Hosea 10 The Risks of it All

You're listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsak preaches from his series on the book of Hosea, a study in God's relentless love.

Let's listen in. Good morning and welcome to Recast Church.

I'm Don Filsak. I'm the lead pastor here. And I'm really glad to be together with you all. I hope you're glad to be here as well.

We here at Recast, we are seeking to honor our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ by growing in faith, growing in community, and growing in service.

I say that up here frequently. When we set out 16 years ago to start a church in this area, and actually,

April 19th of 2009 is the first time that we met as a church in a basement in the

Trestle Creek neighborhood. And so that's coming up on 16 years ago now. And I'm going to be honest.

I mean this with all sincerity. I had no idea if this was going to fly or not. But one thing that we knew for sure way back then was that if it was going to succeed, it was going to be because God was in it, not because we were capable or that we knew what we were doing.

We did not know what we were doing. We didn't even know what we were getting into when we were starting a church. We just kind of saw

God in it and thought, well, maybe He would have us do this. We knew that He would be the one who would need to draw hearts together to love one another, to draw people to Him.

And here we are years later continuing to meet, continuing to take in His Word, continuing to love Him by loving each other well.

I love it. I get an opportunity to have a front row seat to this thing that God has done here in this community. But I would suggest to you in kind of thinking about the text that we're going to be looking at this morning, growing in faith is not very complicated, but it isn't very easy.

It's not complicated, but it isn't very easy. I think one of the most challenging aspects to growing in faith stems from our tendency to give up for a whole bunch of different reasons.

So there's all different kinds of reasons we might give up in the Christian walk and growing in faith. There are seasons of life when we think we've grown enough and we think we are mature enough that we then begin to think we can coast.

That's one risk. Or we can become enticed by the things of this world and for seasons cease to grow because of the world and the way that sin grabs our attention.

I think all of us know what it means to spend at least a season chasing bright, shiny things. You know what

I'm talking about? How many of you know what I'm talking about? You've spent some time chasing shiny, empty things.

Life in a fallen world is hostile to faith. This is not a natural environment in which faith grows.

It requires some effort. An untended garden will grow weeds. An ordering life takes energy.

At every turn in this world, faith is indeed at risk. And I was listening to a podcast on my way into church this morning that reminded me that sin is crouching at the door like a beast crouching at the door waiting for you to open the door to let it in.

So our march through the book of Hosea has us facing a lot of warnings and cautions. And I recognize that it's possible by this point in the book of Hosea that some of us might be experiencing what

I would call prophetic fatigue. Hopefully it's just a minor case. Yeah, some of you got it.

Just a minor prophetic, minor prophet case. But you guys, I think you might get what

I mean by that because even my wife and I were talking about it last night and she said, are you tired of Hosea?

And I said, are you tired of Hosea? And I mean, I would think it would be justified for some of you to go like, how long is this book?

How long is it? And further, we can tend to begin to find the message repetitive, more cautions about sin, more indictments of God's people, more warnings of impending invasion and judgment for the people of God, the

Old Testament people of God. And chapter 10 will be no different, and 11, and 12, and 13, and chapter 14, and then we'll be done.

But our text takes the form of three risks that we need to be constantly wary of during our journey in this fallen world.

And there is a risk of abundance that leads us to trust in material possessions. There is the closely related risk of trusting in creation and falling over into idolatry, worshiping created things rather than the invisible but very real and worthy creator.

And of course, we are always at risk of sowing our lives to sin in general, planting small seeds of wickedness that we think we can get away with when

God in the book of Hosea is promising a harvest. He says, you'll reap what you sow.

And if you sow wickedness, sow the wind, reap the hurricane, is a phrase that comes from this very book.

So yes, this is another message about the state of our hearts. Yes, this is another reminder that God's people are just as tempted as everyone else to sin.

This is another opportunity though to receive caution from the prophet of God. And yet it's also an opportunity to rejoice in the hope and salvation we have through Jesus Christ our

Lord. Amen? How many of you are glad for that? You're glad for that. At no point in this series on the book of Hosea have

I intended for us to be or are we called to loosen our grip on hope and trust that Jesus and his sacrifice is enough.

He is the Savior. He is the King. He is the Lord and he has promised eternity to all who are his.

So what's the risk for us as I launch into a message about three risks this morning?

In that old covenant, the risk was a severe and stern discipline that looked like the people being carted off in exile and being conquered by the

Assyrians, a pretty harsh judgment. But for us, the risk is not a lost relationship with him.

He has sealed that in the blood of his Son and by the promise of his Holy Spirit that dwells within us. The risk for us that I want to point out to you this morning is a loss of peace, a loss of usefulness, a loss of confidence, and possibly, possibly, possibly, maybe even the loss of this life.

But there is real risk, even if it's not eternal risk for us or the one who belongs to Jesus.

If you are his, you want to please him. If you are his, you will live in some semblance and sense of inner turmoil if you give in to the siren song of abundance or idolatry or sin, if you give into those things that the

Israelites were given into. A Christian who is sinking in the muck of this world is a

Christian who is becoming increasingly powerless and joyless and quite often wracked with doubt about their very salvation.

So let's open our Bibles or your scripture journals or your devices to Hosea chapter 10, where we're going to read about these ancient risks that still tempt us even in this modern day where we live here in 2025.

So again, Hosea chapter 10, we're going to read the entirety of this passage and recast this as God's holy word.

This is what he desires for us to be hearing here this morning. And I'm confident, by the way, when

I say, are we tired of this book? I'm not. It's God's holy word. It's what he desires, despite the fact that sometimes

God's word hits us like wave after wave after wave. And you're like, how many more of these can I handle? Well, right now there's,

I think, four more. So well, there's your answer. Hosea chapter 10. Israel is a luxuriant vine that yields its fruit.

The more his fruit increased, the more altars he built. As his country improved, he improved his pillars.

Their heart is false. Now they must bear their guilt. The Lord will break down their altars and destroy their pillars.

For now they will say, we have no king, for we do not fear the Lord. And a king, what could he do for us?

They utter mere words with empty oaths. They make covenants. So judgment springs up like poisonous weeds in the furrows of the field.

The inhabitants of Samaria tremble for the calf of Beth -Avon. Its people mourn for it, and so do its idolatrous priests, those who rejoiced over it and over its glory, for it has departed from them.

The thing itself shall be carried to Assyria as tribute to the great king. Ephraim shall be put to shame, and Israel shall be ashamed of his idol.

Samaria's king shall perish like a twig on the face of the waters. The high places of Avon, the sin of Israel, shall be destroyed.

Thorn and thistle shall grow up on their altars, and they shall say to the mountains, cover us, and to the hills, fall on us.

From the days of Gibeah you have sinned, O Israel. There they have continued. Shall not the war against the unjust overtake them in Gibeah?

When I please, I will discipline them, and nations shall be gathered against them, when they are bound up for their double iniquity.

Ephraim was a trained calf that loved to thresh. I spared her fair neck, but I will put Ephraim to the yoke.

Judah must plow, Jacob must harrow for himself. Sow for yourselves righteousness, reap steadfast love, break up your fallow ground, for it is time to seek the

Lord, that he may come, rain righteousness upon you.

You have plowed iniquity, you have reaped injustice, you have eaten the fruit of lies, because you have trusted in your own way and in the multitude of your warriors.

Therefore the tumult of war shall rise among your people, and all your fortresses shall be destroyed. As Shalman destroyed

Beth Arbel on the day of battle, mothers were dashed in pieces with their children. Thus it shall be done to you, O Bethel, because of your great evil.

At dawn the king of Israel shall be utterly cut off." Let's pray.

Father, I thank you that you are faithful to warn us. You are faithful to send your prophets in history, and now in this day to send your

Word that clearly communicates to us the threat, and the warnings, and the risk of sin that so easily entices and draws us in.

Father, to just image and imagine sin as a beast crouching at the door that desires to come in and wreak havoc.

And God, I pray that you would allow this to be a passage of conviction, this to be a passage of confession, and repentance, and dealing with our sin before you.

Father, I pray that you would identify for us where we have fallen short of the things that you desire of us.

And we thank you that we have a great high priest who doesn't make sacrifices for us, but became the sacrifice for us.

That our sins are washed away, and that they're cleansed, and yet we are still in this process of sanctification, still drawn in time and time again to sin.

And I pray that you would be helping us to keep short accounts with that, and continue to grow, and to continue to learn from past mistakes.

Father, I pray that you would be sanctifying your people through your word that identifies for us how risky it is, these things that we think we're just playing with, will actually toy with us.

So Father, I pray that you would guide us, direct us, help us to walk with you. Even as we have an opportunity to sing songs now in worship to you, that you would lighten our hearts in gladness.

We just read a really difficult passage in terms of judgment, but we recognize that Christ has taken judgment for us.

And so Father, I pray that you would help us to be those who rejoice in gladness, and being set free from the consequences of our sin, while still shunning it and hating it when we see it crop up in our lives.

And Father, I pray that you would receive these songs as worship before you this morning, in Jesus' name.

Amen. All right, yeah, go ahead and be seated. And thanks to the band for leading us.

I don't know if the worship sometimes hits you like it does me. I hope it does, but sometimes, you know, songs can be repetitive.

And we sang it as well a few times, and that phrase. But I just want to point out that like at the beginning, it was a little bit of a question mark in my mind the first few times

I said it. And as I sang it, it became more true. So I hope that that's true for you, that there are times when that repetition serves to almost kind of lean into some things that are maybe difficult in your life, that you actually recognize like, oh, it is well.

It is well with my soul. So I really appreciate their ministry to us. I encourage you to get comfortable and keep your

Bibles open to Hosea chapter 10, so that we can see and follow along in this passage.

And it serves you to have that available on your lap, as I'm going to reference it multiple times throughout this message. The life of faith is full of risks.

I think we all know that. And don't get me wrong, when we are brought into the new covenant that God made through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, our

Lord and Savior, the Lamb of God, come slain before the foundations of the world for our sins.

When we come to Him, we are given all that we need for life and godliness. We have everything available to us in Christ and through His Spirit.

We are given hope. We are given forgiveness. We are given peace. We are given a new purpose. We are given the greatest cause for joy and rejoicing that could ever be.

But in God's big plan, He has seen fit to utilize growth over time to draw us closer to Him.

When we're saved, we are not immediately glorified. We are entered into a process of sanctification by which we grow day by day closer to Him.

We have some setbacks and some victories in our lives. And how many of you know what I'm talking about? There's some ups and some downs.

And hopefully the trajectory of your life spiritually since you came to faith in Christ has been one of growth, albeit maybe slow.

And maybe right now you're not quite sure where that is. But life with Christ is more like a journey and less like an arrival is what

I'm saying. We are called to grow in our relationship all throughout our lives. And no one is given a pass to go, you're old enough now.

You're mature enough now. You're spiritual enough now. You don't have any area to grow. That's not true for any of us.

And yet much like the story of Pilgrim's Progress written by John Bunyan, one of the Puritans, our life with Christ goes through adventures of ups and downs and twists and turns and many risks and many challenges along the way.

Now, our text shows three risks that Israel faced in their relationship with God in that ancient context.

But these three risks are still with us today. Our outline this morning is just simply to follow those three risks as we see them revealed in this text.

The first is the risk of abundance, verses 1 through 4. The second is the risk of idolatry, verses 5 through 10.

And the third is the risk of sin. And yeah, that sounds generic, but you'll see why. Iniquity or sin in verses 11 through 15.

So these three movements have some overlap and are obviously closely related. And I mean, certainly, idolatry is sin and abundance is not sin, but abundance leads often to idolatry and things like that.

So we can kind of see how they're maybe interrelated. But I'm gonna walk us through this outline. And in the book of Hosea, we see the multifaceted way that evil has captured the human heart.

That's one thing that Hosea is doing a good job of is taking the same concept of sin and brokenness and temptation and looking at it from a bunch of different angles, a bunch of different ways that the people of Israel were falling into sin.

And some of those categories are pretty similar, but he keeps talking about it from a different perspective. In each chapter, we're getting more and more of a vision of what it's like to fall and break.

In other words, there are many ways to fall and break, and Hosea was called to speak openly about those ways, to expose them, to warn us, to show us the end result of how that went for God's old covenant people who ignored the warnings, ignored the warnings of risk to their own detriment and their own shame.

And so the first four verses contain the first risk, the risk of abundance verses one through four, the risk of abundance.

Now, right out of the gate, we get an agricultural illustration in verse one. Israel is a luxuriant vine that yields its fruit.

The more its fruit increased, the more altars he built. You see, they were well off in the land that God had given them, a land flowing with milk and honey, and that gave them a lot of resources, that gave them a lot of riches.

As Israel increased and improved, it says the people poured more time into building more altars and improved their shrines.

And you might go, like, what's wrong with that, right? Like, at face value, like, they're multiplying worship, right?

That's good, but we need a little bit of a historical context to understand how this is sin, and it's absolute sin.

They are there by building more altars and by improving the pillars, which would be the pagan shrines.

Asherah was worshiped at a pillar, the pagan goddess Asherah. That's very well documented that there were these

Asherah poles all over the place, these pillars on high mountains and high top hills all around the area.

And what's happening here historically, to understand the context of why this is sin, what are they doing wrong here?

You see, God is blessing them with resources, and they're taking those resources and disobeying Him with their abundance.

He told them to worship Him at the temple in Jerusalem, full stop, one altar, go there, take your sacrifices there, worship me there.

That's it. The northern tribes of Israel, though, historically, as of the writing of Hosea, have broken off from the southern two tribes, and they have an adversarial relationship.

Now, Jerusalem and the temple is in the southern part, those two tribes down there, and there's a rift between them and the ten northern tribes to the point where they actually battle each other at times.

They actually go to war, brother against brother there. And so, the king of the northern ten tribes said, this can't happen, we can't keep sending our people down to Jerusalem to worship.

So, he set up other places to worship. Right away, King Jeroboam I, and he started with just two places, he commissioned that King Jeroboam commissioned the forging of two golden calves, and he set them up, one in the city of Dan, and the other in the city of Bethel.

And this was for the northern tribes to worship. Go to these places and worship, says the king of the northern tribes.

Now, he's still encouraging them to worship Yahweh, their God, there in those places, but he set up the calves as a compromise, mimicking the worship of the pagan nations around them.

Well, you gotta have some visual thing there. That was their mindset. And so, obviously, sinful mindset.

And so, from there, pagan worship grew exponentially. As God blessed them financially, they were like, hey, let's set up more places.

So, nearly every hilltop had a shrine, an altar, or a place to participate in wicked acts of worship, even branching out into worshiping other gods and goddesses.

So, in their abundance, and through their abundance, they are fueled, and empowered, and financed in their forsaking of God.

Now, I want to be clear at the outset that there is not a causal relationship between wealth and sin.

Let me say that again, there's not a causal relationship between wealth and sin. In other words,

Scripture never says, don't get wealthy, don't get money, or you will sin. It doesn't say that.

It doesn't warn against making a certain amount of money, and be careful, once you get enough money, once you get a certain amount, then you're sinning.

Abraham was wealthy, Jacob was wealthy, David was filthy rich, Solomon even more so, Joseph of Arimathea in the

New Testament was wealthy, and even Jesus himself, and hear me carefully, because this is controversial, what

I'm going to say, but Jesus himself had a family trade and a business, and that placed him in a better place than most in his culture.

The fact that daddy had a trade, daddy had an income, daddy didn't just, they were not subsistence farmers, he wasn't born into a subsistence farming situation, despite the fact that most people in his age ate only what they grew, he was actually, his dad had a trade and passed it on to his son.

That's a pretty big deal. But there is a risk, Scripture is clear about this, you're going,

Don, wait a minute, I thought there was all kinds of warnings about abundance and wealth. There is, this passage being one of them, there is a risk that comes with abundance, there's risk in it, and Scripture does indeed warn against the love and service of money.

When money becomes your master, you're in trouble. Scripture is clear about that, and Jesus even says we cannot serve both

God and money, you got to choose. Everybody's going to choose, you have to pick one.

God or wealth, which will you serve? Again, no problem having wealth, just don't make it your

God, don't worship it, don't make it your all and all. We who are counted among the most wealthy people to ever live on planet earth must, must, must heed this warning.

We must acknowledge the deep risk that we, that's all around us, that we live and breathe in this place of risk regarding worshiping stuff, abundance, money, services, all kinds of things at our fingertips.

If we're going to continue to walk with God and continue to grow up in Him, we need to be attentive to the risks that are around us, and abundance is certainly one of them.

You see, abundance gives us time and energy and resources to forsake our God, that's just true. We can buy stuff that gets in the way of our worship of Him.

We can afford boats that tempt us on warm summer Sunday mornings, right? We can afford travel sports that just might communicate to our kids, might communicate to our kids values that we didn't intend to communicate to them.

Are you seeing what I'm saying? We can buy, we can buy devices and games and streaming services and even more illicit things with our money that draw us away from a pure and simple worship of our great and worthy

God. Do you see it? Do you relate to it? Now, the ability to buy things has never been the problem.

Wealth merely exposes the values that we already harbor in our hearts. Look at verse 2. Look at verse 2.

Their heart is false. Our hearts are so incredibly prone to self -deception, and many of us may have been offended by the list of things that I mentioned already above and are already in our hearts making excuses for ourselves, not my family.

My family doesn't struggle with that. Well, yeah, we have all of this stuff, but it doesn't get in the way of my worship. Well, I want to encourage us all towards a real genuine, deep, and honest assessment of what we might be communicating and what might be getting in the way.

When it comes to the heart, the very core and center of our beings, we are either His or we are not

His, and that is true of everybody in this room. You're either His or you're not. I can't see that. But note that what they have done is a wrong action, multiplied altars and put up pillars for the worship of Asherah and increased and built up those pagan shrines, but their indictment comes about due to their hearts.

Our relationship to God in our heart is the first and foremost step of reconciliation with Him and is the first and foremost step in our judgment as well.

What we do does matter, but first the issue is the heart.

True worship from a loving heart is what God desires of His people most. For the people of Israel, they are literally trying to look like they are worshiping while their hearts are not into it.

And church, I've said this many times, and I think Hosea is just beating us over the head with this, you will never trick

God by pretending that you love Him. You will never trick God by pretending that you love Him. And so at the end of verse two, the

Lord will remove their empty and false religion Himself. He says, I'll take care of it for you. What we need to remove from our lives will be removed from our lives.

It will be, but if God has to break in and remove it, that's going to get uncomfortable.

That's going to get uncomfortable. Better that for the love of the one who died for you, better out of a heart given to Him that you remove the offending idols before He must send you into exile or take you out to do so.

You know what I'm saying? Better that you do it now out of love for Him. And there's another problem that comes with abundance.

You know, so you see it in verse three, who needs a king to lead? And who even needs the Lord when we have plenty of food and the wine is flowing?

Well, everything is met by our income and we're in control and we can work a side job and we can get more money and we can do all of this stuff.

And who needs God in this? There is no fear of the Lord before these people's eyes. That's what's going on in verse three.

God is rejected by His people and they have no fear of Him. And I like what Douglas Stewart says about this because the word fear comes up regarding our relationship,

God's people's relationship with the Lord, multiple times. And I like Douglas Stewart said this in his commentary about the word, probably the word fear, probably one of the best things

I've heard applied to and defining the word fear for us in terms of what does that look like in our relationship with God.

This is what Douglas Stewart said in his commentary on this very passage this week. He said that, quote, fear in covenantal terms is roughly equal to obedience.

Fear in covenantal terms is roughly equal to obedience. So that when God is saying you don't fear me,

He's saying you're not doing what I said. Much like a father might say to his kids, you're going crazy.

You don't fear me. There's nothing that I can do to get through to you because there's no fear in their eyes.

There's no respect. There's no obedience. And unfortunately, when we're at a good place financially and all our needs are provided for, we are tempted to set

God on a shelf to take Him out when maybe things are more meager and not going so well for us. And that only demonstrates what is often true in the human heart.

Many of us, I would say all at some point, are tempted to only worship God when we are in need.

We are conniving manipulators in our heart, are we not? Israel is showing us what is common.

They are only being used as an example for what is true in our hearts today. It's common to all of our hearts.

Without His Spirit's transforming work, we will all seek and devolve into manipulators of God to try to get what we want out of Him, right?

Vending machine theology. Put the right thing in, get the right thing out, and move on our way.

The emptiness of their worship is shown by the emptiness of their words. They say oaths to God, but they don't keep them.

They are all talking, no action, says Hosea. And so in the place of their abundance, God promises to let the punishment fit the crime here.

He's creative and He lets the punishment fit the crime. They who have only come to Him for abundant crops will go to their fields and only find poisonous weeds, says

Hosea. And I think it's good for us to pause here at the end of our first point and consider how patient God was with these people.

We have a tendency to look at Hosea as just His judgment, His wrath, His anger, His judgment, His indictments,

His sentencing, all of that. But man, oh man, He was centuries in the process by the time that we talk about Hosea.

By the time that we hear from Hosea, centuries and centuries of building those high top shrines, those hilltop shrines, those places to worship all of these pagan gods.

He put up with a lot of immorality and idolatry. But note that what's really getting to Him in the book of Hosea, what's really getting to the heart of God in regard to this idolatry is their faithlessness in relationship.

If you're in relationship with God by which He has made covenant with you and you have responded to that covenant by faith and trust in His Son, I'm talking about the new covenant, the one sealed in His blood, the one by which

He has purchased real people, you and me. If you're in that kind of relationship, God is forgiving and merciful and eminently gracious.

Amen? Have you experienced Him that way? Remaining in relationship with Him, continuing in His love, continuing trusting in Him?

In relationship, God will forgive, be merciful and gracious. A heart filled with genuine love for the

Lord is a heart that He is glad to work with. But a disingenuous heart pretending to worship

Him is a heart headed for terrifying judgment. And so a real question in application to this first point, are you faking it or do you love

Him but stumble from time to time? We're not talking about perfection here.

We can't talk about perfection here unless we're talking about our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ who fulfilled the law for us.

Amen? But are you faking it? Are you pretending and living a pretend life? Our first application this morning is to consider our relationship to abundance and God.

Is He legitimately the priority in your life? And I like to say this because often we go like, is

He number one? And I would suggest to you that He needs to be a part of all your list.

It is not sufficient to say, God is number one. I gave Him the first of my time. Now I get to go do whatever

I want. All of it for Him. All of it for Him. Like it's not like God, then my wife, then my family, then my church, then my...

It's God in my family, in my husbanding, in my fathering, in my pastoring, in my driving.

That one comes up a lot for me. You guys get what I'm saying? He's not one thing on a list of things.

He's the list. He's the paper upon which you write. He's the ink upon which you put the things down in.

Are you getting what I'm saying? All of it for Him. Is He your priority in all things?

Have you allowed a self -reliance or even stuff you own to get between you and God? This is a genuine question.

Are you using His blessings to enhance your altars? Are you using His resources to build shrines to yourself, shrines to your hobby, shrines to your own entertainment?

I can't tell you where that line is for you. That's not my responsibility to tell you where the line is.

If you want to talk about it, we can talk about it, but I'm just going to help you think it through. But I'm confident that God can tell you.

I'm confident that God can press in your heart right now with conviction those areas where you are loving things or stuff, sports teams, whatever it might be, more than Him.

If you have doubts about this or feel any conviction on this, pray and ask Him to show you what

He desires to change in your heart and in your behavior and in your priorities today.

And I'm confident He will. I'm confident He will, but ask Him. Maybe you don't want to ask Him, then ask

Him. But abundance comes with risks, but there's a follow -up risk that goes more to the point related but more direct, and that's the risk of idolatry verses 5 through 10.

As I mentioned earlier, Israel had set up a golden calf in Bethel, the city whose name means house of God.

And I don't know whatever happened to the place in Dan. It's not really mentioned much by the prophets, but the place, the golden calf set up in Bethel seemed to take root and they seemed to go there and worship, and so it's addressed a lot.

Hosea and some of the other prophets like to riff on the name Bethel. Bethel meaning house of God is the name of that.

Beth -Avon meaning house of evil, and they liked to call it, the prophets like to have a little bit of snark and a little sarcasm, and instead of calling it

Bethel, the house of God, they said, no, you've turned it into the house of wickedness, and so he calls it Beth -Avon. You'll see

Avon used twice in this passage. The word wickedness is what that word means, and there's no city.

There's no city of Beth -Avon anywhere, and it's unlikely that anybody would name it anyways.

Who's going to name their city? Oh, the city of wickedness. I guess there is a Hell, Michigan. I don't know, but I guess, you know, people name things weird stuff.

That's true, but those who wouldn't fear the Almighty, he says, those who wouldn't fear me, remember he already said that, you don't fear the

Lord, verse 3, they came and trembled, the word that's there for like a fervency in worship, they came and trembled in fervent worship before the golden calf, fearing the pagan deities more than they feared the

Almighty God. Do you see how foolish we can be? Afraid that the stock market's going to crash, but not afraid for your soul, not afraid and in an obedience toward the

Lord himself, but as soon as the calf is mentioned, it's being carted off.

It gets a little very, very short show here, verse 5, the inhabitants of Samaria tremble for the calf of Beth -Avon, its people mourn for it, and so do its idolatrous priests, those who rejoice over it and over its gourd.

By the end of the verse, here we go, for it has departed from them, the beginning of the very next verse, the thing itself, the very idol itself shall be carried off to Assyria.

It's mentioned and it's being hauled off. The people will mourn for the loss of their precious, bright, shiny, empty idol.

Sound familiar? What could we be moved to mourn over the loss of today?

How many of us have ever been found like face in our hands, just racked over the loss of something, just something, the scratch on the side of your car, you guys get what

I'm saying? Like just the stuff, the thing itself, the golden calf itself, says

Hosea, says God, will be carried off to Assyria as a tribute to their great king.

This is so shameful. It's hard for us in our current state of where we live to imagine how utterly shameful

Israel is behaving in this. Quite likely, the great king that's mentioned here is Tiglath -Pileser

III, the king of Assyria during this time. It's interesting, we actually see that people gave him a nickname,

Pol -P -U -L. They probably didn't like saying that a lot. It was a big mouthful. So even in Scripture, he's called a couple of times

Pol, Tiglath -Pileser III. They're already paying tribute to him, and Israel will be caught in shame over their idol.

Consider what was meant to be the glory of Israel, by the way. Why are they a thing? Like why is

Israel called out? What are they called out to be? They were called to invite the nations to come and see the glory of the one true

God in their midst. Not a golden idol, but a God who delivers and cares for His people, the invisible creator of all things.

And instead, they turned out a golden calf and named it Yahweh. What? Turned out a golden calf and named it

Yahweh. And now, this calf has been carted off to Assyria to be added to the hall of conquered gods.

Israel has made Yahweh out to be just another idol among the pantheon of pagan deities.

Talk about shame. Talk about shame. They who were supposed to be communicating the glory of God to the nations have made

Him out to be a trinket. Due to this wickedness, He says, your king, the king of Samaria, their capital city,

Samaria, the king will perish like a twig. He's going to be carried off in chaos like a twig on the waters.

Turbulent flood, and he will be carried off like a twig. And the high places of wickedness where the

Israelites practiced her local idolatry will be utterly destroyed. It's interesting.

So, the sin of Israel will be obliterated, the high places will be destroyed. And despite the fact that in our ears, when we read

Hosea, it strikes our ears as a very harsh book. But I find it interesting that the word destroyed in verse 8, the

Hebrew word there for destroyed, this word in verse 8 is the only time in the entire book of Hosea that he uses what scholars believe is the strongest word for destruction in the

Hebrew language. Like, they have multiple words just like we do for the word destruction.

We have words, destruction, obliteration, annihilation, devastation. You can probably add your own to it, right? We could thesaurus this thing and come up with all kinds of words that mean the utter decimation.

Oh, there's another one, decimation of things. And whichever one you think is worse, like whatever word of those you think,

I mean, maybe nuke the place. I don't know what you think of when you think of like the most devastating destruction that you can imagine, that's the word you should apply to the animosity and hatred that God has for their high places of pagan worship.

When they are worshiping that which is not God and worshiping the created, when they're worshiping their bank accounts, when they're worshiping their cars, when they're worshiping their 401ks, when they're worshiping their work, when they're worshiping their family, he says,

I hate that. I despise that. And the most harsh judgment possible is toward those who would worship that which is not

God. Whichever one, whichever word you think is worse is what you ought to think of when you consider what

God wants to do to their high places where they engage in cult prostitution and child sacrifice and other deviant forms of worship for their blessing, for their ease, for their comfort.

He despises the church. And when the day of judgment comes, it says for the people, now the high places are going to be decimated, destroyed, nuked.

They will wish for the mountains to fall on them. They will wish for a swift end to the judgment that is coming for them.

Yeah, ow is right. I think that was ow. Did that sound like out everybody else?

That was a pretty good ow. Ouch. In verse 9, just like last week,

Hosea refers again to the wicked events of Judges 19 through 21. Again, a passage of just devastating sexual filth and disgust and judgment.

That accounting of what the people, the men of Gibeah did in Judges 19 through 21 resulted in civil war in Israel.

Their 11 tribes of Israel were called by God to rise up and attack the single tribe of Benjamin because they were defending the wicked actions of these men of a city of Benjamin, Gibeah.

And Hosea likens the judgment that is coming to that war against unjust Benjamin during that time.

And remembering that out of an entire tribe, only about 500 males were left. Only about 500 men of the, and he's saying this is kind of like what

I'm talking about here. This is a good illustration. Your sin, your sexual wickedness, and the annihilation that is coming is related.

For their idolatry, God will discipline them. For their double iniquity of idolatry and forsaking

Him, He will discipline them. But God speaking says that it will be in His timing in verse 10.

It's in His timing. Do you see it there? When I please, I will discipline them. He's not rushing into it.

He's saying, I'm going to discipline you when it's the right time. And this is very important for us to consider because I have a tendency, and I'm guessing that many of us do, to kind of go like,

I got away with that. But we ought not ever to think that a lack of immediate judgment equals

God's tacit approval of our sins. It does not at all. His patience is meant to give us time to repent.

His patience is given to us, and time is given to us to repent of our sins.

Keep short accounts, church. Confess sin and apologize to Him as soon as you are moved to conviction.

As soon as your heart acknowledges that what He's pressing on you is sin, confess it, repent, and say,

Father, please help me. I want to be done with this. As far as idolatry,

I don't imagine that any of us, that your application is going to be to go home and remove your golden calves.

I hope nobody here has to tear down your hilltop shrine, okay? But we do have our shrines, don't we?

We do have our shrines. We have our hilltops where we worship that which is not

God. Now, it might be the gym where we worship fitness and the appearance of youth.

Clearly, that's my problem. But just, nope, nobody was thinking that.

But for some of us, our hilltop shrines might be our table where food has become our idol.

For a decreasing number, it will be their work computer where they sacrifice all their time at the detriment of all other commitments in order to get ahead and get wealth.

But increasingly, that's not the hilltop for Americans today. Some hilltop shrines look like financial institutions that hold our wealth for us.

Some hilltop shrines are mobile with four wheels and souped up engines or a lift kit, right? Some hilltop shrines have screens with bright, shiny, flashing colors, right?

Take everything away from humanity and we would make idols out of sticks. Do you see it in your heart?

Is that a true statement? Is that true of you? I think it's true of me. Do you recognize the risk involved in worshiping anything that is not

God? He is not willing to share his worship with anything or anyone.

Turn away from the things that you are tempted to give your life to and turn to God and give him your heart afresh today.

Run from the idols. Run into the arms of Jesus. The final risk is more generic.

I'm just going with what the text says, the risk of sin, verses 11 through 15. I could call it the risk of iniquity, same thing.

But Israel is likened to a young, strong bull used for light labor. Threshing is not heavy labor.

It walks in a circle and crushes the grain with its hooves. That's what threshing is, just a simple process.

All it has to do is be able to move and it can do that. But it's about to get the big job, the big job for a young bull, the big job.

It's grown up and it's starting to mature and now it's time for some heavy lifting, says God, likening this to his people.

He says it's time to grow up and get to work. Plowing and harrowing, it takes more effort for a bull to strap to another bull by a yoke to pull a heavy metal plow through dirt.

You know, you're trying to get that plow to go down into the dirt and separate it and that takes some horsepower, that takes some work.

And it's time, he says, for them to get to work. They should be sowing. What's the work that they should be doing? Sowing righteousness.

And if they sowed righteousness, he says, you would reap a harvest of steadfast love. God here is legitimately calling

Israel to change, to break up the hard and dry clods of soil and plant righteousness in their hearts.

And if they would do this seeking the Lord, He would come and reign righteousness on them, giving them growth.

They have plowed in iniquity. What have they done? This is what they've done. This is what they put their work to.

Their effort and their youth and their strength has gone into plowing iniquity and reaping injustice. They have put their trust in their own wicked ways.

They have gobbled down lies, says the prophet. And for this reason, war and devastation is coming for them here at the end of this passage.

They will not be spared in their dignity and horror. The wicked Assyrians were known for their particular brand of violence.

They were a terror to the entire world at this time. Everyone was afraid of the Assyrian invasion.

And just as they had destroyed the city of Beth Arbel shortly before they set siege to Samaria, they will not spare women and children on the day of battle.

They are notoriously known for their violence and their wickedness. Bethel, the house of God, has committed great evil against him.

Her king will be cut off early in the morning. It's another way of saying at the start of the battle. Usually they usually didn't start battle at night because nobody wanted to be swinging swords at night.

Like you just, you know, think about the nature of battle. Then they didn't have those those really sweet like the thing that monocular or whatever that comes down in a night vision and all that.

None of that. None of that cool stuff yet. And so early in the morning means it's not going to take long into the battle for you to be defeated.

It's going to be swift. And she will face the judgment and wrath of God through the violence of the

Assyrian army. Interesting to note that God is both saying, I'm the cause of this invasion.

I am the one bringing judgment. And it's going to be Assyrian swords and Assyrian soldiers that come through.

You see how God using the Assyrians as a tool of judgment of His people.

So the people have sown seeds of idolatry. They have abused the abundance given to them by God. They have not heeded the warnings of the risk of sin.

And so God desired His people to sow seeds of righteousness, to break up the stony hard ground of their hearts.

He wants them to seek Him. We say that again. He wants His people to seek

Him. And He promises to rain righteousness on them if they would do these things. So how about it,

Recast? There are three risks before us, but there is one pathway to abundant life.

A life lived in relationship with God is a great life. A life connected to Him in love through His Son is a great life.

Not a perfect life, but a life of abundant laughter and ample goodness and tenacity and purpose in the midst of hardships.

We all, raise your hand if you want a good life. I think that's all of us. I really do. I think all of us want a good life, but it's the fool who thinks they can buy it.

It's the fool who thinks they can manufacture it with their own control and manipulation of things.

It is the fool, a deep, deep, deep troublesome fool who would believe that they could send their way to a good life.

But have we not tried it, church? Have we not tried it? Have we not said, just maybe a little bit of this would really satisfy me?

A little bit of that would really get my heart going? A little bit of that would be like the pizazz and the jump start that my heart needs?

How foolish. How foolish can I be? Here it's laid out clearly for us in verse 12.

Seek the Lord. Seek the Lord. It's time, church, pursue Him. By talking to Him, by heeding

His clear word to us, breaking up the fallow ground is equated to seeking Him. How do you break up the hard heart of the soil in your soul?

How do you break that up? I have found nothing that works except for His word that brings fresh water to my parched soul and breaks up the lies, breaks up the deception, breaks up the grip of sin over me.

Now it might sound so impractical, maybe even melodramatic, like as if the pastor just is standing up here saying, just read the

Bible, pray every day, and you'll grow, grow, grow. Right? Does anybody even remember that Sunday school song?

Am I the a few of us? I'm not gonna sing it. I'll leave the singing up to Dave.

But no, is it just that I, am I that, am I that like naive? Am I that silly?

Am I that foolish that I might think that just, just, just get up and read the Bible and your life's gonna go great? No, I'm not.

Yes, yes, I am saying that. I'm saying that what your heart and your soul needs is the

Word of God. I absolutely believe that. And I can testify time and time again to God meeting me in my morning time, which has become a routine and a pattern in my life by His grace, but I can tell you that He's met me in those places, and He has broken up the stony ground of my heart.

Things that I couldn't accomplish that His Word has done heavy lifting in my soul. Have you experienced that?

Have you seen it? I, I'll give you an example. God met me early in the morning this past week, and He talked to me.

And what He said was helpful to my busted and broken, sin -cursed heart just this past week.

I'm just giving this as an example. You see, He spoke to me as I sat there. And I might have your attention right now, because I'm telling you that God spoke to me.

And I'm going to have even the elders' attention when I say God spoke to me audibly. Yes, I'm going to say that.

Did I get anybody's attention now? A couple, a couple of the elders just kind of like gave me that one like raised eyebrow, like, let's see where Don's going.

Is this the end of Recast Church? Just bear with me. He spoke to me audibly, and I'm going to stand by that.

And I think I might have everybody's attention, but this is, this is what He said that broke up some of the hard and stony ground in my heart.

It dislodged some of the clods. It was what I needed to hear in the moment. Shook out those, those that were the, where the dirt was all bound up and bunched up over some things, and shook it out and gave it some room to breathe so that things can grow in it.

Even as what He said was planted there for me to consider. He said this, for I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.

The words of my Lord. Studying through Matthew right now. For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.

And I needed to hear that. Have you ever had God's Word meet you in a moment when you needed it? Have you had that experience where you're like, oh, it feels like something just like set free in my soul, like something just broke up there, and I'm a sinner, and you came for me?

Not just for those who have it together, but for people like me? I was rejoicing. And the reason

I say that He said it audibly is because I said it out loud a few times. I actually read it out loud.

I was like, oh my goodness, He came not to call the righteous, but sinners. He came not to call the righteous, but sinners like us.

Do you see how the Word of God can have its way in your heart in a moment? And if you're not putting yourself there, and you're not in it, you're not going to have those experiences.

How can you have that experience without studying God's Word? He wants to meet you.

I needed to be reminded of that, and I found it in my reading, and it was audible because I read it out loud.

It was His words. But the Word of God is powerful to plow up and able to break up the stony and rocky soil of our hearts.

When we realize we are loved, when we realize we are forgiven, when we realize how much He has loved us, when we realize how utterly unworthy we truly are, so righteousness reaps steadfast love.

Break up your fallow ground. It is time to seek the Lord that He may come to us and reign righteousness upon us.

This walk with God is full of great risks, but church, here's what's beautiful. We do not walk alone.

We don't walk alone. So let's come to communion together this morning with deep thankfulness that through Christ we are more than conquerors.

The risks are real, but our Lord is real and mighty. May we never get far from the message we're supposed to consider each week at the table of the

Lord's Supper. We are really not up for the task of saving and rescuing ourselves.

Just like the Israelites, we would fail and falter every single time. And so God made a new covenant through His blood, through the blood of His Son, Jesus Christ, whereby

He took our sins and placed them on His Son who died in our place to set us free from the consequences of guilt and shame.

So if you're trusting in Jesus as your Savior and Lord, then come and take a cracker and a cup of juice to remember

His body broken for us and His blood shed for us. If you're at peace with others here, then I welcome you to come into communion.

It's a community event of union with God and also recognizing that you're in union with others who are in His family here.

And then let's go out from here warned of the risks but also grateful through His word and prayer and then sow a life of righteousness, living as He has commanded with hearts of love for Him.

Let's pray. Father, I do pray that You would be breaking up the stony soil of our hearts, even through Hosea, that even as we've read this about the dry and crusty soil of our souls, there's so many things that can build up calluses and build up hardness in our hearts.

Father, I pray that You would be breaking that up through the power of Your word and through Your Spirit, continuing to lead us more and more into the likeness of Your Son.

I pray that You would not allow, that You would even loosen the grip of abundance and things and idolatry and the service of wealth and the sins that so easily entangle us and the things that even in our youth we've sowed to those things.

And now there's habits in our lives that we've been practicing for years. Father, I pray that You would be breaking those things up and pushing them out by Your grace and Your mercy.

We thank You for Jesus Christ. The hope that we have is not found in our ability to fight these things in our strength.

It is found in the ability of You to forgive and set us on a better trajectory in our lives.

So we trust and lean on Your Spirit to guide and direct each one of us into the things that You desire of us today.