A young man inherited some money last month and he was thinking about what to do with it. He looked out at the combines that were reaping the harvest this year. He decided he wanted to experience some of that joy, so he bought a piece of farm land that had lain barren for a few years. He did not know anything at all about farming, so he approached his new farmer neighbor, “Hey, I would like to be a part of the harvest this year. I would like to plant some corn this week and get in on the joy you are experiencing by the end of the month. How do I do that?” the seasoned farmer scratched his head, “Son, I am sorry, but I cannot help you with that.” Disappointed, the young man at his neighbor and said, “I thought people out here in the country were people who were willing to help their neighbor. Why would you refuse to help me?” The farmer, again, shook his head and said, “Son, I am sorry. I cannot help you with that. It is not that I do not care for you. It is not that you cannot sow seed this year. It is that you cannot sow seed and expect a harvest.” The young man said, “What do you mean I can’t sow seed. It is a free country. I bought this land. I should be able to do anything I want with my own land.” The farmer said, “Son, again you misunderstand me. When I told you you could not, it did not mean it was illegal for you to sow the seed and expect a harvest. I meant you cannot plant now, in October, and expect a harvest this year. There is a season for sowing. There is a season for reaping[1] and it is too late to begin sowing now. The season for planting has past. You missed it this year and there is nothing anyone can do that will ever change that.”
In Scripture, God introduces the word picture of sowing and reaping to describe His relationship with us. In Galatians 6, God instructs us in two different kinds of seed we might sow throughout our life which produce two different kinds of harvest that we might experience in our life. God teaches us each person sows seeds every moment of every day. Everyday you and I are sowing seeds that will one day sprout and produce some fruit in our life. We will experience a season of reaping. For some that harvest will be incredibly joyful; for others that harvest will be incredibly jarring. The kind of seed we sow determines the kind of harvest we will realize. God urges us not to be deceived by the seed marked, “Flesh”. God desires that each one of us receives the upside of the harvest rather than experience the downside. He tells us, through the Apostle Paul’s letter,
7 Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap. 8 For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life. 9 And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up. 10 So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith.
We cannot play God and we cannot toy with Him as though He can manipulated. We are not to be deceived as to who God is. God will not be mocked; He is holy. Let us not grow weary in doing good, for in due season we will reap if we do not grow weary, if we do not get tired, if we do not quit.
In Hosea 8, God warns the people that they are on the downside of the harvest,
7 For they sow the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.
If they sow in a little bit of wind, they will reap a tornado of destruction. They are sowing seeds of sin and selfishness and there is a harvest of destruction that is coming upon them.
God had told them over and over that they needed to repent and throw off the seed bag they had slung over their shoulder filled with seeds of sexual immorality, deceit, violence, idolatry, and false worship. Their seed bag was filled with this kind of seed and they had sowing, sowing, sowing. He told them it was not a matter of a few, little changes in how they are sowing and doing it with more of a flip of the wrist as they sow. This is a radical change that needed to happen. They needed to take off the seed bag they had been carrying in their life and throw it out and pick up the seed bag He was offering, a seed bag with seeds of life and seeds of His Spirit that will reap for them a harvest of righteousness, love, truth, and joy. This people did not need a tune-up or some minor adjustments. They needed a radical transformation.
Satan loves to convince us there is always time for us to seeds of God’s Spirit and righteousness sometime later in our life; that it is find to continue to carry the seed bag of the flesh, of selfishness, and sin for a little while longer. Satan whispers, “No worries. You will stop sowing seeds of your flesh soon enough. You know there will be a time for it, but there is no hurry in changing the bag of seed slung over your shoulder.” That is a lie from the pit of Hell. Little do we realize the season for sowing passes so quickly we do not recognize it until it is too late. That is what happened to Israel as Hosea 9 opens.
Hosea 9 discloses God’s punishment upon sin in the most forceful, freighting terms. Yet, even here God opens the door to His mercy to them in this amazing offer in Hosea 10,
12 Sow for yourselves righteousness; reap steadfast love; break up your fallow ground, for it is the time to seek the Lord, that he may come and rain righteousness upon you.
There is still time for Israel and the door is still open. God amazingly and miraculously keeps the door open for a little while longer. And, they need to break their hard heart, their fallow ground, to pieces through humbling themselves before Him. This is the last moment for them.
What a striking word of grace this is. After proclaiming such strong words of certain judgment upon His people, God still offers a door, a brief fleeting door, remaining open to His forgiveness, His life, and His joy. In short, God is saying to His people, “I know it is late October and I know all through the spring and summer months you had been sowing seeds of false worship, seeds of impurity, seeds of transgression and rebellion, and seeds of disobedience. Those seeds will reap a harvest of horror and heartache, but I am a God of mercy and I am willing to suspend My Law of sowing and reaping on this occasion. You can plant in October and still reap a harvest of righteousness this year. I am giving you an opportunity.” That is a word of love and an amazing, miraculous offer.
As we study this text together, we will be hit square in the jaw with God’s righteous wrath against our sin, but in the midst of these hard truths, keep in mind the God who is angry is also infinitely merciful and loving. If we reap a harvest of death, no one is to blame but our self. God moves Heaven and earth to see that a harvest of righteousness and joy is within reach for us. What are we sowing? What are we reaping?
With the text in mind, of Hosea 9 & 10, we consider, first, deeply God’s wrath and God’s judgment. There are three actions of God we will observe in these two chapters, and we can observe so much more than what we will, but we will content ourselves with these three actions.
Action Number One: God remembers our sin when He judges us. God is not a God whose memory fades as time passes. There are no statutes of limitation to the crimes we commit against Him. In Hosea 8, from a previous study, we read,
13 As for my sacrificial offerings, they sacrifice meat and eat it, but the Lord does not accept them. Now he will remember their iniquity and punish their sins; they shall return to Egypt. 14 For Israel has forgotten his Maker and built palaces, and Judah has multiplied fortified cities; so I will send a fire upon his cities,and it shall devour her strongholds.
Israel is continuing to go through the external motions of worship, love for God, and the desire to praise Him. Israel will seek safety in Egypt and they will hope Egypt will keep them free from the conquering army of the Assyrians. Israel should have know God is their strength and her protector. Instead, she is going down to Egypt to shore up her armies and her fortresses. This will not work.
A clear warning from God regarding His coming judgment could not have been spoken, yet how did the people respond? They acted as though God is not really serious when He spoke these words. They believed God was speaking empty threats and that He is angry only for a short time and it will pass. He will change and He will speak words of loving kindness to them. They continue to have parties and to celebrate their own rebellious choices. They wore t-shirts that read: “Life is Good” with a big smiley face on it.
God still gave His sinful people a bountiful harvest this particular year in a physical way. He allowed grain and grapes to grow that year, even the year when He is speaking these words of judgment. He does not send a draught and He allowed the harvest to be bountiful. They thought, “If we are prosperous, if our crops are coming in, if we are reaping this great harvest we are, and if we have peace right now and there is not a conquering army, that must mean God is pleased. Life is good. Let’s have fun!”
I came across a couple of modern-day mottos that Ancient Israel also believed.
These were big in Israel that day.
Israel thought, “We do not have to worry about God’s warnings. He has been saying this will happen as a result of our sing, but let’s just keep calm. Life is good! Right now the harvest is still plentiful. We are bringing in grapes and grain. We are not broke. Let’s keep calm, not because God is pleased, but because life is good. As long as we treat one another nicely that is all that really matters. There is prosperity and there is peace. Let’s stand apart by breaking the rules. Life is more fun that way. Let’s ignore our head and our thinking about what God is saying about Himself, about His will, or what is going to happen. Let’s just follow our heart and do what our heart tells us is right and what makes us feel right.”
That is the reason why, when Chapter 9 opens up, this is what God says to them, “Rejoice not, O Israel. Stop celebrating. This is not the time to rejoice. Exult not like the peoples because you played the whore, you have been unfaithful to me, and you have forsaken Me.”
We need to keep in mind, as we consider Hosea 9:1, God is the God of Joy. It is striking that the God who is the God of Joy is the God who says, “Stop rejoicing!” God loves for people to rejoice, in fact, He commands us to rejoice over and over and over again in His Word,
Psalm 32:11 Be glad in the Lord, and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for joy, all you upright in heart!
Psalm 70:4 May all who seek you rejoice and be glad in you! May those who love your salvation say evermore, “God is great!”
Psalm 97:12 Rejoice in the Lord, O you righteous, and give thanks to his holy name!
Philippians 4:4 Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice.
Does this seem like a God who sits up in Heaven with a frown on His face, looking for someone to smack who has a smile on their face? No, He commands us to be glad. He commands us not to keep it in and we are to dance and sing. This is God speaking to us.
In Hosea, God’s people are finding their joy outside of God and they are mixing their worship of God with the worship of idols and they were having a lot of fun doing it. There were Temple prostitutes involved. There were surely some great songs and a great band playing. There was dancing and all kinds of activities they took great pleasure in in their worship. They would say, “We are worshipping God,” because they did not just discard Scripture, they held onto them. They probably had Scripture readings in these worship settings. But, they mixed their worship of God with their worship of false idols so God said, “Stop rejoicing and rejoice not!”
What would cause a God who is the Author of joy to command His people to rejoice not? It is His coming judgment, “It is time to humble yourself before the Lord, to weep over your sin, to be broken, and to seek God’s face.”
In Leviticus 23, God His people a joyful feast called the “Feast of Tabernacles”. It happened during harvest. As they were bringing in the harvest they were to have this great feast to celebrate God’s provision and protection all the way back to the time He led them out of bondage in Egypt to the present day. It was a time of joy and dancing and feasting; it was a time of great fun. And, the people in Verse 1 of our text, in Hosea’s day, were likely celebrating this Feast of Tabernacle, but, again, it was twisted. It was not in accordance with the worship of God. It was in accordance with the worship of their own pleasures.
It was very much like our Christmas today. The people still celebrated the religious holiday, but they did so in a way that offended God rather then pleasing Him. They stripped the holiday of its real meaning and they had pushed God into the corners of the edges of their life rather than in the center. They still pursued these great, incredible religious festivals, but they did not pursue a relationship with God and God said, “Stop it! Do not open up Christmas presents to celebrate the birth of My Son if you are not pursuing a right relationship with Me. Do not do it. Stop it! Rejoice not.”
The principle we learn from this is the empty religious ceremony sickens God. We nauseate God when He sees us engaged in external forms of worship without wholehearted love for Him.
God is the God who ordains this festival in the first place. He is the Author of Fun. He is the One who started this celebration of dancing and joy. He is the Author of the Good Life, but it is a good life which is always connected to Him,
Psalm 16:11 You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.
God made us a way to connect to our pleasure in Him and that way is through Jesus. Jesus suffered God’s righteous judgment on the cross so that He would bring us to God. Peter writes this in reference to God’s provision for us to have joy and these pleasures forevermore, in 1 Peter 3,
18 For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit…
Why did Christ die on the cross? It was in order to bring us to God, we who are alienated and cut off from Him as a result of our sin and who have the wrath of God remaining upon our life. Christ died so that He could bring us to God in a right relationship. That is amazing and we never get over that.
What makes life good for you? You say, “Life is good,” why is that? Some say it is because of some of their hobbies, relationships, parties, pursuits, or possessions. I found another image I believe expresses the Gospel,
This is why life is good for us, because God sent His Son and when we kneel before His Son we receive all the blessings His Son brought when He came to earth.
The people in Hosea’s day choose to reject God as the Giver of Life and ignore His warnings. Today, still, we are very much like them in that the idea of God being a God of judgment continues to be called into question. That is why a book such as Hosea is so important for us. Yes, it is jarring and jolting and difficult and hard and heavy and weighty, but God teaches us so much of His own perfection through a book such as Hosea. He teaches us of His righteousness and justice and His anger. These are all perfections of who God is. They are perfections that motivate us to hold Him in awe. They are perfections that motivate to worship Him and to stand in wonder of Him. But, there is a caution here to us and it is a caution this people had fallen into as they pursued God and forgotten God: we must not twist God and fashion Him into our image.
God is not a piece of clay we can shape to suit our own desires. If we tear off parts of God that trouble us we are choosing to worship another god other than the God who really is. If we have trouble with the description God has given to us of Himself and His Word through Jesus and the Apostles, the trouble is with us. It is a trouble with the imperfections within us. It is not with the imperfections with God for God is perfect in every way. What kind of god and which god will we worship?
We see God’s wrath on display in our text,
2 Threshing floor and wine vat shall not feed them, and the new wine shall fail them.
Next year there will not be a harvest. There will be a draught and famine. In the future God will keep His hand from blessing the land to bear fruit,
3 They shall not remain in the land of the Lord, but Ephraim shall return to Egypt, and they shall eat unclean food in Assyria.
They will go to Egypt for protection, but ultimately they will be carted off to Assyria and they will not be able to hold the festivals because all the food will be unclean in Assyria. The Assyrians will not let them engage in the religious celebrations of worship,
5 What will you do on the day of the appointed festival, and on the day of the feast of the Lord?
The time will come to celebrate the feast, but they will not be able to because there is no place and no clean food and there are none of the externals that will be present in order for them to celebrate. What will they do that day? God is telling them He will not put an end to their religious hypocrisy and He will not be mocked,
6 For behold, they are going away from destruction; but Egypt shall gather them; Memphis shall bury them. Nettles shall possess their precious things of silver; thorns shall be in their tents.
They will attempt to find a place of safety in Egypt, but Egypt will gather them up and put them in Memphis, a city about twelve miles south of Cairo. When they get to Memphis, they will be in a ghetto. They will pay money to Egypt to protect them, but they will put them in this ghetto and they will not be able to worship and serve God there. Furthermore, after being carted off the Egypt they will be carted off to Assyria and their silver and possessions will be taken by others and blown over in the sand and the vineyards in the desert will become fields of thorns. Do you get a sense of the picture of the future if they do not change?
7 The days of punishment have come; the days of recompense have come; Israel shall know it.
Right now Israel is self-deceived and they believe these days will never come, but they will know it. But, what was the attitude of this warning they had that God gave to them through the Prophet Hosea?
7b The prophet is a fool; the man of the spirit is mad…
They are going to laugh at Hosea and ridicule him and hold him in derision, “You are a crazy, wild, insane person. You are not worth listening to?” Why did they reject God’s Word through His prophet? It was because of their great iniquity and great hatred. When people forget God and habitually live in sin they stop wanting to listen to God’s Word. God’s voice becomes perturbing rather than pleasing.
The application is this: our sin will keep us from listening to God’s voice so that this Book becomes a worthless Book full of lies, errors, and myths to be discarded. That is what they thought about the Prophet Hosea when he was in front of them, “He is a mad man.”
The main reason we do not read our Bible and obey it is not for a lack of time, but the main reason we do not read our Bible and obey it is because we have forgotten God and we are unfaithful to Him. If we remember God and we are faithful to Him this Book becomes the most precious gift God has given to us. It is His voice that connects us to Him.
God is not rebuking the Assyrians who rejected the Lord altogether. He is rebuking His own people, a people who say they know Him, who celebrate Him, who worship Him, yet when God’s Word comes to His prophet they treat God’s Word as a light and inconsequential thing to be discarded and held in distain. God’s Word ceases to carry the weight of final authority and when God’s Word ceases to be the final authority in our life we have a thousand reasons why we can set it aside and reject it and why it does not apply.
How much weight does God’s Word carry in our life? Do we find our self saying, like the Israelites in Hosea’s day, “I know what God’s Word says to me, but it is not really practical. It is not possible for me right now in my situation. I know this is what God says I right and I know this is the way I am living. I know this is what God says is wrong and this is what I am doing, but it is really not possible for me to live pleasing to the Lord according to Scripture. Surely, there are some exceptions and clauses somewhere and I believe I am a part of those exceptions.”
The Word of God is clear, but somehow in their deceived and twisted way of thinking they gave themselves a pass because they stopped considering God’s Word is the final authority and the last Word on every subject. When we excuse our self from listening and obeying God’s Word we place our self in the path of God’s wrath,
9 They have deeply corrupted themselves as in the days of Gibeah: he will remember their iniquity; he will punish their sins.
Hosea is writing about a horrific crime, a gang rape, that takes place in Judges 19 and 20. It is one of the most horrifying stores ever written in the Bible and it happened in Gibeah. It is interesting Hosea is writing about this now because it happened three hundred years earlier and as he writes about it, we can still sense God is angry about this. God remembers our sin. God does not forget.
People consider the sins they are now committing are sins that will likely fade from God’s memory and all will be well, “Let a week pass, or a month pass, or surely a year to pass,” but God is not an old man upstairs who is feeble and failing. He is the Almighty, All-knowing, All-seeing, All-righteous, All-remembering God.
Our anger often does subside with time. God’s anger never does. It is always righteous. It is always permanent. God is just as angry with our sin today as when we committed it. If God’s righteous judgment has not yet fallen upon us, it is not because the statute of limitations has run out or because God has softened. Because God is eternal and omniscient our sin is as present before Him today as it was the day we committed it. God remembers our sin when He judges us.
Action Number Two: God recognizes a divided heart when He judges us,
10:1 Israel is a luxuriant vine that yields its fruit. The more his fruit increased, the more altars he built; as his country improved, he improved his pillars. 2 Their heart is false; now they must bear their guilt.
Sadly, the more God blessed them with material prosperity the more they dishonored Him. Other translations for the word “false”, in Verse 2, are: fickle, devious, divided.[2] God is not fooled by the externals. He is looking right at the heart and He always knows the condition of the heart. We do not know the condition of our own heart and if we were to ask the Israelites, “How is your heart?”, they would reply, “Oh, my heart is great with the Lord.” Their heart was self-deceived and it was divided. They had part of their heart which said, “Yes, I want to please God.” They were not a people who said, “We hate God altogether.” They said, “We know the Lord and we are celebrating this feast,” but it was divided. They also said, “We love these idols. We love these other ceremonies. We love these sins and we are not willing to give them up.”
The first and greatest commandment is this: We are to love the Lord our God with all our heart, all our soul, all our mind, and all our strength.[3] God is not satisfied with a half-kind of love. As we listen to the story of Hosea we understand that, do we not? We understand why Hosea is not content that his wife, Gomer, says, “I love you, Hosea, but I also love these other lovers.” This is an outrageous thing for a husband to endure, “That is no good at all for you to say you love me and, yet, you love these other lovers. That is not helpful. That is not something that is pleasing at all. It would be just as displeasing for you to say, ‘I do not love you at all,’ because half a love is no love whatsoever.” That is the way the Israelites were treating God and that is way we treat God when our heart is divided.
It reminds me of James’ double-minded man who is unstable in all his ways.[4] I believe the church is filled with double-minded people, people who say, “I love God. I come to church. We pray. We do some things of service, but we know our heart is also divided and we also have other allegiances.” God says this is double-minded and we become unstable and unable to truly connect with God and experience His joy, His pleasure, and His blessing upon our life.
What a sad state it is when God looks at a heart and says, “His heart is false, divided, and fickle.” God remembers our sin when He judges us and He recognizes a divided heart. He knows and that is why is it so important for us to humble our self before Him and seek Him so that we might know the condition of our heart. It is right for all of us to ask the question: Is my heart false or is my heart true? We cannot assume we know until we search Scripture and allow the Holy Spirit to minister to us and help us to see, on the basis of Scripture, whether our heart is true or false.
Action Number Three: God recommends repentance before He judges us. What a word of grace this is.
In these two chapters we have only been able to touch on some of the verses, but they are filled with messages of God’s fury and wrath against sin and of certain judgment that is to come. This is so much so, when I read Verse 12, I wonder, “How did that get stuck in there.” It seems out of place, does it not,
12 Sow for yourselves righteousness; reap steadfast love; break up your fallow ground, for it is the time to seek the Lord, that he may come and rain righteousness upon you.
Consider another verse,
7 Samaria’s king shall perish like a twig on the face of the waters…9 From the days of Gibeah, you have sinned, O Israel; there they have continued. Shall not the war against the unjust overtake them in Gibeah?
Verse 13 continues this theme of God’s judgment,
13 You have plowed iniquity; you have reaped injustice; you have eaten the fruit of lies. Because you have trusted in your own way and in the multitude of your warriors, 14 therefore the tumult of war shall arise among your people, and all your fortresses shall be destroyed…15 Thus it shall be done to you, O Bethel,
because of your great evil. At dawn the king of Israel shall be utterly cut off.
Before and after Verse 12, there are these words that are strong and hard about God’s judgment and severity, yet here is this shining, beautiful, single ray of hope. It is like a piece of light piercing in the darkness of God’s judgment.
Sow for your self righteousness. Grace is being offered.
Notice, first, the Lord is the One who produces the righteousness and at the end of Verse 12 we read, “that He may come and reign righteousness upon you.” This is not a call for the people to solve their spiritual problems through their own good works. This is not a call for them to make amends for their past sins by doing good things. It is a call to sow seeds of the kind of righteousness God gives to those who place their faith in Him. In his letter to the church in Philippi, the Apostle Paul will say,
8 Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith…
When God, through Hosea, says, “Sow seeds of righteousness and faith of believing in Me to provide you with a righteousness that will be credited to your account and which will cause you to reap steadfast love and a right relationship with Me.”
Breaking up the fallow ground is repentance and it represents a heart so willful and so set in our own ways. We are to break it up and humble our self before the Lord. It is time to seek the Lord Himself. We need Him. What will happen if we break up this hard, baked clay of our fleshly soil and of our fleshly soul and we seek the Lord in faith and in humility? He might come and He might reign and what a great picture that is. This fallow ground will have rain gently falling, softening the ground, and producing a fruit that He might come and He might rain righteousness upon us.
Do you believe God can give to you a new heart and a new spirit? That is why Jesus came. As we come to Jesus with a broken heart and believing He is the way, the truth, and the life,[5] God will rain righteousness, a righteousness that produces a harvest of joy, peace, and blessing.
Why would a person listen to God’s call in Verse 12 and begin to sow the seeds of righteousness and break up a hard heart and begin to seek the Lord? Why would anyone do that? Why would the people of Israel do that? There are only two reasons. First, God’s warnings have sobered their soul. No one will obey Hosea 10:12, unless, first, their soul is sober and they consider these warnings and cannot set them aside, “This is what I have done all my life. I have seen these warnings. They are not for me. God will not bring this kind of judgment upon my life. It is for someone else.”
No, they say, “These words of warning are for me and I am really sobered by that.” This is the reason there is such a small and brief light, because the people are not sober. He brings a sobering message, a ray of light, and a sobering message because they are not sober and until they are sobered by God’s warnings, God’s holiness, and God’s righteousness they will never, ever listen to God’s call of grace in Verse 12.
Secondly, they not only become sobered by God’s warning of judgment, but they believe their joy will only be found in the Lord. That is the only reason why anyone would follow God’s call. They believe God is the Source of Life and they are convinced of that and that they need Him. He is the best and greatest of beings. It is only then we will break up the hard soil of our flesh that has been baking for years and years. It is only then we will seek the Lord in truth and begin to sow righteousness that comes through faith.
A young man inherited some money last month and he was thinking what he should do with it. He looked out at the combines that were reaping the harvest this year. He decided he wanted to experience some of that joy, so he bought a piece of farm land that had lain barren for a few years. He did not know anything at all about farming, so he approached his new farmer neighbor, “Hey, I would like to be a part of the harvest this year. I would like to plant some corn this week and get in on the joy you are experiencing by the end of the month. How do I do that?” the seasoned farmer scratched his head, “Son, only God can help you with that.”
But, thank God. He often works miracles in us. He often does the impossible. Start sowing seeds of righteousness to Him and God will let us in on His harvest of joy, even at this time of the year. It is never too late for us to break up the hard soil of our heart and seek Him. If we do that, God will rain righteousness upon us. What a word of hope that is.
[1] Ecclesiastes 3:2b
[2] Respectively: New Living Translation (NLT); Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB); New King James Version (NKJV)/American Standard Version (ASV).
[3] Mark 12:28
[4] James 1:8
[5] John 14:6
A young man inherited some money last month and he was thinking about what to do with it. He looked out at the combines that were reaping the harvest this year. He decided he wanted to experience some of that joy, so he bought a piece of farm land that had lain barren for a few years. He did not know anything at all about farming, so he approached his new farmer neighbor, “Hey, I would like to be a part of the harvest this year. I would like to plant some corn this week and get in on the joy you are experiencing by the end of the month. How do I do that?” the seasoned farmer scratched his head, “Son, I am sorry, but I cannot help you with that.” Disappointed, the young man at his neighbor and said, “I thought people out here in the country were people who were willing to help their neighbor. Why would you refuse to help me?” The farmer, again, shook his head and said, “Son, I am sorry. I cannot help you with that. It is not that I do not care for you. It is not that you cannot sow seed this year. It is that you cannot sow seed and expect a harvest.” The young man said, “What do you mean I can’t sow seed. It is a free country. I bought this land. I should be able to do anything I want with my own land.” The farmer said, “Son, again you misunderstand me. When I told you you could not, it did not mean it was illegal for you to sow the seed and expect a harvest. I meant you cannot plant now, in October, and expect a harvest this year. There is a season for sowing. There is a season for reaping[1] and it is too late to begin sowing now. The season for planting has past. You missed it this year and there is nothing anyone can do that will ever change that.”
In Scripture, God introduces the word picture of sowing and reaping to describe His relationship with us. In Galatians 6, God instructs us in two different kinds of seed we might sow throughout our life which produce two different kinds of harvest that we might experience in our life. God teaches us each person sows seeds every moment of every day. Everyday you and I are sowing seeds that will one day sprout and produce some fruit in our life. We will experience a season of reaping. For some that harvest will be incredibly joyful; for others that harvest will be incredibly jarring. The kind of seed we sow determines the kind of harvest we will realize. God urges us not to be deceived by the seed marked, “Flesh”. God desires that each one of us receives the upside of the harvest rather than experience the downside. He tells us, through the Apostle Paul’s letter,
7 Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap. 8 For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life. 9 And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up. 10 So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith.
We cannot play God and we cannot toy with Him as though He can manipulated. We are not to be deceived as to who God is. God will not be mocked; He is holy. Let us not grow weary in doing good, for in due season we will reap if we do not grow weary, if we do not get tired, if we do not quit.
In Hosea 8, God warns the people that they are on the downside of the harvest,
7 For they sow the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.
If they sow in a little bit of wind, they will reap a tornado of destruction. They are sowing seeds of sin and selfishness and there is a harvest of destruction that is coming upon them.
God had told them over and over that they needed to repent and throw off the seed bag they had slung over their shoulder filled with seeds of sexual immorality, deceit, violence, idolatry, and false worship. Their seed bag was filled with this kind of seed and they had sowing, sowing, sowing. He told them it was not a matter of a few, little changes in how they are sowing and doing it with more of a flip of the wrist as they sow. This is a radical change that needed to happen. They needed to take off the seed bag they had been carrying in their life and throw it out and pick up the seed bag He was offering, a seed bag with seeds of life and seeds of His Spirit that will reap for them a harvest of righteousness, love, truth, and joy. This people did not need a tune-up or some minor adjustments. They needed a radical transformation.
Satan loves to convince us there is always time for us to seeds of God’s Spirit and righteousness sometime later in our life; that it is find to continue to carry the seed bag of the flesh, of selfishness, and sin for a little while longer. Satan whispers, “No worries. You will stop sowing seeds of your flesh soon enough. You know there will be a time for it, but there is no hurry in changing the bag of seed slung over your shoulder.” That is a lie from the pit of Hell. Little do we realize the season for sowing passes so quickly we do not recognize it until it is too late. That is what happened to Israel as Hosea 9 opens.
Hosea 9 discloses God’s punishment upon sin in the most forceful, freighting terms. Yet, even here God opens the door to His mercy to them in this amazing offer in Hosea 10,
12 Sow for yourselves righteousness; reap steadfast love; break up your fallow ground, for it is the time to seek the Lord, that he may come and rain righteousness upon you.
There is still time for Israel and the door is still open. God amazingly and miraculously keeps the door open for a little while longer. And, they need to break their hard heart, their fallow ground, to pieces through humbling themselves before Him. This is the last moment for them.
What a striking word of grace this is. After proclaiming such strong words of certain judgment upon His people, God still offers a door, a brief fleeting door, remaining open to His forgiveness, His life, and His joy. In short, God is saying to His people, “I know it is late October and I know all through the spring and summer months you had been sowing seeds of false worship, seeds of impurity, seeds of transgression and rebellion, and seeds of disobedience. Those seeds will reap a harvest of horror and heartache, but I am a God of mercy and I am willing to suspend My Law of sowing and reaping on this occasion. You can plant in October and still reap a harvest of righteousness this year. I am giving you an opportunity.” That is a word of love and an amazing, miraculous offer.
As we study this text together, we will be hit square in the jaw with God’s righteous wrath against our sin, but in the midst of these hard truths, keep in mind the God who is angry is also infinitely merciful and loving. If we reap a harvest of death, no one is to blame but our self. God moves Heaven and earth to see that a harvest of righteousness and joy is within reach for us. What are we sowing? What are we reaping?
With the text in mind, of Hosea 9 & 10, we consider, first, deeply God’s wrath and God’s judgment. There are three actions of God we will observe in these two chapters, and we can observe so much more than what we will, but we will content ourselves with these three actions.
Action Number One: God remembers our sin when He judges us. God is not a God whose memory fades as time passes. There are no statutes of limitation to the crimes we commit against Him. In Hosea 8, from a previous study, we read,
13 As for my sacrificial offerings, they sacrifice meat and eat it, but the Lord does not accept them. Now he will remember their iniquity and punish their sins; they shall return to Egypt. 14 For Israel has forgotten his Maker and built palaces, and Judah has multiplied fortified cities; so I will send a fire upon his cities, and it shall devour her strongholds.
Israel is continuing to go through the external motions of worship, love for God, and the desire to praise Him. Israel will seek safety in Egypt and they will hope Egypt will keep them free from the conquering army of the Assyrians. Israel should have know God is their strength and her protector. Instead, she is going down to Egypt to shore up her armies and her fortresses. This will not work.
A clear warning from God regarding His coming judgment could not have been spoken, yet how did the people respond? They acted as though God is not really serious when He spoke these words. They believed God was speaking empty threats and that He is angry only for a short time and it will pass. He will change and He will speak words of loving kindness to them. They continue to have parties and to celebrate their own rebellious choices. They wore t-shirts that read: “Life is Good” with a big smiley face on it.
God still gave His sinful people a bountiful harvest this particular year in a physical way. He allowed grain and grapes to grow that year, even the year when He is speaking these words of judgment. He does not send a draught and He allowed the harvest to be bountiful. They thought, “If we are prosperous, if our crops are coming in, if we are reaping this great harvest we are, and if we have peace right now and there is not a conquering army, that must mean God is pleased. Life is good. Let’s have fun!”
I came across a couple of modern-day mottos that Ancient Israel also believed.
These were big in Israel that day.
Israel thought, “We do not have to worry about God’s warnings. He has been saying this will happen as a result of our sing, but let’s just keep calm. Life is good! Right now the harvest is still plentiful. We are bringing in grapes and grain. We are not broke. Let’s keep calm, not because God is pleased, but because life is good. As long as we treat one another nicely that is all that really matters. There is prosperity and there is peace. Let’s stand apart by breaking the rules. Life is more fun that way. Let’s ignore our head and our thinking about what God is saying about Himself, about His will, or what is going to happen. Let’s just follow our heart and do what our heart tells us is right and what makes us feel right.”
That is the reason why, when Chapter 9 opens up, this is what God says to them, “Rejoice not, O Israel. Stop celebrating. This is not the time to rejoice. Exult not like the peoples because you played the whore, you have been unfaithful to me, and you have forsaken Me.”
We need to keep in mind, as we consider Hosea 9:1, God is the God of Joy. It is striking that the God who is the God of Joy is the God who says, “Stop rejoicing!” God loves for people to rejoice, in fact, He commands us to rejoice over and over and over again in His Word,
Psalm 32:11 Be glad in the Lord, and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for joy, all you upright in heart!
Psalm 70:4 May all who seek you rejoice and be glad in you! May those who love your salvation say evermore, “God is great!”
Psalm 97:12 Rejoice in the Lord, O you righteous, and give thanks to his holy name!
Philippians 4:4 Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice.
Does this seem like a God who sits up in Heaven with a frown on His face, looking for someone to smack who has a smile on their face? No, He commands us to be glad. He commands us not to keep it in and we are to dance and sing. This is God speaking to us.
In Hosea, God’s people are finding their joy outside of God and they are mixing their worship of God with the worship of idols and they were having a lot of fun doing it. There were Temple prostitutes involved. There were surely some great songs and a great band playing. There was dancing and all kinds of activities they took great pleasure in in their worship. They would say, “We are worshipping God,” because they did not just discard Scripture, they held onto them. They probably had Scripture readings in these worship settings. But, they mixed their worship of God with their worship of false idols so God said, “Stop rejoicing and rejoice not!”
What would cause a God who is the Author of joy to command His people to rejoice not? It is His coming judgment, “It is time to humble yourself before the Lord, to weep over your sin, to be broken, and to seek God’s face.”
In Leviticus 23, God His people a joyful feast called the “Feast of Tabernacles”. It happened during harvest. As they were bringing in the harvest they were to have this great feast to celebrate God’s provision and protection all the way back to the time He led them out of bondage in Egypt to the present day. It was a time of joy and dancing and feasting; it was a time of great fun. And, the people in Verse 1 of our text, in Hosea’s day, were likely celebrating this Feast of Tabernacle, but, again, it was twisted. It was not in accordance with the worship of God. It was in accordance with the worship of their own pleasures.
It was very much like our Christmas today. The people still celebrated the religious holiday, but they did so in a way that offended God rather then pleasing Him. They stripped the holiday of its real meaning and they had pushed God into the corners of the edges of their life rather than in the center. They still pursued these great, incredible religious festivals, but they did not pursue a relationship with God and God said, “Stop it! Do not open up Christmas presents to celebrate the birth of My Son if you are not pursuing a right relationship with Me. Do not do it. Stop it! Rejoice not.”
The principle we learn from this is the empty religious ceremony sickens God. We nauseate God when He sees us engaged in external forms of worship without wholehearted love for Him.
God is the God who ordains this festival in the first place. He is the Author of Fun. He is the One who started this celebration of dancing and joy. He is the Author of the Good Life, but it is a good life which is always connected to Him,
Psalm 16:11 You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.
God made us a way to connect to our pleasure in Him and that way is through Jesus. Jesus suffered God’s righteous judgment on the cross so that He would bring us to God. Peter writes this in reference to God’s provision for us to have joy and these pleasures forevermore, in 1 Peter 3,
18 For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit…
Why did Christ die on the cross? It was in order to bring us to God, we who are alienated and cut off from Him as a result of our sin and who have the wrath of God remaining upon our life. Christ died so that He could bring us to God in a right relationship. That is amazing and we never get over that.
What makes life good for you? You say, “Life is good,” why is that? Some say it is because of some of their hobbies, relationships, parties, pursuits, or possessions. I found another image I believe expresses the Gospel,
This is why life is good for us, because God sent His Son and when we kneel before His Son we receive all the blessings His Son brought when He came to earth.
The people in Hosea’s day choose to reject God as the Giver of Life and ignore His warnings. Today, still, we are very much like them in that the idea of God being a God of judgment continues to be called into question. That is why a book such as Hosea is so important for us. Yes, it is jarring and jolting and difficult and hard and heavy and weighty, but God teaches us so much of His own perfection through a book such as Hosea. He teaches us of His righteousness and justice and His anger. These are all perfections of who God is. They are perfections that motivate us to hold Him in awe. They are perfections that motivate to worship Him and to stand in wonder of Him. But, there is a caution here to us and it is a caution this people had fallen into as they pursued God and forgotten God: we must not twist God and fashion Him into our image.
God is not a piece of clay we can shape to suit our own desires. If we tear off parts of God that trouble us we are choosing to worship another god other than the God who really is. If we have trouble with the description God has given to us of Himself and His Word through Jesus and the Apostles, the trouble is with us. It is a trouble with the imperfections within us. It is not with the imperfections with God for God is perfect in every way. What kind of god and which god will we worship?
We see God’s wrath on display in our text,
2 Threshing floor and wine vat shall not feed them, and the new wine shall fail them.
Next year there will not be a harvest. There will be a draught and famine. In the future God will keep His hand from blessing the land to bear fruit,
3 They shall not remain in the land of the Lord, but Ephraim shall return to Egypt, and they shall eat unclean food in Assyria.
They will go to Egypt for protection, but ultimately they will be carted off to Assyria and they will not be able to hold the festivals because all the food will be unclean in Assyria. The Assyrians will not let them engage in the religious celebrations of worship,
5 What will you do on the day of the appointed festival, and on the day of the feast of the Lord?
The time will come to celebrate the feast, but they will not be able to because there is no place and no clean food and there are none of the externals that will be present in order for them to celebrate. What will they do that day? God is telling them He will not put an end to their religious hypocrisy and He will not be mocked,
6 For behold, they are going away from destruction; but Egypt shall gather them; Memphis shall bury them. Nettles shall possess their precious things of silver; thorns shall be in their tents.
They will attempt to find a place of safety in Egypt, but Egypt will gather them up and put them in Memphis, a city about twelve miles south of Cairo. When they get to Memphis, they will be in a ghetto. They will pay money to Egypt to protect them, but they will put them in this ghetto and they will not be able to worship and serve God there. Furthermore, after being carted off the Egypt they will be carted off to Assyria and their silver and possessions will be taken by others and blown over in the sand and the vineyards in the desert will become fields of thorns. Do you get a sense of the picture of the future if they do not change?
7 The days of punishment have come; the days of recompense have come; Israel shall know it.
Right now Israel is self-deceived and they believe these days will never come, but they will know it. But, what was the attitude of this warning they had that God gave to them through the Prophet Hosea?
7b The prophet is a fool; the man of the spirit is mad…
They are going to laugh at Hosea and ridicule him and hold him in derision, “You are a crazy, wild, insane person. You are not worth listening to?” Why did they reject God’s Word through His prophet? It was because of their great iniquity and great hatred. When people forget God and habitually live in sin they stop wanting to listen to God’s Word. God’s voice becomes perturbing rather than pleasing.
The application is this: our sin will keep us from listening to God’s voice so that this Book becomes a worthless Book full of lies, errors, and myths to be discarded. That is what they thought about the Prophet Hosea when he was in front of them, “He is a mad man.”
The main reason we do not read our Bible and obey it is not for a lack of time, but the main reason we do not read our Bible and obey it is because we have forgotten God and we are unfaithful to Him. If we remember God and we are faithful to Him this Book becomes the most precious gift God has given to us. It is His voice that connects us to Him.
God is not rebuking the Assyrians who rejected the Lord altogether. He is rebuking His own people, a people who say they know Him, who celebrate Him, who worship Him, yet when God’s Word comes to His prophet they treat God’s Word as a light and inconsequential thing to be discarded and held in distain. God’s Word ceases to carry the weight of final authority and when God’s Word ceases to be the final authority in our life we have a thousand reasons why we can set it aside and reject it and why it does not apply.
How much weight does God’s Word carry in our life? Do we find our self saying, like the Israelites in Hosea’s day, “I know what God’s Word says to me, but it is not really practical. It is not possible for me right now in my situation. I know this is what God says I right and I know this is the way I am living. I know this is what God says is wrong and this is what I am doing, but it is really not possible for me to live pleasing to the Lord according to Scripture. Surely, there are some exceptions and clauses somewhere and I believe I am a part of those exceptions.”
The Word of God is clear, but somehow in their deceived and twisted way of thinking they gave themselves a pass because they stopped considering God’s Word is the final authority and the last Word on every subject. When we excuse our self from listening and obeying God’s Word we place our self in the path of God’s wrath,
9 They have deeply corrupted themselves as in the days of Gibeah: he will remember their iniquity; he will punish their sins.
Hosea is writing about a horrific crime, a gang rape, that takes place in Judges 19 and 20. It is one of the most horrifying stores ever written in the Bible and it happened in Gibeah. It is interesting Hosea is writing about this now because it happened three hundred years earlier and as he writes about it, we can still sense God is angry about this. God remembers our sin. God does not forget.
People consider the sins they are now committing are sins that will likely fade from God’s memory and all will be well, “Let a week pass, or a month pass, or surely a year to pass,” but God is not an old man upstairs who is feeble and failing. He is the Almighty, All-knowing, All-seeing, All-righteous, All-remembering God.
Our anger often does subside with time. God’s anger never does. It is always righteous. It is always permanent. God is just as angry with our sin today as when we committed it. If God’s righteous judgment has not yet fallen upon us, it is not because the statute of limitations has run out or because God has softened. Because God is eternal and omniscient our sin is as present before Him today as it was the day we committed it. God remembers our sin when He judges us.
Action Number Two: God recognizes a divided heart when He judges us,
10:1 Israel is a luxuriant vine that yields its fruit. The more his fruit increased, the more altars he built; as his country improved, he improved his pillars. 2 Their heart is false; now they must bear their guilt.
Sadly, the more God blessed them with material prosperity the more they dishonored Him. Other translations for the word “false”, in Verse 2, are: fickle, devious, divided.[2] God is not fooled by the externals. He is looking right at the heart and He always knows the condition of the heart. We do not know the condition of our own heart and if we were to ask the Israelites, “How is your heart?”, they would reply, “Oh, my heart is great with the Lord.” Their heart was self-deceived and it was divided. They had part of their heart which said, “Yes, I want to please God.” They were not a people who said, “We hate God altogether.” They said, “We know the Lord and we are celebrating this feast,” but it was divided. They also said, “We love these idols. We love these other ceremonies. We love these sins and we are not willing to give them up.”
The first and greatest commandment is this: We are to love the Lord our God with all our heart, all our soul, all our mind, and all our strength.[3] God is not satisfied with a half-kind of love. As we listen to the story of Hosea we understand that, do we not? We understand why Hosea is not content that his wife, Gomer, says, “I love you, Hosea, but I also love these other lovers.” This is an outrageous thing for a husband to endure, “That is no good at all for you to say you love me and, yet, you love these other lovers. That is not helpful. That is not something that is pleasing at all. It would be just as displeasing for you to say, ‘I do not love you at all,’ because half a love is no love whatsoever.” That is the way the Israelites were treating God and that is way we treat God when our heart is divided.
It reminds me of James’ double-minded man who is unstable in all his ways.[4] I believe the church is filled with double-minded people, people who say, “I love God. I come to church. We pray. We do some things of service, but we know our heart is also divided and we also have other allegiances.” God says this is double-minded and we become unstable and unable to truly connect with God and experience His joy, His pleasure, and His blessing upon our life.
What a sad state it is when God looks at a heart and says, “His heart is false, divided, and fickle.” God remembers our sin when He judges us and He recognizes a divided heart. He knows and that is why is it so important for us to humble our self before Him and seek Him so that we might know the condition of our heart. It is right for all of us to ask the question: Is my heart false or is my heart true? We cannot assume we know until we search Scripture and allow the Holy Spirit to minister to us and help us to see, on the basis of Scripture, whether our heart is true or false.
Action Number Three: God recommends repentance before He judges us. What a word of grace this is.
In these two chapters we have only been able to touch on some of the verses, but they are filled with messages of God’s fury and wrath against sin and of certain judgment that is to come. This is so much so, when I read Verse 12, I wonder, “How did that get stuck in there.” It seems out of place, does it not,
12 Sow for yourselves righteousness; reap steadfast love; break up your fallow ground, for it is the time to seek the Lord, that he may come and rain righteousness upon you.
Consider another verse,
7 Samaria’s king shall perish like a twig on the face of the waters…9 From the days of Gibeah, you have sinned, O Israel; there they have continued. Shall not the war against the unjust overtake them in Gibeah?
Verse 13 continues this theme of God’s judgment,
13 You have plowed iniquity; you have reaped injustice; you have eaten the fruit of lies. Because you have trusted in your own way and in the multitude of your warriors, 14 therefore the tumult of war shall arise among your people, and all your fortresses shall be destroyed…15 Thus it shall be done to you, O Bethel, because of your great evil. At dawn the king of Israel shall be utterly cut off.
Before and after Verse 12, there are these words that are strong and hard about God’s judgment and severity, yet here is this shining, beautiful, single ray of hope. It is like a piece of light piercing in the darkness of God’s judgment.
Sow for your self righteousness. Grace is being offered.
Notice, first, the Lord is the One who produces the righteousness and at the end of Verse 12 we read, “that He may come and reign righteousness upon you.” This is not a call for the people to solve their spiritual problems through their own good works. This is not a call for them to make amends for their past sins by doing good things. It is a call to sow seeds of the kind of righteousness God gives to those who place their faith in Him. In his letter to the church in Philippi, the Apostle Paul will say,
8 Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith…
When God, through Hosea, says, “Sow seeds of righteousness and faith of believing in Me to provide you with a righteousness that will be credited to your account and which will cause you to reap steadfast love and a right relationship with Me.”
Breaking up the fallow ground is repentance and it represents a heart so willful and so set in our own ways. We are to break it up and humble our self before the Lord. It is time to seek the Lord Himself. We need Him. What will happen if we break up this hard, baked clay of our fleshly soil and of our fleshly soul and we seek the Lord in faith and in humility? He might come and He might reign and what a great picture that is. This fallow ground will have rain gently falling, softening the ground, and producing a fruit that He might come and He might rain righteousness upon us.
Do you believe God can give to you a new heart and a new spirit? That is why Jesus came. As we come to Jesus with a broken heart and believing He is the way, the truth, and the life,[5] God will rain righteousness, a righteousness that produces a harvest of joy, peace, and blessing.
Why would a person listen to God’s call in Verse 12 and begin to sow the seeds of righteousness and break up a hard heart and begin to seek the Lord? Why would anyone do that? Why would the people of Israel do that? There are only two reasons. First, God’s warnings have sobered their soul. No one will obey Hosea 10:12, unless, first, their soul is sober and they consider these warnings and cannot set them aside, “This is what I have done all my life. I have seen these warnings. They are not for me. God will not bring this kind of judgment upon my life. It is for someone else.”
No, they say, “These words of warning are for me and I am really sobered by that.” This is the reason there is such a small and brief light, because the people are not sober. He brings a sobering message, a ray of light, and a sobering message because they are not sober and until they are sobered by God’s warnings, God’s holiness, and God’s righteousness they will never, ever listen to God’s call of grace in Verse 12.
Secondly, they not only become sobered by God’s warning of judgment, but they believe their joy will only be found in the Lord. That is the only reason why anyone would follow God’s call. They believe God is the Source of Life and they are convinced of that and that they need Him. He is the best and greatest of beings. It is only then we will break up the hard soil of our flesh that has been baking for years and years. It is only then we will seek the Lord in truth and begin to sow righteousness that comes through faith.
A young man inherited some money last month and he was thinking what he should do with it. He looked out at the combines that were reaping the harvest this year. He decided he wanted to experience some of that joy, so he bought a piece of farm land that had lain barren for a few years. He did not know anything at all about farming, so he approached his new farmer neighbor, “Hey, I would like to be a part of the harvest this year. I would like to plant some corn this week and get in on the joy you are experiencing by the end of the month. How do I do that?” the seasoned farmer scratched his head, “Son, only God can help you with that.”
But, thank God. He often works miracles in us. He often does the impossible. Start sowing seeds of righteousness to Him and God will let us in on His harvest of joy, even at this time of the year. It is never too late for us to break up the hard soil of our heart and seek Him. If we do that, God will rain righteousness upon us. What a word of hope that is.
[1] Ecclesiastes 3:2b
[2] Respectively: New Living Translation (NLT); Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB); New King James Version (NKJV)/American Standard Version (ASV).
[3] Mark 12:28
[4] James 1:8
[5] John 14:6