Hosea 13 The Fruit of Sin

ReCAST Church of Mattawan

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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.

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

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I'm Don Filsak. I'm the lead pastor here. And it's good for us to be gathered together today, right? Are you glad to be here?

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I hope so. God has been pleased to bring us all back to this place to be reminded that we're not alone in the struggle to grow in our faith.

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We grow in community. We grow through hearing his word. We grow through believing his word.

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And probably most importantly and vitally, we grow by going out from this place to live out the word that we hear in the gathering of God's people.

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We're getting close to wrapping up our study through the book of Hosea. This is actually, next week will be our last one.

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It's been a challenging journey, week after week of indictments from God. Each week shining a spotlight on the sins of God's old covenant people,

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Israel. Each week new reminders of our own brokenness, but also interspersed throughout this book.

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I hope you've seen some reminders of God's relentless love. That's been the title of the series, his continued pursuit of us even in the midst of our brokenness and our sins against him.

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Even here as we come to this final passage of indictment, next week will not be indictment, but this is the final passage of indictment and judgment in the book.

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We're going to be tempted, we would be tempted if the book ended here to end in despair as Hosea reveals the wrath of God towards sin in what's going to prove to be very startling terms here this morning.

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And while we know that punishment and wrath are coming for those who demand to do things their own way,

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Scripture testifies to that multiple times, we don't like to sit in that knowledge. We like to move on quickly.

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We don't like any time spent considering his wrath, his judgment, and even the eternal nature of hell.

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And Hosea will not end there as we will see next week in our final sermon in Hosea, but before we get to chapter 14 and the encouraging call to repentance,

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God desires us to wade through chapter 13. Before we celebrate deliverance, we need to see the danger.

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We cannot appreciate the cross without knowing God's judgment for sin that was over us.

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Even understanding and appreciating our salvation in the light of what we deserve and what was coming for us.

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As Christians, we talk about salvation, right? I'm saved, you're saved, you should tell others how they can be saved.

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But saved from what? Saved from what? Often overlooked biblical books and chapters like Hosea chapter 13 snap into focus for us the dire consequences of our sins.

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Our passage this morning will continue the theme indictment and wrath and discipline. And I'm calling this sermon the fruit of sin because it includes a variety of facets of the judgment of God.

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The vast majority is one long direct speech from God. And this passage forms the hardest thing, some of the hardest things that Hosea was called to say to his people.

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And I would suggest to you some of the hardest things that God's word at all says to his people in the entire

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Bible. Hosea had a really tough job, so I would encourage you to open up your Bibles and give him and the

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Holy Spirit, who inspired him, our attention. Hosea chapter 13, open your Bibles or your scripture journals or your devices.

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We are going to read that in its entirety, a pretty direct passage. And yeah, hopefully those of you who have kids in here were able to recognize that this message is

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PG, not PG -13. But even in the reading of this, there's going to be some harsh things said.

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Hosea chapter 13, recast this as God's holy word.

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It's not fun, but it's true. When Ephraim spoke, there was trembling.

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He was exalted in Israel, but he incurred guilt through Baal and died. And now they sin more and more and make for themselves metal images, idols skillfully made of their silver, all of them the work of craftsmen.

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It is said of them, those who offer human sacrifice, kiss calves. Therefore they shall be like the morning mist or like the dew that goes away early, like the chaff that swirls from the threshing floor or like smoke from a window.

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But I am the Lord, your God from the land of Egypt. You know, no God but me. And besides me, there is no savior.

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It was I who knew you in the wilderness in the land of drought. But when they had graced, they became full.

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They were filled and their heart was lifted up. Therefore they forgot me. So I am to them like a lion, like a leopard,

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I will lurk beside the way. I will fall upon them like a bear robbed of her cubs. I will tear open their breast and there

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I will devour them like a lion as a wild beast would rip them open. He destroys you, O Israel, for you are against me, against your helper.

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Where now is your king to save you in all your cities? Where are your rulers, those of whom you said, give me a king and princes?

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I gave you a king in my anger and I took him away in my wrath. The iniquity of Ephraim is bound up.

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His sin is kept in store. The pangs of childbirth come for him, but he is an unwise son, for at the right time he does not present himself at the opening of the womb.

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I shall ransom them from the power of Sheol. I shall redeem them from death. O death, where are your plagues?

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O Sheol, where is your sting? Compassion is hidden from my eyes, though he may flourish among his brothers.

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The east wind, the wind of the Lord, shall come rising from the wilderness and his fountain shall dry up.

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His spring shall be parched. It shall strip his treasury of every precious thing.

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Samaria shall bear her guilt because she has rebelled against her God. They shall fall by the sword.

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Their little ones shall be dashed in pieces and their pregnant women ripped open." Let's pray.

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It is hard, Father, to face the reality of what our sin caused in this world and what it deserves in punishment.

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It's shocking and startling to hear some of the things that you say and your word over the judgment of our sin.

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And we know and we understand just in general terms, and we like to keep it as generic as possible and like to not meditate on it often, the eternal nature of condemnation, the eternal nature of hell, and the devastating consequences of sin.

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But I need this reminder, and I'm confident that we all do. You wouldn't have recorded it if we didn't. We need a reminder of the fruit of our sin, the fruit of a life lived against you and even those novel, discreet acts against you are worthy of punishment and wrath.

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You are holy and we are not. You are just and we are not. But you are merciful in sending forth your

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Son. We rejoice in redemption available. And Father, I pray that we would shout it from the mountaintops that there's freedom, there's available freedom, there is available forgiveness, there is available hope to any and all who would run to you for mercy.

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That there is no Savior but you. Savior, yes, from your wrath, yes.

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So Father, I pray that those two realities would combine and clash in everybody's heart here to form a place where we recognize our need for a

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Savior and that you are that Savior. And that we would rejoice those who belong to you, even as we have an opportunity to sing songs and lift our voices before you as the one who has redeemed, the one who has saved.

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But also we know that you are a God of wrath and anger toward those who reject you.

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This is true, this is real, this is hard. So I pray that you would give us boldness and direct witness to others around us, testifying of the hope that can be found only in your cross.

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And it's in Jesus' name that I pray, amen. Thanks a lot to the band for leading us, appreciate them.

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And I encourage you to get comfortable if you need to get up and get more coffee or juice or donut holes while supplies last back there, take advantage of that.

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And then also you do yourself a favor and reopen your Bible or your device to Hosea chapter 13. So you have that, so you can see that what

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I'm saying is coming from the text of God's word and I'm not making this stuff up as I go, but rather we're walking through God's word and my goal is to make it make sense, to try to help us understand what it means from this ancient text and ancient document to our lives today.

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Now, most scholars believe that by the time we get down to Hosea chapter 13, obviously we only have one more chapter left, the hour is late and the sun is about to set on the northern kingdom of Israel as we enter

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Hosea 13. It's likely that much of the northern territory of those 10 tribes that split off from Jerusalem in the south, they have their capital in Samaria, in the largest tribe of Ephraim.

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It's likely that most of that northern territory has already been conquered by the Assyrians and the capital city of Samaria of Israel is getting squeezed and is about to be set to siege.

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While it cannot be stated with certainty, many of the prophets regarding Hosea, many of the prophets are anthologies.

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So when you read a prophetic book like Ezekiel, you're reading like a compilation of Ezekiel's greatest hits.

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That's kind of what you're seeing when you see Hosea, Hosea's greatest hits. Like he probably said more than this in his ministry, but it's recorded and then compiled in a way that tells a story and this book ramps up the desperation as the book goes on.

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It seems to be ordered in a more chronological way than many of the other prophets and our outline this morning is going to be robust.

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I've decided to organize the passage according to the fruit that sin promises to produce in its people.

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I think that again just highlighting the way that Hosea has gone is a lot of that, a whole lot of indictment of sin, a whole lot of declaration of what

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God doesn't want and why he is punishing Israel with exile. So the outline looks like this, death verse 1, futility verses 2 and 3, hopelessness verse 4, forgetfulness 5 and 6, destruction 7 and 9, 7 through 9, and then leaderlessness verses 10 and 11, and then fear verses 12 through 14, and uselessness verses 15 through 16.

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So all really great things that we get to talk about this morning. There you go. There's a happy list, but I think by the end you'll actually find yourself, if you belong to Christ, you'll be rejoicing by the end of this message.

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I really believe that. But I believe that this passage is meant to serve us here and now where we live in 2025, even yes, under grace, under a new covenant, under the cross, under freedom from the guilt and condemnation of our sins through Jesus Christ our

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Savior, it is good to explain these three things at the outset to help set the stage for how we talk about sin in this new covenant time.

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First, we are meant to be warned by the devastating effects of sin, which you see listed and we'll see explained through the text.

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We ought to learn from those who have gone before us. Sin is not a good hobby. Sin is not your friend.

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Sin does not make a good pet. Sin bears grotesque fruit in our lives when we engage in it, and it threatens to lay waste to everything that we love.

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Second, we are being called to run to God for rescue. When we see the fruit of sin and recognize our slavery to it as humanity, we realize what a pickle we were born into.

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Easily enticed to things that kill us. Drawn to the things that will destroy our families.

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Tempted to engage in obviously, obviously, obviously destructive things.

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And that's all of us. All of us drawn into. Any one of us could be a heroin addict tomorrow if we put our mind to it.

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You know what I'm saying? Just work at it. You could get there. No, it wouldn't take any work at all, would it?

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Because those things grab a hold of our flesh and pull us in. Lastly, we are to rejoice in Jesus, our

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Savior, who took upon Himself the devastating effects of sin. He bore a guilt that wasn't

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His own. He suffered a death He didn't deserve. He paid a debt that wasn't His to set us free from the devastating fruit of sin that is spelled out in this text, and we'll walk through it.

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Just like we looked at last week on Easter Sunday, He died to set us free from the effects of sin.

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He rose from the grave to rescue us from the dark specter of death. Our two greatest enemies, sin and death, taken care of by our

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Lord and Savior and King, Jesus. And that specter of death is a good segue into our first fruit of sin as expressed in our text.

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Death is found in verse one as the logical consequence of sin. When Ephraim spoke, there was trembling.

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He was exalted in Israel, but he incurred guilt through bail and died. It's kind of a funny way to say it. Ephraim, the most powerful and wealthiest tribe of the northern ten tribes of Israel, was once highly respected, we see at the beginning of this passage.

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When he spoke, there was trembling. People were in awe of his power and his authority.

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He was a man likened to a man that you wouldn't want to reckon with, a powerful individual.

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And he was exalted and respected throughout Israel, but he incurred guilt through idolatry and died.

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Now, Ephraim has already been invaded by Assyria, likely as of the writing of this. Many of them are already dead, and the siege of Samaria is nearing.

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People are retreating and trying to get back into the city, and those who don't make it are killed by the

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Assyrians, and those who do will eventually die as a result or be carted off to exile due to a very brutal historical siege that is well documented in historical texts.

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The phrase, and died, of course, I joked, it's a kind of understatement. It's a matter of fact, yet it ought to stick close to our thoughts when we think about sin.

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Death came into the world through sin. The wages of sin is death, says Paul in the

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New Testament. The most basic and obvious and persistent and tragic of fruits of sin is death.

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Look no further than the brutal, scandalous cross of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ to see the wages of sin, death, bloody death, gruesome death, paid for sin.

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We are often warned in Scripture that sin leads to death. Praise God that in Jesus, death no longer gets the final word.

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Amen? Futility is also a fruit of sin, and this is our second one in verses 2 through 3.

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As God's people face an invasion from Assyria, they multiply sin. They craft silver idols and continue to worship the work of their own hands, just like we all have a tendency to do.

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They worship gain and have sought their own prosperity. And I think there's a double allusion, by the way, in verse 2 regarding the worship of Baal, where at the end of verse 2 it says, it is said of them, those who offer human sacrifices, kiss calves.

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Part of the worship of Baal and part of the worship of many of the pagan deities during this era and this time were literally the kissing of a golden calf.

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Have you ever wondered why when Israel came out they fashioned a golden calf?

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There's a reason behind that. It's not just that they kiss that idol in worship, but it's actually kissing their money.

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It really is. That's their currency. Their flocks were their currency. Their flocks were their wealth.

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You see it all throughout the Old Testament, where the multiplying of wealth is the multiplying of your flocks, the success of your wealth, the success of your life measured in the number of sheep and goats that you had, the size of your herd, just like we might say the size of your bank account, the size of your 401k.

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This is like us kissing a golden dollar sign, okay? It's the same idea. The people of Israel were sacrificing.

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It even goes so far as to say that many of them were sacrificing children.

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They were sacrificing those who offer human sacrifice kiss calves. And we know that from the rest of the book of Hosea has actually mentioned that specifically and all throughout the prophets there is the mention and in many places the allusion to human sacrifice that was happening during this time.

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The people of Israel were sacrificing infants in human sacrifice in order to multiply their flocks. Calves equal wealth and prosperity, their lives, their works, and their efforts are all about, and their sacrifices are all about their own gain.

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But verse 3 tells them where all that's heading. It will all come to nothing. Their efforts at getting ahead will result in nothing to show for it.

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Futility, talk about futility. Imagine working an entire life to just die and vanish.

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Nothing of eternal value, poof, 70, 80, 90 years of life, all of that living gone like a mist or like the dew that melts in the summer sun, gone like the useless chaff that blows away from the threshing floor when they're winnowing grain, throwing it up in the air and the grain settles and the husk part, the lighter husk part, blows away in the wind.

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That's what this image is. We're like smoke that dissolves in the air. Yeah, it'll go up but eventually it dissolves, right?

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We're often warned in scripture that sin leads to a futile life, to futility. Praise God that in Jesus Christ, futility is no longer our lot.

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We are granted the promise of eternal days, no longer like mist, no longer like dew or chaff or smoke, but our work in Christ will outlast this life, church.

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Whatever is done for Christ and His glory will last. Amen. Hopelessness is also a fruit of sin.

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Verse 4, God is the one who brought His people out of Egypt and He says there is no other capital

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G God except for Him. There is only one God who saves. All the other gods are no saviors at all.

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There is only one savior. Did you know that? There's only one who saves. Now even today in our day and age we turn to many saviors but I've never seen alcohol save anyone.

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I've never seen sexual addiction rescue anyone. I've never seen materialism hold back the grave and nothing, nothing, nothing can hold back the fires of eternal condemnation other than God.

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There is no savior but Him. Our sins lead to hopelessness. The book of Ecclesiastes explains, really comes from the perspective, a bunch of chapters, several chapters all dedicated to explaining a life lived without God.

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A very interesting book, actually one of my favorites just because of the poignancy. I kind of appreciate the sarcasm of it a bit.

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The book of Ecclesiastes explains that life lived without God is meaningless. It is hopeless.

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It is toil and toil and more toil under the sun and that defines an existence without knowing

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God as our savior church. We're often warned in scripture that sin leads to hopelessness.

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Praise God that in Jesus hopelessness has been defeated. The empty tomb reminds us that Jesus overcame death in order to grant all of His followers hope in the resurrection to the life and kingdom of Jesus Christ our

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Lord. Amen. Hopelessness is not our lot. Forgetfulness is also a fruit of sin.

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The fourth one, verses five and six. Verse five begins by telling us that God knew

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His people in relationship as He brought them through the desert during the exodus.

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But in sin the people became, it says in the text, they became self -satisfied and full.

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They had plenty and in their plenty they became proud and lifted up their hearts and in their lifting up their hearts in pride they forgot their

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God. Sin leads to forgetfulness of God. This is what I've often called the greatest enemy of the

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Christian life. I believe that one of your greatest enemies is the very fact that we will leave here and forget most of what was said, most of what comes from the word.

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Anybody struggle with a bit of forgetfulness from time to time? And it really comes down to needing to constantly come back and be refilled time and time again to His word.

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Forgetfulness fuels our ignorant sins, right? I begin to think of myself.

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I begin to serve only myself. I begin to place myself at the center of my life. We are often warned in scripture that sin leads to forgetfulness and pride.

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Praise God that in Jesus forgetfulness no longer gets the final word. All who are

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His are granted a hunger for His word and a desire to walk with Jesus.

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We are drawn to Jesus and regardless of how many times we falter and stumble, those who are

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His will keep coming back to Him. Though we may forget Him from time to time, we will not remain and be left in our forgetfulness.

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Amen? Destruction is the fifth fruit of sin in this passage, verses 7 through 9.

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Sin leads to the animosity of God. That's a scary thought. It leads to His wrath.

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And I want to point out that in this passage we are not allowed to remain in some nebulous notion of His passive wrath towards sin.

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You know, that God will just remove Himself and let bad things happen to people who reject

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Him. But an active rending is found in verses 7, 8, and 9. Four of the most violent verses about God in,

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I think, all of scripture are found in this chapter. They're found in this chapter. Three of them are here in 7, 8, and 9.

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It says He's like a lion, like a large cat lurking along the path, a leopard, a lion or a leopard.

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And they will stalk their prey, right? It's the idea of lurking is ready to attack.

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Now we have a cat at our home. How many of you have a cat? How many of you are cat owners? Have you ever just scratched the sofa a little bit?

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Watched the pupils dilate and it gets down and it pounces? And the idea of being stalked by a large cat is scary, right?

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And any of you, especially those of you who have a house cat, can you imagine one that weighed the same as you or more?

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Batting you around, playing with you a little bit? That's a scary thought. The idea of being stalked by a large cat is scary. And you can just ask the other baseball teams this year, eat them up,

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Tigers, right? The idea of being stalked by a big cat. But seriously, seriously, this is serious.

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A lion or a leopard lurking along the path would make me take the long way around, right? If you knew there was a lion on your walk, you might go the other way, right?

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And things turn even more graphic than that. You go, okay, just like a lion waiting. No, he says,

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I will fall upon them like a mama bear robbed of her cubs. He will devour, he will rend, he will tear.

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The strength of those graphic verbs leaves us no room to pass off God's judgment as merely a passive turning his face away.

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God will be Israel's destroyer. He wants to make sure that they understand that Assyria is active in setting the devastating siege, and so is he.

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Now, this is where God could get out if he wanted to. This is where God, if he wanted to spin his

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PR campaign and make himself look really good, he could be like, it was the Assyrians idea. They did it.

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They're the ones who rampaged across the known world and conquered. And he says, no, I am in it.

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I am judging. I am rending. I am tearing. He wants to be sure that they understand, that his people understand that he who wanted to be their helper and they rejected him has become their destroyer.

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Sin leads to terrifying destruction and judgment under the wrath of a holy

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God. We're often warned in Scripture that sin leads to destruction. Praise God that in Jesus, destruction no longer gets the final word.

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It is no longer our destiny so that we can look on these words of destruction with pity.

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Yes, and with trembling fear. Yes, because we are those who were once rightly standing in those crosshairs until we were rescued by our

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Savior who took that destructive, destructive wrath on himself there on the cross for us.

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Amen. Leaderlessness might sound like a strange fruit of sin in verses 10 and 11, but it's there.

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This is the sixth one. Sin has overcome the rulers of Israel and the kings of Israel to such a degree that they are no help to the people at all.

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Israel demanded a ruler like the nations back in 1 Samuel, and you could read that back in there about the way that God was their leader and they said, we're kind of done with you.

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We need a ruler like the nations. We want a man, a strong man who will lead us and guide us and lead us out to battle and rally the troops and give big speeches and all of that stuff.

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And so God gave them a king. But I want to point out that back in the garden, it's not like there's a problem with hierarchy, right?

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Not like there's a problem with leadership. In the garden, Adam and Eve were made to be in relationship with one who was over them,

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God himself over his people. And God throughout the New Testament institutes leaders and throughout the

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Old Testament did so as well, but in sin our leaders will always, will not always, but will leave us high and dry.

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Each human leader has his own sin to deal with. You will not have a leader standing next to you on your judgment.

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I'm not going to be able to be there with you. I'm not going to be standing there and you're going to be able to point to me and say, well, this bonehead taught me this, this, and this.

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I have my own limited capacity. I have a substantially limited capacity to deal with your sin.

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I can't die for you. I will die for my own sin, right? I can't die for yours. So we understand that we have a limited ability to lean on leaders when it comes to this.

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And we've seen many instances even in churches in the past several decades of God taking away leaders in his wrath.

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Pastors rightly removed, political leaders caught and censured, right? Like we see it all over the place. And especially with the media, the way that it is this age, it's always front and center, right?

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Like as soon as, as soon as the leader falls, news cameras are there and the articles are being written probably before it even happens in anticipation.

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Where can we turn for good leadership? In this fallen world, all leaders go away.

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Whether they are good, bad, or mediocre, they all go away. They're not, none of them are permanent.

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We are warned in scripture that sin leads to leaderlessness. Praise God that in Jesus, leaderlessness does not get the final word.

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We now have an eternal king. Church, we now have an eternal king who will reign over us in righteousness forever and ever and ever with no ends to those evers.

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I have a king. I think you do too. Most of you do.

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I have a king and his name is Jesus and I am grateful to pledge my eternal loyalty to this one.

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Amen? Fear is the seventh fruit of sin in this passage and it's 12, 13, and 14.

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Fear. The anticipation of judgment sits heavy on this world.

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You can see it in verse 12, which says, the iniquity of Ephraim is bound up.

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His sin is kept in store. I remember as a kid, maybe more frequently than I, than I, yeah,

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I just remember it. As a kid, when I, when I would do something that deserved punishment, my mom would send me to my room and ask me to think about what you did.

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So, anybody else get that? Did you get that one? Go think about what you did. I think that she needed to calm down a little bit and that's,

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I'm grateful for that. Like, now in retrospect, I know what she was doing. Either she was laughing about what I did, you know what

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I mean, and didn't want me to see her laugh, or she was needing to calm down a bit. But the whole, um, go to your room and think about what you've done, that was the most scary.

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It felt like it was probably, like, I spent years doing that, right? It was probably only, like, some total, like, three minutes of my entire life, but that was always the worst, the anticipation.

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What am I getting grounded from? Is this the paddle? Is this, you know, what's going to happen next? And in verse 12, the sin of Israel is shown to be stored up.

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God is patient. He is slow to anger, but that doesn't mean He overlooks sin.

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It will all be paid for, church. All sin, all sin, all sin will be paid for, and it's either by Jesus or it's by us.

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It's a chilling thought to consider our sin stored up against us for that final day, awaiting the day of final judgment.

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The illustration of the pangs of childbirth in verse 13 produce another form of anticipation, likening the situation in Israel to childbirth.

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The people refuse to heed the call of deliverance. They are unwise. They refuse deliverance when it is offered.

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That's the baseline. I mean, it's a weird metaphor. It's a weird word picture, not presenting at the womb when it's time to deliver.

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We understand what devastating effects that might have in a culture where there is no such thing as a c -section, right?

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Like, so, death is all that they can anticipate in this scenario. Verse 14 carries that anticipation, though, with a twist.

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In order to be ransomed from Sheol or death, a person must be in Sheol or death.

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Death is indeed the reasonable expectation for Israel, as expressed in verse 14. But God's deliverance of his people through death, through death, is the image here.

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And it is indeed the hope with which we now live, in which we now live. Not that we will avoid death, but that we will be delivered through it to resurrection, just like Jesus Christ our

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Lord was on that Easter Sunday. But the hope comes back around to the reminder of God's stern judgment towards sin by the end of verse 14.

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God declares that compassion is hidden from his eyes. What remains for the one who refuses his offer?

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By the way, it's interesting that phrase, compassion is hidden from my eyes, that no compassion, that's the name of Hosea's daughter.

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Did you know that? Her name is no compassion, Lo -Ruhamah. It comes earlier in the book,

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I think in chapter one, yeah, in chapter one, that he named one of his daughters no compassion as a result of God's telling him to do so, as a way of saying, my compassion has run out for you, my covenant people.

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What remains for the one who refuses his offers of deliverance is no pity, the storing up of iniquity and sin for final judgment.

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And I don't think it's a stretch to call that rightly, that anticipation, to call it fear. We're often warned in scripture that sin leads to fear, but praise

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God that in Jesus, fear no longer gets the final word. We who once lived under the fear of judgment and under eternal condemnation have now been promised freedom in Christ.

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We no longer live under that fear of sin stored up for our wrath, instead we live under the promise of our sins already paid for at the cross.

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Freedom, church, from fear indeed. Uselessness is the last fruit of sin, and it might seem like a stretch that I call it that, but I'll try to make sense of that.

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Verses 15 and 16, 16 being the most, one of the most harsh verses in the entire, entire

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Old Testament. The east wind that's mentioned first though in verse 15, though he may flourish among his brothers, the east wind, the wind of the

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Lord shall come rising from the wilderness, and his foundation shall dry up, his spring shall be parched, it shall strip his treasury of every precious thing.

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That's a metaphor, that east wind is a metaphor for the Assyrian armies that will soon come into Samaria, and that army will dry up, parch, and strip every good thing from Israel.

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That's history, that's what really happens on the heels of the book of Hosea.

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Sin dries up strength, sin will part your soul, it will remove the precious things from your life, and I'm not talking about mere fate.

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This is more than just bad consequences for bad behavior. Well, you know, you do stupid things, get stupid prizes, that kind of thing.

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This is because God is personal, God is active, God is holy, and God is righteous, and he disciplines his children, and he judges in wrath those who reject his offer for help.

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Assyria was particularly brutal in their warfare. They were intentional in their efforts to strike fear in the hearts of their enemies.

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These are the people God will use to judge Israel. Verse 16 is actually a historical statement of fact, and yet the reason for this is given in the text, prohibiting us from squirming.

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What was really stated here, the reason that verse 16 occurs is it doesn't allow us to squirm out of this as a passive result of a sin -cursed world.

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Suffering begins in the holiness of God and the sinfulness of humanity. The reason for suffering is that we sinned against a holy

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God, and the text says, because they rebelled against their God, severe and gruesome suffering came for Israel as well.

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This is true generically and specifically. What do

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I mean? Well, I want to point out that we can never connect specific sins to specific sufferings unless God reveals it, unless God Himself makes the connection.

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How can we say with any confidence that Assyria's invasion and destruction of ladies and children and men and the carting off of some of the middle -aged men for work camps and all of that stuff, how in the world can we say with any confidence that that is at the hand of the

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Almighty? It's because God tells us that those are connected here in this word, so that Job's friends can be wrong for trying to uncover

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Job's wickedness that brought about his tragic losses. And we can confidently say that Sodom and Gomorrah were judged directly as a result of their sinfulness because God tells us.

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Does that make sense? So, that's where we need to be careful. Judging situations and scenarios in our world where we go like, oh, that devastating happened there, they must be really wicked.

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Unless God makes that connection, we ought not to. We don't know what's going on behind the scenes in the fabric of the way that God rules and reigns over His universe unless He tells us, and that's found in the pages of God's Word.

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The reason I'm calling this last point uselessness comes down to the purpose of God's calling a people for Himself.

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He has called us to multiply a godly legacy either through offspring or through evangelism. He has called us to be fruitful, and both verses 15 and 16 emphasize the end to that fruitfulness in an intentionally shocking and gruesome way.

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The fruitfulness of their lands will come to an end, verse 15. The fruitfulness of their wombs will come to a violent end as well, verse 16.

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Now, we're often warned in Scripture that sin leads to terrible things, and sin will lead to uselessness over your life.

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Praise God that in Jesus uselessness no longer defines us. In Christ, we are useful servants for His kingdom.

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Nothing that we have done in the service to our King will prove to have been wasted. Now, I'm not promising success at every

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Christian endeavor, not at all. I am saying that all that is done for the glory of Jesus Christ will be made manifest on that final day, will be brought to light and rewarded.

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Some here have toiled and served for years raising children that rebelled against you as soon as they could.

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Some of you here started a business for God that is no longer around. Useful must be defined according to His glory and His purposes, and I won't pretend to know why things turn out the way that they do, but what

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I do, what I will do, and what I will cling to and encourage you to cling to is the hope that God is working all things for good for those who love

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Him and are called according to His purposes, right? Do you trust it?

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Do you believe it? Sin bears all kinds of fruit, and yet Jesus there on that cross put to death sin in our lives.

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Guilt, consequences, and wrath, and destruction, all of it put down there at His cross so that we no longer live in fear, but we can live in hope.

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So, I would encourage you all to come to the tables informed of the fruit of sin and grateful for the one who has promised a new destiny, the one who has promised a new way of living for all who come to Him by faith.

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So, if you're trusting in Jesus to atone for your sins, and He is your Lord and your King, and you're striving to obey

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Him, and you're at peace with others here as much as it's up to you, then I encourage you to please come to the tables this morning to take the cracker and the juice to remember

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His sacrifice for us. In the cracker, we remember His body broken for us.

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In the juice, we remember His blood shed for us.

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Come remember the historical event that changed your relationship to sin. We were destined to live lives of death, and futility, and hopelessness, and forgetfulness, and destruction, leaderlessness, fear, and uselessness.

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That was our lot. That was the direction. But thanks be to God who has delivered us from this terrible, terrible destiny through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ our

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Lord. Thank Him for this dramatic turn in your life, if that is true over you. And if you've not yet experienced that turn,

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I'd encourage you to skip communion this morning and then come see me at the door on the way out and talk with me about the way that you can be set free from that terrible destiny today.

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Let's pray. Father, I thank you for the hope that we have.

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Just your faithfulness to declare openly the consequences of sin. Father, actually a lot of this passage strikes fear in my heart in terms of the destiny for any who are turned away from you, who reject you, and are angry with you, have animosity toward you.

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Father, I pray that for those of us who have been rescued by your love, and certainly in a place of opposition to you prior to that, we rejoice and we thank you for the deliverance that's been given to us by Jesus Christ our

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Lord. That these fruits of sin are no longer our lot because He took them on Himself for us.

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He took the destruction. He took the death. He took the suffering for us.

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And so, Father, we thank you that there's been a way made for our sins to be dealt with, and we celebrate that now as we come to take the cracker to remember your body broken for us, and the juice to remember the blood of Jesus shed for us.

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Father, this is what unifies us. This is what brings us together. This is what we hold in common, and really has built our church's faith and trust in Jesus as revealed in His word.

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We thank you for the grace and the hope that we have in this new week as a result of those terrible, terrifying things not being over us any longer, but being set free to go out and to minister with your love and your care and your truth to others around us.