One of the privileges that I've had is to work as a mediator. You know, if you've ever had the misfortune of either taking someone to court or being taken to court, you may have had the judge before getting to the trial and stuff, say, well, this is fine, but you guys need to go and talk to a mediator first. And then if you can't resolve it, come back to me. This is something that's more and more invoked and being used to cut through all of the litigation and things. And one of the things as a mediator that I've found was that it's amazing how much we don't listen to other people. And one of the things in mediation that you would have two people who would come in hating one another, not willing at all to even be in the same room. It's only because the judge said you've got to go to this room together that they would go. And just through the process of getting them to listen to one another, you would find all kinds of absolute shock and amazement that they would say, I had no idea. Now, that's obviously a best case scenario where people actually do listen to one another. But one of the things that that's taught me is our incredible capacity for denial. Now, all of us tend to have our own unique kind of ways of dealing with denial. Some of us will work our denial through escapism. We'll just check out whether we actually go somewhere else or just are there but mentally checked out. Well, we might go the party route and go find something else to occupy our thoughts and attentions to avoid dealing with the things that need to be done. The burden students being in the midst of exams reminded me of every time exam time would come around in my life, it was always the best time to clean your room. Why is that? It's like the room is all amazement. But when I've got 18 hours to study for the exam that starts 15 hours from now, it's the time when I need to spend five hours cleaning my room. And you go, why? What's going on? It's a form of denial. I don't want to have revealed to me how much I don't know before that exam, right? I want to focus on something that I can manage. We do that individually and we also do that corporately. We're in the midst of this series on the book of Hosea and looking at God's word given specifically to the prophet Hosea to communicate to his people, Israel. And the first three chapters that we've been looking at is this incredible illustration of God's love relationship for his people. And we've looked at that in how graphically God shows us our sinfulness. But even as we hear those things, our tendency is to want to get some distance, is to deny that that really applies to us. And with the Bible, sometimes it's easy because we think, oh, well, that's for Israel. I don't know what that means for me. But I mean, that's Israel like way back there. I mean, this is thousands of years ago. This couldn't possibly have any relevance. But as you go about working on that denial, we're praying that the Holy Spirit would be at work in all of us to make us recognize, whoa, wait a minute, that's me. God gives us this illustration. These three chapters of saying, my relationship as God is like Hosea's relationship with a prostitute wife, a wife that has been unfaithful to him at every opportunity. Not just caught up in an adulterous affair, but one who goes out time after time seeking after anything with lengths in order to avoid her husband. And so now, after giving that illustration, God turns in this section, chapter 4, he turns that from the illustration to the specifics, to the details of what that means and what that looks like. And you'll see in your notes the overview or the summary for the whole book. God has the right to divorce his prostitute wife. But even though he will discipline her severely, he will always love her and eventually redeem her to complete faithfulness. That's the big picture. He started with the illustration of, here's what that looks like in real terms that you can understand with Hosea and Gomer. And now this section is the opening of divorce court. And we have these three points that we see in this text. The first is God's promiscuous fiancee and then bribe, the promiscuousness that has been illustrated in Gomer that we now see the specifics with the people of Israel. And then that leads to the charges, the specific charges that are pronounced in court in the divorce proceedings. And then this relationship that we'll talk about between Gomer who represents Israel and the similarities and differences with Mary, Christ, Mother. Okay, so that's where we're heading. First of all, let's look at this whole area of God's promiscuous fiancee. We turn from Gomer, this real person married to Hosea and her unfaithfulness that is representative of Israel. And now we turn to Israel herself. One of the things that we need to understand is the way in which in that culture, betrothal was very different from our modern engagement. And we noticed this last week in God using this language of betrothal that he pledges his love. It's an engagement, but in that culture, when a couple was betrothed, that is they were pledged to one another, but before they were married, they were still united together. And while they didn't come together and consummate the marriage and weren't husband and wife fully until the wedding, that if one of them wanted to back out of the marriage before the wedding, it was the same as divorce. You had to go through the same kind of proceedings to break off the engagement as if you were already married. Now, as somebody who was engaged twice, I was engaged when I was just in high school and ended that relationship. I know some of what that looks like in terms of ending the engagement. Of course, it's always better to be the one on the breaking of the engagement side than the one who gets it broken. But there's a lot involved in that, the breaking of the engagement. It's more than just George Castagna thing of trying to figure out how we're going to pay for the announcements and we've already paid for them and sent them out. There's more to it than just the shame of, gosh, I sent out the announcements and paid for them and now we've got to send back the cake. But there's a huge amount of connectedness that's broken, that's ripped apart in the breaking of the total engagement. One of the things that is always difficult in that breaking of the engagement or in a marriage that comes to divorce is the one party who's the recipient, the one who's getting the broken engagement or getting the divorce served to them is saying, what are you talking about? What's going on? Why? Why? And so God goes about laying out very specifically the why. Here is why I, God, am divorcing you Israel as my bride. And as he moves into that specific, we start the passage, you'll look at the, at the front of your notes here in verse one, he has this quote or this phrase that he uses here the word of the Lord. Now that's, it's not just, okay, listen, are you listening? It is the equivalent of what we have in our courts when the, when the bailiff comes in and says, all rise or in, in the older tradition of, hear ye, hear ye, right? The court is being drawn into session, God is saying, this, this is not just, we're talking about this, we're not just arguing about this, but, but we're in court, court's been called the session and we're in the midst of that divorce trial. And so the Lord in this passage lays out the specific charges. And we find that there are, that the Lord charges Israel both for, for sins of comission and omission. That is for things that, that Israel has done that she wasn't supposed to do, as well as things that she was supposed to do that she's not done. Let's look first at those of omission. He says, there's no faithfulness, no love, no acknowledgement of God. It says these are the things that you were supposed to do, that was part of our marital agreement. Now, in that, in that marriage of God with His people, that's connected with His bringing His people up out of Egypt. And as He did that, He brought them to Mount Sinai and met with them there in fire and smoke and they were amazed and trembled and finally said, don't, we can't handle it. Moses, you go and talk to him, we can't, we can't do it, it's too much. And in that, God lays out the covenant, covenant is a fancy way of talking about a sacred agreement. It's, it's like our modern day contracts with, with real teeth. You know, you can, you can sign a contract and then pay a lawyer enough to get out of it, right? Well, the, the old covenant, covenants, these agreements, one of the ways that they would, that they would represent how important that they were is that they would, they would have, the two parties that were agreeing to something, okay? Say, you, you were wanting to, to have Robert build an addition on your garage. You said, okay, Robert, you're a builder, we want, we're going to pay you time and materials and you're going to add the addition on to our garage. And so we've got that all spelled out here in the contract, the lawyers have looked at it good. You said, but, you know, I've heard about contractors and I know that you might have a good lawyer and get out of the contract, but we really want this done just the way that we're saying. So what we're going to do is we're going to go in the backyard and I just happen to have gotten this, this, this bird and, and this, uh, raccoon and we're going to, we're going to cut the raccoon and the bird into two pieces. I got this big cleaver. I'm going to hack him into and, and put their pieces on either side and then Robert, you and I are going to walk through the middle of those pieces and say, if I as the contractor do not pay you time and materials, let the unto, done unto me, what I've done to these, this bird and this raccoon and, Robert, should you not build the addition to the garage as you have promised? I've got the cleaver, right? It's, it's a way of saying, okay, we really mean this, right? What's the thing you did is kids, the pinky, you know, right, it's, it's not just the pinky promise thing, okay, this is, this is hack the part, bloody pieces, lying on the ground that you're looking at saying, okay, if we don't do this thing, right, this is what happens. It's an idea of what the covenant is, okay, it's what marriage agreements are supposed to be. You know, the whole thing of what God has joined together, let no one put his under, God is saying, I take this that seriously, but in the covenant, I'm requiring things of you and if you don't do them, there's divorce. And so now God is coming into court saying you haven't done it. Look at the specific things of what you haven't done. You haven't been faithful. Remember the illustration of Gomer? This is not just a minor mess up. God says, you, there has not been just a lack of some faithfulness, time and again, or once in a while, but there's been an utter lack of faithfulness. You are never faithful. There's been no love. The word used here for love has the connotation of piety in terms of the religious and those things that we do to express our love for God, but in a more normal way of thinking just in terms of love relationships, it's the idea of devotion, the things that you do because you love that person. You want to do things for them and he says, there's no devotion, there's no love. And then third, there's no acknowledgement of God. You're acting like I don't even exist. There's an utter lack of acknowledgement of him. So those are all things that Israel was supposed to do. They were supposed to faithfully obey. They were supposed to love him in devotion and piety. They were supposed to acknowledge him in all of their way. And they haven't. But also look at what they've done, those sins of commission. He says, cursing, lying in murder, stealing in adultery, breaking bounds and shedding blood. There's a parallel here that he follows with the Ten Commandments of pointing out those things that, again, in the Ten Commandments, that was part of the covenant agreement to say, I will be your God. You will be my people. Here are the things that you will do and the things that you won't do. And they've said, oh, the things that we're supposed to do, now don't want to do those. Oh, these things that we're not supposed to do. Yeah, let's go do them and following after them, trying to figure out new and better ways to do the things that he commanded us not to do. So not only do we have in the charges these specific things of being left undone and being done, we also find this downward spiral that we begin a little bit and light gomer. One lover turns into ten, turns into a hundred, turns into chasing after everyone we can't. And he follows this downward spiral, talking in the first ten verses of chapter four of the rejection of the law, these things that we've just talked about. But it doesn't stop there. Those things that are rejecting the law then turn into corrupting the religion, the practice. It's not just, okay, I go out and do those wrong things but then come back and make things right. Have you ever noticed in Mafia movies, have the really awful, the worst Mafiosa folks are very consistent in terms of going to confession, then we're struck you as messed up, you know, hey, I'm going to go and blow up all of my enemies and his family, anybody around, but you know, I'm going to make sure that I go to confession and it's okay. You see, you may start there. You may start doing things and pursuing those things that God has told us not to do and coming back and do tofully confessing them. But over time, that will lead to, not only do I do them, but I don't care about coming to confession either. I don't, my conscience is so hardened that before long, I don't even feel like there's anything wrong that needs to be confessed. So the rejection of the law leads to that corruption of the religion. And then that leads to the leadership becoming culpable and being involved in it all throughout this passage. It's like he's hitting the priest every turn, says, I will punish them, priest and people alike. He says that they gobble up the sins of my people. Now what's going on there is in the Old Testament sacrificial system, when someone's sinned, they didn't just get off with confession and do a couple of good works. Now you had to bring the animal in to be sacrificed. And one of the things that you would do is have the animal sacrifice and the priest who was the one who would sacrifice it would then, after it was cooked in the burnt sacrifice, the priest would then eat that. And so what you find is Israel getting to such a degraded point that the priests are going on saying, hey, there's a party coming Friday night. Why don't you go? Because hey, if I can get them to go to the party on Friday night, guess what's going to happen Saturday? I mean, if he really lives it up at the party, he's going to have to bring in a whole bowl on Saturday, right? And so the priests are then encouraging greater sin. They're saying, live it up because what'll happen is you're bringing the sacrifices in and will eat well. God says you're missing it. You're defaming the very things that I've set up for you to understand my grace. And so we find it getting worse and worse. Not only are they sinning, not only are there consciousness being hardened, but the leaders of the church are encouraging, condoning, and leading them in that. And so as these charges are read, our response ought to be, yeah, you know, I don't go and make
the sacrifice, or I don't go and blow up the people like the mafia. But in every way that the sin is described, I know in my own heart, I sin that way too. I don't look to the Lord as my sufficiency. I don't trust in him alone. I trust in him some, some time, and these other things. And so as the charges are read on how Israel is culpable, how Israel is worthy of being divorced, it ought to make us recognize more and more our own need, and that we're in the same place as Israel. Israel, here's the charges read and says, how do I, what do I do? I can't, I can't do anything else. Paul picks up the same language in Romans and says, the things that I don't want to do, I do. The things I know are right, and that I do want to do, I can't do. So what do we do with that? Well, listen again to this illustration that God starts with, instructing Hosea, go and marry, gomer, take an unfaithful life, take a prostitute as a one, and then she has illegitimate children. And we've talked about this whole thing of betrothal, of engagement. And it points forward, again God uses betrothal language all over this passage to point us forward to one who would be betrothed, and find herself not yet married, but with time. And in every way that Israel had as an illegitimate child, as a faithless wife, had not kept the law, Christ comes and keeps the law. He does all that God has commanded us to do. And he refrains from everything that God has prohibited us from doing. Everything that gomer in Israel leaves undone, he does. And everything that they do that is wrong, he does not do. You see the picture here is not just of Jesus coming to forgive us, Jesus coming to give us a, get out of jail path. But he wants to show us the reality, the depth of our sinfulness. Do you remember in Jesus talking with the smug religious leader, he said, Jesus, why, you hang around with these sinners, and it's taxical that gathers, why do you do all this? And Jesus said, I've not come to save the well, but the loss, the sick and dying. Or when Jesus healed the lepers, and only one out of the ten came back to give them things. You see, as we recognize our need, it says we recognize that the story of Hosea and gomer is not just for Israel, it's for us. We're the ones who are faithless. These charges don't just hold true for Israel then, they hold true for us now, and that we need, just as they need, to have that one who has kept the law. See, Israel was culpable because she had broken the covenant, the agreement with God. She had all of God's words given to her, and yet she sinned recklessly. We have an even greater responsibility because we've been given even more. We know not just that the Messiah is coming, but we know His name, and we know what He's done, and we know the extent of His work in atoning Him. But sometimes we brush over too quickly, the extent of how much we need that work in our life. I hope as we read these charges, as we meditate upon these passages in Hosea, that that would get down below the surface, and allow us to see our desperate need for Him, and how He has taken that covenant that we have shattered, and restored it, so that we can be His. Let's pray. Lord Christ, we do worship You, we praise You and thank You for Your goodness to us, that You came into our world, born of a virgin, and yet in a way that made the people around you mock You. Oh, sure, sure You are conceived by the Holy Spirit. Forgive us for the ways in which we take too lightly the extent to which You have gone to save us, to redeem us. We do worship You and praise You in Your name, Lord Christ. Amen.