Him, we can easily forget about Him. We forget about His love. His holiness becomes a faded memory. His promises of future blessings become overshadowed by present pleasures and the pressing problems of the day. When we forget our Maker, we lose sight of our purpose in life. We end up seeking fulfillment from the things of this world. We begin to live by sight instead of by faith. The desire for worldliness replaces the pursuit of holiness. But we can rest assured that while we may occasionally forget God, He never forgets us.

Before the Face of God.

When I would heal Israel, the iniquity of Ephraim is revealed, and the evil deeds of Samaria; for they deal falsely; the thief breaks in, and the bandits raid outside. But they do not consider that I remember all their evil. Now their deeds surround them; they are before my face. By their evil they make the king glad, and the princes by their treachery. They are all adulterers; they are like a heated oven whose baker ceases to stir the fire, from the kneading of the dough until it is leavened. On the day of our king, the princes became sick with the heat of wine; he stretched out his hand with mockers. For with hearts like an oven they approach their intrigue; all night their anger smolders; in the morning it blazes like a flaming fire. All of them are hot as an oven, and they devour their rulers. All their kings have fallen, and none of them calls upon me. – Hosea 7:1-7 ESV

As children of God, it is sometimes far too easy to forget that He is there and that He sees all that we do. Because He is invisible to our human eyes, we can find ourselves acting as if He is nowhere in sight and wrongly conclude that He is unaware of our actions. But God is all-knowing and ever-present. He sees all. Nothing escapes His sight. In fact, the author of Hebrews warns us, “Nothing in all creation is hidden from God. Everything is naked and exposed before his eyes, and he is the one to whom we are accountable” (Hebrews 4:13 NLT). The psalmist tells us, “The LORD looks down from heaven and sees the whole human race” (Psalm 33:13 NLT). And in the book of Proverbs we read, “The LORD is watching everywhere, keeping his eye on both the evil and the good” (Provernbs 15:3 NLT). So the idea that somehow God is oblivious to our actions is ludicrous. Nothing is hidden from His eyes. And as followers of Jesus Christ, we should live with that insight in mind.

The idea of living our lives with a constant awareness that God is watching is biblical. When Adam and Eve sinned, God knew immediately. When Cain murdered Abel, God confronted Cain and asked him two questions: “Where is Abel your brother?” and “What have you done?” (Genesis 4:9-10 ESV). God was not asking for an update. He was not in need of a status report regarding what had gone on down on earth. He knew. He was looking for a confession from Cain, but instead He heard lies and denials. Many years later, when Abraham, the father of the Hebrew nation, was 99-years old, God appeared to him and said,  “I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless” (Genesis 17:1 ESV). God was literally saying to Abraham, “live your life before my eyes.” God wanted Abraham to conduct his life with a constant awareness that He was watching. When God called Abraham to “be blameless”, He was not asking for sinless perfection. The Hebrew word translated “blameless” carries the idea of wholeness or completeness. Abraham was to have no hidden areas in his life. There was to be no compartmentalization, no sacred and secular split, where some things belonged to God and others were reserved for Abraham. What God was asking of Abraham was that he live his entire life, every area of his life, with a constant awareness that God was watching, because He was.

So what does all this have to do with Israel and Hosea? Everything. If you notice in verse 2, God says, “their deeds surround them; they are before my face.” The Hebrew word is פָּנִים (paniym) and it is the same word used in Genesis 17:1. God was telling the Israelites that they were committing their sins “in His face.” While they probably thought their actions were invisible to God, He made it clear that every single sin they committed was visible to His all-seeing eyes. Their kings may have approved of their behavior, but God didn’t. He not only saw what they did, but He knew the motivation behind their actions because He knew their hearts. God spoke through the prophet, Jeremiah, saying, “The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is? But I, the Lord, search all hearts and examine secret motives. I give all people their due rewards, according to what their actions deserve” (Jeremiah 17:9-10 NLT). Jesus Himself said, “But the words you speak come from the heart—that’s what defiles you. For from the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, all sexual immorality, theft, lying, and slander” (Matthew 15:18-19 NLT).

The Israelites had a heart problem. Their hearts were far from God and it was reflected in their actions. They no longer knew God. They had no fear of God. They acted as if He could not see what they were doing and, even if He did, He would do nothing about it. Sadly, that is how many Christians live their lives today. Rather than understanding that God sees all that they do and even knows the motivation behind what they do, they live as if God is somehow oblivious or disinterested. But God would remind us, “The eyes of the LORD search the whole earth in order to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him” (2 Chronicles 16:9 NLT). He is looking for those who want to live their lives in keeping with His will and with an awareness that He sees all that they do. God doesn’t demand perfection from us, only dependence. He has given us His Holy Spirit to empower us to live the life to which He has called us. Abraham was far from perfect, but he was called the friend of God (2 Chronicles 20:7). David was anything but sinless, and yet he was called a man after God’s own heart (1 Samuel 13:14). God wants us to live our lives in His strength, according to His will and right in front of His face. He is watching. He cares. He rewards those who seek Him. But He also disciplines those who refuse to rely upon Him and live in obedience to Him. The saddest statement in this entire passage is God’s indictment against Israel that said, “none of them calls upon me” (Hosea 7:7 ESV). May that never be said of us as His children.

A Lack of Light.

But like Adam they transgressed the covenant; there they dealt faithlessly with me. Gilead is a city of evildoers, tracked with blood. As robbers lie in wait for a man, so the priests band together; they murder on the way to Shechem; they commit villainy. In the house of Israel I have seen a horrible thing; Ephraim's whoredom is there; Israel is defiled. For you also, O Judah, a harvest is appointed, when I restore the fortunes of my people. – Hosea 6:7-11 ESV

At the heart of Israel’s sin was their failure to keep their covenant with God. When He had delivered their ancestors from slavery in Egypt, God had given them His law and made a bilateral covenant with them at the base of Mount Sinai in the wilderness. That remarkable event was accompanied by thunder, lightning, smoke and fire. After seeing this dramatic display of God’s power and hearing the holy requirements of God, the people were petrified. “Now when all the people saw the thunder and the flashes of lightning and the sound of the trumpet and the mountain smoking, the people were afraid and trembled, and they stood far off and said to Moses, ‘You speak to us, and we will listen; but do not let God speak to us, lest we die.’ Moses said to the people, ‘Do not fear, for God has come to test you, that the fear of him may be before you, that you may not sin’” (Exodus 20:18-20 ESV).

God had chosen the people of Israel as His own. They were to be His representatives on earth, living according to His holy law and revealing to the world the blessings that come with obedience to His will. But God had warned them that there were going to be consequences to their disobedience. “The Lord will send on you curses, confusion, and frustration in all that you undertake to do, until you are destroyed and perish quickly on account of the evil of your deeds, because you have forsaken me” (Deuteronomy 28:20 ESV). Over the years, the nation of Israel proved remarkably unfaithful, even before the kingdom was split in two. And after God had divided the kingdom, the ten northern tribes, known as Israel, took their unfaithfulness to a whole new level. And as a result, God was forced to keep His word. He was going to bring about their destruction.

Forsaking God always has dire ramifications. You cannot ignore God and hope that all will go well for you. Failure to honor and worship Him as God always leads to devastating consequences. In the case of Israel, their sinfulness spread like a plague among the people. Murder and robbery became common place, even in those cities that had once been known as sacred sites. The priests and religious leaders, rather than being icons of spiritual virtue, were fully complicit in the immoral and unethical acts of the nation. They were guilty of leading the nation astray, not only by advocating the worship of idols, but in committing acts in direct defiance of God’s commandments. God had made His will crystal clear. His commands were non-negotiable and free from interpretation.

You must not have any other god but me. You must not make for yourself an idol of any kind or an image of anything in the heavens or on the earth or in the sea. You must not bow down to them or worship them, for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God who will not tolerate your affection for any other gods … You must not misuse the name of the Lord your God. The Lord will not let you go unpunished if you misuse his name. Remember to observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy … Honor your father and mother … You must not murder. You must not commit adultery. You must not steal. You must not testify falsely against your neighbor. You must not covet your neighbor’s house. You must not covet your neighbor’s wife, male or female servant, ox or donkey, or anything else that belongs to your neighbor. – Exodus 20:3-17 NLT

And Israel had violated them all. Just as Adam, the first man, had broken God’s covenant in the garden, disobeying His command to not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the Israelites had willingly and persistently broken God’s covenant with them. They had failed to take God seriously. They had doubted His word and ignored His warning about curses and promise of blessings. It is interesting to note that their failure to love God as expressed in their disobedience of His law, manifested itself in a lack of love for one another. Murder and robbery are relational crimes committed by one individual against another. Just as murder followed the initial sin of Adam and Eve, the Israelites’ forsaking of God was followed by a hatred for one another. The great Shema, based on Deuteronomy 6:4-9, was a required daily prayer for all Israelites, learned at an early age. It reads:

Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. – Deuteronomy 6:4-9 ESV

The law of God and a love for God were to be inseparable. God’s commands contained both vertical (God-focused) and horizontal (man-focused) elements. If someone obeyed God’s law out of love for Him, they would automatically express love for those around them. Obedience to God would manifest itself in mutual respect and love for others. But notice that the Shema contains the admonition to teach God’s commands to the next generation. They were to be a constant part of everyday life, dictating and determining behavior and influencing every aspect of life. But failure to keep God’s laws always follows failure to keep God as the center of your life. Disobedience is a byproduct of disbelief and distrust. Adam and Eve sinned because they listened to Satan and doubted God’s word. The people of Israel had sinned because they had forsaken God. Just as darkness is an absence of light, so sin is an absence of God. Walking away from God is like walking away from a light. You will eventually find yourself stumbling around in the dark, incapable of knowing where you are going and what you are doing.

The apostle John wrote, “God’s light came into the world, but people loved the darkness more than the light, for their actions were evil. All who do evil hate the light and refuse to go near it for fear their sins will be exposed. But those who do what is right come to the light so others can see that they are doing what God wants” (John 3:19-21 NLT). Israel had walked out of the light and into darkness. Their behavior was a result of their failure to honor and esteem God. And we can experience the same tragic outcome if we fail to keep God as the central focus in our lives, honoring Him for who He is and lovingly obeying His will because we know He loves us.

False Repentance.

“Come, let us return to the Lord; for he has torn us, that he may heal us; he has struck us down, and 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 before him. Let us know; let us press on to know the Lord; his going out is sure as the dawn; he will come to us as the showers, as the spring rains that water the earth.” What shall I do with you, O Ephraim? What shall I do with you, O Judah? Your love is like a morning cloud, like the dew that goes early away. Therefore I have hewn them by the prophets; I have slain them by the words of my mouth, and my judgment goes forth as the light. For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.– Hosea 6:1-6 ESV

These opening verses of chapter six have a positive ring to them. It sounds as if the people of Israel are recognizing the nature of God’s redemptive punishment and are returning to Him in repentance. But as we will see in the verses that follow, any repentance they attempt to show will be short-lived. The words in these three verses are filled with truth and accurately reflect the nature of God. He was going to tear them in order that He might heal them. He would eventually strike them down so that He might build them up. But these verses are actually an indictment of the people of Israel and provide a prophetic look at what their pseudo-repentance will look like in the future. When the full weight of God’s discipline falls on them, they will feign repentance, thinking that it will shorten the length of their punishment. That is the message behind verse 2: “After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will raise us up, that we may live before him.” Their overly optimistic outlook regarding the brevity of their punishment reflects an ignorance of the depth of their sin. Like a child who says, “I’m sorry” hoping to escape the well-deserved discipline of his parents, the Israelites would try to appease God with false repentance.

In his letter to the church in Corinth, Paul referred to a previous letter he had written to them that contained some severe, corrective words. He had evidently received news that his words had hurt them. But he wrote and told them, “Now I am glad I sent it, not because it hurt you, but because the pain caused you to repent and change your ways. It was the kind of sorrow God wants his people to have, so you were not harmed by us in any way. For the kind of sorrow God wants us to experience leads us away from sin and results in salvation. There’s no regret for that kind of sorrow. But worldly sorrow, which lacks repentance, results in spiritual death” (2 Corinthians 7:9-10 NLT). The worldly sorrow to which Paul referred is exactly what verses 1-3 in chapter six of Hosea are illustrating. The people will be sorry they got caught. They will be sorry that their actions have resulted in God’s divine discipline. But their sorrow will not lead them to true repentance.

In fact, there would be false prophets who would tell them that everything would be all right. They would try to convince the people that God was not all that mad and that His punishment would not be severe. Even after the northern kingdom of Israel fell, the southern kingdom of Judah would listen to the words of false prophets who showed up, promising good news instead of bad. God had some harsh words for these purveyors of positive motivational messages:

“Do not listen to these prophets when they prophesy to you, filling you with futile hopes. They are making up everything they say. They do not speak for the Lord! They keep saying to those who despise my word, ‘Don’t worry! The Lord says you will have peace!’ And to those who stubbornly follow their own desires, they say, ‘No harm will come your way!’” – Jeremiah 23:16-17 NLT

Later on in the book of Jeremiah, God’s words get even harsher:

“Do not listen to your false prophets, fortune-tellers, interpreters of dreams, mediums, and sorcerers who say, ‘The king of Babylon will not conquer you.’ They are all liars, and their lies will lead to your being driven out of your land. I will drive you out and send you far away to die.” – Jeremiah 27:9-10 NLT

The severity of God’s punishment reflects the depths of their sin. Just saying they were sorry would not be enough. Making a few token sacrifices in the hopes that God would be satisfied and hold off His judgment reflects an incredible misunderstanding of God’s hatred of sin. There are those today who think that hell is either a figment of man’s imagination and doesn’t exist at all or that it is merely symbolic, since, the falsely believe, a loving God would never torture someone for eternity. But both of those perceptions are false and reflect a gross misunderstanding of God and His attitude toward sin. The severity of hell should provide us with a vivid reminder of just how much God despises sin. And ultimately, the sin God despises most is man’s rejection of Him as God. It is a refusal to love, honor and obey Him as God. And concerning the people of Israel, whom God had made His own, He said, “For your love vanishes like the morning mist and disappears like dew in the sunlight” (Hosea 6:4b NLT). They had failed to return to God the love He had graciously shown them. After all He had done for them, in most cases in spite of them, they had rejected Him as their God.

What God wanted most was their love. And man’s love for God is best motivated by an understanding of the severity of his sin and that responds in wonder at God’s gracious and merciful provision of a way to be made right with Him despite his undeserving state. It was while we were sinners that Christ died for us (Romans 5:8). It was while we were hopelessly dead in our sins that God chose to give us life through Christ (Ephesians 2:5). That is why God called out to Israel, “I want you to show love, not offer sacrifices. I want you to know me more than I want burnt offerings” (Hosea 6:6 NLT).

God wanted true repentance. He was not interested in worldly sorrow or religious ritual done in the hopes of appeasing His wrath. King David said it best when he wrote Psalm 51 in the aftermath of his sordid affair with Bathsheba.

You do not desire a sacrifice, or I would offer one. You do not want a burnt offering. The sacrifice you desire is a broken spirit. You will not reject a broken and repentant heart, O God. – Psalm 51:16-17 NLT

Israel was not yet broken. The hearts of the people had not returned to God. They feared punishment more than they loved God. And the sad truth is that, for too many of us today, any repentance we attempt to show is motivated by fear of God, not a love for Him. We simply want to escape judgment, not know Him better. We underestimate our sin and under-value His sacrificial love for us. But the more we understand the gravity of our sin, the more we will appreciate His gracious, merciful love and show godly sorrow that leads to true repentance.

They Know Not The Lord.

Hear this, O priests! Pay attention, O house of Israel! Give ear, O house of the king! For the judgment is for you; for you have been a snare at Mizpah and a net spread upon Tabor. And the revolters have gone deep into slaughter, but I will discipline all of them. I know Ephraim, and Israel is not hidden from me; for now, O Ephraim, you have played the whore; Israel is defiled. Their deeds do not permit them to return to their God. For the spirit of whoredom is within them, and they know not the Lord.

The pride of Israel testifies to his face; Israel and Ephraim shall stumble in his guilt; Judah also shall stumble with them. With their flocks and herds they shall go to seek the Lord, but they will not find him; he has withdrawn from them. They have dealt faithlessly with the Lord; for they have borne alien children. Now the new moon shall devour them with their fields. – Hosea 5:1-7 ESV

Everyone is guilty. Priests, people and king are all culpable for what is about to happen to Israel. There is no one who can escape the coming judgment of God by claiming innocence. The religious and governmental leaders were all guilty of orchestrating the downfall of the entire nation, having established policies that encouraged idolatry and led the people away from God. But like dumb sheep, the people willingly followed, satisfying their base desires and fulfilling their sinful passions, with no regard to the will or wrath of God. The corporate mindset had become one of spiritual rebellion and everyone was involved. Justification of their actions was the order of the day. And Hosea made the foreboding pronouncement, “their deeds do not permit them to return to their God” (Hosea 5:4 ESV). They had become so infected with “the spirit of whoredom” that repentance was impossible for them. They no longer knew God. Their lifestyle of sin had virtually erased His memory from their minds.

The imagery in this passage is one of hunting. Hosea described nets being spread and slaughter taking place. It is as if the priests and the king had purposefully set out to capture the people of Israel and slaughter them like prey. And others had joined in the hunt, capturing the helpless people in their nets of idolatry and rebellion. But God was going to hold them accountable. He was going to discipline them all. Because nothing is hidden from His eyes. No activity takes place on this planet that He does not see and to which He will hold all accountable. The people may forget God, but He does not forget them.

Things had gotten so bad, that even Judah, the southern kingdom, would eventually be infected by the sinful actions of Israel. They too would end up rebelling against God and suffering His discipline and judgment. At the last minute, the people of both nations would attempt to worship God and repent of their sins, but it would prove too little, too late. Their repentance would not be based on a love for God, but simply a fear of His coming judgment and a desire to escape it. But Hosea warns, “With their flocks and herds they shall go to seek the Lord, but they will not find him; he has withdrawn from them” (Hosea 5:6 ESV). They had gone too far. God knew their hearts and He was able to see through any attempt on their part to feign repentance. He was not going to accept their last-minute sacrifices and pleas for forgiveness, because He knew their hearts were not in it. Their actions would not be motivated by a love for Him, but out of a fear of punishment. As God had said of the people of Israel, “These people say they are mine. They honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me” (Isaiah 29:13 NLT).

This was all a heart issue. The sinful practices of the people of Israel flowed from their hardened hearts. They no longer had any love for God. Their hearts had been stolen away by false gods and the promises of pleasure, happiness, satisfaction and contentment those false religions promised. They loved themselves and their own pleasure more than they loved God. And as a result, they had proven unfaithful to God. Just as Gomer had left Hosea and given herself to other men, Israel had left God and given themselves to false gods. And now they would face the punishment of God. But we must always remember that one day God was going to restore them. Just as He commanded Hosea to buy back Gomer from her life of prostitution, God would redeem Israel from their slavery to sin. Not because they deserved it, but because God is loving, gracious and faithful. He would keep His promises to Israel, in spite of them. Their unfaithfulness would do nothing to diminish His faithfulness. And we too can always count on the faithfulness of God. His redemption of us has nothing to do with any merit on our part.

But the saddest statement in this entire passage is that they knew not the Lord. Despite all He had done for them over the years, the people of Israel had no real knowledge of or relationship with God. Yes, they had an intellectual knowledge of who He was, but there was no intimacy or personal relationship. They didn’t understand His greatness or appreciate His goodness. They had long ago forgotten all the incredible miracles He had done on behalf of their forefathers. God had become just another god among the many that they worshiped. And the sad reality is that we are guilty of the same thing. There are those today who claim to be worshipers of and believers in God, but they have no real knowledge of Him. Their understanding of Him is of the text book variety, provided to them second-hand and with no personal experience involved. They know about Him, but it is an impersonal and experience-depleted knowledge. The book of Judges portrays a similar situation in the life of the people of God. “And all that generation also were gathered to their fathers. And there arose another generation after them who did not know the LORD or the work that he had done for Israel” (Judges 2:10 ESV). A whole new generation came on the scene that was devoid of any real knowledge of God. Their parents had failed to teach them the truth about God, including His incredible power to deliver them and provide for them. So they turned to other gods. Their ignorance of God led them to rebel against Him. And the same pattern is repeating itself today. Each generation must tell the next about the greatness and goodness of God.

For he issued his laws to Jacob; he gave his instructions to Israel. He commanded our ancestors to teach them to their children, so the next generation might know them—even the children not yet born—and they in turn will teach their own children. So each generation should set its hope anew on God, not forgetting his glorious miracles and obeying his commands. – Psalm 78:5-7 NLT

The Leadership Void.

Yet let no one contend, and let none accuse, for with you is my contention, O priest. You shall stumble by day; the prophet also shall stumble with you by night;  and I will destroy your mother. My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge; because you have rejected knowledge, I reject you from being a priest to me. And since you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children. The more they increased, the more they sinned against me; I will change their glory into shame.

They feed on the sin of my people; they are greedy for their iniquity. And it shall be like people, like priest; I will punish them for their ways and repay them for their deeds. They shall eat, but not be satisfied; they shall play the whore, but not multiply, because they have forsaken the Lord to cherish whoredom, wine, and new wine, which take away the understanding. – Hosea 4:4-11 ESV

God held all of the people of Israel responsible for their sin, but He had a special word of accusation against the spiritual leaders of Israel. The priests and prophets, while not actually men appointed by God, were still going to be held accountable because of their claim to be representatives of God. The priests of Israel were actually unsanctioned by God, because they had been appointed by Jeroboam after the kingdom split in two. He had created his own gods and appointed his own priests. They were not Levites, as God had commanded. So these were actually false priests leading the people in the worship of false gods. So God held them to a higher standard and leveled more severe charges against them. The same was true of the false prophets who were claiming to bring messages from the false gods they worshiped. These men were supposedly speaking new revelations from their gods, giving the people of Israel divine direction. But they were simply misleading the people. The revelations they received, if indeed they received any, were most likely demonic and most definitely not from God.

God’s main accusation against the priests was that they were leading the people away from Him, not toward Him. The people’s knowledge of God was actually diminishing, not increasing. God said, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge; because you have rejected knowledge” (Hosea 4:6 ESV). The priests were not seeking after the one true God, so the people were becoming increasingly ignorant of God and His ways. The priests were not teaching the laws of God, so the people were breaking them without even knowing it. And all of this was leading to their destruction, both spiritually and physically.

As priests, these men were to be promoting godliness and the worship of God. They were to be leading the people into a deeper understanding of and appreciation for God. But God said, “The more priests there are, the more they sin against me. They have exchanged the glory of God for the shame of idols” (Hosea 4:7 NLT). They were leaving God out of the equation. They had replaced Him with false gods and the peoples sins were actually increasing, not decreasing. And God even accused the priests of wanting the people to sin more, because the more they sinned, the more sacrifices they had to bring to repent of their sins. And the more sacrifices the people made, the more portions of those sacrifices they got to eat as their priestly payment. They were actually getting fat and happy off of the sins of the people. “When the people bring their sin offerings, the priests get fed. So the priests are glad when the people sin!” (Hosea 4:8 NLT).

There was evidently a common saying among the Israelites that said, “And what the priests do, the people also do” (Hosea 4:9a NLT). These so-called spiritual leaders were actually setting the standard for sin. They were leading the people into idolatry, immorality, and sins of all kinds by their very actions. Which led God to declare, “So now I will punish both priests and people for their wicked deeds” (Hosea 4:9b NLT).

One of the saddest results of turning from God and seeking false gods is that the blessings you seek never come to fruition. The benefits you hope to derive from your false god never appear. The satisfaction you want remains illusive and unattainable. And God told the people of Israel, “They will eat and still be hungry. They will play the prostitute and gain nothing from it, for they have deserted the Lord to worship other gods” (Hosea 4:10-11a NLT). If you make money your god, you will never have enough of it to make you happy or bring you satisfaction. If you make popularity or beauty your god, there will always be someone more popular and more beautiful than you are. If you place your hope and trust in an individual, they will inevitably let you down. Whatever you end up worshiping in place of God will always let you down. It is incapable of delivering what you seek.

While the Israelites were guilty of worship golden calves and idols made of wood, our false gods are more sophisticated and subtle. Ours take the form of people, careers, material things, money, politicians, success, entertainment, and even self. And sadly, in our culture, there are those claiming to speak for God who encourage the worship of these false gods. They claim to speak for God, but actually direct people away from Him by encouraging actions and attitudes that are opposed to His will. These false preachers and pastors promote happiness over holiness. They downplay the topic of sin and portray God as some kind of self-help guru who exists to meet all your personal desires. They preach inclusion and tolerance at the expense of God’s holiness and man’s need of repentance and salvation from sin. They teach the love of God as some kind of syrupy, sweet, all-accepting idea where God never opposes sin and never condemns the sinner. In essence, they emasculate God, turning Him into a doddering grandfather in the sky who doles out blessings on any and all, free from judgment and mindless of the idea of accountability. But this is not the God of the Bible. And like the false priests and prophets of Israel, the pastors, teachers, evangelists and prophets of today who lead people away from the one true God, will be held responsible by God for their actions.

Our Faithful God.

She conceived again and bore a daughter. And the Lord said to him, “Call her name No Mercy, for I will no more have mercy on the house of Israel, to forgive them at all.  But I will have mercy on the house of Judah, and I will save them by the Lord their God. I will not save them by bow or by sword or by war or by horses or by horsemen.” When she had weaned No Mercy, she conceived and bore a son. And the Lord said, “Call his name Not My People, for you are not my people, and I am not your God.”

Yet the number of the children of Israel shall be like the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured or numbered. And in the place where it was said to them, “You are not my people,” it shall be said to them, “Children of the living God.” And the children of Judah and the children of Israel shall be gathered together, and they shall appoint for themselves one head. And they shall go up from the land, for great shall be the day of Jezreel. – Hosea 1:6-11 ESV

After eventually giving birth to Jezreel, Hosea’s first son, Gomer would go on to conceive and bear two additional children to Hosea – a daughter who Hosea was instructed to name, “No Mercy” and a second son who was to be called “Not My People.” The girl’s name would literally be, “She Is Not Loved.” Now to get the full impact of what is going on here, you have to imagine Hosea calling out the names of his children on a daily basis, just as you and I do within our own families. Every time Hosea wanted to get the attention of one of his children or to introduce them to someone, he would be reminded of the tenuous status between the people of Israel and their God. Neighbors, family members and friends would also receive a not-so-subtle or appreciated nudge as to the spiritual state of the nation. The real sufferers in this context would have been the children themselves, whose very name would be like badges of dishonor their entire lives. What parent in their right mind would want to invite a kid named “No Mercy” or “Not My People” to their child’s birthday party?

But as usual, God’s purposes went far deeper than the personal sufferings of either Hosea or his children. God would making a divine statement about His dissatisfaction with His people. Their actions against Him were unacceptable and His judgment on them was going to be unavoidable. Things had gotten so bad in the northern kingdom of Israel that God was forced to conclude, “I will no more have mercy on the house of Israel, to forgive them at all” (Hosea 1:6 ESV). And even scarier than that was His sobering pronouncement, “for you are not my people, and I am not your God” (Hosea 1:9 ESV). God was going to give them over to their own rebellious desires. He was going to bring judgment for their unrepentant actions against Him.

God was in no way breaking His covenant promises with Israel. He was simply telling them that the relationship they had enjoyed with Him up until that time was about to radically change. His provision, protection and power would be removed. They had come to believe that their relative success as a nation was due to their status as the children of God, but now God was warning them that that was all about to change – radically. God, who is holy and righteous, cannot turn a blind eye to sin. He cannot simply tolerate or overlook the rebellion of those whom He has called His own. He was going to give the Israelites over to the natural inclinations of their hearts. They didn’t want to serve and obey Him, so He would make it possible for them to come out from under His rule and reign, and experience the “freedom” they so desperately craved.

And yet, God tells Hosea that at the same time, “I will have mercy on the house of Judah, and I will save them by the Lord their God” (Hosea 1:7 ESV). When the history of the two divided kingdoms of Israel and Judah are examined closely, it is evident that both were guilty of unfaithfulness, but the southern kingdom of Judah has within its less-than-ideal historical chronology a few bright moments when a king would come to the surface who would serve God and lead the people in a renewed obedience to Him. These kings were few and far between, but they provide a marked contrast to the long line of rulers over the northern kingdom of who each, “did what was evil in the sight of the Lord” (1 Kings 16:25 ESV). It is important to remember that God had promised King David that He would establish his kingdom forever. “Your house and your kingdom will continue before me for all time, and your throne will be secure forever” (2 Samuel 7:16 NLT). God also told Solomon, David’s son, “I will establish the throne of your dynasty over Israel forever. For I made this promise to your father, David: ‘One of your descendants will always sit on the throne of Israel’” (1 Kings 9:5 NLT). So a major part of God’s promise to show mercy on the southern kingdom of Judah was in order to keep His promise to David. It was not that Judah was more faithful than Israel, but that God was faithful to fulfill all that He had promised. The southern kingdom of Judah was named after one of the two tribes from which it was comprised. And it was to be through the tribe of Judah, David’s tribe, that the Messiah would come. The prophet, Micah, had predicted, “But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, are only a small village among all the people of Judah. Yet a ruler of Israel will come from you, one whose origins are from the distant past” (Micah 5:2 NLT).

In the midst of all the gloom and doom of this passage is found a small, but highly significant word: “Yet.” God tells Hosea, “Yet the number of the children of Israel shall be like the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured or numbered. And in the place where it was said to them, ‘You are not my people,’ it shall be said to them, ‘Children of the living God’” (Hosea 1:11 ESV). In spite of all that God had said regarding His removal of His mercy and His rejection of the nation of Israel as His children, He was not done. His anger would not be long-lasting and His rejection would not be permanent. They may have proved unfaithful, but He would not be. The day was coming when His judgment would be unleashed on them in the form of the Assyrian army. But there was also a day coming when God would restore the entire nation of Israel – all twelve tribes – to their rightful place as His children. “And the children of Judah and the children of Israel shall be gathered together, and they shall appoint for themselves one head. And they shall go up from the land, for great shall be the day of Jezreel” (Hosea 1:11 ESV).

Too often we read passages like this one and focus solely on the judgment of God. But in doing so we miss out on the real message of His faithfulness. We fail to remember the rest of the story. God is not done yet. The redemptive story He is writing is far from finished. His faithfulness is beyond question and His steadfast, unfailing commitment to His promises is unshakeable. Israel would fail God, but He would not fail Israel. Even the southern tribe of Judah would end up falling under God’s wrath for their rebellion, but He would not abandon them forever. Why? Because He is the faithful, covenant-keeping God.