DECIDING ON DISCIPLINE

DECEMBER 16, 2012  

1. CHECK YOUR RELATIONSHIP (HOSEA 8:1-3) 

1 Put the trumpet to your lips! Like an eagle the enemy comes against the house of the LORD, Because they have transgressed My covenant, And rebelled against My law.  

• Hosea is commanded to sound the alarm of war because the time of judgment had arrived. 
• Before now the message had been one of hope, but now it becomes one of impending doom. 
• God is explaining why He is going to send them into captivity.  

"O prophet, cry with thy throat as with a trumpet, saying;'' … The prophet is here considered as a watchman, and is called upon to blow his trumpet; 

--John Gill's Commentary 

2 They cry out to Me, "My God, we of Israel know Thee!" 3 Israel has rejected the good; The enemy will pursue him.  

NASB  

• When the blow of the enemy falls, Israel, as a nation, will remember the past mercies of the Lord, and will "cry" to Him even though they have given their worship and loyalty to Baal, the idol God of the Canaanites. 
• Such a quick and easy repentance does not indicate a real change of heart. 
• To say, "We know You" requires an intimate experiential relationship which does not happen overnight.   

2. YOU REAP WHAT YOU SOW (HOSEA 8:7-10) 

7 For they sow the wind, And they reap the whirlwind. The standing grain has no heads; It yields no grain. Should it yield, strangers would swallow it up.  

"Sown the wind - A proverbial speech to denote lost labour."--John Gill's Commentary  

• This verse speaks of the judgment both of famine and of the enemy who was to come into that land.  
• The formalism of their worship to Jehovah was divorced from moral and spiritual living. 
• Their form of worship had within it the seeds of its own destruction  
• God will not accept rituals and ceremonies as true worship - then or now!   

8 Israel is swallowed up; They are now among the nations Like a vessel in which no one delights.  

• For all intents and purposes, Israel had been swallowed up; and, they found no pleasure in their new condition. 
• They were like a "a vessel in which no one delights" for they did not have any power or influence - spiritually or politically!  

"...they lived poor, mean, and abject, and were treated with the utmost neglect and contempt; no more regarded than a broken useless vessel, or than a vessel of dishonour, that is made and used for the ease of nature, for which no more regard is had than for that service: thus idolaters, who dishonour God by their idolatries, shall, sooner or later, be brought to disgrace and dishonour themselves."--John Gill's Commentary 

 9 For they have gone up to Assyria, Like a wild donkey all alone; Ephraim has hired lovers.   

• The fact that Israel was wandering "all alone" reveals the path that her idolatry led them to.   

10 Even though they hire allies among the nations, Now I will gather them up; And they will begin to diminish Because of the burden of the king of princes.  

NASB  

3. HEED A WARNING WHEN YOU HEAR IT (HOSEA 9:7-8) 

7 The days of punishment have come, The days of retribution have come; Let Israel know this! The prophet is a fool, The inspired man is demented, Because of the grossness of your iniquity, And because your hostility is so great.  

• The time of their visitation in judgment from the Lord had come.  
• The people of Israel considered God's "prophet to be a fool," that is, "a false prophet, not telling the truth." 
• They had no spiritual discernment. 
• It is the ignorance of the Word of God that is most  disturbing about our nation today. 
• How do so many people get trapped in cults today? 
• It is because of their ignorance of the Word of God and lack of spiritual discernment. 
• God said that He intended to judge Israel, and that should be an illustration to any nation which makes a pretense of being a Christian nation.  

 8 Ephraim was a watchman with my God, a prophet; Yet the snare of a bird catcher is in all his ways, And there is only hostility in the house of his God.  

NASB  

• Despite the attitude of most of the people, the prophet's duty was to warn the people of danger. 
• That is exactly what Hosea was doing. 

• Hosea knew that he was doing the will of the Lord in giving the warning to the people, and it is clear that he longed for the people to heed the message to repent and return to the Lord in obedience. 
• In response to Hosea's message, the people laid a snare for him wherever he went, and possibly, tried to get rid of him.   

"the prophet is a fool; so Israel said, before those days came, of a true prophet of the Lord, that he was a fool for prophesying of evil things, but now they shall find it otherwise."--John Gill's Commentary 

Or, “The watchman of Ephraim now pretends to have been with my God, and prefaces his lies with, Thus saith the Lord; but he is a snare of a fowler in all his ways, and is cunning to draw the simple into sin and the upright into trouble; and he is so full of hatred and enmity to goodness and good men that he has become hatred itself in the house of his God, or against the house of his God.”--Matthew Henry's Commentary  

4. REALIZE WHAT TIME IT IS (HOSEA 10:10-12) 

10 When it is My desire, I will chastise them; And the peoples will be gathered against them When they are bound for their double guilt.  

Other renderings of "their double guilt": 

1. their two eyes - the enticing nature of what they set their eye on 
2. their two fountains - sins of corporeal and spiritual adultery
3. their two furrows. KJV     

Probably a primitive word; an eye (literally or figuratively); by analogy a fountain (as the eye of the landscape): - affliction, outward appearance,..--Strong's definition  

• Both the kingdom which led to human pride and self-sufficiency and the sin of the fertility cult will end in destruction. 
• The Lord will discipline them through the peoples who "will be gathered against them" for their "double guilt."  

11 And Ephraim is a trained heifer that loves to thresh, But I will come over her fair neck with a yoke; I will harness Ephraim, Judah will plow, Jacob will harrow for himself.  

"The sense is, that Ephraim or the ten tribes were taught to bear the yoke of the law, and yield obedience to it, and perform good works; but did not like such a course of life; had no further regard for religion than as they found their own worldly profit and advantage in it: or they did not care to labour much in it; they liked the fruit and advantage arising from working, rather than the work itself; and thus, like a heifer, doing little, and living well, they grew fat,…"--John Gill's Commentary 

12 Sow with a view to righteousness, Reap in accordance with kindness; Break up your fallow ground, For it is time to seek the LORD Until He comes to rain righteousness on you. 

NASB  

• The figure of sowing and reaping is applied to the religious life of the nation.  
• In the land of promise they were to sow righteousness for a harvest and steadfast love. 
•  The harvest was assured, for the Lord was ready to rain salvation upon them.  
• Thus under that striking agricultural symbolism is presented one of the most vital truths of our faith - the law of spiritual returns - those who seek find. 

"Not the seed of grace, which bad men have not, and cannot saw it; and which good men need not, it being sown in them already, and remaining; rather the seed of the word, which should be laid up in their hearts, dwell richly in them, and be kept and retained by them; though it is best of all to understand it of works of righteousness; as sowing to the flesh is doing the works of the flesh, or carnal and sinful acts; so sowing "unto righteousness" (g), as it may be rendered, is doing works of righteousness; living soberly and righteously; doing works according to the word of righteousness, from good principles, and with good views, with a view to the glory of God:…"--John Gill's Commentary