Hosea 13:9-11

Hosea chapter 13, verse 9 through 11. O Israel, Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself, but in me is thy help. I will be thy king. Where is any other that may save thee in all thy cities? and thy judges of whom thou saidest give me a king and princes I gave thee a king in mine anger and took him away in my wrath God blessed to us is sacred and holy word this small this evening we’ve probably all have known someone who through drugs or through drink have destroyed themselves, ruin their health, and cost themselves their lives. Have you ever done anything you felt like doing even though you knew that it was going to harm you? Well, God here charges Israel with destroying herself, plunging headlong toward her own ruin because of her behavior. Let me begin tonight by saying this. You’re the blame for your soul’s destruction. You’ve destroyed yourself, verse 9 says. God reminds you here of your guilt in the eye of crisis. The moment things have gone pretty well for Israel under King Jerobo and the second. They had an economic boom. They had military victories. So they were doing well. But this would not continue. God has already threatened Israel with wrath as we saw in verses 7. 8. Doom. Doom lies on the horizon. Now there are those who seem to go pleasantly in their sin and they go on pleasantly in their sin for a time, even perhaps a long time. Everything seems well. And then all of a sudden, the hand of God reaches out and strikes them. sickness may lay you up. Business falters. We find that your health is taken from you. You end up in misery and pain and maybe the money that you once had and spent so freely for sinful has now disappeared. At this point, you begin to realize that something, you begin to realize that something is drastically wrong. And there is an, you acknowledge that God has not allowed you to get away with your sin. It is caught up with you. Your sinful ways have now caught up with you and you’ve now caught up with you and God’s angry and he is overtaken you with his anger and you being overwhelmed. When your calamity comes, God says, you’ve destroyed yourself. You did it yourself. See what has come because of your wickedness. You know, R.C. Sprold once commented upon his habit of smoking before coming to know, the Lord and entering into the ministry. He said he smoked cigarettes for years. He never really kept count, but he confessed the hundreds of people came up to him and told him about the dangers of smoking. Before he was ever converted to Christianity, he said he knew full well that smoking was harmful, that it was dangerous, that it was a health risk. He knew it before the surgeon general had the warning put on the cigarette packages. He called it sheer madness on his part that he continued to do it. Sin like cigarette smoking is destructive. It always harms you to continue in it. Your sheer madness. God tells you so. But sin cannot ultimately bring you happiness. Sin is destructive. How stupid then to continue to do that which is harmful your spiritual health. You have to confess that God is right. There are many people who have neglected their Christian upbringing. You know, some people are born in a Christian family and their early days were spent in Sunday school and church and you remember maybe dad reading the Bible to them and mom praying with them and so forth. And you never heard any foul language at home. No poor example was set before you. You had a good childhood with many happy memories. And yet you went astray during your young, you know, adulthood you pursued evil as eagerly as a heathed child. Like John Newton, who wrote Amazing Grace, you broke your godly mother’s heart by plunging headlong into a life of shameful living. Perhaps like him, you gained a reputation for a vile character and pure honoriness and no vice was left untried on by you. And of course, if you have any honesty left, you ought to hang your head in shame. Yes, I have destroyed myself despite the advantages I’ve had. Have you deliberately sin? Sadly, you know, it’s one thing to fall into sin. It’s another thing to contemplate to think upon it and then to pursue it after weighing it carefully you still deliberately go and do it and brings destruction what are you going to say at the judgment bar of god at the end many years ago a london newspaper reported a story about a divorce case heard in the courts of that city a wealthy young man who had gone away to war and after he married, he was married to a very attractive young woman, he was soon off to the war. So his new bride wrote of the demanding schedule she had to keep as a nurse in a nurse in a certain hospital and apologized for not writing him more often. She explained that she was spending a great deal of time with the wounded. Some once later, the man got to leave and he was coming home. And he decided just to slip into London quietly and surprise his wife. So he came to London and he went to the hospital right away, figuring she was probably there, but she wasn’t. Then she went home and she wasn’t there either. And when he asked the help, they said, well, there was a tea dance at the Ritz. Going there, he found her in the company of another man. How shocked and shamed she was at her husband’s appearing. But she had her husband’s appearing. courted sin and it led to a miserable divorce. Have you deliberately sin? Have you deserted God’s warnings or despised God’s warnings? How many times have we read in Josea God warning? About their sinfulness and what it’s going to lead to? And sadly, many, uh, not only sin, but they play games with their parents. Parents have warned them. They play games with their husband or wife to avoid detection. People sneak around the sin. God often puts a hedge in our way, a hindrance. Yet people still violate God’s laws and circumvent. they go push through the barriers that God sets up. Maybe that stern warning of your parents, you know, set, you know, you took note of it. Maybe there was a sermon that you heard that particularly convinced you of the sinfulness of your way. And yet you set all that aside. And if you could sin, after all that aside, and if you could sin, after all, those witnesses and warnings and so forth, he surely deserve to be destroyed because you’ve destroyed yourself. In his book Feminine Faces, Clovis Chapel wrote about the unique findings he had during the excavation of the Roman city of Pompeii. One was the body of a young woman who was found mummified. by the volcanic ashes of Mount Vesuvius. Her physical position told a great story, a tragic one. Her feet pointed toward the city gate, but her outstretched arms and fingers were straining for something that lay behind her. And of course, the treasure she was after, she didn’t get in time. She was grabbing for something that lay behind her. for a bag of pearls, but she got overwhelmed by the ash and in lava. She knew what would happen if she didn’t get out and fast enough. But the treasure she was after kept her there anyhow. So you are to blame for your soul’s destruction. Now you must turn to God. for help. Verse 9b through 11. You may desperately search for human help. The people of Israel, as we had said before, trusted in their kings and their princes to negotiate, and they made treaties with Egypt and Syria, the two major powers of the time. Ever God now pictures them in a moment of crisis, realizing that. that is the treaties they made are not going to help them. In their desperation, they’re going to be asking, is there anyone who can help us? Make a search through all the cities. Are there any wise men that we can use? In your eye or of need, all human help will disappear. God will take it all away from him. The Bible says, vain is the help of man. And you will find out of man. You find yourself crying out, where am I going to find help? What am I going to do? Notice that we see here that God will crush any confidence you have placed in human aid, verse 11. God will give the Israelites such kings as Shalom, Manaham, Paca, and Hoshia. will be a result of his displeasure. He states it here, interestingly enough. They were all evil kings. All we have is assassination and conspiracy and bloodshed. They weren’t beneficial kings for the people. God would be angry. He gave such kings to Israel in his anger. And he took them away, he says, in his wrath. So neither the giving or the taking were beneficial to Israel at all. Those very things on which you hang your hopes, God may snatch away from you in your ire of crisis. So God will crush any confidence you’ve placed in human aid. God will offer to help you when you recognize your need. of him verses 9 and 10 is only when you’ve come to realize that you’ve destroyed yourself that God says here but in me is my help yes you have destroyed yourself but I can help you what is the use of a Savior when you do not see your need to be saved when you’re still commenting non-human aid to solve your problems. The point is that Jesus Christ came to seek and to say that which is lost. Those who are desperately floundering and they know it. It is not those who deem themselves in fine shape which God is ready to help. There can be no healing when there’s not a recognition. of the disease. I’ve destroyed myself. And God says, well, yes, you have. You recognize it that I can help. So even when you feel you have destroyed yourself, God holds out hope here and he can help you can help you. Scripture says, call upon me in the day of trouble and I will deliver thee. So God requires you to reach out to him. Cast yourself upon his mercy. Your only remedy is found in God. That’s what he tells us here. The King James of verse 10 has, I will be thy king. Now you’ve trusted in your king, trust in me, I’ll be your king. And that is what we must do. If you expect God to help you, you’re going to have to submit to his authority. You’re going to have to come under his reign. You’re going to have to be willing to obey him. And that’s what he requires of us. You can’t expect for God to help you when you’re still stubborn and rebellious. It demands you to accept him as your king and submit to him. So you must turn to God for help. Two things here, we see. You see that the pursuit of sin results in self-destruction. This is the message of the text. Sin may bring a few moments of pleasure, but ultimately it leads to misery and destruction. The pursuit of sin is like smoking. Eventually, it kills you. And that’s what happens in this life, too. You will hang your head in shame and confess, yes, my sins have destroyed me. They have been my undoing. The second thing we see. How you may know when God gives something in anger and not in love, like you gave something in anger and not in love. Like you gave these things. kings. When you desire a gift and not the giver himself, God often will send it to you in anger. You remember how the Israelites in the wilderness needed, you know, they said they had to have some meat to eat. Well, God gave him meat to eat, but he did so in anger and it struck him with a plague when they ate it. When your desires are immodular, and demanding when you are covetous and unrelenting in your pursuit of that what you want. God gives you things in anger. When God grants your desires, it takes away the comfort and the satisfaction of that desire, he’s perceived from him. That is a sign that he’s given to you in anger. When what you desire is surely satisfy your own lust, then obviously as selfish, and God will give you things in anger and not in mercy. When you trust the means you are used to obtain your desire, but do not seek God’s face in prayer. it’s selfish. When you obtain your desires through sinful means that are unlawful or selfish, it is because God is giving you to it to you and anger. So let us keep these things in mind as we look at this text tonight. There’s a lot of things that we do that are foolish. God says it’s going to destroy you. continue along this path. Let’s close with prayer. Heavenly Father, we bow before you tonight. We are thankful for the warnings you give us in Scripture. May we take them to heart. And I pray, Lord, that you would be gracious to us as your people. I especially pray that you would be with us to heed your warnings to be. not destroy ourselves by our sinfulness. We pray, Lord, that you’d help us to help others in this regard as well. And we ask these things in Jesus’ name. Amen. Let’s stand for the benediction of mine. Grace be with all them that love our Lord Jesus Christ and sincere.