Hosea 9:1-6

Tonight I invite you to turn with me to Josea once again, chapter 9. Josea chapter 9, we’re going to look at the first six verses. Isaiah chapter 9 and the first six verses. Rejoice not, O Israel, for joy as other people, for thou hast gone a hoaring from thy God. thou is loved a reward upon every corn floor the floor and the wine-presh shall not feed them and the new wine shall fail on her they shall not dwell in the Lord’s land but Ephraim shall return to Egypt and they shall eat unclean things in Assyria they shall not offer wine offerings to the Lord neither shall they be pleased a pleasing unto him their sacrifices shall be under them as the bread of mourners all that they eat thereof shall be polluted for their bread for their soul shall not come into the house of the Lord what will ye do in the solemn day and in the day of the feast of the Lord Below they are gone because of destruction. Egypt shall gather them up. Memphis shall bury them. The pleasant places for their silver. Nettles shall possess them. Thorns shall be in their tabernacles. May God bless to us is sacred and holy word this evening. In the Netherlands, when there is a law in the conversation, people have an expression that they use. They said, well, a minister must have walked by. I suppose there might be some truth to that. For Josea sure kills all the joy of Israel’s celebration here in our text. You talk about a party trooper. The nation of Israel is enjoying a huge celebration. Everybody seems to be happy, and all of a sudden, Josea arrives with a message of gloom and doom. What a bust or kill joy. You find something in our text here about God rebuking the carnal joy of the unfaithful. Let me begin tonight by saying this. God may rebuke you for rejoicing when you were unfaithful. as we see here in verse one. Rejoice not, O Israel, rejoice as other people. For thou hast gone a hoaring from by God. Thou hast loved a reward upon every horn’s war. Exactly what Israel was celebrating, we are not told. But it was a festive time, the day of national rejoicing. like that of the Fourth of July in our own country. Perhaps the celebration was more fanatic than unusual. There is good reason to believe that a national crisis had been averted. Maybe it was a time for them to be happy. This may refer to Jerobo the second recovering the military strength of Israel and breaking the power of Syria over the country. as we read about in 2nd Kings 14. It may refer to King Pecca’s victory over the nation of Judah when he slew 120,000 valiant men in one day. Or it may refer to a peace tree that King Menaham negotiated with the king of Assyria in 2nd King’s 15. Or it may simply have been a harvest time where they had a huge harvest, and they rejoiced over all the increase. they had received. But whatever the case may be, the last thing on Israel’s mind at this time was a coming disaster. And yet, Josea demands the partying stop. Don’t be so jubilant for you have been unfa faithful to God. Israel here is an example of of those who are unfaithful to God and yet find a cause to rejoice in some kind of carnal thing of life. How many rejoice in the outward prosperity and health and strength and friends and military victory or job promotion they receive? The sad thing, however, is he may still stand guilty before God. and there is a frightening distance between you and God, which we find here. How matters stand between you and God may not seem important if you are outwardly prospering, if you are not presently being punished for your sins, the guilt and pollution of your sin may not trouble you much. Augustine once said this, the joy of the world is nothing else, but their wicked. unpunished. If God do not punish them presently, then they have a great deal of joy. God is ignored. His laws are flounted. His anger still burns against the country. You should consider whether or not God approves of your joy. God tells them here, rejoice not. God condemns the joy of those who are unfaithful to him. you know the basis of joy or sorrow must revolve around your relationship with God. And we read here that they had gone a hoaring from thy God. Of all sins, the sins of forsaking God, being unfaithful to your profession, is a great evil which indeed ought to dampen all your judgment. joy. If you have forsaken the Lord, you have little cause to rejoice, even though you may be enjoying outward prosperity and peace. God condemns the people for loving the reward of the corn floor, being full of the joy of harvest while not mourning their sins. Do you recall the story of King Ahab? who coveted the vineyard of his neighbor, Naboth, and how the king made himself sick, because Naboth wouldn’t sell him the vineyard. And then Jezebel, the wicked queen, plotted the death of Naboth, and stole his vineyard away from him and presented it to her husband. And you can see Ahab as he rushes over to inspect his newly required, acquired. possession. What the light showed his heart as he walked through it. He thinks of himself, this is now all mine, the best vineyard in the country, have the best wine for years to come. But God would not allow Ahab to rejoice for long, for who came to meet him, but the prophet Elijah. and Elijah pronounced God’s judgment upon Ahab in his house. Thou ass sold thyself to work evil in the sight of the Lord. How then could he expect his joy to last with regard to the vineyard? His heart wasn’t right with God. Jonathan Edwards used to appeal to the love of pleasure in the unconverted. He said it would be worth. worthwhile to be religious if it were only for the pleasantness of it, and that the righteous enjoy their pleasures assured of the blessing of God. And that’s an important consideration. The ungodly, however, have no such satisfaction. But indeed, on the contrary, they are afraid. He concluded that a little religion was a little religion with a clear conscience, brings more true joy than a great deal of worldly pleasure. God condemns the joy of those who are unfaithful to him. Now notice you may prosper and have little cause to rejoice. When you rejoice, you ought to be carefully considering whether or not God approves of your rejoicing. In James 4, We read, cleanse your hands, you sinners. Purify your hearts, you double-minded. Be afflicted and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy into heaviness. He says, you have no reason to rejoice. You ought to be mourning your state. The rejoicing of many people is so little in accordance with the mind of God, they ought to know better. and to think otherwise. Outward prosperity and success may in coincide with the heavy wrath of God hanging over your head. You know, Psalm 73 Asaph says I was envious at the foolish those who were in defiance of God when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. He confesses that it grieved him that those who were unfaithful to God seem to have a lot. all the breaks in life, they were prosperous, they enjoyed the good life. And he really got depressed about this until he went to the house of God, and he heard what God had to say about the whole matter. Surely thou did set them the unfaithful and slippery places. Thou castes them down into destruction. God often has a first, aim in allowing the wicked to prosper than you and I may be aware of. Remember Heyman? That Heyman was invited to Queen Esther’s banquet with the king. And he was absolutely delighted because he thought he was being specially honored because it was just the king, the queens, and Heyman. So he went away to rejoice. told his friends of the great honor bestowed upon him by the queen herself and yet Esther had a far different reason and design than Heyman imagined she was not going to honor Heyman she was going to seek his destruction so many whose prosperity and property God increases deduce the wrong thing from it they think everything is all right and they ought to rejoice when in fact God may indeed be working their ruin and their destruction but they don’t see it. This is why the Bible teaches you as a believer to rejoice with trembling. Remember that you are unworthy of all the good things you receive from God. And consider that the things you enjoy in this life may vanish in a moment. There’s uncertainty about prosperity and success when it comes to this world. So God may rebuke you for rejoicing when you’re unfaithful in him. Secondly, you may feel God’s awful wrath for your unfaithfulness in verses 2 to 6. Now in verse 2, he says, God may deny you those things you delight in the most. He says this in verse 2. The floor and the wine press shall not feed them and the new wine shall fail in her. This message may be difficult to accept, but it’s easy enough to understand, I think. It is simply that because people have forsaken God, God has forsaken them. Because God has forsaken them, and because God has forsaken them, the blessings that the heart Symbolized would soon come to an ant. They would not be able to feast anymore, and in truth, they would have a hard time feeding themselves. Their food would either be blasted by the hand of God by crop disease, or drought, or else plundered by the hand of man, like the Assyrians invading the land. The new wine which they used to celebrate would fail in Israel. Now, normally, people do not think of the blessings of life as being a direct result of God’s hand, his good gift. Many think mechanically and materially without God entering into much of their thinking. The result is, it appears that everything remains the same from the beginning of creation. as if you think, well, we will always prosper. We will always have food. But that is not true that all things continue on on change. Judgments do fill history. And beyond that, there is the final judgment to come. When you make the things of this world, you’re idle, your portion, above that which they were designed for, it’s just with God to deny you then. God does this by way of chastening and judgment. When you begin to miss those things, which you have taken for granted, it will be so that you would seek him out. I have, uh, near my desk at the house, a picture of my wife when she was a little girl. One of my favorite. pictures of her. That little blonde-haired girl with a big grin has a lot of pure devilment in her eyes. Her parents told me that she was a little terror in her youth. By the way, they told me that after I had married her. You know, they didn’t warn me. It was always something of that disposition can be seen in that picture. Her dad said absolutely nothing seemed to work to correct her. They scolded her. They took away privileges. They spanked her. They tried a variety of punishment. Eventually, however, they found the one thing that got her attention. The one thing she hated to lose and would make her listen and obey her parents. You know what that was? They took away her three musketeer bars, her candy bars. She was a chocoholic, and she hated to miss her her favorite candy. So they took it away, and she started to be hating. I wonder if that would still work. I have to see about that. In the same type of manner, God deals with people, especially those who claim to be his people, but are unfaithful. God takes away what you delight in the most, and he removes your chief source of joy. So God may deny those very things you delight in. God may drive you out of his church. As we see in verse 3, you read these words, They shall not dwell in the Lord’s land. But Ephraim shall return to Egypt. and they shall eat unclean things in Assyria. The prophet here proclaims a heavy judgment. The Lord’s going to send them into exile. They would be deprived of the Lord’s land, Canaan. God promises to disinherit them as aliens expel them. Canaan can be viewed here as a picture of the rest that the church enjoys in Hebrews 3 and 4. all those who are members of Christ’s church enjoy this special rest. The church is where God in a special way dwells, where his laws and his precepts are taught, where his worship is found, and it is the place of special watch care. To be unfaithful to God may cause you to lose the excellent privileges connected with church membership. There’s a great judgment to be cast out of the church of God. You forfeit the privileges of the church, and you don’t conform to God’s laws. And what happens when you were cast out of the church? What did Christ say? You are as a heathen and a public. Israel returns to Egypt, the place of slavery and darkness. which typifies the world and slavery to Satan. Some will go into captivity to Assyriot and eat unclean things, and there is no longer separation between them and the heathen there just like them. You remember the story of Cain and how he was driven from the presence of the Lord and became a fugitive and a vagabond forever? We cast out of church. is to be driven from the place of special presence of God, to be considered a worldly, be turned over to Satan. And you are, as a dog, returning to its filthy vomit and the sow returning to wallow in its mud and corruption. Quite a serious matter. God may drive you out of his church. God may reject all your efforts to appease him, as we see your efforts. in verse four. They shall not offer wine offerings to the Lord. Neither shall they be pleasing unto him. Their sacrifices shall be unto him as the bread of mourners. All that eat thereof shall be polluted, for their bread for their souls shall not come into the house of the Lord. God says that Israel will be. cut off from any relationship to him, even from the very means by which they could be reconciled to him, they shall not have any sacrifices to offer, not so much as a drink offering. And even if they did offer something, it would not be pleasing to God. Instead of offering sacrifices of joy and praise, they would eat the bread of my bread of mourners, those who mourn for their dead. The phrase, the bread of their souls means their sacrifice. As Melchai 1-7 says, He offer polluted bread upon an altar. Bread is taken here generally for all kinds of offerings to God, food for God. So the offerings which they sacrificed for their very life of their souls, God, God says he rejects here. Sad thing is when God rejects a person who desperately seeks him for his or her very lights. These people rejected the voice of God at his temple, turned their facts to him, turned to false gods, ignored all of God’s repeated warnings through his prophets and now when their very lives are at his stake and they would have God be favorable to them God rejects them there’s one really scary aspect to John Bunyan’s pilgrims progress it’s not his fight with Apollion it’s not even his arrest at vanity fair it’s when he was at the interpreter’s house and he was led to a very daughter dark room where a man sat in an iron cage. And this man seems very sorrowful. His eyes are downcast, his hands folded together, and he sighs as if his heart would break. And Christian asked the man, who are you? And the man says, I once appeared to be a good and successful Christian. I thought I was on the way to the celestial city and was happy. at the thought of getting there. Christian then asked, well, what are you now? And here was the scary part. Now I am a man of despair because I left off to watch and be sober and to give rain to my lust, and I sinned against the light of the word and goodness of God. I tempted the devil, and he has come to me. I have grieved the spirit, and he is gone. I am so hard in my heart that I cannot repent. The Christian was shocked and asked, but can you not now repent and return? And the man said, God hath denied me repentance. Alas, he has shut me in this cage. Oh, eternity, eternity, how shall he endure eternal punishment? The interpreter said to Christian, let this man’s misery be remembered by you and be your warning. God may reject all your efforts to appease him. God may leave you in terror, wondering what to do on the day of his wrath. Versus five and six, what will you do in the solemn day, in the day of the feast of the Lord? For lo, they are gone, of destruction. Egypt shall gather them up. Memphis shall bury them. The pleasant places for their silver. Nettles shall possess them. Thorns shall be in their tabernacles. The solemn day and the day of the feast of the Lord, I take for God’s time of wrath and vengeance upon them. The day of feasting is also a day of rejoicing in the day when God executes his wrath upon the wicked is a day of rejoicing for God. Isaiah 103 says, What will you do in the day of visitation and in the desolation which shall come from far? To whom will ye flee for help and where will ye leave your glory? Many of the Israelites shall flee to Egypt. because of the destruction of their country by the Assyrians and they might hope that they will escape. Perhaps they flatter themselves that they can return when things calm down. They shall be gathered up in Egypt to die, to be buried in Memphis. Memphis is the place of the ancient and splendid pyramids, and its graveyards are of phenomenal proportions. The Frenchman Mariette excavated in the 1850s, the burial ground there in Memphis, an extraordinary underground cemetery of the sacred Apis Bowls. It was in Memphis, the city of the dead, that many of Israel’s festival goers would end their days. The places where they formerly dwelt and kept their days. precious possessions are going to be overgrown with metals and thorns. What will you do in the day of God’s wrath? When all your comforts are gone, and God himself fights against you, when your conscience terrorizes you, and you do not know which way to turn. The day when God brings ruin upon you, what are you going to do? Try fleeing God’s wrath and He will just bury you somewhere else. else. Judas knew how it felt to endure the terrors of the Lord, and he committed suicide. Of course, the greatest fear you will face is the day of judgment when the ruin of your eternal soul is certainly sealed. Yes, sometimes God’s ministers kill the joy and become party poopers, but it’s a good thing they are. you’re given a warning here, a sober message. Too often you get caught up in the pleasures and the lights of earthly life, and God is forgotten, even forsaken. God would have you awaken to your danger. Stop the celebrating. God may rebuke you for rejoicing when you are unfaithful to him. Prosperity and success means. nothing. You need to consider whether or not God approves of your joy. Else you’ll be like Ahab. Else you’ll be like Haman, as we consider. You know, loss of those things you delight in is important at times. Expulsion from God’s church is difficult. Total rejection and utter ruin will come upon you. So the question tonight is your joy carnal or is it spiritual? Can we not rejoice in the things of the Lord? Can we not see that as the main reason we should be rejoicing? I hope so. Because that’s really the message that we should take the heart from this passage tonight. May God bless to us. He has sacred word. and benefit us from it. Let’s pray. Father, we give you thanks for your provision. Remember us in our hour of trial and need. And I pray you help us to be faithful to you and to you and rejoice most in the great things of Christ that have been granted to us. And I pray tonight, Lord, watch over your church and protect it. us, Father, from departing from you. Let’s stand for the benediction. May God’s blessing rest with his people. Grace be with all them that love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity. Amen.