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.
Or if you will, take your Bibles and turn to Hosea chapter nine. I've entitled tonight's message "The Honor of God." Last week, Gary Johnson walked into my office and he brought me a copy of Grant Castleberry's book. He's the preaching pastor here at this church on Sundays, and his book's entitled "The Honor of God." And I began. And by the way, it's going to be available in May, so just keep that in mind. It's a great book.
I mean, I hadn't read. I've only read the introduction, but the introduction is awesome. But here's what he writes in the introduction. About the honor of God. Listen to this: the honor of God lies at lies at the fabric of our existence.
It is because the honor of God is the chief end of God. God created the universe and everything in it for this ultimate purpose: the honor of His own name. The basic meaning of honor is weightiness. Honoring God means that we view His character, His rule, and His sovereignty as the weightiest realities in our lives. The basic idea is that honoring something, or in this case, someone, means that we are showing the heaviness or weightiness of that person in our life.
It's like your earthly father. You know, particularly if you had a good father, he's weighty in your life. The father carries so much weight with the son, and God is even infinitely weightier than our earthly father.
Now, when you leave tonight, I want you to leave with these two very important considerations. First, how do we dishonor God? In other words, what specifically are we doing that brings dishonor to His name? And then, secondly, what does it mean to honor God? And what actions can we take to bring glory and honor to the Lord?
We need to understand that to bring dishonor to God is the greatest sin we can commit. To dishonor God is to act in ways that are contrary to His character, to His commandments. Bringing shame upon his name and thereby diminishing his reputation and his glory—that's what it does. When we dishonor God, we're bringing shame to His name. That's what happened with Jimmy and Tammy Baker, if you remember that years ago, and Jimmy swaggered.
And when when a minister falls, it's what happened to David. When David fell, it brought shame to God's name, and it caused the enemies of God to scorn David and his faith.
So, how do we dishonor God?
Well, first, we dishonor God when we fail to trust His word. When we read this book or we hear it and we don't believe it, we're not believing God. That's the problem. When we don't trust His word, we're not trusting God. Look at verses one and two.
Do not rejoice, 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, verse two, and wine presses will not feed the people. The new wine will fail them.
I think you know this by now. But the the main sin of the Israelites is they turned away from God. And turn to other gods for their well-being, for their sustenance. In other words, they didn't trust God to take care of them. This is mind-boggling when you consider all that God did for the Israelites.
He delivered them, remember, from four hundred years of slavery in Egypt. He led them through the Red Sea on dry ground. He defeated their enemy right before their eyes. Remember, they got on the other side. They looked back, and the water came back and covered up the Egyptian army, including Pharaoh.
So he destroyed their enemy. Then he led them through the desert for how many years? Forty. Did he take care of them? He provided them with manna and quail and water every single day.
He brought them safely to the promised land, and then he defeated all their enemies there and just gave them the land and he prospered them in the land, even while they were sinning egregiously against him. And all he asked in return was this: trust me, trust me. That's all he wants for us. From us, he just wants us to trust him. You see, as long as the Israelites honored God by obeying His word, that's how you honor God by reading the Bible, believing it, and obeying it.
As long as they did that, they would have been the beneficiaries of His countless blessings. Because that's what God wants to do. He wants to bless us, not like the prosperity preachers, you know, teach it. He wants to bless us spiritually. In Deuteronomy chapter thirty, Moses is before the people, and he he gives the Israelites two choices.
First. He said, "If you love the Lord your God, again he's talking to all the Israelites. If you love the Lord your God and walk in His ways by keeping His commandments, then you will live and increase, and enjoy God's abundant blessings." That's what the Promised Land offered, if they would just trust God. But then Moses said, "If your hearts turn away from God and you are disobedient." And you bow down to other gods, then you will surely be destroyed, and you will not live long in the land. And then Moses pleaded with them in verses nineteen and twenty, Deuteronomy thirty, verses nineteen and twenty.
He says, "Now choose life, guys. This is what I would say to you and me tonight. Choose life, so that you and your children may live, and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to His voice, and hold fast to Him." For the Lord is your life, and He will give you many years in the land. This is what the Lord has taught me over the past forty plus years, and sadly, it took me a lot of years to learn this truth. And I don't want to to take you that long, particularly you young guys.
And here is what I've learned: that if I will love the Lord, put Him first in my life. And if I read His word and trust it, and if I keep His commandments and His laws and His precepts, which are are they there for my good or for my ill? Ill, for my good. Then He will bless my life, and He has blessed my life, and it's all because of His grace and mercy. I deserve none of His blessings.
So, man, this is the main truth. I want you to learn from my study of Hosea this year. I want you to, I want you to learn how to live the rest of your life honoring God because that's the greatest thing you can do with your life. It's honor God. Here's how you do it.
Proverbs three, five, and six came to my mind when I was thinking about how to honor God.
Now I'm reading this from the Amplified version, but listen carefully. Lean on. Trust in and be confident in the Lord with all your heart and mind, and do not rely on your own insight or understanding. In all your ways, know, recognize, and acknowledge Him, and He will direct and make straight and plain your paths. In other words, if you live for the honor of God, He will guide you through this difficult life.
And He will protect you along the way. That does not mean that you won't suffer, but He will be with you in your suffering. Isn't that right, Peter? Did that happen to you? God will be with you when you pass through the rivers.
He will be with you when you pass through fire. And then He will bring you to the end of your life, safe and secure in Him. And then Jesus will open the door to heaven, and welcome you in to paradise, where you will live. Forever with Him in the in the real promised land. All you have to do is what Moses said: love the Lord your God, walk in His ways, keep His commandments, and then you will live and increase, and you will enjoy God's abundant blessings and gifts.
It begins in this life. It begins in this life. This is how we honor God, and if we honor God, He will honor us. If not in this life, in the life to come.
Now, at the time of Hosea, the Israelites no longer trusted in the Lord their God, who had delivered them out of slavery and given them the Promised Land. Instead, they placed their trust in these false gods, who went by names like Baal and Moloch. They were trusting these false idols to bring them prosperity. In essence, you know what they did with God when they when they turned away from God. They rejected Him and His Word, and they started worshiping these false idols.
They pushed God into a corner.
Well, He had no choice but to do what? Judge them. The Bible says that God is long-suffering and patient. Has He been long-suffering and patient with you? Like he has with me, God was patient with the Israelites for nearly 240 years, from the time of Jeroboam I, right after Solomon died.
You remember Jeroboam became the king of the northern kingdom of Israel, and Rehoboam became the king of Judah. And so, the northern kingdom for 240 years until the time of Hosea. God was patient with them. All the while, they were worshiping the gods of their enemies, Baal, Molech, and another god by the name of Chemosh. Y'all remember that name in there anywhere in Kings?
Chemosh was the chief deity of the Moabites. The worship of Chemosh involved rituals that were considered abominable by the Israelites, and yet they committed them, including human sacrifice. And so, by the time of Hosea. God's patience had run out, and now it's time for what? Judgment.
Here's a biblical principle we all need to understand: the consequence of ongoing and unrepentant sin is the judgment and wrath of God. When's the last time you heard that in church? Have you heard that recently? And this is what the Northern Kingdom of Israel was about to experience: the judgment of God. In Romans chapter two, verses four and five, Paul writes this.
And here, you remember in Romans one, he lays out the downward spiral of sins, talking about really blatant sinners. But then you've got religious people who look at these blatant sinners like people on death, men on death row. I'm glad I'm not like them.
So Paul in Romans two addresses the religious and lost. Here's what he says. Do you show contempt for the riches of of His kindness, tolerance, and patience, not realizing that God's kindness leads you towards repentance? But because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God's wrath, when His righteous judgment will be revealed. When I look at the history of our nation, would y'all say that we've been blessed by God?
More so than any other nation, probably in the history of the world, and God has been blessing us, even though we have we continue to sin egregiously against Him, and just like Israel, we have snubbed God's kindness, and we, as a nation, what we're doing as a nation is we're storing up wrath against ourselves for the day of God's wrath against our nation because we rejected Him. And we've turned to other gods.
So how is God going to judge Israel? Look at verses three through seven. Verse three says they will not remain in the Lord's land. Ephraim will return to Egypt, not literally, but it will be like going back to Egypt where they were enslaved. And they will eat unclean food in Assyria.
Verse four: They will not pour out wine offerings to the Lord, nor will their sacrifices please Him. Verse five: What will you do on the day of your appointed festivals, on the feast days of the Lord? Remember, they won't be in the land, so they won't be to have those feasts. Even if they escape from destruction, Egypt will gather them, and Memphis will bury them.
Some of the Israelites escaped from the Assyrians and went south to Egypt, but they were destroyed too. That's what he's saying here in verse six. Even they, 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 tents. That's what's going to happen when they are taken from the land.
It's just become a place of thorns and thistles. Look at verse seven. The days of punishment are coming. The days of reckoning are at hand.
So Hosea prophesied during the reign of the last six kings of Israel, from seven sixty two BC until seven twenty two BC. Do you remember there were four assassinations during those last six kings? And so the time period was about forty years. That he's prophesying, you know, to the Israelites and telling them what's coming—that God's judgment is coming. And so, in seven twenty-two B.C., who showed up?
The Assyrians, and they they they destroyed Samaria and all of Israel. And then they took the surviving Israelites out of their homeland, and they took them back, basically as slaves, to a strange land, Assyria. Never again would they be able to worship God in Israel. Never again would they be able to drink new wine from their vineyards. Never again would they see the temple of the Lord.
The day of grace was over.
Now was the time of judgment. You see, this is what happens to a nation that dishonors the name of God and remains in stubborn rebellion and refuses to repent. God is extremely patient, but His patience has a what? A limit. Just ask Noah, and if you could ask all the people who were desperately trying to get on board the ark while the water rose, do you know who shut the door to that ark?
God. He shut Noah and his family in, and he shut everybody else out. Genesis six verse sixteen says, "Then the Lord shut Noah in." You see, God's patience at some point comes to an end. Just ask Pharaoh. Just ask the Canaanites.
Just ask the people of Sodom and Gomorrah. This is why we need to fear God. Because not only is He a God of love, but He's a God of wrath, and His wrath, by the way, flows from His love. His wrath burns against what? Sin.
Evil. Why does God hate evil so much? Because He's holy, and look at what it's done to the people He loves. Look at what it's done to our planet. Look at what it's done to the world.
Evil is running rampant, and God sees it all.
So, men, we dishonor God. First, when we fail to trust His word, so let me ask you something: Do you trust this book? The older I get, the more I cling to it. It's like an anchor for my soul. We also dishonor God; we fail to trust the men who preach His word.
Look at verses seven and eight. Because your sins are so many and your hostility so great, the prophet is considered a fool. The inspired man is a maniac. He is a—he's demented. He's mad.
That's the way the world looks at preachers who preach the inerrant word of God. He's just a crazy preacher. Verse eight: The prophet, along with my God, is the watchman over Ephraim. Yet snares await this prophet on all his paths, and hostility in the house of his God. What did God do for two hundred and forty years, while the Israelites were becoming more and more wicked in their sin?
What did He do? Who did He send? Prophets, men like Elijah and Elisha. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos, Hosea. How were these prophets treated?
For the most part, they were not only rejected, but they were persecuted, and and some of them were actually murdered. In Acts chapter seven, when Stephen was on trial before the Sanhedrin, remember he gave that marvelous sermon. And then he got to the end of it, and he looked at those, the Sanhedrin. These were the same men who put who on trial, Jesus, and then had him crucified.
So when Stephen is standing before them, you think about the courage it took. He said, "You stiff-necked people, with uncircumcised hearts and ears." He's talking to the religious leaders. You are just like your fathers. He's talking about these, the Israelites. You always resist the Holy Spirit.
Was there ever a prophet your fathers did not persecute? They even killed those who predicted the coming of the righteous one, like Isaiah. And now you betrayed and murdered him. According to tradition, do you all know how Isaiah was killed? Sewn in two, probably by King Manasseh.
Jeremiah was placed in stocks and lowered into a dry cistern and left to die. The Apostle Paul was beheaded. Jesus Himself was crucified. In some countries today, all around the world. Particularly Muslim countries and communist countries, missionaries and preachers face severe persecution, including imprisonment and even death.
Have y'all seen what's happening taking place in Syria right now? Christians by the hundreds are being executed. I saw a picture of one man in Syria who was crucified, and the guy didn't post the video because it was too horrific. They're crucifying Christians in Syria. Why is this?
Because the world hates the word of God, and also hates those who proclaim it.
Now here in America, preachers who hold up the Bible as the inerrant word of God don't have to worry about this kind of severe persecution. At least not yet. Nonetheless, biblical preachers are not very respected, and many consider us foolish. I remember. I went to.
As y'all know, I grew up in a Methodist church. I went to a Pentecostal holiness on Sunday nights. I went to an Episcopal prep school. Then I went off school, didn't go to church. Then I came to Raleigh, joined a liberal, hate to say this, Presbyterian church, and then I went to a Southern Baptist seminary.
And I remember one day I was at this exercise room. And this this man came up to me, who was a member of that Presbyterian church that I used to be a member a member of. And you know what he said to me? He he had heard I was going to this Baptist seminar up there in Wake Forest. He looked at me kind of with scorn.
He said, "Do you believe all that stuff they teach out there?" You know what I said to him? I said, "They're just teaching the Bible." He said another word to me. Here in America. Today, most people don't even go to church, or they go where they will be made to feel. Excuse me, comfortable.
They will avoid churches where words like sin and repentance and you must be born again are used. Here is what Paul warned Timothy about in First. Excuse me. Second Timothy four verses three and four. 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 teach what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. Is that taking place here in Raleigh today? You better believe it is.
So, what were the consequences for Israel in dishonoring God by rejecting His word? Here's what they were going to face. Look at verse nine, eleven, twelve, and seventeen. They have sunk deep into corruption, as in the days of Gibeon. God will remember their wickedness and punish them for their sins.
Verse eleven: Ephraim's glory will fly away like a bird. No birth, no pregnancy, no conception. Even if they rear children, I will bereave them of every one. Woe to them! This is God speaking now.
Woe to them when I turn away from them. And then verse seventeen says, "My God." This is Hosea speaking about why could he say, "My God," because he he had a personal relationship with God. The Israelites, most of them, did not. My God will reject them because they have not obeyed Him. They will be wondrous among the nations.
When we reject God and His Word, He will eventually reject us. Do you know He does this? According to Romans one, y'all turn to Romans one. This is the worst thing He can do to a man: give him over. To his sinful desires.
In other words, let him go his own way. God says, "Thy will be done." In Romans one, from about verse twenty-four down, three times it says that God gives us over. And if you look at verses eighteen through twenty-two, it says that he we we suppress the truth, we don't thank God. We um we worship things that are made rather than the Creator. In other words, we turn to idolatry.
And so, in verse twenty four, it says, "God gives us over in the sinful desires of our hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of our bodies with one another." Now, I want you to notice that what he gives us over to the first time is natural sin. Did you hear me? It's natural sin. But then we turn away from the truth of God. To ally in worship created things rather than our Creator, and then in verses 26 and 27, he gives us over a second time.
Look at this. He this time he gives us over to shameful lust. Women exchange natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way, the men also abandon natural relations with women, and are inflamed with lust for one another. Men commit Indecent acts with other men, and receive in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.
So this time, he gets over to what kind of sin? Unnatural. But it gets worse. Verse twenty-eight. Therefore, since we do not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, that is, we hear the word and we reject it, we don't think it's worthwhile to even think about God.
He gets us over to what kind of a mind? A depraved mind to do what ought not to be done.
So, in the end, God gives us over to total depravity, where we can no longer distinguish between right and wrong, between good and evil. And in this depraved state, we dream up ways to commit sin. Thus, God has no choice but to give us over to let us go our own way. This downward spiral eventually leads to total depravity, in which we. And here is the third way we dishonor God, according to this text.
We dishonor God with all kinds of wickedness, including the shedding of innocent blood. Look at verse thirteen. God says, "I have seen Ephraim, that's Israel, like Tyre, planted in a pleasant place, but Ephraim will bring out their children to the who? Slaier, would you say slaughter? Same thing, slayer, slaughter.
So what were they doing that was so egregious to God? What?" What was Israel doing that so aroused God's wrath?
Well, not only were they worshiping the false gods of the enemies like Baal and Molech and Kimosh, not only were they practicing sexual prostitution as part of their worship. Can you think of anything worse than that?
Well, it gets worse. They were sacrificing their children to these idols. Take your Bible and turn to Jeremiah 19. Jeremiah chapter 19. Go to Psalms and turn to your right.
In Jeremiah nineteen, the prophet describes what they were doing in a place called the Valley of Hinam or Topheth. Do you know where this valley is located? Jerusalem. It surrounds the old city. It surrounds Mount Zion.
And this valley was infamous for child sacrifice to idols like Moloch and Baal.
So it's a valley right there beside Jerusalem, and they were sacrificing children. Their sacrifice—they were—you know what they're doing—they were burning their sons and daughters to these gods as a form of worship. Jeremiah seven thirty and thirty one says, "Stay at Jeremiah nineteen." But Jeremiah seven says, "The people of Judah have done evil in my eyes," declares the Lord. They have set up their detestable idols in the house that bears my name, and they defiled it. They literally would set up these idols in synagogues in the temple.
They have built the high places of Topheth in the valley of Ben Hinnam to burn their sons and daughters in the fire.
Something. This is what God is saying.
Something I did not command, nor did it even enter my mind. It's reported that drums were beaten to drown out the screams of the children being sacrificed in these fires. Can you believe that? By the way, the valley of Hinnam is also known as Gehenna. It's a term that Jesus used to describe hell.
At the time of Christ, Gehenna was a garbage dump used for burning trash, including the bodies of executed criminals and animals, to prevent disease. Matthew ten twenty eight says, "Do not be afraid of the house. Excuse me. Do not be afraid of those who kill the body, but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the one who can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna.
That's the word that's used there for hell." Let me ask you something: Why is the murder of a person such a dishonor to God's name? Exactly right. When we when someone is murdered, it is the destruction of someone who bears the image of God, including a baby in its mother's womb. You when when abortion is committed, you destroy you you are destroying someone that was created God's image. And this is there anyone more innocent than a baby in its mother's womb?
Anyone more innocent? Proverbs six sixteen and seventeen says there are six things the Lord hates even that are detestable to Him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood. Several times throughout the Old Testament you'll find this phrase: God hates the shedding of innocent blood. He hates the shedding of innocent blood. Since nineteen seventy three.
It's estimated that over 65 million abortions have occurred. That's the population of which country? I said it earlier this year. France wiped out a whole country, not including all the children they would have born since 1973.
Now, in Jeremiah 19, and I'm going to conclude with this. In this chapter, Jeremiah is told to go out to the Valley of Ben Hinnam, and there he was to basically proclaim the the word of the Lord. He was to say he was to stand in this valley, looking at Jerusalem. Thus saith the Lord. This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: Listen, I'm going to bring a disaster on this place that will make the ears of everyone who hears it tingle.
For they have forsaken me and made this a place of foreign gods. They have burned sacrifices in it to gods that neither they nor their fathers ever knew, and they have filled this place with the blood of the innocent. When we, as a nation, men, dishonor God by rejecting Him. In his word, by rejecting his son Jesus Christ, by rejecting the faithful men who are still in this country preaching God's word, and by shedding the blood of innocent babies, creating his image, when we're doing these things, you know what we're inviting? We're inviting the wrath of God.
We're inviting his judgment.
So here is the question: Is any hope for our country? What would you say? Yes, there is always hope. We still have a remnant of Christians in this nation, and I actually believe that God is showing our nation some mercy here right now. And we need to be praying for for this country that God will heal our land.
So, what do we need to do, you and me? We need we need to pray, but we need to repent of our own sin. Repentance begins in the house of God. We need to repent. We need to commit to to live the rest of our lives every single day in His honor, and for His honor.
And you know how you do that. You know the best way to honor God is to share the gospel with others. In other words, to spread His to to to. To spread his name before the world. That's why Jesus said, "Go out and share the gospel to the ends of the earth." When you, when you share the gospel to someone, you're bringing honor to God, and you're you're holding up His reputation as honorable.
So let me ask you this: When is the last time you shared the gospel with someone?
So, man, here's what I want for us. I want you and me. I want us to commit. Say, Lord, when you go to bed tonight. Just pray this prayer, Lord.
I want to commit the rest of my life to you. I want my life. I want to. I want to live for your honor and not mine. And so, Lord, we pray that you'll give us the strength to do that.
So, Lord, if you bow your heads with, if you men will bow your heads with me right now, I want to close with a prayer of commitment for us tonight together. Heavenly Father, we just bow our heads before you tonight. And we ask you, Lord, to give us the strength to live for you and not for ourselves. Help us to be willing to take up our cross and die to self. Help us to be willing to share the gospel with those around us who don't know you, who are lost.
Lord, the time is short, and Lord, we can't live for your honor. Without your help, we need you, Lord.
So I pray this for each one of us. And if there's a man sitting here tonight who's not sure that if he were to die right now he would go to heaven, I pray that right now that man will surrender his life to you. In Jesus' name, I pray. 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.
