By Woodrow Kroll
Part 5 - When Life Grows Nothing But Thorns
You are probably familiar with the name Alexander Solzhenitsyn. We haven't heard much from Solzhenitsyn in the last few years; but back in 1983, Alexander Solzhenitsyn gave an address. I want to quote just a couple of lines from that address. Because Alexander Solzhenitsyn, I think, clearly shows us the response of God to sinning people.
See, if a nation decides to sin against the Lord God, God doesn't sit back and say, "Oh, isn't that too bad." God responds to that. And the response God is, that God always judges sin. God does not let us get away with our sin forever. Listen to Alexander Solzhenitsyn, back in 1983. He says this: "When I was a child, I recall hearing a number of older people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia. They said, 'Men have forgotten God.' Since then, I have spent well-nigh 50 years working on the history of our own Revolution. I've read hundreds of books, hundreds of personal testimonies, and contributed eight volumes of my own towards the effort of clearing away the rubble left by that upheaval.
But if I were asked today to formulate the main cause of that ruinous Revolution that swallowed up more than 60 million of our people, I would repeat, 'Men have forgotten God'." So Alexander Solzhenitsyn says, You know, those old timers in my nation weren't wrong, after all. They saw a nation that followed God. Then they saw a nation that turned away from God, and all the horrible things that befell that nation, because they had forgotten God. Now, think that what Solzhenitsyn said about Russia, Hosea would surely say about Israel.
The Book of Hosea is wonderful, because the story of Hosea is really included in only three chapters. I said the other day that we're in big trouble, because we are only looking at 14 chapters; and here we are, we're not very far into this book yet. But the great thing is, we don't have to go through the entire book. Oh, we will; but we don't have to, because the story is found in the first three chapters.
Look at chapter 1, chapter 2, and chapter 3. Chapter 1 introduces Hosea, introduces the fact that he is to take a wife named Gomer, and this wife is going to be unfaithful to him. This wife is going to be a wife that will wander away from the life of the family.
But by the time you get to chapter 2--look at the end of chapter 2 (verse 23b)--He's talking about "Then I will say to those called not My people, 'you are My people.' And they shall say 'You are My God!' " By the time you get to the end of chapter 2, God's people are coming back to Him. And the life of Gomer and Hosea must parallel the life of God and Israel. Because the life of Gomer and Hosea, as a married couple, is designed to be a picture of what it is like for Israel to walk away from God. And by the time you get to chapter 3, it is the reconciliation, the bringing back of Gomer to Hosea.
In chapter 3, he goes and he buys her back out of the market place of sin, and their lives are put back together again. This is a wonderful story. A story of love gone right, and faithfulness gone wrong. The love of Hosea for his unfaithful wife Gomer is the story of the love of God for His unfaithful people, Israel. But the story is over by chapter 3.
Chapter 4, all the way to chapter 14, are footnotes on the story. As we go through this book, and we learn something about Hosea, it is also something about God's unfailing love. We will go to every chapter in the book, but the real story is in the first three chapters. So if we learn the story, we can go then to the footnotes of chapter 4 through 14, and reveal the proof of what he says in the first three chapters.
That's what we're going to do today. So, let me take you back to chapter 2. Chapter 2, beginning at verse 4. The question being asked here is: How does God respond when a people like Israel sin against Him? Well, notice in verses 4 and 5, it tells us that God will temporarily withhold His love from His people, in order to bring His people back to him. This is what it says, chapter 2, verses 4-5: "I will not have mercy on her children, for they are the children of harlotry. For their mother has played the harlot; she who conceived them has behaved shamefully. For she said, 'I will go after my lovers, who give me my bread and my water, my wool and my linen, my oil and my drink'."
Now, here's a mother who would not stay home. Here's a mother who was unfaithful to her husband and to her family. And God says, I will judge the sin of Israel by withholding temporarily My love for My people. Now, you have to understand, when God says I'm going to withhold My love temporarily, that doesn't mean He doesn't love His people. Remember Jeremiah 31, verse 3a: "Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love."
Do you know what a good definition of the word everlasting is? Everlasting means it lasts forever. He says, "I have loved you with an everlasting love." God doesn't give up on His people. But He says, in order to bring them back from their sin, in order to bring them back from judgment, in order to let them come back to their senses, I will temporarily withhold My love from them.
So, what does God do when He responds to a sinful people? Number 1. Verses 1-5, chapter 2 tell us that God will temporarily withhold His love from His people. Look at verse 6, chapter 2. God will block Israel's path to success. It says in verse 7 of chapter 2 that God will, first of all, deprive Israel of her sinful lovers. This woman, Gomer, was going after lovers, going after men who were not her husband. Israel was going after gods who were not the God of Israel. And so He says, here is how I'm going to deprive them, here is how I'm going to judge them: I will deprive them of success in their lives, as long as they go after false gods.
Now remember, these were people who had been successful. They were living in strong economic times. God says, in effect, I'll bring a down-turn in the stock market. I'll let there be another crash. I'll show My people, that if they going after other gods, with the goods that I gave to them from the blessings of My hands, I'll withhold My love for them for a short period of time, and I will block their path of success, so all their e-trading, all the things that they do, none of these things will produce income for them. And I can do it. God says, You just watch Me!
Notice in verse 7, first of all He says He will deprive Israel of her sinful loves. Secondly, He says He will refuse to take the unrepentant Israel back. See, they'll say, hey, my fortunes are turning. So, she'll recognize--the end of verse 7--she will recognize that she was better off with God; she'll want to go back to her original husband. "Then she will say 'I will go and return to my first husband, for then it was better for me than now'." (Hosea 2:7b) And God says, No, you won't! See, you wandered away from Me when I fed you, when I gave you great goods, and now you want back to Me because you know you'll get goods again. That's not the reason you come back to God.
You don't come back to God because of a loss of blessings; you come back to God because of repentance. And a lot of Christians haven't learned that yet. There's a lot of sin in the Church today, that is swept under the carpet because people miss the blessing of God, and they're forced to say, 'OK, I'm sorry. Let's just get on with our lives.'
Listen friends, you don't just get on with life, when you sin against God; you have to come to repentance about your sin. That's the only way to come back to God. And God says, in effect, Look, I will block Israel's success; first of all, Israel will be deprived of her lovers; secondly, I refuse to allow repentant Israel back to me; and thirdly He says, in verse 9, that God will withhold his blessing from unrepentant Israel. As long as they are unrepentant, God says, He will not bless them. This is God's response to Israel's sin.
A popular message for the twenty-first century? Hah, not on your life! It wasn't a popular message for Hosea either. But it was God's message, and the book hasn't changed, friends. And God's response to sin hasn't changed. GOD--WILL--JUDGE--SIN ! You've got to mark that down and keep it with you all the time. Because a nation that sins against God doesn't get away with it FOREVER!
I'm not sure Israel learned that lesson; in fact I'm not sure America has learned that lesson, either. So, how does God respond? First of all, He temporarily withholds His love from His people. Secondly, He blocks their path to success. Notice at verse 10, God responds by punishing the idolatry of Israel. Verse 10 talks about exposing her sin. Verse 10 also talks about making her lovers powerless to retain her. Verse 11 talks about bringing a stop to Israel's joyous celebrations. It's talking probably about their annual festivals, and their monthly new moon festivals, their weekly Sabbath observances.
Look at Verse 12. In verse 12, He talks about destroying her vegetation. God can bring a great drought, and destroy the crops of any nation. He can withhold vegetation. This goes a little deeper than that. Vegetation was regarded as the pay that was given to Israel's paramours, for allowing her to become adulterous with these others . They would provide their grain and their wheat as payment to the Baals, the gods of this world. And so He says, I'll withhold your vegetation, so you can't pay your lovers.
And why? Why did God punish His people? It's pretty simple, folks. When you read the Book of Hosea, you'll learn that God punished His people because His people forgot God. They just moved on in their prosperity. This is not simply a mental lapse; this is a refusal to acknowledge the goodness of God in their life. And God said, I will not forget that. And I will not let that go unpunished. That's a lesson Israel had to learn. It's also a lesson we have to learn today.
Let's go to chapter 5. Chapter 5 is a footnote on God punishing His people. Chapter 5, verse 6. "With their flocks and herds, they shall seek the Lord, but they will not find Him. He has withdrawn Himself from them." Now, is there a contradiction in the Scripture? Sometimes, God says Seek the Lord while He may be found. Other times, God says, Go ahead and seek Me, you wont find Me. Haven't you found that--what appears to be a contradiction in the Scripture? There's no contradiction here.
What God, in effect, is saying is this: 'Any repentant person who seeks Me, will find Me. Any unrepentant person who seeks Me, will not find Me.' And Israel here is unrepentant. So He says, I will hide myself from My people. They'll get to the bottom of the rope, they'll get to the end of their rope, they'll get to the point where they have no more crops, they have no more grain, they'll have no more festivals, and they'll say, what happened, it must be that we went away from God. If we go back to God, He will give us blessing again. Thus, He says, I'll hide Myself, so they can't make that error. Can you imagine: the people of God, Israel, the Chosen Nation, seeking God, and God hiding Himself from His people? That's a part of God's response to unrepentant sin. God withholds His blessing; God hides Himself from His people.
Look a couple of chapters later. Chapter 9, another footnote. In chapter 9, He says that God will judge His people through other nations. This may be difficult for Israel to appreciate. They were strong. They had a good army at this point. They were economically viable. But it says (chapter 9, verses 1-3): "Do not rejoice, O Israel, with joy like other peoples; for you have played the harlot against your God. You have made love for hire on every threshing floor. The threshing floor and winepress shall not feed them; and the new wine shall fail in her. They shall not dwell in the Lord's land; but Ephraim will return to Egypt, and shall eat unclean things in Assyria."
Now when he mentions Egypt here, Egypt is always a symbol of exile, a place of sin, the place where God's people are destroyed, the place where they are punished. Assyria, well, that's the actual location of this exile. I mean, it's less than two decades, friends, when the King of Assyria is going march into Samaria, the capital of these ten northern tribes, and carry off these people into exile, into captivity. God will keep His Word.
So God says, I will hide myself from My people, I will judge My people with other nations." And then He says that God will destroy Israel's hope for the future. Notice here, He makes reference to the fact that (chapter 9, verses 11-12): "As for Ephraim, their glory shall fly away like a bird--No birth, no pregnancy, and no conception! Though they bring up their children, yet I will bereave them to the last man. Yes, woe to them, when I depart from them!"
See, the blessing of a nation in this time was its young people, just as it is today. And here is a nation to which God says, I will destroy the future of these people; if their women attempt to become pregnant, they will not become pregnant. And if they are pregnant, they will miscarry. And if they do carry their children to full term, I will bereave them early in their lives. See, God was trying to get attention, the attention of His people. This is serious stuff. I mean, it's one thing for God to touch the great wealth of a nation; it's another thing for God to touch the future of that nation.
Now, does that mean that God is out there killing children? No, it doesn't mean that at all. This is a nation that kills it own children. God doesn't have to do anything. This is a nation that causes it own miscarrying wombs. This is a nation--if they had such a thing as fetal alcohol syndrome--that would be plagued with fetal alcohol syndrome. This is a nation which has turned it's back on God. And a nation that is reaping what it has sown.
Well, finally, notice in verse 6 of chapter 10. God will bring disgrace and shame on Israel. Verse 6 says: "The idol also shall be carried to Assyria as a present for King Jareb. Ephraim shall receive shame, and Israel shall be ashamed of its own counsel."
America, America, God shed thy grace on thee. You know, God can remove grace, just like he can shed grace. God can disgrace a nation, just like he can build a nation. And sometimes when nations become proud, they're like people; they become proud, they become arrogant, they become invincible, they decide they don't need God any more.
Israel had come to that point in her life, and God said, I will withhold my blessing, I will see to it that I will hide Myself from My people. Other nations will plunder these people, they will carry them off as captive; the hope of their future will be gone, because their children will not be raised. And I will bring shame and disgrace on these people, because they have turned away from Me.
I read a story one time about an arrogant young man who was waiting for a bus. And while he was waiting at the bus stop, he noticed the crowd behind him looking in the window of a taxidermist shop. He was intrigued why everyone was looking in this window, so he kind of peeked through the crowd, and there he saw a bird, an owl, in the window. And he looked at it; he was an arrogant fellow, so he said, "Listen, if that is the best job I could do, I would just give up; I'd find another line of work."
And everybody looked at him, because this owl was perfect; it was beautiful. He said, "Look at that owl, look at the head. The head is out of proportion to the rest of the body. Look at the pose, the pose of the body is unnatural, an owl doesn't sit like that. Look at the feet, they're pointed in the wrong direction." And just then, the owl turned around and winked at him. And he kind of slinked away, back to his bus stop. Because in his arrogance, he thought he knew more than the taxidermist.
Israel in her arrogance thought she knew more than God. She did not attribute the great financial success of her nation to the blessing of God. She turned her back on God. And the response of God to sin is always punishment. God will always judge sin. And just like He judged Israel, God will judge any nation today that does the same thing, that turns her back on God.
I think that is a great and deadly lesson. God can withhold blessing, just like he can give blessing. And if we're not tuned-in to God, if we are a living arrogance as a nation, God will, in fact, respond to our arrogance. And the response of God is always the judgment of sin.
www.backtothebible.org
Copyright �1996-2002 The Good News Broadcasting Association, Inc.
All rights reserved.