Hosea: When We Forget God

Preacher: Thobezweni Sithole

Text; Hosea 5:1-4:7

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

By now we all know where Hosea is. Amen. Shall we sit there? Let's read. Hear the word of the Lord, O children of Israel. For the Lord has a controversy with the inhabitants of the land. There is no faithfulness or steadfast love and no knowledge of God in the land. There is swearing, lying, murder, stealing, and committing adultery. They break all bounds and bloodshed follows bloodshed. Therefore the land mourns, and all who dwell in its language, and also the beasts of the field and the birds of the heavens, and even the fish of the sea are taken away. Yet let no one contend and let no one accuse, for with you is my contention, O priest. You shall stumble by day, the prophet shall also stumble with you by night, and I will destroy your mother. My people are destroyed for a lack of knowledge, because you have rejected knowledge. I reject you from being a priest to me. And since you have forgotten the law of your God, I will also forget your children. The more they increased, the more they sinned against me. I will change their glory into shame. They feed on the sin of my people, they are greedy for their iniquity. And it shall be like priests, I will punish them for their ways and repay them for their deeds. They shall eat but not be satisfied. They shall play the whole but not multiply. Because they have forsaken the Lord to cherish whoredom, wine and new wine, which take away their understanding their understanding. My people inquire of a piece of wood, and their walking stuff gives them oracles. For a spirit of whoredom has led them astray, and they have left their God to play the whore. They sacrifice on the top of mountains and burn offerings on the hills, under oak, poplar, and terebinth, because their shade is good. Therefore your daughters play the whore, your brides commit adultery. I will not punish your daughters when they play the whore, nor your brides when they commit adultery. For the men themselves go aside with prostitutes and sacrifice with cult prostitutes, and a people without understanding shall come to ruin. Though you play the whore, O Israel, let not Judah become guilty. Enter not into Gilgal, nor up to Bethavan, and swear not as the Lord lives. Like a stubborn heifer, Israel is stubborn. Can the Lord now feed them like a lamp in a broad pasture? Ephraim is joined to idols, leave them alone. When their drink is gone, they give themselves to whoring. Their rulers dearly love shame, and wind has wrapped them in its wings, and they shall be ashamed because of their sacrifices. 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 Tabot, 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 Horim is with them, is within them, for as they know not the Lord. The pride of Israel testifies to his face. Israel and Ephrail shall stumble in his guilt. Judah is also Judah shall Judah also shall stumble with them. With their flock and herds they shall go to seek the Lord, but they will not find him. They have dealt faithlessly with the Lord, for they have borne alien children. Now the new moon shall devour them with their feels. This is God's word.

SPEAKER_01 4:12

We've been going through Hosea, and today we are on chapter four. Basically, it's a shift in the book of Hosea. The first three chapters have been looking at this interesting, very scandalous relationship of a prophet and a prostitute, a wife who betrays her husband for other men. And that being a picture or a mirror to Israel's face, that look, this is the relationship you have been. This is the relationship you have been treasonous toward. You have been covenantally treasonous. You have broken the covenant between your God. But God has remained faithful. God keeps loving again. God keeps redeeming. God keeps chasing you. God keeps you, as it were, restraining you from your own self-destruction. And when the idols are done with you, when the men and various men and now the men are selling you there as a pimp, your lover is now pimping you out, is selling you as a slave. God is the one who comes to buy you back. Don't deserve it, desperate situation. We call it unmerited favor. We call it God's uh loving, uh choosing to love those who do who don't is who don't deserve it in any case. And today basically we're shifting from that relationship of the marriage into the relationship of what um, well, not relationship per se, but the courtroom. We're going to the courtroom from chapter four all the way to chapter, the last chapter in in Hosea. It's basically an unpacking of the charge, an unpacking of the evidence, an unpacking of the verdict. But but but don't don't stray with me. This is gonna be the hardest part in terms of the minor prophets because there's poetry there, there's lots of imagery there as we journey moving forward in Hosea. But this morning we just want to look at these three things. The the fact that when we forget God, the charge specifically says truth disappears. When we forget God, truth what? Disappears. In other words, the grieving husband now rises to his feet and brings a formal charge. He becomes simultaneously the wounded husband, but also, as I said, the chirinel, the prosecuting attorney. And also at the same time, the judge. Um, and and hear the word of the Lord, which kind of gives us then the charge. Look at it in verse 1. Uh, we preach through books of the Bible, so that's why I was referring to the YouTube channel so that you can catch up because we we preach expositionally, and for you to get the context in which we are preaching from, it would be good for you to play some catch-up, but you won't miss anything even this morning. That's my prayer. Court is in session. Here's the charge. Hear the word of the Lord, oh children of Israel, for the Lord has a controversy with the inhabitants of the land. There is no faithfulness or steadfast love and knowledge of God in the land. That's the charge, friends. It's it's it's basically a structured charge that that that gives us a framework here that the integrity that keeps your word is gone. That honors, as it were, commitments to the Lord have been gone. In other words, principle is gone. Um, there's no faithfulness. Do you see it, friends? No faithfulness here is like there's no integrity that keeps your word, there's no honor to your commitments. What holds the moral fabric of the community together is no more. Number two, there's no steadfast love. In other words, there's no chesed, there's no covenantal love. That is that is the reality of both an affection, a genuine affection, and an unbreakable faithfulness to your husband. It's no more that that marital love, that love that says, I am yours, not only when it is convenient, not only when you deserve it, not only when I feel like it, all of that is gone. The third charge, friends, is there's no knowledge of God in the land. The one from which the other two flow, friends, the one that sits at the absolute center of everything, or say I will say from here to the end of the book that there's no knowledge of God in the land. And interestingly, here he uses the word yadah. We're gonna unpack it uh in a moment. But for now, friends, the the idea of saying it's a courtroom is because of the word controversy. Controversy controversy. The controversy basically is the charge. The controversy, when you translate into the original language, it's basically saying there's a case here. There's a case to be uh argued. In other words, friends, the the the the the the idea here is to say, man, there's a case to be argued, and the case is is not uh, as it were, flowing from a husband who is restless and reacting out of uh anger and angst and um irrationality, as it were. There's kind of like a principled systemic uh uh unpacking of a charge, right? It's like the evidence is gonna be before us and we're gonna see what the Lord says. But I want to zoom in quickly to the five, the the last charge of there's no knowledge of God because the other two flow from that. The knowledge of God holds then, friends, the keeping of the commandment, the the knowing of God holds then the idea of faithfulness, holds then the idea of steadfast love, the the knowing of God. In other words, the knowing of God here is not reduced, and in other words, to a sense of intellectual um um um failings. The the lack of that knowledge is not an intellectual failing. Don't read it as um though God is filing charges that um people don't have enough theology. So don't read it like that. That's why I said I'll unpack the word Yada, Y A D A. If you want to open a coffee shop, that's a beautiful name. Yada proves whatever. Anyway, the point here is this, friends, it means something far more intimate than correct information. To know God in Hosea is not to hold a set of doctrinal propositions about him. It is to be in living, daily, covenantal, personal fellowship with him. It is to love him, it is to trust him, it's to walk with him, is to acknowledge his presence and his lordship over every room of your life. Friends, Israel had simply forgotten some, has not simply forgotten some theological facts about God, they had forgotten a person, they had forgotten their husband. And whenever we forget God, friends, we never actually stop worshiping, we start worshiping something else. Dare say, in the words of J.I. Pekka, in other words, there's a difference between knowing God and knowing about God. Friends, get that book. Like, it's my favorite book, not because it's my favorite book, it's a life-changing book, knowing God. There's a difference between knowing God and knowing of God or knowing about God. When you truly know God, you have energy to serve him, boldness to share him, and contentment in him. Friends, the the the the idea of knowing God is a is a is is a sense in which um he he draws the word Yada even from Genesis kind of chapter um um um three and four, where uh Adam on Eve, Adam knew Eve. I mean he met Eve. He he called her. This is flesh of my flesh, bone of my bones. He he he he he met Eve. What does it mean? He knew Eve, and then there was Abel, Cain. There's a picture there of intimacy that that don't be satisfied with knowing about God, be thirsty to really know him. Do you know God? Friends, the human heart never remains empty, it always fills the vacuum with the substitute. So, friends, before we get to the evidence and the verdict, I want you to feel something. What does it feel like to be forgotten by someone who promised to love you? That's the argument of the whole message today that uh when we forget God, and I want to ask you, just take a moment of silence and think about it. What does it feel like to be forgotten by someone who promised to love you? It's not being walked out on like someone walking away in a visible felt sense. It's not a violent way, it's just being forgotten. As other things occupy that person's space. As life gets busy and comfortable in other areas of convenience, as as they face the fact that man, the the gaze they had on you is no longer on you, is on something else. Fade away into the background where as life has them pointing to other priorities, pretty much feeling like being forgotten. Friends, that's the picture of forgetting God. It's a picture of drifting. You you don't decide to stop loving God. You you slowly, incrementally, almost without noticing. Perhaps that that is the most frightening form of unfaithfulness, friends. It's not rebellion, it's not shaking your fist at God, but it's actually that slow drifting away. It's not hatred, but neglect. It's not a dramatic goodbye, but a gradual forgetting. And friends, perhaps your experience of being forgotten resonates deeply with you. It's hurtful. But that's the picture God is explaining in the text, in the case. That is the first charge it brings, friends. What the idea of saying, Man, there's something else that is occupying your imagination, something that is occupying your attention. You are here, but you are absent. In other words, friends, there's a sense of which even you can be in the church bodily, but you are daydreaming about something else. You are worrying about something else. When when it all goes quiet, there's something else that is that is that you are obsessing over about. And and you you kind of in a way feel like if you had that thing, you'll be fine, you'll be okay. And friends, that's not what you think about church, that's not what you say when someone asks you how your relationship with God is going. It's it's what fills the this, as it were, the screen of your mind at 11 at night. When the city is quiet and you are just with your thoughts. And here's the prosecution in verse 2. Uh, I'll go into that, but I want to uh uh quickly pause on this to say, what is that thing that is capturing your imagination? That you say, if I had that thing, as Tim Keller would say, then that'd be enough. Friends, that is your God, that is your idol. That is the very source through which you are forgetting God. Now let's look at verse 2 quickly. The prosecution continues. There is swearing, lying, murder, stealing, committing adultery, they break all bounds, and bloodshed follows bloodshed. Hosea does something interesting here. He he kind of cites um uh a couple of the Ten Commandments: the third, the ninth, the sixth, the eighth, the seventh. And and he he declares them as all simultaneously being broken. In other words, friends, this is not a random moral failure. This is a systemic thing that is happening here. This is a predictable unraveling of a society that has cut itself off from God. It doesn't start with that shaking of the fist, it starts with it starts with that slow drifting away. Forgetting God starts with that drifting, drifting into other comforts, drifting into other saviors, and then the adultery happens. Then you wonder why. Then the swearing, the lying, the murder, the stealing happens. The point here is this that kind of like what what Hosea is saying here is the logical argument he's breaking down is you don't need to miss it here. He's saying that the reason there is lying is that faithfulness has disappeared. The reason there's adultery is that love has grown cold. The reason there's murder is that the knowledge of God, which alone teaches us that the person standing in front of you is an image-bearer of the living God, is is therefore that person is infinitely precious, that has evaporated from the culture. In other words, friends, the point here is that social breakdown is always a downstream from forgetting God. That's that's always the case, friends. Think about our beautiful city of gold, Johannesburg. The gender-based violence statistics, friends, that no government can actually fix with their programs. The point here, friends, is that the gender-based violence is because there is a sense of forgetting what? God. Think about the Mazlanga Commission that I've been mentioning every week for the past three weeks. The institutional corruption that empties out every structure. It's because, friends, we're forgetting God. The bloodshed that flows over many lives that are lost daily, friends. We are the crime capital of the world, if not number two. Love to be top five in Bafana, Bafana, Bafana, Bafana being top five in the world in soccer. But we we're top five in terms of murder and rape. We have forgotten God. The loneliness that uh um kind of lives behind your your apartments in the city, the the anxiety that that lives behind those uh expensive apartments is it's mainly because, friends, underneath all that curation, people have forgotten God. And we reach, friends, rightly so, for solutions. You want policies, you want education, we want economic reform, and all those things do matter. But Hosea is not a social commentator, he's a prophet. And his word is this, friends the root of the unraveling is theological. When when a people forget the personal living God, everything downstream begins to disintegrate. Then verse 3, friends, lends us with the terrible weight of the charge. Look at it quickly. Therefore, the land mourns, and all who dwell in it languish, and also the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens, and even the fish of the sea are taken away. Just imagine all structures, all institutions unraveling and falling apart, affecting our poor puppies and animals and livestock. What say is saying here is that the very fertility gods, the pa'als you are trusting in. For fertility and economic thriving have betrayed you, have enslaved you, are falling apart. And everything else around you is integrating because of forgetting God. Everything that you had put your hope in is falling apart. And look at creation groaning, look at creation being corrupted, look at the animals and the creation order being disintegrated because of the fall, because of the corruption, because of forgetting God. Creation itself is beginning to groan. Animals, birds, fish, the exact categories listed in Genesis 1. If you are I don't want to say that. When God gave humanity, friends, the mandate to rule and care for the earth, now because Israel has broken covenant with God, the land is mourning. Paul is reading this passage, and when when he writes, friends, in in Romans 8, he kind of like it insinuates this point that the whole creation has been growing together in pains of childbirth, waiting to be rescued. See, friends, covenant rebellion does not stay contained. It radiates outward from the human heart into families, into communities, into cultures, into creation itself. Your sin is not that private. It's cosmic. It starts with just you drifting. And it affects the closest people around you. It affects your community. It affects how you show up at work. Some Christians have been caught in serious scandals of corruption. Started somewhere, friends. The charge has been laid. Now God turns in the evidence. The evidence, the creatures become gods. Hosea 4, verse 4 to 19. Exhibit A. I wanted to, I was looking forward to saying that people don't get. Exhibit A. Exhibit A. Look at Exhibit A quickly. Yet let no one contend and let none accuse, for with you is my contention, O priest. Exhibit A, the failure of leadership. After the sweeping indictment of verse 1 through to 3, um, God narrows his focus. He turns first to the people most responsible for the theological formation of the nation. The priests. Look at verse 6 quickly. Because you have rejected knowledge, I reject you from being a priest to me. And since you have forgotten the law of God, I will forget your children. Friends, contextually, the priest of Israel had one primary calling above all others: to stand between God and the people, to guard and teach and embody the knowledge of God. That was their job, friends. That was their calling. They were not called into uh institutional prestige. They were not called to sit on leather couches at front of the temple or whatever. They were not called to be uh people who who who leverage politics, as it were. They were not called to manage religious crowds. They were not called to be influencers. Their calling was to the knowledge of God. They had to make sure the knowledge of God is kept, is taught, is lived out, is passed on. That was their calling, friends. They had rejected that. And Hosea's causation is devastating. The reason the people have no knowledge of God is because the leaders gave them none. The priests have stopped feeding God's people the knowledge of God. And friends, when the shepherds stop feeding sheep, sheep do not immediately realize they are starving. They simply forget what nourishment really tastes like. We see it, friends, even in our in our in our in our in our day today, friends, that that people we are baffled by some of the things people are are drawn into. I can't imagine a professional eating grass. Professionals are not as smart as we think. We are not as smart as we think. Our education is cannot liberate us from our theological emptiness. And so we'll eat grass, we'll drink petrol as professionals, as the educated, so-called educated, so-called people with knowledge. It's because, friends, there's an emptiness, a lack of understanding, a lack of knowledge. My people perish because they what? They lack knowledge. There is a word here for every kind of leader, pastor, parent, small group leader, every pre every parent in the room, as it were, everyone responsible for teaching and shepherding and training people here. And and here's the here's the here's the message here, here's the point here that the greatest gift you can give the people in your care is the deep, clear, faithful, living knowledge of God. And the greatest betrayal, friends, of that, of spiritual leadership is to stand before God's people and give them what they want to hear rather than what God has said. And and notice verse 4 and 5, friends. He doesn't only mention priests, he mentions prophets. You shall stumble by day, the prophet also shall stumble with you by night, and I will destroy your mother. The mother here is Israel. Priests and prophets are both indicted. And chapter 5, friends, will add kings. In other words, all these people who we call anointed, set apart by God, the prophet, the priest, the kings, are indicted. Every layer of leadership is standing in the dark. It's a beautiful picture. It's not a beautiful picture, but it's a it's a picture with uh kind of thinking about us. You know, there's a court in in um now I forget the place in Gutly Home. Remind me. Palmridge. If you go to Palm Ridge, you are a professional who's been corrupted. Pumbridge court, they they stand there. It's it's it's kind of like a a court for commercial crimes. It's not one individual, it's like six or eight men standing in in a line because they had systematically um curated a way of stealing money from the uh uh poor to enrich themselves, to enjoy the softness of Rosebank and Cape Town and Kemps Bay and Dubai. It started friends with the theological drifting, forgetting God. And you'll hear some of these men who grew up in church, these women who grew up in church, now caught in horrendous scandals. Every layer of leadership is standing on the dock, including spiritual leaders. So your idol may not be pleasure, it may not be Dubai, it may not be all these fancy things, it may not be um uh um cakes of raisins and delicacies and malva pudding, it may not all be that softness of life, it may actually be being respected, being being in positions of prominence and abusing your power and not shepherding your people. Your idol may not be that rebellion, it may, it may, it may very well be performance. Your idol may not be uh, as it were, uh immorality, it may be your own righteousness. You you can be far from God while sitting in church. That's why the priests are indicted. Through the performance of religious duties with hearts that have gone quietly cold, through the management of spiritual appearances, while the actual relationship with Jesus has cooled to something functional and formal. Hosea places both groups in the courtroom. The religious are not spectators in the trial, they are defendants. My question to you today is this Are you in church today performing rather than worshiping? Going through the motions of a relationship that you are not actually investing in, managing your spiritual life rather than living it. The priest of Hosea's day would recognize you so with the church. They'll probably put you in higher positions. The priests, but also God sees friends, God sees our self-righteousness, God sees our performance. We can't pretend to an all-knowing, all-seeing God. We can't. Sounds heavy, right? Let's take a break. Let's look at verse 7. The more they increased, the more they sinned against me. I will change their glory into shame. I want to read that again slowly. The more they increased. How many of our how many of us pray for increase? I mean someone in financial year ends. And they're like, I'm praying for an increase. Go to negotiate and increase. The idea of increase is always positively seen. I'm I'm moving up in life. Increase. I'm getting an extra zero to my my my net or my growth. Increase. I'm uh this house is too small, it's beneath me. Increase. I used to drive a Ford car. Now I'm going for a Ford Ranger. Increase. But friends, look at the hardening effect of prosperity here. The more they increased, the more they sinned against me. That scares me, friends. The more they were comfortable, the more they forgot me. The more they increased, the more they sinned against me. I will change their glory into shame. From riches to rags. The hardening effect, friends, of prosperity is here. When things go well, when the harvests are good, the career is progressing, the finances are stable, the life is soft. God tends to become a background feature rather than the foreground reality. He's not rejected deliberately, he's simply forgotten gradually. The spiritual urgency of need now dissolves into the spiritual anesthesia of comfort. You are numbed by the softness. You are deafened by the softness to the voice of God. What do you fear losing most? What do you fear losing most? Think about it for a second. Can close your eyes, think? Friends, the greatest danger of prosperity is not that it makes us hate God, it actually makes us forget Him. And dare I say, friends, we are in Rosebank. And that's the scariest thing for most of us in this room. Yes, you're traveling from far and wide, but that's the scariest thing. You you you you are in a privileged position of access. You you you can make something of your life. You you can you can make good with the resources you are getting. You you are in a privileged position. We we can't deny that. It just takes us living 15 minutes before and going downstairs. Not many can afford that life. And I don't want us to feel guilty about having things that are nice that God has given us. But I want to warn us. I really want to warn us that friends, may not the gaining of things be the losing of God. Comfort friends often produces a more dangerous form of unbelief than rebellion because it allows us to drift quietly away from the God we no longer feel we need. You start just your prayer life. You don't feel a sense of need, you have everything. But but but when I talk to people with with access, there's there's a sense of a difficulty with them. The need is I need to be satisfied. I'm struggling with this. I have the the the big cars, I have the big positions, I have the the influence, but I'm not satisfied. You know what that is? It is God telling you those things cannot fit into your heart. You can't fit all that excess into your heart. You are designed for God, who is far greater, far more precious, and He will enable you then to hold these things loosely. So we'll keep going. 15 minutes. I'm asking for grace for people who are stickers for time. 15 minutes, please. Good? Yes, no? Okay. Exhibit B. They exchange the creator for created things. Look at verse 12. My people inquire of a piece of wood, and their walking stuff gives them oracles. For a spirit of whoredom has led them astray, and they have left their God to play the whore. This is funny. They were asking sticks for direction, they were consulting wooden idols for wisdom, they were seeking fertility shrines for the outcomes only God could give. They were asking death things for life. And Jose, I want you to feel that absurdity, friends. These are people who had the living God, who had been ransomed from Egypt, who had eaten bread from heaven and drunk water from a rock. And now they are asking a piece of wood what to do with their lives. But before we look down on them with a sneer, like, I don't do that. I don't, I don't, I don't consult sticks. I'm educated. We need to understand what was actually happening. They were not choosing between God and nothing. They were choosing between God and Baal. In other words, friends, the God of fertility, productivity, material abundance, the God who they believed would deliver agricultural success, tangible results, comfortable outcomes. The exchange what was not irrational, the exchange, friends, was not irrational as it were. It was calculated, it was strategic. It was the word is pragmatic. Now, if you define pragmaticism as like if it works, if the outcomes, if this will achieve the outcomes I want, I don't care what the means are, but I'm gonna go for the outcomes. So the outcomes determine whether this is uh a viable option or not. Now, now now take hold that thought and and and and and and ask yourself this that um how are you pragmatic in Johannesburg? What are you saying? This this works, so I'm gonna go for it. Whether God likes it or not, this works, so this is my ball. I'm gonna go. Let's name our carved wood. Let's name our sticks for a second. Your career could be that stick. Your reputation could be that stick, your success, your approval, your beauty, your comfort, your financial security could be the very stick that you are looking to for answers and not God. Friends, often without consciously deciding to the weight and worth that belongs only to God, we often give it to someone else or something else, a stick. These are the things we secretly believe in, believe that they will make our life work out if we can only get just enough of them. Sticks, friends. Are you saying my investment banking career is a stick? Yes, it's a it's a stick if you look into that career progression for only what God can give you, that friends is a stick. It's dead, it won't give you life, it will only enslave you. Now, friends, I want to ask this question. What have you asked to carry the weight of God in your life? What have you asked to carry the weight of God in your life? What have you asked to carry your life that you should be asking God to carry? Look at verse 11. Hodom wine, new wine, take away the understanding, friends. That's that's the sequence Hosea is mapping here. First you leave God, then you chase a substitute. You you you chase the the whodom, the wine, the the new wine, you you chase all these things and and and your capacity to evaluate what you are doing and what is costing you, then you you need that, friends. And the judgment Hosea is giving here is to open our eyes to see things for what they truly are: dead sticks. Paul calls it in Romans 1 a sense of exchanging the glory of God, um, the immortal God for created things. There's always that exchange. And and friends, we we take created things and ask them to do what only the creator can do, and we need to really repent of that. And look at verse 17 quickly. Ephraim is joined to idols, leave him alone. That's that's God's response. It's not a shout of fury, it's a whisper of abandonment. It's not the fire of righteous anger, but something more terrible the silence of departure. When you want to is when you want to insist on your investment banking. On that stick. When you want to insist on something other than God, God will let you be. And that's a terrible reality. And we'll we'll walk around pretending I'm blessed and highly favored. But your heart is far from God. Because God let you be. Verse 19: a wind has wrapped them in its wings, and they shall be ashamed because of their sacrifices. What began as freedom is now turbulence. The spirit of whoredom that felt like liberation has become a, as Mendoza would say, tornado. Shame is the only currency idolatry ever pays in the end. It promises the world and takes everything from you. The verdict point three. I asked for 15 minutes, so uh we're left with 10. The verdict when God withdraws. Chapter 5 opens with the triple summons, as it were. Hear this, O priest, pay attention, O house of Israel, give ear, O house of the king, for the judgment is for you. Here's the summons. The case has been filed in, the evidence has been accepted in. And now here's the verdict, friends. Priest, people, king, every layer of Israel's society is called to stand. No one remains in the gallery, everyone is in the dark. The case has been presented, the charge is proven, the verdict is now coming. Look at verse 3 quickly of chapter 5. I know Ephraim, and Israel is not hidden from me. For now, O Ephraim, you have played the whole Israel is defiled. Notice the verb. God says, Yada. I know. The same word whose absence opened the entire lawsuit, friends. That same word now kind of gives us a picture here. The people have uh no knowledge of God, but God has full knowledge of them. Perfect, intimate, covenantal knowledge of them. They have been building their lives on the assumption that God either cannot see or has stopped caring. They have been conducting their affairs, nursing their idols, performing their religious obligations, imagining they are operating below the radar of heaven. And Hosea tells them that nothing is hidden. God knows. He sees every idol you have bowed to, every justification you have constructed, every time you soar by his name, with their heart still warm from other lovers. The covenant husband sees what the unfaithful bride imagined was private. And then verse 4, look at it quickly. Incremental choices, 10,000 small choices. Each choice to turn away from God is a vote for the person you are becoming. Or dare I say, unbecoming. Nobody wakes up one morning and decides to abandon God. It's one compromise, one neglected prayer, one postponed repentance, one quiet act of forgetfulness at a time. Not a loud voice vote, a quiet one, a quiet repeated one moment. Every morning you reach for your phone before you reach for the word. A small vote. Every pattern of sin you have named, accommodated and decided to live with rather than bring to the cross. It's a vote. Every time you defer the return, defer coming to God and and turning to Him in trust and believe, it's a vote, friends. A vote for the person who cannot find their way back. Now, my question to you, the last reflection question is what are you managing rather than repenting of? What are you managing rather than repenting of? Friends, religious performance is not the same as the presence of God. It's not the same as knowing about Jesus. It's actually being called to know Jesus. So what am I saying here? I'm saying, friends, the case closes here. Verse 7. Look at it. They have dealt faithlessly with the Lord, for they have borne alien children. Now the new moon shall devour them with their fields. Yo, if you are new here, it'll be like if I ended the sermon here, it'll be like, I saw. If you are feeling guilty, it's good. I'm glad you are feeling guilty. If you are feeling like judged, it's good. I'm glad you are feeling judged. If you're feeling condemned, it's good. I'm glad you are feeling that way. I'm I'm so, so glad. But I wouldn't be glad if you walked away right now at this moment. Hang in there for two minutes and hear these words, friends. The words of the gospel, that the Christ that enters the courtroom is like you are in the dock, you're guilty. You're like, no, I'm judged, I'm going to be sentenced to life apart from God. God has forgotten me. It's over. I have no answer for my sins. I know I'm guilty. The evidence has been laid there, and all I can do is shut my mouth. What the anointed one means is that he is the promised priest, he is the promised prophet, he is the promised king. In Psalm 110, there's a promise of that, of the priest who is a king. What am I saying, friends? The messiah had to come, prophet, priest, king, and fulfill all that the other religious leaders could not fulfill. And not only that, he became the sacrifice, he became the mediatorial one who draws us into God. He became, friends, our justification. What am I saying, friends? Yes, we are guilty, we are accused, but in Christ we are called not guilty because he had to step in our place and bear on himself the judgment that we deserve. He had to pay the price. As the priest, friends, he had to make the sacrifice. He was both priest and lamb. But also, friends, as the prophet, he had to speak the word. He's the word incarnate, the God with us. He had to speak a perfect word, not only speak it, friends, and preach it and remind us of it, he had to live it out and fulfill it completely so. But also, friends, he's the king of kings. He came down, saw that friends, to declare and proclaim a new kingdom. He says, Behold, now the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Repent and believe. All you need to do is believe. Oh, what grace, friends! The Messiah has come in the person of the Son Jesus Christ. The true prophet, the true priest, the true king. And dare I say, friends, the true husband. The true husband had to endure all forsakenness. Psalm 22 says, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? The true king, the true priest, the true prophet had to be forgotten in our place. Had to be uh deserted on that cross in our place. So that we would never be forgotten. The true king had to experience all of that so that Jesus, the Lord, God says, Ah, uh, I remember, I will remember your sins no more. I will resolve to, the God who never forgets, I will resolve to forget your sins. This is not dramatic poetry, friends. This is the Son of God, the faithful one, the covenant keeper, the one who had never once forgotten his father, absorbing his own, in his own person the full weight of divine withdrawal from his own father. The withdrawal that our idolatry deserved, the withdrawal that every forgotten husband, every broken covenant, every exchange of glory had earned. He walked into darkness of God's absence so that you and I would never have to. And that's the gospel, friends. That's the gospel. And what do we do with that? We return. The same God who sent Hosea into the slave market to bring Goma home is the God who says to you this morning, I will heal your apostasy in Hosea 14. I will love you freely. If you place your your faith and trust in Jesus Christ this morning, there's forgiveness for you. There's nearness for you. Jesus walked into that courtroom, said, I'll I'll stand for him. I'll take his place. Other illustrations kind of picture a judge sitting there having a gavel and saying, Hang on, you are guilty. But I'll take away, I'll take off my robe of being a judge and I'll clothe you with it. And I'll take your criminality and the judgment it deserves on myself. All you need to do is believe. Believe that Jesus died for you. And friends, practically, what do we do with that? What do we do with the decay in our city? We point to people, we point people to a God who they need the knowledge of, who will reframe their desires, who will rescue them from their slavery, who will bring them home. In other words, friends, we call people to know Jesus, to enjoy him, to exalt him. Would we make him known like that, friends? That hang on, you are guilty, but there's rescue for you. There's one who's taken your place on that old rugged cross. Romans 8:1 says, Therefore, there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Thanks, thanks be to God, friends, that we can pray those prayers. That friends, the the whole creation in Romans 8 awaits for the revelation of the sons of God, the people of God who've been redeemed through the saving work of Jesus Christ. They await the coming of the King of Jesus Christ to rescue it from its brokenness. But it all starts here, friends. Each and every one of us in this room, believing and trusting in Jesus Christ for our rescue, for our recusal. Is that recusal? Lawyers, you'll help me for our not guilty verdict, for our justification. Let me pray for us.