Hosea 8:1-6 Set the trumpet to your lips! One like a vulture is over the house of the LORD, because they have transgressed my covenant and rebelled against my law. 2 To me they cry, My God, we- Israel- know you. 3 Israel has spurned the good; the enemy shall pursue him.
4 They made kings, but not through me. They set up princes, but I knew it not. With their silver and gold they made idols for their own destruction. 5 I have spurned your calf, O Samaria. My anger burns against them. How long will they be incapable of innocence? 6 For it is from Israel; a craftsman made it; it is not God. The calf of Samaria shall be broken to pieces.
INTRODUCTION
As some of you know, last year I was on a mission trip to southeast Asia. On our way home, our first stop-over was in Kolkata, India. Half of the passengers got off in Kolkata and another group got on. The rest of us never left our seats. While we were taxing to the runway the plane suddenly stopped, the doors were opened, the emergency, inflatable slides were deployed, and the flight attendant began shouting “evacuate, evacuate.” Having already begun to doze off with my headphones in, it took me a minute to recognize the panic in the announcement and the chaos that had ensued all around me. At that point, as you can imagine, my mind quickly cleared up and I joined the rest of the passengers in fleeing the plane.
Even though I did not yet know the reason for the alarm (we found out later that the plane—the one we’d just flown in on—had caught on fire), it never occurred to me to ignore the warning or to respond to it casually. I could tell by the flight attendant’s panicked voice that the only reasonable reaction was swift action.
And so it should have been for Hosea’s audience. In 8:1 Hosea called the Israelites to “set the trumpet to your lips!” (5:8). Israel was in danger and this was a call to sound an alarm warning them of it. (In reality all of Hosea’s prophecies were one collective alarm.) The proper response for Israel should have been to take immediate and decisive action; to take the warning siren of God seriously; to, without hesitation, turn from the dangerous things they had engaged in back to God.
In chapter 8, Hosea did not merely warn the Israelites of the presence of danger (like a warning siren today), he named it and its result. That is, he even went so far as to name four specific dangers that the Israelites had wandered into and the specific, dire consequences of continuing in those things.
And yet, as we’ve seen over and over, Israel did not respond appropriately. Instead, she acted as if Hosea’s alarm was a test or a lie or an exaggeration. She continued on as if there was no real danger and, therefore, eventually faced the consequences Hosea promised.
This passage is another gift to you and me (and all God’s people) in that it allows us to see the folly of Israel’s (lack of a) response along with its devastating consequences. In this passage we get to see what will happen if we too ignore God’s call to acknowledge Him as God. And in this passage we learn how we can rightly respond to the alarm that’s still going off. That is, we’ll consider the four separate calls for alarm from chapter 8 (two this week and two next), along with the promised consequences for failing to heed the alarm, as a means of honoring God and avoiding Israel’s fate.
Grace, mankind remains in the same precarious position that Hosea warned the Israelites of. But God still offers the same gracious escape route that Hosea told the Israelites of—hope in Him. Let’s pray, therefore, that we would all hear the alarm, recognize its seriousness, and respond to it as God calls us to through Jesus Christ, our LORD.
SOUND THE ALARM BECAUSE ISRAEL BROKE THE COVENANT (1-3)
The first reasons (stated in this passage) for Hosea’s charge to Israel to sound the alarm were that Israel had: broken (“transgressed”) the covenant with God (“rebelled against [his] law”) (1), falsely claimed to know God (2), and forsaken (spurned) that which is good (3). Let me say a quick word about each of these.
I’ve covered the nature of God’s covenants with Israel in previous sermons so I won’t belabor that today, but the upshot is that God always deals with His people through a covenant. The essence of His covenant with Israel was that God had graciously invited Israel into a relationship with Him in which God would benevolently rule over her, and she would gladly come under his rule in faithful, exclusive obedience (He would be Israel’s God and she would be His people). As long as Israel kept the terms of the covenant she would only know God’s protection, blessing, preservation, goodness, and love. If she forsook (or transgressed) the terms, however, she would only know God’s judgment and wrath.
Israel agreed to God’s terms and initially kept them. Soon, however, she went her own way, chased after other gods and peoples, and therefore incurred the jealousy of God we find in Hosea. Hosea charged Israel to sound the alarm because she had broken God’s covenant with her.
Next, Israel was in danger because despite having forsaken God as her God, Israel continued to claim to know God. But that’s not how it works. You don’t quit working for a company and then keep your parking spot. You don’t end a friendship and continue to use her employee discount. And you don’t break the terms of your relationship with God and still claim to know Him. “To me they cry, My God, we- Israel- know you” (2). Though Israel continued to make that claim, one of God’s main charges against Israel in Hosea was that she did not know Him (2:8, 13; 4:1, 6; 5:3, 4; 6:6; 8:2, 14; 11:3; 13:6); that she has forgotten Him.
And, as we see in a startlingly increasing measure today, Israel was in grave danger because she continually sought to redefine “good.” “Israel has spurned the good” (3). God alone is Creator of the universe. Things are good (and beautiful and true) only insofar as they correspond to God’s nature and design. We have no authority to call something by a name other than that which God has given it. God alone has the power to name and define and assign purpose. Against God’s clear instructions, Israel had forgotten this (as so many of us have today) and attempted to rename her own wisdom, her own rules, her own standards, and her own relationships as “good”. Having spurned the good, all that was left was evil, and that’s a dangerous place to be.
Because of these three things and the danger they placed Israel in, Hosea commanded them to sound the alarm. Though God’s wrath was kindled by Israel’s disobedience, he nevertheless gave them another chance and another and another. Thus, here, He issued another warning to Israel in order that she might repent.
Because she refused to listen, however, God sent a vulture/eagle (the Assyrians) to hover over Israel as a means of enacting his judgment (1). We’re not sure which bird Hosea referred to, but both are ominous. If Hosea spoke of a vulture (a scavenger bird), that meant the Assyrians were waiting to eat Israel’s already dead body. And if Hosea had an eagle in mind (a bird of prey), it meant that Assyria would hunt, kill, and then eat her. Either bird represented Israel’s imminent death and devouring. At God’s design, Israel’s enemy would pursue her and then feast on her flesh because she failed to rightly respond to God’s warning through Hosea (3).
And so it is for you and I today, people of God. If you have ears to hear, you will hear the still-ringing alarm. We will be faithful participants of the New Covenant in Jesus, know God through Jesus, and love, in the power of Jesus, what is good, or we too will be devoured. There is no middle ground. All people are either covenant keepers or breakers. All people are either friends and children of God (by faith), or enemies of God and children of the devil. All people are either walking by faith in light and life or by sin in darkness and death.
Hear the alarm, Grace, and run to Jesus where you will find forgiveness and help and healing.
SOUND THE ALARM BECAUSE ISRAEL ASSUMED LEADERSHIP AND WORSHIP (4-6)
And that leads us to the second section, and the next explanation for Hosea’s alarm (4-6). He called Israel to put their lips to the trumpet in this passage because Israel had sinfully and repeatedly ignored God’s exclusive right to establish rule (4) and worship (4, 6) in Israel and taken them upon herself.
In the beginning of v.4 we read, “They made kings, but not through me. They set up princes, but I knew it not.” As we saw last week this was going on in truly astounding ways at the time of Hosea’s prophecy. King after king came to the throne by sinfully assassinating his predecessor. In Hosea’s day, there was almost no thought to how God meant kings to come to and use power; only about how to gain political advantage.
This placed Israel at odds with God and, therefore, in great danger. But it was even worse than that. In addition to Israel’s immediate political sins, Hosea most certainly had the root of this royal treachery in mind. Back in Deuteronomy 17(:14-20) God had promised Israel to provide her a human king to rule under God (who will always be the One True King). In 1 Samuel 8, however, Israel demanded a king on her terms and for her purposes (to be like their pagan neighbors). In response to this…
1 Samuel 8:7-9 … the LORD said to Samuel, “Obey the voice of the people in all that they say to you, for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them. 8 According to all the deeds that they have done, from the day I brought them up out of Egypt even to this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are also doing to you. 9 Now then, obey their voice; only you shall solemnly warn them and show them the ways of the king who shall reign over them.”
What did God mean when he said “show them the ways of the king who shall reign over them? In the following verses Samuel described the type of oppressive rule that the kings of Israel would inflict upon their people (the kind that the people of Hosea’s day were experiencing in maturity). Samuel also declared (1 Samuel 8:18), “And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves, but the LORD will not answer you in that day.” Again, Hosea prophesied at a time when Samuel’s prophecy was fulfilled.
Many years earlier the Israelites planted sinful seeds that bore sinful fruit in Hosea’s day and Hosea loudly warned the Israelites of the dangers of continuing to eat of the fruit.
Hosea’s alarm was sounding because Israel had tried to usurp God’s right to dictate her leadership and also her worship. We see this in the rest of v.4-6, “With their silver and gold they made idols for their own destruction. 5 I have spurned your calf, O Samaria. My anger burns against them. How long will they be incapable of innocence? 6 For it is from Israel; a craftsman made it; it is not God. The calf of Samaria shall be broken to pieces.”
False worship was the most serious and, therefore, dangerous offence of all. And yet, once again, in speaking these words, Hosea’s thoughts certainly went back to the seed of this treachery.
Exodus 32:1-4 When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered themselves together to Aaron and said to him, “Up, make us gods who shall go before us. As for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.” 2 So Aaron said to them, “Take off the rings of gold that are in the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.” 3 So all the people took off the rings of gold that were in their ears and brought them to Aaron. 4 And he received the gold from their hand and fashioned it with a graving tool and made a golden calf. And they said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!”
When Moses did come down from the mountain, he saw the golden calf and was incensed. He “took the calf that they had made and burned it with fire and ground it to powder and scattered it on the water and made the people of Israel drink it” (Exodus 32:20).
But rather than learn their lesson, a number of years later, in 1 Kings 12(:28-32) we read,
1 Kings 12:28-29 So the king [Jeroboam] took counsel and made [not one, but] two calves of gold. And he said to the people, “You have gone up to Jerusalem long enough. Behold your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.” 29 And he set one in Bethel, and the other he put in Dan.
Jeroboam’s rebellion and sinful actions were the cause of the division of Israel into the Northern (Israel, Ephraim, Samaria) and Southern Kingdoms (Judah, Jerusalem). He made not one, but two, golden calves for Israel to worship. It was these calves that still resided in Israel (Samaria, Israel’s capital) at Hosea’s time. And it was these calves, forged from gold by man, that God spurned and promised to break into pieces.
Again, the Israelites at the time of Hosea were feasting on the sinful fruit planted by their forefathers many years earlier.
What was the result of all of this? What would happen if Israel refused to hear and heed the warning trumpets? Because these things were an abomination to God, Hosea promised they would lead to her destruction (4), God’s burning anger toward her (5), and God’s exasperation with her (5).
And once again, Grace, it remains so for us today. We too are constantly planting seeds that will bear fruit (both in our own lives and in the generations to come). We will either plant righteous seeds to the glory of God or we will plant seeds of rebellion to the satisfaction of our flesh.
In this way, then, we must learn from the Israelites and decide whether our ultimate allegiance and affection belong to God or anything else. If they belong to God because of new life in Jesus, we will eat the fruit of God’s blessing and pleasure.
But if we set up for ourselves kings other than God (what rules you?) or our affection on things other than God (where is your joy?), we will eat the same fruit as the Israelites did, the fruit of treasonists and traitors; that is, we will eat the just fruit God’s anger, exasperation, and ultimately, destruction.
Our only hope is Jesus, but in Him is certain hope. Hear the warning trumpets and look to Jesus. Turn to Him. Hope in Him. Walk with Him. And know the everlasting love and life of God.
CONCLUSION
I know all of this sounds harsh—and it is. But you and I need to realize that this is the tone of the entire bible. This isn’t merely OT talk. Christians must learn to think in these terms.
Galatians 5:19-21 Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, 20 idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, 21 envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.
Matthew 18:7-9 “Woe to the world for temptations to sin! For it is necessary that temptations come, but woe to the one by whom the temptation comes! 8 And if your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life crippled or lame than with two hands or two feet to be thrown into the eternal fire. 9 And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into the hell of fire.
James 5:1-6 Come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you. 2 Your riches have rotted and your garments are moth-eaten. 3 Your gold and silver have corroded, and their corrosion will be evidence against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure in the last days. 4 Behold, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, are crying out against you, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. 5 You have lived on the earth in luxury and in self-indulgence. You have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter. 6 You have condemned; you have murdered the righteous person. He does not resist you.
There is more to the story than this because of Jesus Christ, but there is never less. Why is this so hard to swallow? Why do we, like the Israelites in Hosea’s day, plug our ears to this kind of language? Why do we go on living as if the sirens weren’t blaring and as if God hadn’t provided us with a way out?
Miranda sent me an article earlier this week that I believe captures it well.
What we consider hardship is a computer whose Internet speed drops below 25 megabytes a second.
This makes for a very superficial kind of people who have little relationship to the threats of life, and especially the ones that were just common in other generations.
Then you add to that the ever-present entertainment industry on your phone, or your iPad, or your TV, or your computer, or the movie theater, which everybody takes for granted.
Everybody talks incessantly. Most of the talking is clever. It’s repartee. It’s banter. All of these together produce a life that results in a superficial, trivial, clever Christian banter, shaped for the Twittersphere and crafted for spreading on Facebook.
It’s almost impossible to shift from a posture of levity to a posture that takes hell seriously and sheds tears over someone’s lostness.
“The pendulum has swung so far in one direction that we are far more adept at humor than tears.”
It’s almost impossible to walk into a worship service and suddenly switch off a whole lifestyle of silliness and try to become a reverent person before an all-holy God, when everything else in life has been training us to be glib, trite, and superficial.
In other words, most of us live entirely in a world in which everything is flippant and shallow. And so when we encounter passages like this one we tend to either shield ourselves from it (not really allowing ourselves to take it in for fear of what it would mean for us) or we rework it to fit into our flippant and shallow worlds (convincing ourselves that the cross cancels out the need for any real seriousness).
The gospel of Jesus Christ demands something different, however, it demands that we take these passages seriously, but that we do so in the knowledge that Jesus lived them on our behalf, died to atone for our failures, and rose from the dead to empower us to walk in true obedience.
The gospel doesn’t bypass the need for us to be serious and walk in holiness; it is the good news that we can be forgiven for failing to do so and that God has provided the necessary power to do so now in joy. Let us hear Hosea’s alarm and then look to Jesus. And with our eyes fixed on Jesus, let us walk in serious and holy joy and call others to join us in it.