Hosea 5:1-15

Hosea 5:1-15

Choices & Consequences

I.                    All sin has great consequences, but God’s love is greater; so we must seek God’s way and not our own (Vv. 1-7)

a.       As God continues His rebuke of Israel, He again focusses the responsibility on their spiritual and political leaders, but also makes certain that everyone in the nation knows they’re accountable for their choices. The leadership had led the people astray, turning places of honor and worship of God into dens of idolatry and debauchery. They were a snare, a net, and dug a deep and dangerous pit in which they had all become trapped, but the people had also followed blindly along. The leadership had known that they weren’t following in the way God would have them go, but they had fooled themselves into believing God hadn’t seen. But nothing is hidden from God or out His control. He alone is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent. And God assures them that He sees them all, His discipline will be applied to all them, and He’ll instruct them all in the consequences of their sinful choices. However, the people had actually come to a point where their sinful choices to go their own way had led to such prideful self-justification and heart hardening that they were unable to know God and turn back to Him, but they were so lost they didn’t even realize it. They were still raising their herds for sacrifice to God, and planning to seek Him in worship, but God says they won’t find Him. Their unfaithfulness has led them to seek their own way more and more confidently, and produced generation after generation which knew God less and less and drifted farther away from Him. In the end, their sinful choices to go their own way, would lead them totally away from God, and the consequences of their own choices would devour them. What about us? What does the present state of our world and lives reveal about the consequences of our choices? In government, the business place, communities, schools, churches, families, and our individual lives, have we been so set in choosing to seek our own way for so long that we’ve become so hardened in pride and self-justification that we can no longer see? Are there aspects of your life today where you know you’re resisting living according to God’s will? Like Israel, God is calling us to seek His way and not our own. (Vv. 1-7; 2 Chron. 16:9; Ps. 11:4-5; 19:7-11; 25:15; 34:15; 139:7-16, 23-24; Prov. 5:21-23; 8:13; 11:2; 16:18; 29:23; Matt. 18:5-6; Jas. 4:1-6)

II.                 All sin has great consequences, but God’s love is greater; so we must acknowledge our sinful choices, and seek God with our whole heart (Vv. 8-15)

a.       Israel had reached a point in their apostasy in which God would allow them to go their own way, and also reap the fruits of their own choices. He would judge their sin through war and captivity, and would judge Judah in the same way. The people had continued to follow their own way, justify themselves by moving the boundaries of God’s law, and would be oppressed, crushed, and desolated as a result. God would send these circumstances and oppressors to threaten His people so that they might see the danger, connect it as a consequence of their sinful choices, and turn back to God. God is like a moth who flits around and disturbs and distracts us from what we’re doing so as to prompt us to change, but if we ignore Him, He’ll devour our property and cause rot. But instead of turning to God for help in their time of need, Israel will turn to the very people which God will use to judge and discipline them. God used the Assyrians as His tool of discipline and judgment, when overwhelmed them like a lion. Even in the face of calamity they were still determined to follow man’s ways, and it ultimately led to desolation. So what’s the solution? God loves us and desires for us to make the right choices, but He must hold us accountable for our sin. We must understand that His motivation, even in holding us accountable for our sin, is to move us to seek Him with our whole hearts. He loves us, wants what’s best for us, and desires to be in an intimate relationship with us, but sin is the just barrier to all those things. Even as wicked and faithlessly has His people had acted, and even as far removed from them as He seemed due to their sin, they only had to acknowledge their guilt and seek Him with their whole heart. It’s the consequences of our sinful choices which must compel us to repentance, and to seek God through the Person and work of His Christ. It doesn’t matter how wretched our sin is, how great the consequences have become in our lives, or how far we’ve drifted from God, His love is greater, and only it is more powerful than our sin. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that all who believe in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life! (Vv. 8-15; Deut. 4-12; 2 Chron. 7:13-14;  Ps. 119:1-8, 67-75 107, ; Isa. 57:15-21; Jer. 3:13; 29:11-13; 33:3, 14-16; Matt. 5:1-16; 22:36-40 23:37-39; John 3:16; Luke 15:11-24, 32; 19:10; Acts 17:24-31; Rom. 6:23; Jas. 4:7-10; 1 John 1:8-9; 2:15-17)