Hosea 5 What God Sees and What God Does

Welcome 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.

I'm Don Filsak. I'm the lead pastor here, and welcome to everybody. It's good to be together with all of you. I'm glad to be here. I'm really grateful for the love and unity that we've experienced here through Recast over the years.

It's been a joy and a privilege to serve here as a pastor, and I mean it with all sincerity. I also appreciate the way that the church over the years has endured my strong conviction that all of scripture is God's word, and what I mean by that is just that the fact that I'm committed to God's word has us digging in, and we talk about some tough passages of scripture.

We study it together, and we don't shy away from the tough parts, but instead, we lean into those parts to understand exactly what God desires. This morning's message is, I've been rating all of the messages, and this one is PG.

That's kind of from the staff's estimation. I don't just do that myself, but it's, so if anybody wants to let their kids go for a few minutes, Trent will be back there to keep them occupied in room five, so you can take them back by the cafe if you'd like to.

Just as kind of like a word of caution, I rated this one PG. Last week was PG -13, but then we posted the podcast up to Apple, and Apple always scrubs it and writes a transcript, re-transcribes everything that I say up here, and after doing so, they actually called my sermon last week explicit, gave it a warning on there, so I don't know if that's worthy of clapping or not, but it's kind of like, that's a first for me, and I don't want to be known as a cussing pastor, but it definitely used the word whore a lot, so I'm just going to say that.

And so, I don't preach my handful, by the way, the kids, they can go back out the double doors, and then they'll come back with us during the worship singing time, and then they'll go back to their classes for their lessons during connection time, so I don't preach my handful of favorite topics over and over again.

I think that would get boring for you, and it'd get really boring for me, too. Instead, we walk through books of the Bible, chapter by chapter, verse by verse, and we walk through, therefore, some heavy words that challenge us.

Hosea Reveals God’s Wrath and Our Need for Grace

Hosea is a book that is rich and deep and scandalous in our text, you know, as we study it, as we read it, and what we're looking at this morning is startling in the revelation of the wrath of God. As a matter of fact, when Lynn and I were talking about it, it's not even that it uses the word whore a couple of times, but it's a very stern word about the very wrath of God, and we will see this morning that God knows all of our sins, He knows all of our hearts, all of our thoughts, all of our deeds, all of our attitudes, all of the words we've ever spoken, everything is laid bare before the eyes of the Holy One.

And then we also understand this, and when that's coupled together, we realize what a predicament our lives were in, His wrath toward sin is genuine and real and terrifying. So what God sees, our deep sinfulness, leads to what God does, judge sin in His wrath.

And what God does, which is judge sin in His wrath, will by the end of this passage lead to a hope at the end of the tunnel. For it's often in the severity of His wrath toward sin, and the fact that we're covered in it, and the fact that we can't resolve it ourselves, and the fact that we are entrapped and enslaved to it, that often leads us to seek Him for help.

And it's when we acknowledge our guilt, as we'll see by the last verse, as we acknowledge our guilt, seek His face, and earnestly, church, earnestly, earnestly seek Him that He responds to us with grace and mercy.

To come to the gospel requires that we understand two very dark realities that we're going to plunge into today, and I'm going to encourage us to actually go in with both feet into these dark realities.

We are saturated in sin, and His wrath is being poured out on all sin. And I would say it's good for us to jump into that reality before we talk about grace. So, as a matter of fact, many of us have a tendency, and we might have been raised, or we might have heard people say things that are like, well, there's a God of the Old Testament, really angry, and so He sent Jesus to kind of be like good cop, bad cop kind of thing, like Jesus is the good one who just kind of like lets us off the hook, and the Old Testament God is full of wrath and anger.

Have any of you ever heard that dichotomy, that false dichotomy before? That's just not real. As a matter of fact, you can go to the New Testament, and you can find His wrath expressed there just as well.

Paul, at the beginning of his tour de force on the gospel itself, we call it the book of Romans, says this, this is the New Testament, the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.

Hosea continues in here to indict us. The New Testament emphasizes also that God's wrath is poured out toward ungodliness and unrighteousness, but what Hosea does has a tendency to continue to seek to terrify us with clarity about God's severe wrath toward all sin.

This is a missing component, I would suggest to you, for much of American Christianity, and for many pulpits today, we are rarely left to consider the devastating effects of sin, and God is often portrayed as a pushover, but one cannot read this passage, one cannot read Hosea chapter five, and continue to see God like just merely a big grandfather in the sky who's got his little crystal dish of candies to hand out to everybody.

We need passages like Hosea, thanks Dave, we need passages like Hosea to give us a more robust and full knowledge of the almighty holy one, and he is not, I mean, here's the thing, Yahweh is not playing around.

Buckle up, because Hosea is about to tell us what God sees, all, all, all of our sin, and what God does, consistently, he pours out severe wrath for all sin. Now I'm gonna save the hope for the very end, lest we give in to the temptation that's all over our culture to try to solve the darkness with the light before we experience the darkness.

I discourage us from softening our sin and softening his wrath with grace, we need a strong sense of our sin and a strong sense of his wrath before we can truly appreciate what God, what God was doing in sending Jesus to go up on that cross for us, and so, let's open our Bibles or your scripture journals or your devices to Hosea chapter five, Hosea five, and Recus, I wanna remind you, this is God's holy word, this is what he desires to communicate to us this morning, it's a stern word, but it's a real word, it's true, and our hearts need to hear it.

So Hosea chapter five, starting in verse one, hear this, O priests, pay attention, O house of Israel, give ear, O house of the king, for the judgment is for you, for you have been a snare at Mizpah and a net spread upon Tabor, and the revolters have gone deep into slaughter, but I will discipline all of them, I know Ephraim, and Israel is not hidden from me, for now, O Ephraim, you have played the whore, Israel is defiled.

Their deeds do not permit them to return to their God, for the spirit of whoredom is within them, and they know not the Lord. The pride of Israel testifies to his face, Israel and Ephraim shall stumble in his guilt, Judah also shall stumble with them, with their flocks and herds, they shall go to seek the Lord, but they will not find him, he is withdrawn from them.

They have dealt faithlessly with the Lord, for they have born alien children, now the new moon shall devour them with their fields. Blow the horn in Gibeah, the trumpet in Ramah, sound the alarm at Beth-Avon, we follow you,.

O Benjamin.

Ephraim shall become a desolation in the day of punishment, among the tribes of Israel, I make known what is sure. The princes of Judah have become like those who move a landmark, upon them I will pour out my wrath like water, Ephraim is oppressed, crushed in judgment, because he was determined to go after filth, but I am like a moth to Ephraim, and like dry rot to the house of Judah, when Ephraim saw his sickness and Judah his wound, then Ephraim went to Assyria and sent to the great king, but he is not able to cure you or heal your wound, for I will be like a lion to Ephraim, and like a young lion to the house of Judah, I, even I will tear and go away, I will carry off and no one shall rescue.

I will return again to my place, until they acknowledge their guilt and seek my face, and in their distress, earnestly seek me.". Let's pray. Father, what an overwhelming word. Your judgment is just, your assessment is accurate, your observations of our sinful brokenness are true.

If we're honest, we know what you have seen over our lives, the darkness, the brokenness, the waywardness, the sinfulness, the overtness with which we have opposed you, and then scripture testifies of your holiness, your justice, your righteousness in terms of judging and sending wrath on such sin.

What a dire and dark circumstance. What a tragic and terrifying circumstance that we found ourselves in. Father, I pray that we would recognize the power and the potency of the darkness that is in our lives, the extremity of your wrath towards sin, that that would transform to greater heights of joy, greater heights of delight, greater forgiveness to others, greater humility in the way that we work and live and do our lives together here now because you have rescued, because you have sent your son to bear that wrath that we deserved on his shoulders and face you in your wrath, him being torn instead of us.

I pray that that would settle on each heart fresh and new. I know that it's an old, old story. It's a story we've been telling ourselves since our salvation. It's a story that we're at risk of being forgetful of.

It's a story we're at risk of just seeing as simple and, oh, that's just the basic gospel. Father, I pray that we would not lose sight of the awesome glory and wonder of what you have done for us in the cross of your son, the great darkness that was waiting for us, the great judgment, the great wrath, the great tearing and rending of our very souls and instead him taking that for us.

Father, I pray that you would receive these songs as worship and we would offer them up in hearts elated and joyful this morning in Jesus' name. Thanks to the band for leading us and I encourage you to get comfortable and reopen your Bibles or your devices to Hosea chapter 5.

We're gonna walk through that and we're gonna walk through it at some pace and it's really helpful for you to have that in front of you so that you could see what I'm saying is coming from God's word.

I'm not making this stuff up. So Hosea was a prophet that was called to expose the sins of his people in his generation and so from that standpoint, we're reading, whenever we're looking at scripture, we can kind of tend to think we're reading somebody else's mail, right?

It was written to somebody else in a different time in a different era. But his words are recorded for us in scripture in order to serve all of God's people down through the generations, even here to Matawan, Michigan in 2025 and they serve as a stark reminder of both our sinfulness and God's intense wrath toward that sin.

And I'm gonna encourage us as much as possible to lean into the darkness before we get to the light at the end of the tunnel and so I think that it's good for us at times to take in the darkness, the sinfulness of our own hearts and God's righteous, real wrath toward that sin.

These passages continue to be intense because we rarely have anybody talk to us this way, if we're honest. Like hardly anybody would ever talk to us like Hosea talks to us here in these minor prophets all throughout the minor prophets and the fact that the minor prophets aren't preached very much is I think to the detriment of the church in America but the minor prophets express a facet of reality that makes us uncomfortable and that might be part of the reason why many don't preach them.

But in this new covenant era that we live, many have even questioned the benefit of studying a book like Hosea because don't we live under grace? Can you imagine somebody saying that?

Well, don't we live under grace?

Jesus has set us free from guilt and judgment. Why talk about guilt and judgment? Why talk about those things? So, why should we concern ourselves with our own sinfulness and God's severe wrath toward sin if it's already resolved?

And I would suggest to you that a proper understanding of Hosea chapter 5 will lead us to high points of rejoicing, to exuberance of praise, to the ability to forgive others who have wronged us deeply, to walk in this world in humility because one must understand just how dire the circumstances were in order to more greatly appreciate the rescue that they've been given.

And that's us. So, let's allow the text to come at us like the brick bat it's meant to be. Our pride needs to be put in its place. Our understanding of God needs to be corrected for most all of us, myself included.

And our appreciation of grace needs to be elevated, church. It needs to be raised high so that we understand just from what a pit we have been rescued, it's really important. Our outline this morning looks like this.

What God sees, verses 1 -7. What God does, verses 8 -14. And the hope at the end of the tunnel, the final verse, verse 15. So, we begin with what God sees in these first seven verses. It really comes down to the fact that God sees our sin.

I could have entitled this first point, The Sin We Commit, or The Way We Roll, but instead I think it's valuable for us to see all of this is written from God's perspective. Verse 3 emphasizes that God knows Ephraim, and Israel is not hidden from him.

In other words, the emphasis here is that God knows all the sins of his people, of all time and all places, in all ways. He knows that Ephraim has played the whore, he says, and that Israel is defiled.

And I take verse 3 as the basis of this entire first section of text. You see, here's what's the point. God sees, nothing is hidden, God knows all of it. He doesn't have to launch into an investigation to try to piece together our sins against him.

Do you know what I'm talking about?

He already knows. He knows, he knows, he knows. And I remember when I first came to realize that God is watching us, and I remember me in Sunday school at a Baptist church when I was growing up, I got this concept of God seeing everything.

And does anybody remember that fear? Anybody raised like me where there was that fear of like, oh no, God is always watching?

Yeah?

And maybe three of us raised our hand on that and said, yeah, I remember that. And some of you are just realizing that for the first time, and that fear is just now settling on you, I don't know. But it's good for us.

It is good and right and helpful for us to let that settle on us with like a little chill that runs down your spine when you realize it. Like a little bit of holy and righteous fear is appropriate when we recognize that God has been with us every moment of our lives, every moment of every day.

There is one who knows every single evil thought I have ever thought, every evil deed I have ever done, every evil word I have ever spoken. Do you know what I'm saying? And what he sees, he sees all of that, and what he sees in these first seven verses is chilling, and I'm going to break them down into seven things that the Lord sees, one for each verse.

In verse one, he sees his leaders causing others to stumble. He calls the priests, the people, and the king and his royal court to all pay attention. Really kind of the emphasis in the language there is he's calling all the leaders to pay attention and he says, they are all under judgment because they have all been a snare and a trap.

Now, leaders can be a snare and a trap for any people, and it can be governmental, it can be political, it can be religious, but leadership has a tendency to lay snares and traps for the people. The two locations, snare and mizpah, a trap and tabor, they're likely named for their historical context and importance to the nation of Israel.

You see, whenever you see a place name, it's good to go back and say, like, why would these places have been significant to the people? These are places of significant historical victories in Israel's past, places where God delivered them.

So it's quite possible that the snare and the trap that's being mentioned here is simply the trust that God will come through for them again and again and again and again and again. God will just keep giving you victories.

The snare in the net is simply this. The leaders are telling the people and each other, we can do whatever we want, we can ignore God, and God will continue to be with us and defend us just like mizpah, just like he was at Mount Tabor.

So they think of God like a victory dispenser. He just gives out victories. They do not love him. They do not obey him. They are not honoring him. They are not making sacrifices to him, but they expect things from him.

Sound familiar? Sound quite possible that our own hearts have been there at times? Using God for our own ends while ignoring him and rejecting his ways is a sin of deep, deep folly. He is the living God, church.

He is not a dispenser. He is not a token. He is not an artifact carried into battle to guarantee victory, and he certainly isn't a genie in a lamp ready to give you your three wishes. He is personal. Our God has will, and he sees our heart attitude toward him.

And so in this first point, woe to the spiritual leader who leads those following them astray. The second thing that he sees, so he sees the wicked leaders causing the people to stumble, but he also sees their wicked sacrifices.

That's the second thing. Things escalate quickly. It says God sees the slaughter and the revolters have gone deep into the slaughter, but I will discipline all of them.

What slaughter?

Are we meant to have a vision of Israel like everybody's killing everybody in the streets and it's complete riots and chaos and everybody's dying? No, this is a high point for Israel. They're wealthy.

Things are going well for them. What can be meant by slaughter is well attested in the pages of all of the other prophets and scholars all look into these things and all of the commentaries that I read on this passage this week identify the same thing.

What is the slaughter that's being referred to here? And it's quite specific. The revolters have gone, those who are rebelling against God have gone deep into slaughter. The commentaries led me to conclude it's this gruesome reality that this slaughter is quite likely a reference to their child sacrifices, sacrificing infants on altars.

God's people in one of their greatest acts of rebellion against him ever recorded for us are offering up their children on altars to Molech in exchange for rain, in exchange for rain and wealth and abundance.

They are deep into the blood of slaughter is the indictment.

This is what God sees.

We live in a culture and I would suggest to you, I can't help but make the comparison. We live in a culture that is deep into slaughter as well. We hide it probably better than they did. We don't sacrifice children to Molech.

We don't sacrifice children to Baal or to Asherah, but we are a culture deep into the slaughter of infants. Is that fair? Am I being fair? I think it's fair. I think America is deep into the blood of infants offered to other gods and we might.

As well.

I would be for naming them because I think we've got names. Capital C, convenience. Capital E, ease. Capital P, pleasure. Capital A, apathy. Oh, they have names, church. Our culture worships gods and goddesses.

We don't call them Molech or Baal or Asherah, but sacrifices have to be made, don't they? The pagan idols demand a sacrifice in exchange for wealth and abundance. And while I can't soften the gravity of this devastating wickedness that has captured our culture for as long as I've been alive, I was born on a marker day, January 24th, 1973.

I just aged myself. You can do the math. Yes, you probably already knew I was that old anyways. You probably thought I was older. But the day before I was born was the day that Roe v. Wade was officially ratified.

So I am the age of Roe v. Wade. I am the legality of abortion in America is me and under, just younger than me. And it's devastating, isn't it? I do want to speak words of hope to anyone here in this room and I recognize that a church our size has been impacted by someone making a decision to end the life of their child, maybe even somebody in this room.

And maybe you haven't even shared it with anybody. God's grace is available to you. His forgiveness is real. And hope can be found in Jesus Christ, amen? I'd be open to talk through the grace of God and pray with anybody who is in that hard place.

But I recognize that many women would not even want to come and share this with me, would not want to talk to a man about this. But I'm confident that we have many women who would love to talk with you and pray with you and express God's grace to you.

You could start with my wife. She's right here. I think almost everybody here knows you, but some of you don't. So you could talk and start with her and she would be glad to connect you with someone. My wife has in her top five on the Strength Finder, Relator.

She loves being able to connect people and that's one of her gifts. And she would love to be able to do that for you. There's grace available, but I cannot soften the blight of the slaughter in our culture.

You get those two? There's grace available for anybody that was caught up in it. There's also a great devastation that we need to be mindful of and be praying for our country. Praying maybe more so now than ever.

God sees and knows all the sin, all the sins of the nation, all the sins of the individual, and their refusal to repent will result in his stern discipline of his people. Verse 3 I've already kind of emphasized as the overarching theme of these first seven things.

He sees their idolatry and their filth. He knows all of it. He knows the ways that they have betrayed their covenant with God and played the whore, the text tells us. He knows the filth and the defilement that Israel has engaged in.

He sees it all. The fourth thing in verse 4, he sees the spirit of whoredom that has enslaved them. They are enslaved by their sin. Look with me at verse 4. It's astonishing what it says. Their deeds do not permit them to return to their God, for the spirit of whoredom is within them, and they do not know the Lord.

Their deeds have led to them being enslaved, to being captured. Sin will run your life. Sin will be a master, and their capture results in a lack of relationship with God. There's a scary, scary spiritual truth that's being expressed in verse 4 that is good for us to think about in our daily lives.

Good for us to take in and consider here this morning. There is a point where we can be carried away into the, I'm going to give it an air quote, joy of our sin.

Do you know what I'm talking about?

Where our sin becomes a delight to us. Where we enjoy it, and it begins to fulfill us, and it begins to meet a need for us, and we begin to love it, and we begin to cherish it, and we begin to hide it from others, but we keep it for ourselves.

And there comes a point where you are enslaved to it. There comes a point where it begins to run the show, and we don't get to decide when that is. Did you know that? You don't get to decide whether that's after the first time or the tenth time.

But there will be a point where it will own you. There will be a point where the sin will begin to run the show. And we can never, therefore, play with just a little sin, assuming we'll have it under control.

The sins of Israel hold the people and will not let them run back to God. Do you see it in verse 4? Won't let them run back to God, even if they wanted to. The sin is holding them. So here's the thing, church.

We can never sin today with a plan or a scheme or a plot to repent tomorrow. I've had people say that to me. Well, God's gracious. God's forgiving. I'll just ask for forgiveness later. I'll do what I want this week and have a bender at the end of the week, and then I'll go and ask for forgiveness on Monday, right?

And it'll be a great fun weekend, but then I'll just ask for forgiveness. Just being honest, I think all of us have wondered that.

Like, what does grace do?

What does that mean for us? And here's what I love.

It's just this reality.

It's worth leaning into. You don't know whether you will want to repent on Monday. It's possible that you just fall in love with it to the exclusion of your God. You just say, I'd take this over him any day.

That's what the people of Israel are doing here.

He sees this.

He knows this. We may become so enamored and blinded by our sin like Israel that we refuse to give it up, and it may wrap us up and carry us away to our very grave. Sin will run your life if you give it a chance.

They started doing some things. That's how it all began for them, just doing some stuff, some deeds. Those deeds became a spirit of whoredom, and that spirit took up residence in them, and they no longer knew the Lord, where no is a relational word, not a mental word.

Like, they forgot that God was God, and they forgot everything they had ever learned about Him. No, not that kind of not knowing Him, but that kind of not relating to Him. You see, the animating principle within the people of Israel, as of the writing of Hosea, is a spirit of whoredom rather than a spirit of God.

They don't know Him and quite likely are blinded to Him because their lust has eclipsed their view of the Almighty. The immediate gratification of sexual sin has gripped their hearts so that a relationship with God seems unnecessary or at least undesirable.

Think about that. God's people relating to Him in a way that it's kind of undesirable to follow Him, kind of undesirable to have Him because how many of you know that when He enters your life, He begins to call some shots?

He begins to tell you what to do and what not to do. And God is seeing all of this, church. Can you imagine the fact that the God who hears every prayer? You think about His omniscience and omnipresence.

You think about all that He knows. He hears every prayer, amen? He also sees every sin. He knows every sacrifice and good deed, amen? He's with you when you help somebody, when you're doing good, when you're sharing the gospel, when you're reading your Bible, when you're praying.

He's there, amen?

Oh, glory.

But He also sees every abuse, every murder, every betrayal. He sees the captivity of His people wrapped up in a spirit of whoredom, lying and cheating and stealing and thieving. He sees every man trapped in pornography.

He sees every woman trapped in pornography. What He sees is going to lead to what He does.

And He sees it all.

What He sees is going to lead to what He will do. The fifth thing that we see, that He sees their pride in verse 5. He sees all pride. And it seems so ironic to say that the same people who have fallen into a trap of whoredom, the same people who are offering infants to idols, are the same people trapped in pride.

How can they be proud? Well, I think we can all relate to that.

Anybody else? Anybody ever been caught in a life of sin and proud at the same time? Anybody ever just basically lay into your spouse, and the next minute you're thinking you're all that and a bag of chips?

Any of you? Anybody? We can be moved from sin to pride very quickly. And that's exactly what's happening here. And God can't help but see their pride when their pride is testifying before His face, the text says.

It's like they're flaunting it before Him. Their pride is ever before Him. He never stops seeing their intense and obnoxious pride of His people. They shall stumble in guilt, and the southern kingdom of Judah will stumble with them.

And this is, by the way, the first mention that we understand that Judah is also going to go away too. They also are going to stumble. Now, within this declaration, Hosea is saying, the failure of God's old covenant people will be complete.

The old covenant has succeeded in showing all humanity that we will not be able to be justified by laws or rules. The end of all aspiration of self-fix and self-remedy is found in the Old Testament.

It's over back then. But unfortunately, we have not been good students of the Old Testament. So I was raised in a church that taught me to act like Noah. They never mentioned the drunken part. They told me to act like David.

But in Sunday school, they didn't cover Bathsheba.

Do you know what I'm talking about?

So I learned that this is like the hall of faith, right?

This is amazing people. Be like them. Live like them.

And the Old Testament exists to show us you can't please God through law. You won't make it. You cannot get to Him that way. And that's what it exists to show us. David messed up. Joseph messed up. Peter messed up.

I mean, in the New Testament as well. But all of these people messed up, needing a rescue. The terrible blight of false pride is alive today. Where anyone holds to the notion that we are good enough, or we can be good enough, there should be a reminder of verse 5.

Circle verse 5 and come back to it when you sense a spiritual pride welling up within you. The pride of Israel testifies to His face. Israel and Ephraim shall stumble in His guilt. Judah also shall stumble with them.

Our pride before His face is not a good thing. His eyes are full of our sins. And so what I'm getting at here, church, this is kind of important. You can never convince the one who sees your heart, who sees your actions, who sees your attitudes, who has heard every word you've ever said, you will not be able to convince one like that, that you're basically good.

Do you see the folly in that? Do you see the folly immediately? In any attempt to try to convince God that you're okay? To convince Him that you're doing basically good?

That's folly, isn't it?

That's silly.

He has seen it all.

He has known it all. He's observed it all.

Everything that you've ever done is laid bare before Him. The sixth thing that he sees is their empty worship in verse 6. They go to the wrong places to worship Him. I am reading through the Bible in two years right now.

I'm going through the Christian Standard Bible and I'm taking it slower. I've been going at a little bit breakneck pace the last couple of years and I wanted to slow down. I'm nearing the end of Leviticus right now in my daily reading.

All throughout that stretch is a stretch that really bores people a lot. It's all the sacrifices, the laws, the rules, how to worship Him, how big to make the tabernacle, how big to make the altar, and how to burn sacrifices on it and all that stuff.

The point being that one thing that impresses me as I go into Hosea is how detailed he was in his instructions to them. Very detailed in the instructions so that they couldn't get away later and say, well, we didn't know where you told us.

We didn't know where we were supposed to worship. We didn't know what sacrifices we were supposed to bring. We didn't know what kind of altar to make. We didn't know. No, he's very explicit.

Do you get it?

So he shows them exactly what to do. And he said, go down to Jerusalem and take your sacrifices there.

To the priests there.

And so they go to every green hill where they made it easier for people because it's a long trip to Jerusalem. Who has time for that? Nobody got time for that. So they go to every green hill where they made their own places of worship, and they go with their herds and their flocks, but God will not be found there.

They go to the wrong place. God will not be found in the midst of their false worship. God sees our pretense. He knows when we're putting on a show for others. Instead of genuinely worshiping Him as He has set forth, He knows when we're trying to buy Him off with offerings or other external shows.

Our God sees the motivations of our heart. He knows why every one of you are sitting here. He knows what got you up out of bed and got you around and got you here. He knows that some of you are here because you think you just checked a box and God's going to love you better this week, and He might even bless you and He might give you good things because you sacrificed an hour and a half of your time for Him this week, and He knows you're trying to buy Him.