“The LORD also has a dispute with Judah, and will punish Jacob according to his ways; He will repay him according to his deeds. 3 In the womb he took his brother by the heel, and in his maturity he contended with God. 4 Yes, he wrestled with the angel and prevailed; He wept and sought His favor. He found Him at Bethel and there He spoke with us, 5 Even the LORD, the God of hosts, The LORD is His name.”
JUDAH CALLED ON THE CARPET
Hosea’s ministry was largely to the Northern Kingdom and has primarily been directed at them to this point. His ministry is estimated to have covered a period of approximately 60 years, from 784 B.C. until about the time of the fall of the Northern Kingdom of Israel in 722 B.C.
Judah did not fall to Nebuchadnezzar until 605 B.C., and the destruction of Jerusalem came 20 years after that. So at the time of Hosea chapter 12 the things that would come upon the Southern Kingdom for her sins were still at minimum, 117 years away, and most probably closer to 140 years away.
Nevertheless, when the destruction came upon them it would come suddenly, and this should cause us to tremble when we think of how many decades heralds of God’s Word have been warning our society from many pulpits across the land, concerning the moral and spiritual decline of our nation.
In 1988, author Robert Fulghum had a book published entitled, “All I really need to know I learned in Kindergarten”. The idea behind the little book was that since the basics of human social behavior are taught us as young children, such as kindness, fairness, cleaning up after yourself, sharing and so on, they are principles that should be obvious to us and remain with us the rest of our lives.
Less than 10 years after the emergence of this book my wife and children and I moved to Del Norte, Colorado. The church we began to attend there was pastored by a man who had just been discharged from the Marines and was now working as a farrier, which is someone who shoes horses. The residual influence of the military, which was his recent experience, and his desire to resonate well with the local ranchers, as a shoer of horses, gave him a proclivity for centering most of his sermon illustrations in military things, or ranching and farming.
Now I have absolutely the greatest respect for the farmer and the need for farmers and the blessing they are to all of us. But there were many of us in that congregation who were becoming increasingly burdened by frequent references to the United States Marines, and the nature of farming.
One Sunday morning as this man presented his quickly composed message, he said, “Now, we’re all farmers here, and we understand…” But the fact was, we were not all farmers there, and this well-known fact drew my attention away from the point he was driving at to consider how many in his congregation he had just lost.
As I began to contemplate this, my wife leaned close to my ear and whispered, “Everything I really need to know about farming, I learned in Kindergarten; ‘E-I, E-I, O’.”
I don’t know what that has to do with anything; I just wanted to tell it to you.
Getting back to Fulghum’s book, we might wonder how such a simple thing could top the best seller list for almost two years. I mean, don’t we all have a sort of built in knowledge of fundamental right and wrong?
C.S. Lewis certainly recognized this, and in his essay “The Law of Human Nature”, he built and established a very strong and incontrovertible argument for the case.
In the middle of this short piece he says, “Whenever you find a man who says he does not believe in a real Right and Wrong, you will find the same man going back on this a moment later. He may break his promise to you, but if you try breaking one to him he will be complaining ‘It’s not fair’ before you can say Jack Robinson. A nation may say treaties do not matter; but then, next minute, they spoil their case by saying that the particular treaty they want to break was an unfair one. But if treaties do not matter, and if there is no such thing as Right and Wrong – in other words, if there is no Law of Nature – what is the difference between a fair treaty and an unfair one? Have they not let the cat out of the bag and shown that, whatever they say, they really know the Law of Nature just like anyone else? “Mere Christianity” C.S. Lewis, 1943 Macmillan Pub Co, NY
But I still haven’t answered the question I posed, have I? How can a book like Fulghum’s get to the bestseller list?
Well I think the question can be answered with a statement in the negative and a statement in the positive. First the negative, I doubt very much that it would have been taken seriously at all seventy or a hundred years ago. People were taught these basics as children and that teaching was backed by discipline in the home and in the community when they disobeyed those fundamental rules of successful societal living. Therefore the publication of a book of this nature would have been seen as a total waste of paper and ink. Stating the answer in the positive, our society has become so obsessed with self and selfish pursuits; so inundated with the message of the merchant and the con man that “Number one is number one” and being encouraged with the invitation, ‘If it feels good, do it”, that over a period of just two generations people have managed to suppress within themselves the God-given understanding of Right and Wrong and what is acceptable behavior toward human kind, and they really do need to be reminded about fairness and equity and social responsibility; the very basics of living among people.
Unfortunately, and I think you’d agree with me in this, as the days go by it seems as though less and less of the folks you run into in the mall, the movies, the schools or the parking lots are paying any attention to that Kindergarten voice within them, whispering common sense and adjuring them to be nice and do good.
And if we want to get right down to the meat of the matter, the heart of the problem, which we do, then we have to be reminded that the fundamental problem is not that people forget what’s right, but that they deliberately suppress within themselves the general knowledge and awareness they have of God, and surrendering themselves to the power of sin they continue in their downward spiral into self and darkness, being progressively made in the image of the demonic and rushing headlong toward an eternity of lostness and emptiness, unless the divine intervention of the Holy Spirit of God brings them to the Light of the gospel of the glory of God in Christ.
Lewis ended the essay I quoted saying this:
“These, then, are the two points I wanted to make. First, that human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way, and cannot really get rid of it. Secondly, that they do not in fact behave in that way. They know the Law of Nature; they break it. These two facts are the foundation of all clear thinking about ourselves and the universe we live in.”
And friends, I think Lewis has hit it on the head there, hasn’t he? What is responsible for the sorry state our society is in, if not that fundamentally people have lost the ability to think clearly about themselves or the universe they live in?
Now I’m getting ahead of myself a little here and I’m going to have to back up, but first let’s go to Romans 1 and finish this thought.
Because the ever expanding inability of mankind to judge or discern anything clearly begins with their rebellion but it ends with God’s sovereignty in allowing them the horrible freedom they’ve demanded. Listen to verses 24-32 of Romans 1
“Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them. 25 For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. 26 For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, 27 and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error. 28 And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper, 29 being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice; they are gossips, 30 slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, 31 without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful; 32 and although they know the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but also give hearty approval to those who practice them.”
Now a few minutes ago I made reference to the deliberate suppression of truth within men and I was thinking of an earlier portion of this first chapter of Romans, which says, “…the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them, for God made it evident to them.” (vss 18-19)
Man suppressed the truth. Then, the resulting damage of that willful suppression is revealed in the portion I just read, and I want you to notice the three-fold, “God gave them over”.
In verse 24 “God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts”. In verse 26 “God gave them over to degrading passions”. And in verse 28, “God gave them over to a depraved mind”
Do you also hear the digression? The lust began in their hearts, their passions were carried out in their bodies, and in the end their minds became so depraved that they could no longer, in the words of Lewis, think clearly about themselves or the universe they inhabit.
This should take the Bible student to James 1:15
“Then when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and when sin is accomplished, it brings forth death.”
And friends and loved-ones I want to assure you of something today. Men pathetically attempt to avoid God by saying they don’t believe in His existence. They even go so far as to admit that He might have existed once but now He is dead. They excuse their behavior with claims that they are stressed, that they have been misled, that they were disappointed by parents and teachers, that all of society is going down and its degrading influence is overpowering; there are almost as many excuses for perverted and debauched behavior as there are perverted and debauched people.
But God is not mocked, though men are self-deceived, and whatever they tell themselves, whatever excuses they can dredge up, whatever claims they make concerning His significance versus their moral freedom, God calls to account. And there will not be one in all His creation who will not give an accounting to Him.
So here we have the Word of the Lord through Hosea, turning now to Judah, because He has an indictment against her also, and it has to do with immorality, greed, deception and spiritual adultery.
Apparently, the shops of Judah needed Fulghum’s little book.
No, they needed to hear the Word of the Lord, as is so desperately needed today, not the words of men; not even the best words of men. They needed to obey His Word in an attitude of repentance and return to Him. Let’s see the comparison that God makes in these words of His through the prophet.
THE EXAMPLE OF JACOB
In His indictment of Judah God speaks of Jacob, the grandson of Abraham, whose name was later change by God to Israel. And although he would be the common link to both the Northern and Southern kingdoms, being the father of the twelve tribes, God here makes his name synonymous with Judah as you can see in verse 2.
God through the prophet cites three main events of Jacob’s life that marked him out and that track the changes he went through in his journey.
First there was the grasping of his brother’s heel during the birth process.
In fact, the name Jacob means ‘heel grasper’ and it was a term generally used of someone who came up behind another to ‘trip him up’, so to speak; to deceive or otherwise get the best of someone.
It was an appropriate name for the child because it spoke of the kind of person he would grow to be. The Bible reader will be familiar with the deception of Jacob in tricking his father, Isaac, into blessing him as the older brother instead of Esau.
The second event of Jacob’s life that God cites comes many years later when He has wives and flocks and servants, and is headed back to his homeland at God’s beckoning. He learns that Esau is coming up the road with many men behind him, and he is afraid because the last he heard from Esau his brother had threatened to kill him for cheating him out of his birthright.
So Jacob, although a changed man, is afraid of his brother’s wrath. After sending many gifts on ahead to hopefully appease Esau, and then finally sending his whole family on ahead in two separate groups, he finds himself alone on the banks of the Jabbok. That night a man comes to him and they begin to wrestle. Now it is not specifically mentioned that Jacob knew who he was wrestling with, but it is implied in the fact that they wrestled until daybreak and when the man told Jacob to stop Jacob refused, saying he would not let go until the man blessed him.
Then when it’s over and Jacob asks the man’s name the man indicates that Jacob needn’t ask because he already knows, and at that point Jacob, whose name has now been changed from Jacob, “heel grasper” to Israel, “One who strives with God and prevails”, says, “I have seen God face to face, yet my life has been spared”
And let me just toss in a little food for your later meditation here. Have you ever noticed the disparity between the numerous Biblical accounts of men coming face to face with the angel of the Lord, which we understand to be what we call a Theophany, or a visitation of God in human form and their subsequent reaction, and on the other hand the men and women who write books in our time or get on television or radio and go on and on about a vision they saw of the Lord and how blessed they were and what great things He showed them for their ministries and the people they would minister to and so forth?
Every time we read in the Bible of these Theophanies, these pre-incarnate appearances of the Lord, the people are shaking in their boots! They wonder that they have not dropped dead just by virtue of His proximity to them. Isaiah had a vision in the night of being brought to stand before the Lord and he said, “Woe is me, for I am ruined!”
Yet you turn on your television to one or two certain channels and on a regular basis you have these pompous clowns going on about the last time the Lord popped in and chatted with them in their dressing room!
Like I said; just food for thought.
The third event brought up by God in our text is Israel’s meeting with God at Bethel. It is the place Jacob first met with God when he was fleeing from his brother. At that time he was disposed to bargain with God.
“Then Jacob made a vow, saying, “If God will be with me and will keep me on this journey that I take, and will give me food to eat and garments to wear, 21 and I return to my father’s house in safety, then the LORD will be my God. 22 “This stone, which I have set up as a pillar, will be God’s house, and of all that You give me I will surely give a tenth to You.” Gen 28:20-22
How presumptuous is that? I will set up a pillar of stone and it will be God’s house? Which is what Bethel means, by the way; ‘house of God’.
And in return all he asks is food, garments, safety and eventual return to the home he’s just run away from.
When he comes back to Bethel though, in Genesis 35, he is quite a different man.
This time he comes to Bethel at God’s direction, and when he goes there in obedience God blesses him there and officially changes his name to Israel and reiterates the promises He had made to Jacob’s father and grandfather.
“God also said to him, “I am God Almighty; be fruitful and multiply; a nation and a company of nations shall come from you, and kings shall come forth from you. 12 “The land which I gave to Abraham and Isaac, I will give it to you, and I will give the land to your descendants after you.” Gen 35:11-12
So here are these contrasts that God is illuminating for the hearers of the prophet. Jacob, their ancestor, was a deceiver, a cheat, arrogant and ignorant. Those characteristics together got him into big trouble that shaped his life.
But in the end he was a man of faith and obedience, open and humble in the very face of God, repentant of his former deeds, making amends where he could and trusting God to see him through.
And in this very brief recap of the history of this patriarch, God is sending a message to Judah that it is not too late. It’s not too late to remember the basics, the stuff they would have learned in Kindergarten, and turn back to the Lord.
6 Therefore, return to your God, Observe kindness and justice, And wait for your God continually.”
But there is another contrast the Lord is showing here and it sends a very clear message down through the corridors of time; every bit as true and significant for the church of the 21st century as it was for the 8th century B.C. and the people living in Judah.
And that is the contrast between the bulls of sacrifice in Gilgal and the altars they built there to worship the gods of the pagans around them, and the Lord, the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob who was found at Bethel in blessing and promise.
It is a contrast also between the God who has already determined He will break the back of Ephraim and send him away to Assyria, yet turns His face still to Judah and implores him to follow the example of his ancestor, Jacob, and return to his God and seek Him continually.
For He says of Himself, “Even the Lord, the God of hosts; the Lord is His name”.
RETURN TO BASICS
And friends and family it may not be too late for the church in America. It may not be too late for our nation. It may not be too late…for you. Or for me.
Because as sorry as the situation looks, and as weak and pathetic as the church has become in these recent years through her compromise with the world and the world’s standards and demands, and as weak and pathetic as our individual experiences have slumped to with our propensity to come and do all of our religious calisthenics on Sunday morning and apply absolutely none of it to the rest of our lives, the admonitions of scripture are just as real and applicable today as the day they were penned by their original authors, inspired by the Holy Spirit.
And through the Apostle the Spirit still calls to the heart of every true believer and says,
1 Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. 2 And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.” Rom 12:1-2
Could I paraphrase that? Be really, what you are ideally! Don’t be religious. The experience of anyone who has ever meant business with God is that they were drastically and visibly changed forever. And when a man or woman or young person truly surrenders to the will of the One who calls Himself ‘the Lord, the God of hosts’, there is a transformation; there is a renewing of the mind, there is a newness of life that manifests in behavior that the world cannot understand, that the spirit of the world hates, that God blesses.
The person humbled and yielded to God begins once more to think clearly about himself and the universe he lives in. He is able to put things in perspective and understand what is real and what is important as opposed to what is passing away and a total waste of time and attention.
The people of ancient Judah dragged their bulls and their young children up to the high places and made burnt offering to demon gods in their folly and in their blindness and their godlessness. And don’t think for a moment that the same deceitful spirit isn’t governing the lives of many, many people in our own so-called modern and enlightened society, outside the church and inside.
God is calling for a return to the basics. Return to your God. Observe kindness and justice, and wait for your God continually. This is a restating of something we’ve heard elsewhere in scripture.
“He has told you, O man, what is good, (Micah 6:8) and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”
“Now, Israel, what does the LORD your God require from you, but to fear the LORD your God, to walk in all His ways and love Him, and to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul” Deut 10:12
God hasn’t made it hard, Christians. Why do we make it so hard?
He has met with us and spoken with us. He appeared to us in the form of a Man and told us what is good.
He has cleared the way for us by taking the decree of debt that was against us, that was hostile to us, and nailing it to His cross, and there’s nothing for us now to strive for except turning from our silliness and taking our eyes off the lures of the world and putting away our little idols and following Him.
“So Jacob said to his household and to all who were with him, “Put away the foreign gods which are among you, and purify yourselves and change your garments; 3 and let us arise and go up to Bethel, and I will make an altar there to God, who answered me in the day of my distress and has been with me wherever I have gone.” Gen 35:2-3
“For through the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think more highly of himself than he ought to think; but to think so as to have sound judgment, as God has allotted to each a measure of faith.” Rom 12:3
God calls to account, believer. Judah didn’t listen. The world never listens. But those who are His hear His voice and meet with Him at Bethel, and are blessed.
