This is the Truth Network. 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.
Well, good evening, gentlemen. How good and pleasant it is for brothers to dwell in unity. I'm so happy to be here and to be able to share the Word of God with you. And if you have your Bibles, can you turn to Hosea chapter 7? We're going to be looking at verses 4 all the way.
to verse 16. That's Hosea chapter 6. Beginning at verse 4. All the way to verse 16. But we're not going to look at the entire.
We're not going to read the entire section of verses. We're going to read verse 4, verse 8. Verse 11 and verse 16. And if I could get this iPad together, we can get started. Let's see.
There we go. We're going to look at Hosea. Chapter 7, verses 4, 8, 11, and 16. And look at what it says in verse 4. They are all adulterers.
They are all like a heated oven. whose baker ceases to stir the fire. From the kindling of the dough, Until it is leavened. Verse 8. Ifraim mixes herself with peoples, Ephraim is a cake not turned.
Verse 11. If Ram is like a dove silly without sense. calling to Egypt, going to Assyria. In verse 16. They return, but not upward.
They are like a treacherous bow. Their princes shall fall by the sword. Because of the insolence of their tongue. Let's pray. I like it.
Father, we come before you, Lord. Uh humble. Understanding, Lord, that we need you in every aspect of our lives. And if we need you in every aspect of our lives, then certainly we need you. to be able to proclaim your word.
hear your word, obey your word, and apply your word. Please help us, Lord. I ask that you please help me, Lord. There is no power in and of myself. The power is in your spirit.
So I pray that you would use the means that you use to exhort your people. Convict your people, edify your people, and change your people, Lord. And I pray, Lord. That your name would be glorified, Christ would be honored, and that anybody who doesn't know Christ will come to a saving knowledge of Him through this word. We ask this humbly.
In Christ's name, amen. All right, Hosea chapter 7, verses 3 to 3 To 16. And you're probably wondering why did I read four verses instead of the 12 verses that we were supposed to read? And the reason why I did that is because the main point of the passage occurs to us in four pictures. You'll notice the pattern in those four verses that we read: their sin is like this or like that.
But what we need to understand is, is that The prophet Hosea here is speaking to a people who have refused to listen to God. And in Psalm 81, verses 13 and 14, it says, Yahweh is speaking. He says, oh, that my people would listen to me. that Israel would walk in my ways. Verse 14, I would soon subdue their enemies.
and turn my hand against their foes. And commenting on that passage, this is what Matthew Henry writes. He writes, We cannot look for too little from the creature. nor too much from the Creator. We may have enough from God if we pray for it in faith.
All the wickedness of the world is owing to man's wilfulness. People are not religious. because they will not be so. God is not the author of sin. He leaves them to the lust of their own hearts and the counsel of their own heads.
If they do not well, The blame must be upon themselves. The Lord is unwilling that any should perish. What enemies sinners are to themselves. It is sin that makes our troubles long and our salvation slow. I want to repeat that last part of that quote.
It is sin that makes our troubles long and our salvation slow. What this statement reminds us of is the situation of the nation of Israel in this passage. The nation of Israel are God's covenant people in the Old Testament. But Israel at this particular point in the book of Hosea, they're a divided nation. The northern kingdom and the southern kingdom are divided.
They are a rebellious nation. They are a nation given over to idolatry and a nation who has committed themselves to rebellion against Yahweh. But God in His grace, He sends a prophet. He sends a prophet to speak to them. He sends a prophet to call them back to the covenant of faithfulness.
And although God repeatedly calls them to repent, They continue to plunge themselves deeper and deeper into depravity. And you can read about that in 2 Kings 17, verses 7 to 13. There, the writer of 2 Kings is basically interpreting what happens to Israel, their eventual going into Assyrian captivity. He interprets that theologically. He says that happened because they didn't listen to God, they refused to listen to the prophets.
And God has expressed his willingness to heal Israel. But they continue to show their sinfulness to him. If you look at Hosea chapter 7 verse 1, it says, 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.
He's talking about the sin, particularly in the northern kingdom. of Israel. And just to put this passage in context in verses 1 through 3, Unrepentant Israel is a lawless society of liars, thieves, and robbers. The problem is, is that They deceived themselves into thinking that God does not see them. And we shouldn't be quick to judge them because we're the same way.
Whether we're a believer or an unbeliever, we get in a position where we sin and we start thinking of things, and we want to make a God that's okay with what we're doing. God is okay with that. He wouldn't, it's not a big deal. God doesn't see that. God wouldn't care if I just did this sin over here.
In Israel, they convinced themselves that God did not see what they were doing. They thought that they could get away with what they were doing. But God sends a prophet, and God sending that prophet lets Israel know that he sees exactly what they're doing. Because that presupposes, the ministry of Hosea presupposes that God sees it and He's responding to it. That's why He sends the prophet.
And what this reminds us is that God sees exactly what we're doing. Whether we are believers or unbelievers, God sees everything. Our God knows all things, He has all power, and He misses nothing. He's an ever-present help, He's everywhere. He can't be limited by time and space.
Therefore, he always sees what we're doing. Look at what it says in Psalm 10.4. In all his scheming, The wicked person arrogantly thinks there is no accountability since there is no God. And the point of that passage is not so much atheism, it's the denial that God will respond to evil, or that God will punish sin, or that God will see sin. And we've all done that before.
We'll say God wouldn't do anything about that. God would be okay with that. And we'll come up with a conception of God that does not match the God of the Bible. But we need to be very careful when our conception of God does not match what the Bible says about God. Because when a God that we came up with in our own minds goes against the God of the Bible, that's an idol.
That's idolatry. That's the very sin that the prophets are calling Israel to repent of. And there are plenty of other verses that tell us that God sees us. Uh Proverbs 5, 21, For a man's ways are before the eyes of the Lord, and the Lord examines all his paths. The God of the Bible sees everything.
A God that doesn't see everything is not God. And through the prophet Hosea, God tells Israel all about the sins that he sees them commit.
So the main point of this passage is, Israel is a nation that refuses to repent of her sins. That's the main point. And God, through the prophet Hosea, provides for us four pictures to show us the character of a sinful nation. What is the first picture? The first picture is in verses four through seven.
Israel's sin makes them like a heated oven. And basically this simile here starting in verse 4. Basically, it's addressed to the priest. And we know that he particularly has the priest in mind because if you go back to chapter 4, verse 4, he talks about the priest and he exposes the priest, and the subject does not change all the way up into verse 7 of chapter 7. or chapter four of verse seven.
But the main point here is that God sees what the priests are doing, God sees them. They think, oh, we're getting away with it. And the reality is that we need to understand that in this passage, when you see that word they and them all the way from verse 3 to verse 7, that's who God is talking about. God is talking about the people who are responsible for the worship, the people who should have known better, they didn't do better. They they acted against what they knew.
But he has the priest in mind. And why does he have the priest in mind? Because, along with the ungodly kings, The priests were at the center of the conspiracy against God. Instead of seeking true worship, as it fits their job description, they were becoming politically biased. They were doing what was politically expedient, and they were ignoring what God said for their own agenda or somebody else's agenda.
And Hosea tells them in verse 4, he says they are all adulterers. This isn't physical adultery. This is spiritual adultery. Or, another word for it is idolatry. They're sinning against the covenant.
They're going against the relationship that they have with God, and they're treating somebody else the way that they should treat God. That is what spiritual adultery is: it's idolatry. And he says in verse 3, it says, by their evil they make the king glad.
So they willingly serve wicked kings. They willingly went along. with the wicked kings Agenda. They were complicit. And the sins of these priests Hosea compares it to a heated oven because their sin manifests itself.
in a in a fiery passion to set kings up to be killed. That's the problem. They were supposed to be preserving the worship of Yahweh. But they're getting involved in political things rather than focusing on their theological responsibility. And we read about this in 2 Kings verses 15 and 16.
Most people see... This conspiracy or Hosea referring to those events that happened in 2 Kings, verses 15 and 16, because the last six kings that reigned. Four of them were assassinated. Derek Kittner writes, For when passion reigns, there are no limits or loyalties. for such a fever running at every level of society.
It was no coincidence that Israel's last three decades were a turmoil. of intrigue. as one conspirator after another hacked his way to the throne. only to be murdered. in his turn.
Of the six men who reigned in those thirty years, Four were assassins. and only one died in his own bed.
So we see that sin is like a heated oven. It boils over. It continues to burn. It's insatiable. It gets worse and worse.
But then we move on to the second point. Israel sin makes them like a half cooked pancake.
Now I say half cooked pancake, but we see that it's pronounced differently. The reason why I say half cooked pancake is because that's exactly the image. That would be the contemporary way to describe what he's picturing here. And this simile describes the nation of the northern kingdom as a people. It is to describe their sin as a people.
And Hosea uses this term, Ephraim. As a signal that he's changing subjects. He's not just talking about the priests now, now he's talking about the whole nation. Particularly the northern kingdom. Their sin is cultural compromise.
They have adopted the practices of pagans. They've adopted the gods of the pagans. And they're doing what God told them not to do, which is why they went into Assyrian exile. And this sin basically like a half-cooked pancake, I ask you this question. You get up on a Saturday morning, you're hungry.
Your wife, your mother, your sister, whoever makes you breakfast, they say, I made you pancakes. And you say, oh man, I can't wait to get to these pancakes. Did you get the syrup? And you say, yes. You see the pancakes.
One side is crispy and the other side still has the batter on it. How many of you want to eat that? What good is that to anybody, right? It's only good to be thrown away. You're not going to say, okay, let me just click the other side.
You're going to throw that away and want something else. God is saying Israel is like a half-cooked pancake. They're not really useful to him. What good are you as a nation when you can't be my prophetic voice? What good are you if you're not worshiping me?
What good are you if you're just like the nations? That's a message for the church. If the church looks like the world, the church is useless. The church must be above the world. The church must be faithful to God.
The church must be loyal to God, or the church is just like a half-cooked pancake, useless.
So when we turn to idols and we don't obey God, We're useless. Why? Because the point of being used by God is to bring Him glory. That's the point of being used by God. The point of being used by God is not to be impressive and be like the culture around us.
It's to show them the glory of God. But if we're not showing the culture the glory of God, then we're going against the very purpose that God called us for. The same thing with the nation of Israel. That's his point here. And that takes us to verses 11 and 12, the third picture.
He said Israel's sin makes them like A silly dog.
So what does he mean by silly dove? What he means is When something is silly, Sometimes they might do things that are funny. You might look at him and say, what is that person doing? That doesn't make any sense. That's what he's saying about Israel here because what they're doing doesn't make any sense.
It doesn't make any sense.
Well, what exactly are they doing? They're running towards people for political reasons that they should be going away from. They were seeking political alliances with pagan nations. When God told them, I fight for you, Israel. I protect you, Israel.
I carry you up on eagle's wings, Israel. I am the Lord of hosts. Trust in me and I will fight your battles. But since they didn't believe that or they didn't act in faith, they said, I have to make a political alliance. I have to get involved in geopolitics to make sure that we are preserved as a nation.
I know that God said he was going to protect us, but I'd rather go to these foreign enemies that don't know God and make an alliance with them rather than to rely on God who is the protector. But he says here they're like a silly dog because that's silly. And this doesn't mean that they don't have intelligence, it means that they don't have discernment. You can have intelligence and not have discernment. Discernment means that you're seeing things as God calls us to see it, and we're doing what He calls us to do.
That's how you know you have discernment. Many people can have intellect, they can have information. But if we don't have that insight to follow God and do what he says, Then we're simply being foolish. And that's the point that he's saying here. Instead of them looking to the heels which cometh their help, their help comes from the Lord, they look to foreign nations.
And from God's perspective, this alliance is moving them backward, not forward. We can do things in life. I'm gonna cheat to get ahead. And then we might get ahead. We might get ahead for a little while, but then.
We get exposed. then we end up losing the very thing we cheated to get. or that we lied to get, or that we compromised the will of God to get. Anytime we take shortcuts and we don't want to act in faith, it's going to eventually catch up with us. And that's what we see with the nation of Israel.
Because they made these political alliances with with the Assyrians. And what God did was in 722 BC, he sent them into Assyrian captivity. Because he wanted to remind Israel that, okay, you want to go over to these nations? Let me show you that these nations are not me. You're going to go to this pagan nation, and you're going to realize how good you actually had it.
Because I actually was protecting you. I actually was guiding you. But let me discipline you and give you over to the Assyrians. And we see that he did that because they wanted to seek political alliances. with pagan nations, which makes them silly, or like a silly dove.
And the fourth point. He says, Israel's sin makes them like a treacherous bow. Or some translations say a useless bow.
So Israel is like a treacherous bow, and I want you to imagine an image here. A father teaches a son how to shoot a bow. Or, whatever the weapon of choice, how to shoot whatever you can think of. He gets to scale. His markmanship his markmanship gets pretty good.
And you're like, good job, son. That's how you do it. And then he turns the gun on you and starts aiming at you. That's the picture here. God has made Israel For his purposes.
He's taught them how to walk. He's taught them how to trust him. And they turn against him. They turn against him. They strayed from God.
Verse thirteen. They rebelled against God. Verse 13. They spoke lies against God, verse 13. They committed spiritual adultery, which is going against the covenant, in verse 14.
They conspired to sin against God. Verse 15. Therefore, God gave them over to foreign enemies in verse 16. That's the judgment. And then he mentions Egypt.
Egypt is used here symbolically. And by Hosea and what he's communicating is Is that God delivered Israel from slavery. But since they want to go back to the very people that enslaved them, He's going to give them over to captivity to be enslaved. That's what he's saying here. And if you read Exodus chapter 20, Leviticus 26, 13, Hosea 13, 14, Isaiah 43, 3, all of those passages talk about how God delivers Israel from the Egyptians.
And it's the height of foolishness to go back to the very thing God has saved us from. But God gives them over. to Assyrian captivity so that they can be slaves To the Assyrians because they do not want to listen to God. That should be a very sobering message for us. But now that we know what these four pictures are.
We've seen these four pictures that describe the sin. We've seen how God has called Israel repeatedly to come back to the covenant. They rebelled against him. We see all of this. But one question remains.
What do I do with that? If somebody asks me, what did you learn at the men's study tonight? What are you going to tell your family? How are you going to apply this to your life?
Well that brings us to the application. And I have two points of application. I have one point for the believers. And I want to talk to you. If you're here, maybe you're a skeptic.
Maybe you were just invited and you're not even a Christian. God has a word for you. You're not just here to hear a bunch of Christians do an in-house conversation. God has something to say to you. But I want to talk to the believer first.
In the Old Testament, In 1 Corinthians 10, verses 6 to 13 and Romans 15, 4, Paul tells us that whatever is written in the Old Testament. Is written for our benefit, the benefit of believers, so that we might learn not to do what Israel did. When we read about these sins that Israel did, we're not to basically, you know, say, oh, I would never do that. No, we're to look at this soberly and say, God, help me not to do that. Because apart from your grace, I'm just like Israel.
Apart from your grace, I'll turn to idolatry. Any of us are capable of doing that, and we're to learn from what Israel failed to do. And we need to take note too. Israel's problem was not the nation's. Israel's problem was Israel.
If you want to know your biggest problem in life, just look in the mirror. And I'm saying that to myself too. Look in the mirror. You're with yourself every day. and you still struggle with sin every day.
You can't go hide in a corner. We can't go blame somebody. We sin because it's our fault. We sin because we want to sin. Same with Israel.
They sinned because they wanted to sin. And what this tells us as Christians in 2025. is that as much as we should pray for our nation, As much as we should even pray for the salvation of unbelievers, please do that. Our nation needs prayer. We need to be going before the throne of grace asking God to save.
Unbelievers. But that's not the main thing this text calls us to do. This text does not call us to look out there and say, all the problems are out there. This text calls us to self. Examination.
And what we need to understand is This text calls us to pray. that those of us who believe might live faithfully before God in a godless culture. Because there's a temptation. We live in a godless culture. It's a temptation to compromise.
It's a temptation to just, you know, say, well, these are just the times we're in. Yeah, there are many ways to God. Yeah, we can just go along with that. Yeah, two of the same gender people can marry each other. Yeah, that's okay.
It's just the times. No, that's wrong. And as God's people, we cannot compromise. People say there are many ways to God. No, there's not.
There's one way to God. But what this text calls us to do is, we need to understand that the key to revival is not the conversion of unbelievers. The key to revival is the revival of believers within the church. We need to understand that. When believers are on fire for God, that's when missions take off.
When the people of God are doing what God said, that is when the church is the greatest prophetic voice. And we need to understand too with our nation. The biggest problem in America is not liberal politicians. The biggest problem in America is liberal pulpits. Because if the preacher is not telling the truth, there is no prophetic voice in the nation.
So the preacher has to be on fire for God. The preacher has to be obedient to God. The preacher has to be saying the truth about God because the culture is the culture. The church is the church. The church is the pillar and the buttress of the truth.
So, we don't need to be looking to Washington to change the society. We need to be looking at ourselves and our church to change society. Because the church is where the truth is. But then we also need to understand That the biggest problem in America. It's not The absence of prayer and Bible reading in the schools.
Praise God, if the schools start doing that again, praise God. None of us would be against that. But me to understand one of the main problems is prayer and bobbering is missing from a lot of churches. Who cares what they're doing in the schools if the church is not being who the church is called to be? But then we need to realize that the biggest problem in America is not that unbelievers won't repent.
That's not the biggest problem in America. The biggest problem is professing Christians won't repent. Because if there's confusion in the house of God, why in the world are we worrying about what's going on in the world? when God has called the church to be the prophetic voice in the world. And then the biggest problem is not that America is worldly.
The biggest problem is that a lot of times the church is worldly.
So we must understand that Hosea is not written to unbelievers. It's written to people who are in covenant with God. It's written to the people of God. He didn't write, he wasn't speaking to Babylon. He wasn't speaking to Egypt.
He wasn't speaking to the Assyrians. He was speaking to the people of God, the ones who he called out from the nations to be his light and to glorify him among the nations. That's who he's talking to. The problem in this passage is not the nations, it's the people that claim to know him. That was the problem.
So like Israel, the church is a nation. Of people called out by God from the world to be devoted to God and serve as God's prophetic voice in the world. Look at what it says in 1 Peter. Talking about Christians. But you are a chosen race.
A royal priesthood. a holy nation. A people for his own possession. Why? That you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into marvelous light.
The only way that you can be a light is to do what he says. The only way that we can be a light is that we're living in repentance. We're walking in faith. We're walking in obedience. We can't say, oh, what's wrong with the culture out there?
The culture is going to be the culture. Are we going to obey God? That's the call for us. The call for us is to walk in faithfulness with God by the power of the Holy Spirit. Because Jesus said, let your light shine.
How do we let our light shine? By pointing out the problems? No. By making sure that we're faithfully walking before God. That we're examining ourselves, that we're mortifying and fighting our own sins, that we're not being hypocrites.
That's what this text calls us to do. But then there's a word for you. Maybe you're a seeker. Maybe you're here and you don't know the Lord Jesus Christ. God has not left you off the hook.
God is concerned about you. God has a word for you. So, if you're here today and you don't know the Lord Jesus Christ, you need to understand you might be an American citizen. You might be a citizen of another country, but the only citizenship that truly matters is the citizenship of heaven.
So you need to understand that. And you need to understand you only have two options. There are many religions, but there's only one right way to God, and that's Jesus Christ. I'm here to tell you, you're confronted with two choices. Either you're going to take the path of salvation.
Or you're gonna continue on the path of condemnation. The Bible says, he who believeth not on the Son, it doesn't say he will be condemned, it says he's condemned already. And the only way to escape that condemnation is to look at the cross. You need to understand that you are a sinner. You are in the hands of an angry God.
You deserve death. That's not a debate. God says you deserve death. You are a son of Adam. You're infected with this condition called sin.
You can't modify your behavior and make it go away. You can't go to church and make it go away. You can't do good deeds and make it go away. Your righteousness is of a filthy rag. What you need is the Lord Jesus Christ.
because he lived the life that you could never live. And because he's the perfect son of God, that 33-year life that he lived, it took him to the cross. And he died an acceptable death. He died the death that you deserve to die. And if you place your faith and trust in Him, God will look at you as He looks at His Son, Jesus Christ.
Because he treated his son Jesus Christ as you deserve. And being justified by faith, you have peace with God through the Lord Jesus Christ.
So, if you're here today and you're kind of curious about religion, you're trying to figure out how to get to God, Jesus Christ is the way. You can be certain that Jesus is the way. I'm telling you, everybody else is wrong. Jesus is right. Come to Jesus Christ.
There's no need to be confused. He says, I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through me.
So come to Jesus Christ. He says, Come to me, all ye who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Buddha is not giving you rest. Muhammad is not giving you rest. Confucius is not giving you rest.
Nothing will give you rest outside the Lord Jesus Christ.
So, if you're here today and you don't know him, don't harden your heart. Hear his voice. Repent of your sins and place your faith in him. If you place your faith in him right now, he will save you now, not tomorrow, but now.
So, choose this day whom you're going to serve. Because here we're going to serve the Lord Jesus Christ. And the question is, are you going to join us? Because the reality is, you don't have a lot of options. You got two choices: either condemnation or salvation, and that salvation is in the Lord Jesus Christ.
So I urge you and beg you to come to Him. Come to him. You don't have to be eternally condemned. Come to him. He will give you rest.
He will save you. He will welcome you into his kingdom. Please come. And I want to remind us, as this passage said, The problem is not out there. This text calls us to be who we need to be in here.
And we can do that by the power of the Holy Spirit because God has promised to be with His people. He has empowered His people. God does not tell us to do anything that we can't do.
So let's trust in Him, let's follow Him, and let's be faithful to Him. Let's pray. Father, we come before you. Humbly, Lord. Understanding, Lord, that those of us who know you It's only because of your grace.
It's only because of your power. And I just pray, Lord, that you would help us who believe. to continue to walk faithfully before you. Continue to show us our faults. Continue to show us our sins.
And continue to help us to repent, Lord. And I also pray for the unbeliever here. I pray for that person who's struggling. That person who says that they're not sure. That person who's still on the fence about Jesus, Lord.
I pray, Lord, that you would guide them. You will lead them to a saving knowledge. And you would help us, Lord, and use us in any way that we can be of assistance to them, Lord, because their soul matters. They matter. And eternity matters, Lord.
So I pray that you would bring them to a saving knowledge and bring them into your kingdom. Ask this humbly in Christ's name, amen. 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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