Hosea 2:5-7

Oseo chapter 2 and verses 5 through 7. For their mother have played the harlot, she that conceive them hath done shamefully, for she said, I will go after my lovers. They give me my bread and my water, my wool, and my flax, mine oil, and my drink. Therefore, behold, I will hedge up thy way with thorns, and make a wall that she shall not find her paths. She shall follow after her lovers, but she shall not overtake them. She shall seek them, but shall not find them. Then shall she say, I will go and return to my first husband. Then it was better with me than now. And God blessed to us is sacred and holy word this evening. Gomer, the wife of Josea, may have been a woman of beauty and personal charms. It doesn’t seem that she had any trouble attracting men. But her desires were shallow, and as she pursued her path of adultery, she soon discovered where that road would take her. Gomer left, Josea, first for pleasure, then for the things that were given her by her lovers in verse 5, giving us a list of it. What a pity this woman did not learn to value the faithful love of Josea above. love these material possessions. What happens to a woman who does this? Well, there’s a downhill slide that takes place. Once, one year, she will be living with a man, and maybe he’s able to take good care of her. In contemporary terms, she has a large Cadillac and a beautiful mint coat. But after her first lover has grown the last lover has grown. tired of her and she is a bit worn in age he dumps her then she’s living with a man who is able to provide her only with an old-tel bill sedan and an artificial fur coat. The year after that, maybe it’ll be a tiny compact car and a plain jacket. Eventually she will hit rock bottom and that’s what happened to Josea’s wife. She sank lower and lower in the social scale of the city of Samaria, and as we’ll see, she ends up in the slave market. Just as Gomer left the tender lover of her husband for the base love of these vile men, even so Israel has played to Harlot with regard to God. Our text needs to be considered on two levels. We have Gomer and we have Osama. but we also have Israel and Jehovah. Now the apostasy of the children of Israel has been recorded for your benefit as a New Testament believer. And certainly there is a warning here about abandoning the Lord. Let me begin by saying this. You may pervert the good gifts of God. as you pursue a course of sin, as verse five indicates to us. For their mother hath played the harlot. She that conceived them have done shamefully, for she said I will go after my lovers. They give me my bread and my water and my wool and my flax, my oil, and my drink. My oil and my drink. You give temporary things first place in your heart. She’s certainly concerned here primarily about material possessions. Evidently, Josea could not fully satisfy her on a profit’s pay, so she readily cast aside her relationship with Josea to pursue her lovers, which bestowed upon her those material things she felt would not make her happy. In the same manner, we find that Israel has enjoyed an abundance of temporal comforts, which they assumed were the blessings of the various false gods and idols that they worshipped. This was certainly base in gratitude with regard to Jehovah. People often make the same type of mistake today. Because your business prospers, you fail to consider that your soul is perishing. Because there’s enough food on the table for you and your family, you might not realize your soul is famished for lack of spiritual bread. You may put the things of time and place, this earth, material things, before the realities of eternity. It’s a terrible mistake that people make. to attach such importance to the body of clay, forget about the preciousness of the human soul. Such a folly is particularly shameful to a person who has professed to be a Christian. That person ought to know the superiority of the eternal over the temporal. so you can give temporal things first place in your heart. Now, you claim as your own what really belongs to God. Carnal hearts look upon all the things that they enjoy as their own. Notice how many times the word my is used in this section, verse 5. Gomer and Israel are both thinking, mine, mine, all mine, my bread, my water, my wool, my flax, my oil, my wine, my wine, and so forth. Israel thinks her lovers, our idols have showered her with these gifts, but now she has them. And Gomer thinks these things have come from her lovers, but they’re hers now. Yet these material blessings were not given by not Gomers or Israel’s, nor were they given by the false gods and lovers, but they were given by God himself. For the Lord expressly claims them all in verse 9, and he threatens to take them away. You’ll notice in verse 9, he says, therefore I will return and take away my corn in the time thereof and my wine in the season thereof, and will recover my wool and my flax given to come. her nakedness. So God says these things are mine. They’re not, you’re not yours. They’re mine. You can never really say, this is mine. No, it’s God’s. And you’re supposed to be using it for his glory and his honor. So you can claim as your own what really belongs to God. Third thing here is you attribute your present happiness and comforts to your sinful course. Prosperity and success, while pursuing an evil course in life, often hardens people in their sins. The church historian Yuscivius reported that Maximilian, emperor of the Roman Empire, made an edict against the Christian faith. He vilified the Christian faith. He as a detestable vanity. He attempted to confirm his followers in the worship of their idols. He said this, Behold, how the earth brings forth fruit for the husbandmen in abundance, how our meadows are adorned with flowers and herbs, and moistened with the dews of heaven. What health we have, and what quiet and peaceable lives. Thus he has! arguing because they are prosperous, he sought to confirm them in their idle worship and wicked ways. They don’t need to Christian faith. You know, maybe you’ve dealt with somebody who said something like this. Ever since I gave up religion, my business has thrived. Or my Christian profession was holding back my real success. Look at me now. I’ve climbed the corporate last. I’ve climbed the and thus you may ascribe the benefits of God to the result of your own sinful ways and do the same thing that Israel and Gomer are doing. To the unsaved, God often provides temporal goods. Because in eternity they certainly have nothing. So whatever they have, they have it in this life. it’s almost as if God is fattening them as beast for the slaughter to come. But to the Christian backslider, God provides these material benefits to test you, to show you how far you will go and despising his goodness, and to what ingratitude you would descend, to shame you, to bring you to repentance for your behavior. so you may pervert the mercies of God if you pursue a course of sin. So secondly tonight, you see this, the Lord will place adversity in your path to present you, or to prevent you from continuing in a course of sin. Now notice verse 6. Therefore, behold, I will hedge up thy way with thorns and make a wall that she shall, not find her path. God sends you here an unexpected hindrance. He puts up a hedge and hedges up your way. I think this is a very important passage of Scripture. Because God will place right in Gomer’s way, white in Israel’s way, an obstacle. And suddenly, she’s not a able to continue in our wicked ways. You know, it used to be said that farmers would keep their cattle in their fields by planting thorn hedges around the boundary line of their property, and the straying animals would get pricked, and if they attempted to leave, and therefore their path of escape was blocked. So God puts here a thornhedge of a thornhage of trouble right in the way of the ungodly, right in the way even of his people, to stop them in their sins. With the ungodly, he does so that they might learn the lesson that the way of transgressors is hard. With regard to his own people, it’s a chastening measure that he uses. This hedge may be placed in your way in a different manner. God puts his finger. God puts his on your business and suddenly it slacks off. Bad debts multiply. Bankruptcy stares you in the face. You didn’t expect this or it may be a sudden sickness falls upon you and your health disappears and you’re bound to a wear wheelchair or perhaps you are confined to a bed. You see it in the case of Jonah when in his course of disobedience he seemed to be his path seemed to be so promising at first when he struck out and was going in the opposite direction of Ninevehiva. But now all of a sudden this smooth path of sin he found a ship going to Tarshusis, got it. went down in the hole and fell asleep. Everything seemed to be going good. All of a sudden, the world loses its charms. God gives hedges in your path. We find the storm comes. We find the storm comes up and begins to change everything. God’s finger can touch you and deal with you in the most tender ways. You remember a real. when Pharaoh pursued after the Israelites. He got his army and his chariots and off he went. Then the Israelites had the Red Sea open for them by God. And they started across and the Egyptians tried to do the same thing. And they had chariots, which meant that they would probably catch up except for God brought his cloud. in between Israel and the Egyptians. And on one side it was dark for the Egyptians, but the other side had light for the Israelites, and so they were able to escape. And if that wasn’t enough, he took the wheels off the chariots of the Egyptians so that they ran it along the ground. So they couldn’t be gained the speed that they were hoping to have. and he stopped them. Look at this story of Saul. We read it tonight from 1 Samuel 19. He sent men to capture David at Niof. Well, three times he sent men and each time God’s spirit came upon him and caused him to prophesy and they didn’t get David. So finally, he says, I’ll go down and see what’s going on here. And he goes down and what does God do with him? He’s prophesying lying naked on the ground. and David, of course, is able to escape. God put a hedge up. He wouldn’t let them either Pharaoh or Saul get their way. And that’s what we see happening. Thirdly, God will send you a painful hindrance. I’ve already mentioned this, but I’ll put a little more emphasized. It’s a hedge of thorns, isn’t it? God does not hedge the sinner’s path with rhododendrums and azaleas. He doesn’t use pretty flowers. He uses thorns, prickly thorns that will tear your flesh, will cut into your soul. God’s restraints here are not soft, they’re not cushiony, but they’re sharp, they’re pointed, they’re They’re meant to check you. From God’s point of view, nothing but a thorn hedge would have arrested your course of sin. You’re so madly pursuing your present sinful path that you would have dashed through anything else. But here’s something that’ll slow you down. You may be smarting so much you wish you had never been born to go through the thornhead. Thorn is here. the thorn hedges. He may get some scars from it as well. So God will send a painful hindrance and then God will send an effectual hindrance as well. He says he’ll make a wall. How sad? Some people are so desperate that they would try to push their way through the thorn bushes. So what does God do? He has a wall built up behind that. Here you are a cut and bleeding and then you hit run into the wall and you can’t get past the wall. There’s no breaking it over which you cannot climb. You’re stopped dead in your tracks. God will not permit any further advance in that course of sin. What a terrible thing for a Christian. The backslide to such an extent that he or she would break through even a thornhedge of God, that your previous trials did not deter you from your sin. Didn’t turn you back. You set your face like Flint to pursue your sin, and God has to put a wall up. Also. There’s an ancient record of a man called Philomophalotamus, who brought his body such grievous diseases by sexual perversions and drunkenness. The fish did the physicians told him if he didn’t abstain from these activities, he would surely lose his eyesight and go blind. He immediately replied, farewell, O pleasant light. Rather than I will deny myself in this, I will never see light anymore. He would rather risk the loss of his eyesight, lose the spiritual, then lose the spiritual status, the satisfaction of his lust. Thus it is with many. Like Jonah, if you’re not repentant when the violent storm comes up, God has a great fish waiting. You know, he’s going to bring you to repentance one way or the other. When you set sail on your sinful course, at first it may be smooth sailing, but this storm comes up, and then there’s the great fish to swallow you up as well. So the Lord will place adversity in your path to prevent you from continuing in a course of sin. The third thing we see here tonight is this. You may pursue your sin despite God’s hedge, but in the end the desired effect will be accomplished. Now notice what happens with regard to Gomor and Israel, verse 7. indicates. She shall follow after her lovers, but she shall not overtake them. She shall seek them, but shall not find them. Then shall she say, I will go and return to my first husband, for then was it better with me than now. In the hardness of your heart, you may attempt to overcome God’s wall. God and Godly go up and down the wall looking for some type of hole in it, try to scramble over it and fall, perhaps. But you find that God causes you to suffer such a loss financially that you cannot find the means to sin as you used to, let’s say. God may take away from you all the pleasure and satisfaction you used to in your sin. The Roman Emperor Tiberius said he would give a mint of gold to anyone who would invent a new pleasure or restore the thrill of an old one. But it will not happen because God’s wall is too well made. The worldling knows sin will be his ruin, and yet he hugs it as if it were gold. What a sad thing that your heart can be so hard that you hunt down sin like a drag addict looking for a fix. Notice here that you will ultimately be brought to a state of remorse. While you’re charging God’s wall like an angry bull, it’s very strenuous activity and eventually you become weak and ashamed. Backslidden Christians have found this to be the case. like the prodigal son, you eventually run out of money and the pleasures of sin disappear. You’re desperate, you’re in need, you’re weary and worn, and then you begin to think about how was it before, how sweet it was to enjoy fellowship with God, how full your soul felt, and now your soul is starving. You feel the frown of God. God. You come to the end of your rope. You say to yourself, is this the way I want to spend the rest of my life? Is this the way I’m going to die? And like the prodigal your son, you say, I want to go back to my father. I want to go back to his house. I want to go where my soul is fed. Gomer and Israel were made to feel the wretchedness. of their condition to realize what they had lost. The same will be true of you if you backslide. You will confess it was much better before. The course of sin has left you empty and weary. God’s strong wall has finally brought you to the point where you have to say, I will go and return. There’s no way forward. The sad thing is, is that though Israel and Gomer were brought to a state of remorse, we don’t find them returning. They didn’t. There are professing Christians who fall away who really never had the root of the matter in them. They were never regenerated. And so they never returned. You may come to a state of remorse over your wasted life, remorse over where sin has landed you. and still never repent. What a sad case, that is. So you find in this passage, I think, a solemn warning to the people of God. Christian professors may turn out to be hypocrites. They prove to be unconverted. Watch against the very beginnings of backsliding. Take care of little sins. Watch that your heart does not become cold to the thing. of God. A few people who profess to be Christians all of a sudden end up to be open sinners. It’s step by step they drift away from God little by little. Do not forsake the preaching services of the church. Do not allow coldness to creep into your private prayer life. If that old enthusiasm for Christ has been lost, They need to pray that your first love would be restored to you. Pray for your pastor, that he may faithfully teach you the Word of God. Pray that I might be preserved from sin. Look beyond the material things of this life to the state of your eternal soul. And remember what God has said, the way of transgressors is hard. It’s hard. Let’s close with praise.