This is the Truth Network. Welcome to the broadcast ministry of Finding Purpose with Russ Andrews, where we seek to glorify God by making Him known and guiding others towards their true purpose in life. No one is here by chance. God put us here for a reason. And the most important thing we can do is discover his plan for us and commit ourselves to it.
Keep listening as we learn from the Bible how to live wisely in God's world. which is the first step towards finding your purpose.
Okay, so take your barble. And turn to Hosea chapter 4. Tonight's message is entitled, Woe to the Shepherds Who Lead My Sheep Astray. The prophet Jeremiah Speaking of Hosea. Hey, by the way, you might want to turn to Jeremiah 23 and Hosea 4, and kind of, we're going to be back and forth between these two books.
But the prophet Jeremiah was born near Jerusalem around 650 BC. He lived in the southern kingdom of Judah about 100 years after Hosea. And whereas Hosea prophesied the destruction of Israel, the northern kingdom, by the Assyrians, Jeremiah prophesied the destruction of Jerusalem and the Babylonian exile. And although they were separated by 100 years and they lived in two different kingdoms, the northern kingdom is where Hosea lived, and the southern kingdom is where. Jeremiah lived, their messages were identical.
The word of the Lord came to them. And they both brought charges against the Israelites, the people. and against their religious leaders, the prophets and the priests. In Jeremiah chapter 1, verse 18. The LORD said to Jeremiah, I will pronounce my judgments on my people because of their wickedness in forsaking me.
In burning incense to other gods and in worshiping what their hands have made. And then in Jeremiah 23, verse 1. The prophet addresses the real cause of their spiritual collapse. And this is the theme of tonight. Woe to the shepherds.
Now, these are God's words, okay? Woe to the shepherds.
who destroyed in scattering the sheep of my pasture. Declares the Lord. This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says to the shepherds who tend my sheep. Because you have scattered my flock and driven them away, and have not bestowed care on them. I will bestow punishment on you for the evil you have done, declares the Lord.
Now tonight we're going to see that Hosea has a very similar message to that of Jeremiah.
So look at verse 1 when Hosea... Chapter 1, chapter 4. Look at verse 1. Hear the word of the Lord. Wow.
Who do we need to hear from? The Lord. And so when Hosea is. speaking when he's writing these 14 chapters. It's really God who's rotting it.
You understand? He's rotting under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Hear the word of the Lord, you Israelites, because the Lord has a charge to bring against you who live in the land.
Now you need to understand that when the prophet brings charges against these religious leaders, And when I do the same thing today. These are not the words of men. This is not my word. These are the words of God. Amen.
Here in Isaiah chapter 4, the Lord brings first, he brings charges against the people. Listen to the Lord's charges in verses 1 and 2. There's no faithfulness, no love, no acknowledgement of God in the land. There's only cursing, lying, and murder, stealing and adultery. They break all bounds.
And bloodshed follows bloodshed.
So why was this happening all over Israel? Why had the people turned away from the Lord? who would think about it. He had delivered them out of bondage in Egypt. He brought them through the desert for 40 years and fed them and gave them water to drink.
And then he brought them into a land flowing with milk and honey called the what land? The Promised Land. What went wrong with the chosen people of God? See, the real problem lay with the false prophets and the false priests. who had turned away from the Word of God, and they were worshiping false idols.
But before we look at the charges leveled at these false teachers, I want you to look at the consequences. Of the egregious sins that were committed by the people. Look at verse 3. Because of this, The land mourns, and all who live in it waste away. The beasts of the field, and the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea are dying.
In his commentary on Hosea. Michael Eden. He says, Israelite society was riddled with violence, deceit, and impurity of every kind. Two centuries before, The first Jeroboam, remember he was. The servant of one of the, excuse me, the officials of King Solomon, and he became the first king.
Of the northern kingdom of Israel. But the first Jeroboam, Eaton writes, had introduced idolatry into Israel. Even the powerful ministries of Elijah and Elisha had not turned the country around permanently. Kind of like, think about Billy Graham. It was great.
But look at what's happened to our country. 200 years later, in Hosea's time, the social consequences are unmistakable.
Now, listen carefully to this. This is, again, what Eaton is writing. Rejection of the God of the Bible will affect society. The decay may be slow, but it will be steady. When God's self-revelation is rejected, sin grows in power and soon will be open and obvious.
Is that true in our country?
Society becomes riddled with deceit, violence, impurity, and theft. The seed The seed was the rejection of God. The fruit is social decay. Did you hear that? The seed was the rejection of God, while the fruit is social decay.
And then even nature is affected.
So let me ask you a question. Has anything changed in the last 2,700 years? No. Is the heart of man still the same? Yes.
Jeremiah 17, 9 says, the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. know it. That is, who can understand it? All you have to do, man, is look at our country. Have y'all figured out by now that our politicians are corrupt, at least most of them.
Which is becoming more and more evident. Our society is marked by murder, terrorism, bloodshed, rape. incest, riots. Remember the riots of 2020, I believe it was? Robbery, lying, cheating, and the list just goes on and on.
Even the land and the weather. has been affected. Fires in LA. Have you ever seen such a thing? Biblical flooding in western North Carolina.
Earthquakes and powerful tornadoes. Many experts attribute this to global warming. Do you want to attribute to? The judgment of God. It's the judgment of God.
It's obvious. The land literally moans. All who live in it waste away. We're all dying. And all of creation, including animals, is affected.
All you have to do is Watch the news. In Romans 8:22, Paul writes: We know that the whole creation has been groaning, as in the pains of childbirth, right up to the present time. In Leviticus 18. The Lord gives Moses 19 commands. regarding perverse sexual activities.
Let me give you just two. Verse 22 says, Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman. That is detestable. Whose word is that? Gods.
Is it pretty clear? It doesn't say the word homosexuality, it just describes. What you're not supposed to do. Verse 23, do not have sexual relations with an animal. and defile yourself with it.
Can you believe God has to tell us not to do that? A woman must not present herself to an animal to have sexual relations with it. That is a perversion. Then in verse 28, the Lord says this.
Now listen carefully. Think about Hurricane Katrina. And if you defile the land, it will vomit you out. as it vomited out the nations. that were before you.
What happens every year in New Orleans? Modigra. It is the outpouring of homosexual revelry all throughout the night with drunkenness. and all kinds of stuff that you can't even talk about. And at some point.
God says enough and the land will vomit you up. The seed of depravity begins with the rejection of God. The fruit is social decay, and even nature is affected. Hosea said to the people, Hear the word of the Lord. He has charges to bring against you, the people.
And then he also has charges to bring against the prophets and the priests. When I consider the charges of the Lord against the Israelites, I think the most telling charge that he brings is this one. The people no longer acknowledge God. The question is why? What happened?
When the nation of Israel was divided upon the, you know, at the time of Solomon's death. Jeroboam If you read 1 and 2 Kings, became the first king of the northern kingdom. And to make sure that the people did not head south. to Jerusalem to worship there at the temple of God. He made two golden calves and he put one where?
In Bethel, and he put the other one in Dan. And this led to the people worshiping false idols, which was an egregious sin before a holy God. Moreover, Jeroboam built shrines on all the hilltops and he appointed priests.
Now, listen to this. He appointed priests from all sorts of people, even though they were not Levites. God said the priest must come from the line of who? Levi. It was these false priests, who shouldn't have even been priests, who began to lead the people away from God into idolatry.
Do you know how many men and women today decide to go to seminary? for all kinds of reasons other than the right reason. You don't go to seminary. Unless God calls you. This is one of the main reasons so many false ministers filled today's pulpits.
They were never called by God. They just decide to go because it seems like a good idea. They want to be, you know, have a prominent position in society, I guess. In Jeremiah, listen to Jeremiah 23, 21. We're going to be in Jeremiah a lot tonight because he calls a spade and it's so true for our day.
The prophet here in verse 21 addresses this very issue. Listen to what he says. I did not send these prophets, yet they have run with their message. I did not speak to them, yet they have prophesied. That word prophesied there is not foretelling, it's foretelling.
It's just preaching. Right now I'm prophesying. I'm not telling the future. I'm just preaching the Word of God. That's what prophesying is.
I did not speak to them, yet they have stood in the pulpit and preached.
Now they don't even have my message. In Hosea verses 4 through 14, the Lord levels eight charges against these religious leaders. First, and I'm going to go through all eight of them fairly quickly: the prophets and the priests. Were and are today, many of them, spiritually blind. Look at verse 4.
Surely God has a controversy with a certain person. It's clear that this verse 4 is addressing the priest. Surely God has a controversy with a certain person. And there is a person God reproves. There must have been, Hosea must have had one particular priest in mind.
With you surely is my controversy, O priest. Look at verse 5. And you shall stumble in the day, talking about the priest. And with you also the prophet shall stumble by night, and I shall destroy your mother. The mother, I think, there refers to Israel.
Which he was going to destroy, by the way. Why did the prophets stumble? They're blind gods. In Matthew 23, Jesus called the Pharisees blind gods. In Matthew 5:14, Jesus says, Leave them.
They are blind gods. If a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into the pit. If you go into a church and you can easily figure out if he's a blind guy, how do you figure it out? You read the Bible, you take it with you. And first of all, he's probably not preaching for the Bible.
That's a red flag right there. But is he teaching it what it says? Does it line up with the truth? In Isaiah's day, the prophets and the priests were blind gods, and we're leading blind people into the pit of idolatry. Do you think anything has changed today?
Do you think it has changed much? No. Religious blind guys, listen men, can be found in every denomination in our country. If you want to read a great book about it, get J. Gresham Mason.
whose book was he wrote I think in 1920. And he explains how liberal theology, which really is false theology, Crept into our seminaries, in our churches, all through the beginning of the 1920s. By the 1950s, the churches were just, you know. We're turning bad. And then look at where we are today.
Number two, the prophets and priests, here's the problem: they ignore the word of God. Look at verse 6: My people are destroyed from lack of knowledge. That means spiritual truth and wisdom. Because you have rejected knowledge. I will also reject you as my priest because you have ignored the law of your God.
Our loss ignore your children. Do you know what fault teachers do? They twist the word of God. And they do it very deceptively. In such a way that it loses its real meaning.
Therefore, people who listen to them become confused. They become spiritually disoriented and they lose their way and they end up spiritually destroyed. In Acts 20, verses 28 through 31, Paul warned the Ephesian elders, he knew that he was not going to see them again. And this is almost like the last thing he told them. Keep watch over yourselves in all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers.
Be shepherds of the church of God, which He bought with His own blood. Listen, I know that after I leave, savage wolves will come in. From outside. will come in among you. And will not spare the flock.
Even from your own number, men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them.
So be on your guard. Remember that I. For three years, I have never stopped warning each of you night and day.
So listen, if you're not attending a church where the preacher preaches the whole counsel of God's Word, in other words, when he gets to Romans, he does not skip Romans chapter 1, verses 18 through 32. He goes through it verse by verse. You never hear that done in mainline denominations. They're just like we'll go through that chapter. Either they're going to explain it away, but I guarantee they will never be in their lectionary reading.
Romans 1, 18 through 32. Look at 2 Timothy chapter 4. Paul gave Timothy this charge. Preach the word. Be prepared in season and out of season.
Correct, rebuke, and encourage with great patience and careful instruction. For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They would turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. What is one of the myths?
You're okay. And I'm okay. And God loves you. just the way you are. You don't really have to change.
That's in essence what they say. Paul describes exactly what is taking place. Here's charge number three: The prophets and priests exchanged the glory of God for idolatry. Look at verse 7. The more the priests increased, the more they sinned against me.
They've changed my glory into something disgraceful.
Now, Eaton translates it like this. Their glory they changed into their shame. Either way, what they're doing is they're exchanging the glory. of God. for things that are shameful.
Paul sheds light on this in Romans chapter 1, verses 22 and 23. Although they claim to be wise, They became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal men, and birds, and animals, and reptiles.
So what exactly were these priests doing? In Jose Oste.
Well Eden says They corrupted the worship of Israel. Their glory was the honor of priestly ministry for Yahweh. They turned it into shame by their vile rites of pagan worship. And I'll get more into the details of what that. Pagan worship looked like in just a few minutes.
But now, what I want to do. I want to show you quickly the last five charges, number four through eight. The prophets and priests, they love wickedness. The prophets and priests lead the people astray. They desert the Lord, number six.
They worship false idols, number seven. And they practice sexual deviancy as part of their worship. Look at verse 8. When you see the word they, it's referring to the priest, okay? They feed on the sins of my people and relish their wickedness.
Verse 9: And it will be, this is so telling, like people, like priests. Like priests, like people. And I will punish both of them for their ways and repay them for their deeds. Then look at verse 10 of the second half through 12. They, again, that's the priest, will engage in prostitution, but not increase, because they have deserted the Lord to give themselves to prostitution.
To old wine and new wine, which takes away the understanding of my people. See, that's the real danger of false teaching. They consult a wooden idol. I never quite understood that. and are answered by a stick of wood.
A spirit of prostitution leads them astray. They are unfaithful to their God. Verse 13, they sacrifice offerings on the hills. Their daughters turn to prostitution. Verse 14, I will surely send punishment upon your daughters because they turn to prostitution, they commit adultery.
The men actually couple themselves with harlots, and they offer sacrifices with sacred prostitutes. A people without understanding. come to ruin. Where did I begin to talk about this? What was going on in their religious services that so angered a holy God?
Well listen, it all began with the kings. Beginning with Solomon, when they married foreign wives who brought with them their false gods. A good example. If you read it in 2 Kings. King Ahab, he married a wonderful A lady by the name of Jezebel.
I think I talked about her last week. who was a Sidonian. She was from up here you got s A tower in Sidon, up above, up there in Lebanon, north of Israel. She was from Sidon. And the Sidonians worship Astart, also known as Astoroth.
Who was the chief, Astroth was the chief goddess of Sidon, and she's associated with fertility and love. She was often worshipped alongside Baal.
Now their religious practices included ritual prostitution, particularly associated with the worship of Astra.
Now you may remember. In 1 Kings 18, Elijah called 850 of Jezebel's false prophets to a showdown on what mountain? Mount Carmel.
So 1 King, I mean, Elijah challenged 850 of these false prophets to the showdown, and you remember what happened. They chanted and they tried to they built their altar and they put wood on it and they were trying to get God to bring down fire and Elijah said which whosoever God brings fire down and burns up the altar he is the one true God so by the and Elijah started taunting them Maybe your God's asleep. Maybe he's Not listening to you. Anyway, he just challenged them, and they began slashing their skin and doing all this kind of crazy stuff. And he let it go for about four or five hours.
Finally, he said, Okay, listen. It says one profit against 850. He stands up there and he builds his own altar. And then he has them take these jars of water and he has them saturate the altar Three times, three times. until it's just flooded.
And then he prays. to the one true God. And of course, fire comes down. And then he has all of those 850 prophets taken down to the valley, the Kishon Valley, and they were slaughtered. You see that slaughtering.
shows the destination. of all false teachers. They're headed for Great. condemnation. Do you know why?
Because like people like priest. False preachers often have very large congregations Who follow the teaching that comes from the pulpit. Thus, in churches where they never hear the word sin or the word repent. or teaching that You must be born again. See, they never heard the truth.
See, the problem in the modern church is that preachers have a Here's the problem. They have a low view of God. And they have a high view of man. In other words, They don't really understand the nature of God, His character. They don't understand that God is so holy.
And so righteous. And so pure, we don't even understand it. Elijah came into us No, excuse me. Isaiah came into his presence. And he just fell down like he was dead.
and said, I'm a man of unclean lips, for I've seen the glory of the Lord. And see, they don't really understand that no one can come into the presence of God unless his sins have been atoned for. But in their blindness, they see mankind as basically good. Thus there really is no need to mention sin. and lead to repent if you think mankind is specially good.
Do you see the problem?
So they have a wrong view of God. In Hosea's day, the worship of the Israelites became so perverted that it included religious prostitution. Men and women would literally perform sexual acts in public as part of their worship. In other words, perversion was brought into their place of worship. Yeah.
We can cast no stones at the prophets and priests of Hosea's staff because we are just as guilty. Look at Jeremiah 23, verse 11. The prophets And the prophet and priest are godless. Even in my temple, I find their weakness, declares the Lord. Look at verse 12.
Therefore, their path will become slippery. Talking about the priests. They will be banished to darkness, and there they will fall. I will bring disaster on them in the year they are punished, declares the Lord. And then look at verse 14.
They strengthen the hands of evildoers so that no one turns from his wickedness. They are like Sodom to me. This is God speaking. In other words, He sent these priests. These evildoers are like Sodom to me.
The people of Jerusalem are like Gomorrah. You don't happen to Sodom and Gomorrah, don't you? were destroyed. See, here's the problem with preachers today. They do not mention sin.
They do not mention the need for repentance. They do not mention the strong words of Jesus to Nicodemus when he said, Nicodemus, you must be what? It wasn't a suggestion. It was basically a have to. You must be born again.
If you must be born again, how often should we hear that on Sundays? pretty much every Sunday. What happens when people never hear these truths? They continue in a state of blindness and lostness, and they're headed for hell unless they hear the truth from some other source than the church. And I'm not saying this to Pat Finding Proppers on the back.
This is the very reason. that I started finding purpose. In fact, one of the reasons I went to seminary was to learn the Bible. I went to seminary to learn theology so I could refute some of these liberal pastors I'd sat under.
Now I'm going to close in Jeremiah 23. This is what the Lord Almighty says. Listen so carefully. Do not listen to what the prophets are prophesying to you. Again, they fill you with false hopes.
They speak visions from their own minds, not from the mouth of the Lord. They keep saying to those who despise me, the Lord says, You will have peace. And to all who follow the stubbornness of their hearts, they say, No harm will come to you. Why? Because God loves you.
He does love us, but he also has. He also is just and righteous. But which of them, listen to what God says, which of them, talking about preachers, has stood in the council of the Lord to see or to hear his word? Who has listened and heard his word? See, the storm of the Lord will burst out in wrath, a whirlwind swirling down on the heads of the wicked.
The anger of the Lord will turn back until He fully accomplishes the purposes of His heart. In days to come, God says, you will understand it clearly. I think it's talking about the great white throne judgment. I did not send these prophets. Cheer that.
I did not send these prophets, yet they have run with their message. I did not speak to them, yet they have prophesied. But if they had, listen, here's the thing: if they had stood in my counsel, they would have proclaimed my words to my people and would have turned them from their evil ways and from their evil deeds. In Matthew 23, 33, Jesus called the religious leaders of his day, You snakes, you brood of vipers, how will you escape being condemned to hell? Listen.
Okay. Do you know why the judgment of false teachers and preachers is going to be so severe? Because they've got a whole group of men and women and children following them. who believe that what they're seeing is the truth. And if they don't know their Bibles, which they don't, because most of them don't read it, they don't bring it to church.
So they have to take the pastor and his word. When he says we're all God's children, He's not telling the truth. When he never mentions the words sin and the need to repentance, you know Jesus and John the Baptist, when they started their public ministry, they started preaching a message of what? Repentance, repentant, repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. When's the last time you heard a minister stand up and say, congregation, you need to repent?
Raise your hand if you've heard that in the last five years in your church.
Okay, you guys are Baptists. Do you know why I went to him? See, I didn't grow up Baptist. I really didn't like the Baptist. Because I thought they were, you know, electric irritates from the I'm just being honest.
I grew up, I went to a Methodist church. My mother and I went to a Pentecostal holiness on Sunday nights. That was the interesting. I went to an Episcopal prep school. I went to Carolina for four years and never went to church.
And then I came to Rome and I joined a very liberal I thought we'd make a denomination church. And I finally said, The Baptists are the only ones left. And a choice.
So I went to a Baptist seminary.
So when I got through the yeah, I'd been to Methodist. Episcopalian. Presbyterian. How pinnacle holidays? Petr Seminary Totally confused now.
So, listen, this is my final plea with you. Men, I say this all the time, but I mean it. If you're in a church, And you're not hearing the truth of God's word. Why are you there? And if you've got a wife and some children or some grandchildren and you're taking them there.
You need to get out of there. Because you're wasting your time. Find a church where they preach the word of God, and so you can pass it down to your children and your grandchildren. I think I told the leaders tonight, I pulled my family out of this church. and took them to Providence Baptist.
Which was an old hotel converted into a church, an ugly hotel. And I left my children, my boys, in a Sunday school class that was in a mobile home. Yeah. They left their church where we had lemonade and they were having fun. And it was a pleasure to go to church.
We started going to a good church. It going to you waking up on a Sunday morning and going to church was World War III. You know what my two sons tell me today? Thank you, Dad. Thank you.
In John 10:10, Jesus said, But they, his true sheep, will run away from him, a false shepherd, because they do not recognize a stranger's voice. If you're a Christian, if you listen to a false preacher, he's a stranger. You can run from You've been listening to Finding Purpose with Russ Andrews. This broadcast is made possible because of the prayers and financial gifts of listeners like you. If you want to learn more about our ministry or support us as we reach others with God-centered Bible teaching, please visit us at findingpurpose.net.
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