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Ps.25:10 "All the paths of the LORD are steadfast love and faithfulness, for those who keep his covenant and his testimonies."

It is so very tempting to imagine that God is different from what He reveals Himself to be in His Word, the Bible!

Our thinking about God is conditioned by a variety of different factors:

·         The way the society and culture within which we live has an influence upon us.

·         The views of others affect us.

·         Our own sinful hearts long to believe that God is indulgent and not too holy – that He will somehow be happy with whatever we are prepared to offer however little that might be. (After all the vast majority of folk somehow seem to imagine that if there is a heaven then that's where they will be when they die!)

·         Then the Bible speaks to us about God and if we take the time to read it we find that it has a great deal to say about just who God is and what He is really like.

As we do read the Bible we are confronted by a vision of God that is really quite troubling. Instead of finding an indulgent God who constantly turns a blind eye to our peccadilloes – the kind of God that because of our fallen nature we naturally tend to approve of – we actually find He is not like that at all!

Each of the first three chapters of Hosea has contained a strong element of hope that the relationship between the LORD and His wayward people can be restored. But we must be careful that we don't become complacent imagining that God will always be the all-accommodating husband. As we turn to Hosea ch.4 this morning we find that the LORD God has adopted the role of the prosecuting counsel in a court case. He has no lack of charges to bring against His people.

There are two categories of charges that the LORD lays against His people.

Firstly He speaks of what is lacking in their life.

Secondly He speaks of the wrong things that are present when they really shouldn't be.

We might refer to them as sins of omission and sins of commission. Sin in the Bible is not just about doing things wrong but also about not doing what is right. The plea that we often make of "I didn't do anything" may be just part of the problem!

The first charge is so serious - God's people do not resemble Him at all. There is no faithfulness that characterises their lives and there is no hint of that steadfast love, the mercy and kindness that so characterises the LORD Himself. Back in 2:19 these formed part of the LORD's betrothal gifts but they are now noticeable by their absence from the life of His people.

Why are the people so unlike the LORD? Quite simply because they have no true knowledge of Him!

The second set of charges is similarly serious. Failing to reflect the glories of the One True Living God who had already done so much for them the people have plunged into gross moral failure. Here is a people who could hardly make the plea before God that they had done their best because they were breaking the 3^rd, 6^th, 7^th, 8^th and 9^th commandments by swearing, murdering, committing adultery, stealing and lying!

As the charges continue it is possible to make some sweeping generalisations: they no longer recognise any moral boundaries – they have cast aside old taboos – and what is the result? Have they succeeded in creating a wonderful free society where everything is going so well? No. No more than has our own society succeeded in creating an earthly paradise. As Israel threw off God's law the results were clear – increasing violence, sadness and distress, and ecological disaster.

When a nation turns from the LORD God and from His ways there are always real consequences and the consequences are not pleasant.

 The first thing to note is that the LORD isn't able to allow anyone to dodge the accusations by arguing that "it wasn't me but him" type responses. His analysis of the situation is just and He doesn't expect arguing back or any attempts to be made at passing the buck. However the LORD does go on to identify those who hold a particular responsibility.

The people are destroyed, ruined and they are not to pretend otherwise. While all may not be equally responsible all nevertheless share in the same catastrophe.

The people are destroyed and brought to ruin through 1. lack of knowledge and 2. lack of understanding. The primary charge is therefore levelled against those whose responsibility it was to teach the people God's truth: the priests are those targeted as are, to a lesser extent, the prophets who seem to have been in cahoots together.

Priest are often described as having a teaching function so their ministry was by no means limited to the offering of sacrifices etc. Ezra, for example was a priest and a scribe who was "skilled in the Law of Moses that the LORD the God of Israel had given," Ezra 7:6. A few verses later we read in v.10 that "Ezra had set his heart to study the Law of the LORD, and to do it and to teach his statutes and rules in Israel."

Sadly the priests of Hosea's day functioning in Israel were not of the same calibre as Ezra! Rather in Hosea's day the priests taught badly if they bothered to teach at all and thus they failed in one of their main responsibilities. Teaching God's truth is such an important thing and it must be done well and faithfully. The same responsibility is incumbent upon those who would be teachers of God's Word in the Christian era. Listen to what James had to say about the matter:

Jas.3:1 "Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness."

The teaching of God's truth is important because, for lack of knowledge, men and women go on being destroyed today. How serious a matter it is to teach therefore! Pray for your teachers! Pray for those with positions of responsibility in God's church that faithfulness may characterise our pulpits, Sunday Schools, Bible classes, colleges and seminaries.

The priests of Hosea's day contributed to the destruction of the people because they themselves rejected the knowledge they should have been passing on. Theirs was a wilful setting aside of the truth of God and they failed the people of God who went headlong towards to ruin.

If the people are destroyed through this lack of knowledge the priests much not think that they are going to get away with not being punished for their failures.

The priesthood may well have grown and grown but their numbers will afford them no protection – indeed as they increased in number so they increased in their guilt!

In fact the priests had come to live as parasites upon the wickedness of the people and they really were more interested in seeing this wickedness continue than they were in seeing it curtailed. How tragic this is! Instead of being concerned for the glory of God they saw the people's sin as a good source of fresh meat for them to consume. Why so? Well more sin meant more sacrifices and more sacrifices meant more fresh meat for the priests!

Once again we are brought to consider the true role of a minister. Pray that our ministers in the church would be concerned for God and His glory rather than caught up with some collusion with the people in the lining of their own pockets.

What you most need to hear from any man who stands in the pulpit is that he teach you faithfully the Word of God. You may not always like what is taught, you may at times feel it to be exceedingly uncomfortable as your sin is exposed and God's high standards placed before your eyes – but you need this knowledge lest you too be destroyed.

The Scottish minister of the gospel, Robert Murray McCheyne, once wrote that his peoples' greatest need was his own personal holiness. The more like God he became the more he would be able to teach them faithfully about God and His word. The priests in Hosea's day were miserable failures in this respect – pray that our day be not like his! God give us holy, godly, ministers who will teach the Word whether that Word be popular or not!

But just as punishment and destruction was about to unfurl upon the people so the priesthood was to experience a similar judgement.

The type of judgement that was about to fall was not that of a direct divine intervention but the judgement of diminishing returns that the LORD has built into our lives when we chase after the wrong things and try to fill that "God-shaped" gap in our lives with something, anything other than God Himself.

The more the priests were to consume the less satisfaction they were to find.

Likewise the more illicit sexual activity the people indulged in the less they would multiply as a people.

The entire nation had turned its back upon the LORD, His word had been rejected and true understanding undervalued. So the LORD hands them over in their rejection to sex and alcohol abuse – two abuses that only serve to obscure further the already diminished understanding of what the truth is really all about!

As the people turn their backs upon the LORD they do not turn their backs upon religion. They don't give up on spirituality but rather turn to a spirituality that is all wrong.

GK Chesterton wrote "When people stop believing in God, they don't believe in nothing -- they believe in anything."

So it was true here of Israel. In their rejection of God's truth they turned to idols and worshipped bits of wood. They used their walking sticks in a superstitious way to try to determine which decision to take etc. Imagine trying to decide what to do based upon which way you stick falls over! It sounds ludicrous doesn't it in our so-called rational age? And yet people resort to reading tea leaves or coffee grains, they turn to the stars consulting their horoscope drawn up by some astrologist somewhere.

Did you know the first horoscope was published in a British newspaper in 1930? Now in the US 125 million say they believe in astrology with 70% consulting their horoscope on a regular basis.

But I suppose such things shouldn't surprise us after all in essence astrology is a religion all about you! And doesn't the human heart like to see itself at the centre of everything?

This religious rejection of divine revelation was not neutral on the moral front and no turning away from God's truth ever has been. The spiritual prostitution to which the people gave themselves as they gave up on the One True Living God was accompanied by a far more literal prostitution as sexual morality took a nosedive. It is no different in our own day wherewith wholesale rejection of divine revelation we can catalogue a whole long list of moral boundaries being repeatedly shifted.

Just think of the mess our own society has got itself into with STDs, teen-age pregnancies, spiralling abortion rates, one parent-families, not to mention the sexual grooming of minors on the internet, child abuse, and the horrors of paedophilia.

Then of course for much of history double standards have been applied. The man commits adultery and gets away with it but the woman if discovered is savagely treated. But here in Hosea the LORD simply refuses to go along with such hypocrisy! The wayward women will not be punished for doing what their menfolk want to do themselves! How sad when men in society fail to protect their womenfolk and destroy the very safeguards of society through the hedonistic pursuit of their own unbridled sexual lusts!

Which society are we talking about: Israel of the 8^th century BC or the UK of the 21^st?

The chapter comes to an end with the condemnation of Israel being put in the form of a warning to her neighbour Judah.

Israel is still the one whom Hosea is addressing but he does so now in this infuriating indirect way.

Effectively Hosea urges Judah not to come and visit Israel's most favourite religious shrines. Gilgal had occupied an honourable place in the history of the people of God but by Hosea's time this town had become a centre for formal and unspiritual worship. The name Beth-aven brings an unexpected twist – Bethel (the house of God) was a an important place in Israel's religious life but Hosea changes the name to Beth-aven (house of evil)! Don't follow Israel's example, Judah is told in no uncertain terms. Don't participate in Israel's decadent lifestyle! Don't have anything to do with Israel – her case is a hopeless one wedded as she is to her idols!

We find the same teaching being given to the church in the NT:

1Cor.15:33 "Do not be deceived: “Bad company ruins good morals.”"

Or again:

2Cor.6:14-18 "Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? What accord has Christ with Belial? Or what portion does a believer share with an unbeliever? What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; as God said,

“I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Therefore go out from their midst, and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch no unclean thing; then I will welcome you,  and I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to me, says the Lord Almighty.”"

So Judah is told to have nothing to do with Israel/Ephraim because this latter is joined to idols. This does not however mean that the LORD has yet given up on Israel/Ephraim – Hosea has yet to write:

11:8-9 "How can I give you up, O Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel? How can I make you like Admah? How can I treat you like Zeboiim? My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender. I will not execute my burning anger; I will not again destroy Ephraim; for I am God and not a man, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath."

Reaching out to those who are in need of salvation is one thing but participating with them as though their way of life is totally acceptable or a valid option is a wholly different matter!

How important true knowledge really is – it is a matter of life or death!

Lack of knowledge is deadly leading to destruction and ruin. How serious it is then when the truth is deliberately rejected and how desperate the situation is when those who are supposed to each the truth are the very ones wilfully rejecting it!

What we believe and how we think are vitally important as the beliefs that we truly hold will have an impact upon our lives, there will be fruit be that fruit good or bad!

Lack of knowledge of the truth was the cause of Israel's downfall. Not knowing the truth the people failed to know God and live their lives accordingly.

Jesus when He came declared Himself to be the truth, the truth that we all need to hear and understand.

Jn.14:6 "Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."

Why is it so important to know and understand who Jesus is and what He has done? Well quite simply because He is the truth! God has chosen to speak His final word to the human race in the revelation of Himself in His Son:

Heb.1:1-2 "God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son"

There is salvation in Jesus and in no-one else. If you want to be saved, to have your sins forgiven, have a fresh start in your spiritual life and then to enjoy unfettered access to the Father then you must come to the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the truth, the utterly trustworthy One. He has already secured the salvation of all those who come to Him in faith and trust.

You need to know such things. You need to have an experimental knowledge of such things. That is, your knowledge must not be some sterile academic head knowledge but you need to to know Christ in personal intimacy of relationship. Have you called on His Name for salvation? You must do so there is no substitute for this. Any other procedure will take you down the same line that Israel pursued and will end up at the same destination – destruction and ruin, everlasting ruin at that.

But you don't need to go Israel's way:

2Cor.4:6 "For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ."

Oh my friends: "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved!"

and

"May grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord."

Amen.