Do not rejoice, O Israel. Do not be jubilant like the other nations. For you have been unfaithful to your God. You love the wages of a prostitute at every threshing floor. Threshing floors and wine presses will not feed the people. The new wine will fail them. They will not remain in the Lord's land. Ephraim will return to Egypt and eat unclean food in the Syria. They will not pour out wine offerings to the Lord nor will their sacrifices please him. Such sacrifices will be to them like the bread of mourners. All who eat them will be unclean. This food will be for themselves. It will not come into the temple of the Lord. What will you do on the day of your appointed feasts? On the festival days of the Lord. Even if they escape from destruction, Egypt will gather them and Memphis will bury them. Their treasures of silver will be taken over by briars and thorns will overrun their tent. The days of punishment are coming. The days of reckoning are at hand. Let Israel know this. Because your sins are so many in your hostility so great, the prophet is considered a fool, the inspired man a maniac. The prophet along with my God is the watchman over Ephraim, yet snares await him on all his paths and hostility in the house of his God. They have sunk deep into corruption. As in the days of Ghibbia, God will remember their wickedness and punish them for their sins. The word of the Lord. Lord Christ, we do thank you and praise you for your word that you have given us. Holy Spirit, work in us and help us to see what it is that you intend for us to understand from this and how to apply it to our lives. Give us bravery and boldness to do that and we pray in Christ name. Amen. You may be seated. We are in the midst of this series on Hosea. The book of Hosea as we found is rather breathtaking and really wild in the graphic detail with which the Lord tells us about who we are as his people and the reality of our sinfulness before him. In the first three chapters, we see this elaborate illustration that God gives us in telling his prophet Hosea to go and take a faithless bride, a woman of parloratry and prostitution. We see that unfold and show us the reality of our sinfulness before God. And then in chapters four to nine, there is this bringing us into the divorce court, showing us God's case against his bride, the people of God, why we deserve to be divorced from him. And then in our section today, the proclamation of the seconds, the gaville hitting and saying, this is what is going to happen because of our sinfulness. And then in the chapters that follow 10 to 14, we will see this sort of reminiscent and longing, this talking about the things that God's people have experienced and seen, this kind of trip down memory lane if you will, of God's people and all of the heartaches that God has had because of what his people have done, but also the laughter to look forward to, the joy that is waiting as God restores his people. So that's where we are in the context of the whole book. Right now kind of the courtroom section is drawing to a close in this reading of the verdict of the judgment that God is bringing on his people. It is sometimes difficult for us to really see all of the things that are there in the scripture because we don't always have the context. A lot of the language in this particular passage is tied in with the sacrificial system and the things that foreign for Jose's audience, they would identify with and recognize very clearly, but being so removed, it's sometimes difficult for us. I was struck by President Bush's trip to Europe that he's engaged in right now and how he started that trip in going to Poland and particularly in visiting the concentration camp of Auschwitz. Might help us a little bit more and that we're a little bit closer to and understand the horrors of the Holocaust. And one of the questions that the Holocaust immediately brings to mind to folks thinking through that kind of horror is how could such a thing happen to a particular people. And as you look at the scope of history that it continues to happen to the Jewish people in horrendous ways. And that question of why is something that Jose is dressing. Now please don't hear me wrong in that. I'm not addressing what Jose is saying to the Jews then to explain the Holocaust. But I'm trying to help us look at that question when a people is so utterly annihilated and destroyed. Those are the questions that come to mind that all of the nations around look and say what? What's going on? And that's what Jose is getting at. He's spent this time showing us the courtroom demonstrating in bringing evidence and saying this is why the people of Israel and Judah coming deserve the sentence that they're going to receive. Expulsion from the land. Destruction on a genocidal scale. Being dragged into slavery. And as he explains that there is this motif of wandering. The weeping wanderers that God's people are about to become. And it is all the more shocking when you understand all of the promises that God has given to his people to gather them, to bring them into a home that would be theirs. So as we try to sort through this and understand what it means for them and then what that means for us. I want us to see the sentence and what that really is. The what expulsion from the land was all about and what that meant. And then to see God's mercy in his judgment, even such a severe judgment that there is incredible mercy in that judgment. And then looking for this true sacrifice, this pleasing sacrifice, is all the other sacrifices of Israel are pulled away. What is the sacrifice that there to look towards? And then the home coming. God gathering his wandering weeping wanderers home into his presence. So that's where we're going. First of all, this idea of sentence. Again, we've said that this is in the context of a courtroom. God saying this is what you are guilty of. And then giving the verdict. In our understanding of divorce courts, we might be looking at what alimony is involved. What child support is going to be given. What are all of those things that the judge renders and says, here's what the court is ordering. And as God brings down the gavel and says this is the judgment that's going to be visited upon you, we see to our horror the severity of the punishment is expulsion from the land, is being driven into slavery, is death and destruction. Now, a lot of times we struggle with understanding that because we've got a very bizarre understanding of Israel and her relationship to the land and continues to this day. Part of the whole reason of the president going over to Europe is working through what do we do with Israel being in the land. And the Palestinians who were there in the land who were pushed out in order to make way for the Israelites. How do you work that? What is the relationship of the land? What's the significance of the land? Part of the reason that we misunderstand that is because it has much more to do with being in God's presence than it has to do with the real estate itself. We tend to do that in our own personal lives. We get things out of whack. We sometimes miss what's the stake and what's the nice garden salad or the dessert afterwards. And we, you know, it's so common that we talk about that, you know, each dessert first, right? That's what we're really trying to get to is the dessert. The other stuff is just kind of there to allow you to get to the dessert. But the dessert, the blessing of God bringing his people into the land, of giving them homes that they didn't build, of giving them vineyards that they didn't plant, of giving them prosperity, of giving them all these things. That tends to be the thing that we look at and say, well, that's what it's about, but it's not. And it never was. The whole idea of being brought into the promised land was being brought into proximity with God. Being brought into the place where God said, here is where I'm going to cause my name to dwell. Even as they came up out of Egypt before they get into the promised land, God instructs them to build a tabernacle, a place where he would dwell, a tent that was, you know, a mobile sanctuary. And as the people marched into, up into the promised land, secure this route, 40 years wandering, the tabernacle, God's presence was right in the middle of them. That they were given explicit instructions in terms of where each tribe was to be located and stationed around the tabernacle. You know, why? Because God is neurotic and, you know, in terms of travel plans, you've got to do it just this way. I know there are some of you guys who are out there, right? You're making summer plans right now. And you've already gone online and gotten the map, right? You've downloaded all the things. You've got all the travel plans. You know, some of you are really neurotic and you've got, you know, the AAA tourbook color coded with the little things of, you know, and then we're doing this. And, you know, and woe unto the family should you deviate from that plan. That's not what's going on. God is, is not just being neurotic about how the people travel. He's showing them it is a, when you go into the land, going into the land is all about being in my presence. And so, to expel them out of the land is not just, oh man, we had these nice places and now we've got to, we've got to live in tents or even worse, we're going to be carted off into slavery. We're going to have to, to be in a jail. Now, the idea is, you're being taken out of God's presence. He's saying, get out of my sight. You who were my people, my special cherished people, that I want to gather to myself and whisper sweet nothings to. And, Giggle, together, when nobody else understands the inside joke, that's what the land was intended for. And now, because of your great sin, you're being sent out. In his explanation of the verdict of saying what the judgment is, there is all this language that ties in with the ceremony, with the sacrificial system of what is going on. And he contrasts that with the practices of what they've done. He talks about their feasts and the festival days, the things that they were to enjoy. And all those things are tied in with this ceremony, with the sacrificial system that God is saying, these are the means by which you're to come into experiencing and knowing the reality of your relationship with me. Now, they never were effective in terms of actually gaining that access, but they were the means through which the people understood and began to benefit in that relationship. And yet, what they did was God said, you're to have these feasts, you're to gather together in case of the joy of what it means to eat with me. And instead, they come together and feast, praising other God. They took the harvest that God had given them. There's this language of the threshing floor. Well, during harvest time, in an agricultural, agricultural environment, what happened? Some of you have grown up on farms, you know what that looks like. Harvest time, everything else gets pushed aside. The kids don't have school. They're there. Everybody is involved in the harvest. And it's long days from before sun up to after the way after Sunday that you're involved in that. Well, in their context, the same thing would happen. In fact, the men would stay at the place where the threshing floor was throughout the night. Why? So that raiders didn't come and say, hey, cool, they've got a bunch of harvest. Let's go bring our wagons over there and take the produce that they've done so that they would stay there. Nothing wrong in that. But then what would they do? In the midst of the harvest, the time when they as a people were supposed to be celebrating and saying, praise be God, who's given us this harvest, who's provided for our need. Instead, they would erect idols. They would put up asher poles, pagan fortilities to say the gods of the harvest have given us a great year. And prostitutes would come in in the middle of the night. The men had worked hard. So on the threshing floor, the prostitutes would come in. He's pointing it all the ways in which they have looked to other things for provision. When God was the one, remember we talked about that in the first three chapters, that gomer, the prostitute, wife is out thinking that her lovers are the ones who are giving their things. When all along, it's Hosea who's showing up and giving those things to her lovers to pass on to her. That illustrates the reality of what was going on. And what God is saying is, these ceremonial things, this sacrificial system that I've given you to point you to my real relationship with you, I'm going to take all of those things away. I'm going to strip those things from you. The wine that you would pour out in joy, thanks, giving offerings. The wine cup is going to dry up. The wine skin is going to rot. The bread that you would bring into the sanctuary to give is an offering. Look, the Lord is provided for our grain. That bread would be defiled and no longer of any use. You see, he's saying what's going to happen is not only are you going to be driven out of the land, out of my presence, but the means of grace, the things that are in your life to show you to point you to our relationship together. I'm going to strip those things away too. Your life and captivity, he talks about going to Egypt and to Assyria and eating unclean food. The mourners bread that's referenced here, you see, when someone would die, the liturgical system would say that the bread in the house of someone who had died was unclean. And anybody who was associated with death, anybody who came into the house and ate that bread was made unclean. That means they couldn't go to the temple and makes sacrifice. He's saying, when you're carted off to Assyria, when you're taken into Egypt as a refugee, you're going to be defiled, you're going to be unclean, surrounded by people who don't love the Lord, who don't follow after his ways. You are not going to have the means of access. You're not going to to be able to experience that in your time of wandering. You see, that's really what's going on is expulsion is turning them from dwellers in the land of God into weeping wanderers into those who are adrift. And it's an image that the scripture uses again and again to show both our relationship with God as it's meant to be and the devastating consequences of sin, of being cut off from him. We see it even from the earliest people, Adam and Eve, what happens when they sin? They're forced out of the garden. They're pushed out of the land, the garden where they were dwelling with God. Kane, when he murders his brother, what is God's judgment on him? He's made a wanderer, cut off from that means of access, that way of calling upon the Lord. And this is what we see with Israel. They've been given the promises. They've been brought into the land that was supposed to be that honeymoon home where they were to enjoy the presence of the Lord. But instead now they're cut off. They're sent wandering. It's an extreme punishment. How can anyone to deserve something of that severity? But the second main thing is that we see God's mercy in the judgment. Remember we, and in this passage, we've got the reminder of Ghibbi again, and we looked at that before, that city in the promised land where they should have been following the law, but instead they're not from A to Z. Remember they didn't do the things that they were supposed to do, and instead they did everything that they weren't supposed to do. But God deals differently with Ghibbi, then he does with Sodom and Gomorrah, cities with the same things going on. You see the severity of God's judgment, casting them out, cutting them off, sending them out of the promised land, out of connection with him, is a judgment in order to wake them up. It's a judgment in which he is calling them to repentance. He doesn't just flop them out. That's what he did with Sodom and Gomorrah. Remember we don't like to think about that, but fire falls from the sky, annihilating the city. God doesn't do that with Ghibbi. He doesn't do that with Israel. When they have sinned, we're talking here, not just about a little sin. What we see in this courtroom pronouncement of all of the sins of the people is not just that they had sinned a little bit, or even really blown it once or twice. But we find the long suffering mercy of God in that generation after generation the people continued in their sin. When God would send prophets to wake them up and to say, come back to the Lord, you're defiling the very place that God has given you as a blessing. They didn't listen to him, or they beat them, or they killed them. We need to understand and see this judgment with the severity that is there, but at the same time see the mercy of God that he judges them, not just blotting them out, but with great severity in order to wake them up, in order to call them back to himself. He calls us to repentance. Earlier in the service we had read Psalm 137, a Psalm that was a song that the people that God gave to the people in the captivity that he's here now telling them that he's going to send them into. As the people watched the destruction of Jerusalem and were sent out in the captivity, taken by hook and chained into a Syria and then into Babylon. You can hear the mocking of the people in the great city of Babylon. Here come those Israelites. They've got a special relationship with God. Not just any God. They've got a special relationship with the God of all Israel, and the God of all the universe. Hey, Israelite, sing us one of those songs. You see the people are, how can we sing? How can there be joy? We're weeping because we've been cast out. We've seen the destruction of Jerusalem, but even in that we can weep in one of two ways. We can weep simply because of the taking away of the blessings with small children. This is something that we deal with all the time. Christmas, right? We're doing something with the kids and they disobey. And so we say, hey, I know you hear the ice cream truck and you've been begging all day to get ice cream from the ice cream truck because it's the summer we're not going to get ice cream from the ice cream truck today. And there's weeping and gnashing of teeth, right? Particularly our carus who's given a little bit to dramatism. You know it's bad when it's violent weeping. Why do we weep? Because I'm not getting what I want. God is saying weep because you're not in communion with me. Weep not because of the lost vineyards. Weep not because of the house that was just the way that you wanted it. It's no longer yours. Weep because of how you have sinned against God. It's a weeping that is heartfelt that shows real grief not over being caught or punished, but weeping over the the summer in relationship out of being cast out of the presence of God. And we see in this both the severity and the mercy in his judgment. And we see in that that we he uses extreme measures because we need an extreme redemption. You see we come to the Lord thinking well I just need a little band-aid. You know I kind of got a little bit hurt and I need I need something to take away the outch or to relieve my immediate sense of judgment. Now the Lord says it's much greater than that. We see that not only in the severity of the judgment that is real experience, but we see that ultimately in the cost that it requires ultimately. In God's judgment being poured out on Christ. You see that's what Christ experiences. When Jesus comes and dies on the cross it's not just you know an example it's not just him showing you know you need to be willing to love people even enough to die. Well that's a wonderful model that's a wonderful example. If that's all Jesus does we do not have any hope. Now what Jesus does is he comes and takes the expulsion that has been given as judgment upon us and he takes that on himself. He takes our being pushed out of the presence of God. He takes our judgment on himself. That's what we hear from Christ when he's on the cross. Yes the pain is excruciating. The Romans dreamed up crucifixion in order to be a torturous, horrendous death, but it wasn't the name that Christ cried out about. It wasn't the physical beating almost to death that was his grief, but he cried out. Eli, Eli, La Basta Baksanae. Some of those gathered around said he's calling on Elijah. No Eli. Name of God. My God my God. Why has South forsaken me? I'm the beloved son. I am God himself. Why can you turn your face away from me? It's because we deserve that expulsion and Christ takes it upon himself. You see all the other sacrifices that this passage talks about that the people of Israel had pointed to the sacrificial lamb who would come and be slain. The one who would receive the full brunt of the judgment of God in all of his wrath. Jesus takes that upon himself. He has sent out of the presence of God the Father in order that we might be ushered in. Clothes with the roads of righteousness. Brought to the table and said come and darn it. Now if we really understand the extent of the sacrifice, the extent of what Christ has done for us, you might be thinking to yourself, well wait a minute. If Christ has paid the full penalty of the sacrifice, if all of the wrath of God has been satiated, if Christ has done all of that,
why does life suck so much? I know that's not a word you're supposed to use and we don't we don't encourage our kids to use that. But I use it advisedly because that's what the scripture is saying. It's using that kind of language. Why are there so many difficulties? Why do we experience the weeping still? If Christ has weep for us, if he's experienced all of that, why then do we still have
the scripture points us to the reality that while we have been received as God's children, if we've trusted in him, that we're still an exile. We have this duality of being wanderer still and yet at the same time having the presence of God through his solely spirit and dwelling in us. We live in that tension of having ready access of being able to come into the Father's presence in ways that the Israelites never knew in Jerusalem and yet even as we come into his presence, we still have to battle with our sinful hearts that try to distract us, that want anything other than being in his presence. If the day is coming for our real homecoming, when we will no longer wrestle with our sinfulness, when we will no longer be touched by the taint of sin around us. You see, the land is not about just the land. It's about relationship with God, unadulterated, unstainful, wonderful relationship with him. That's why Christ has said, when he comes back, he's bringing with him a new Jerusalem, the place of God's dwelling that we will live in that reality, where his righteousness will shine so clearly that it will eclipse the light of the sun. This is the reality of what we have in the promises
of God, where we are as much more than just a reading on a GPS, telling us this is where you're located. In this text, we see that our location is ultimately about our proximity, our relationship with God. Do we see the severity of our sin that deserves exile, that deserves expulsion out of God's presence in his mercy and the visiting of his wrath? Do we likewise see how Christ has taken on that expulsion? He's taken on that wrath and he welcomes us home. Lord Christ, we do worship you. We praise you that you are righteous and holy, that you will not count and sin even for a second and yet you have been so long suffering, that you have waited millennia so that you might save your people, that you, Lord Christ, have taken our exile on yourself. We praise you in worship you in your name.