The bottom line on Hosea 4-5 is simply that whoever you are, you’re doomed without Christ. But not everything that claims to be “Christian” is true. Hosea 4 & 5 have strong words against false teachers – and against those who follow them.
You’re to beware parody religion; beware false faith. Listen to God through Hosea, and find life to the full.
These notes accompany a sermon on YouTube delivered at Bromborough Evangelical Church Wirral in September 2024. You can find more in the series in our sermon index.
What’s wrong? (1-3)
We saw last time that Hosea 1-3 are a kind of introduction to Hosea – and to the 12 minor prophets.
God’s wrath and anger is born out of his love for you. His natural disposition is love. Your sin is a rejection of his love, provoking him to anger.
The rest of Hosea unpacks the various ways we reject him. Chapters 4 and 5 are closely linked. We’ll focus on Hosea 4:1-14 to keep it manageable, but the themes go on through chapter 5 too.
Read Hosea 4:1.
Sometimes someone might wonder what’s wrong with the world. Here in v1 we’re told:
- “There is no truth” – no dependability, no faithful certainty in people. Dishonesty is normal in our culture. We expect it. Mistrust is everywhere. Lock your car. Alarms on.
- “No faithful love” – no abiding commitments between people. Family breakdowns, community disintegrations.
But the interesting thing is that those two things – “truth” and “faithful love” – are used to describe God in the Bible over and over. So if they are missing in society then there’s no experience of God himself!
- “…and no knowledge of God in the land!”
- God is not known, not experienced, not even in human relationships.
Harm Done
So you get v2. Read Hosea 4:2.
Did you hear about the recent murder on the Beechwood estate? If you didn’t, it’s because it’s no longer unusual. If you’re ever called to do jury service you realise how all the things in this list are around us all, all the time, even here in Bromborough. The idea that humanity is somehow improving is a lie. The notion of “progress” gets shattered by every war or pandemic, and more locally by every death, every cancer. Every major war seems to end with war crimes charges – when the restraint of good society is removed, you see people for what they really are.
Lawlessness is nearby and underneath us all the time.
Because it’s in your heart.
We even take it out on the planet: Read Hosea 4:3.
That statement related to God’s covenant curses with Israel, but it’s easy to see how human selfishness is burning up our planet. And Hosea roots all this in the lack of the knowledge of God in the land. When people act without his law, they become less than human.
So if “progress” is a vain myth, and human ideologies fail under pressure, is religion any better?
It’s obvious from history that great wrongs have been committed by people supposedly acting in Christ’s name. But that doesn’t mean Christ is bad – but some have taken his name for personal gain. In fact, Hosea has strong words against such people:
What’s the cause? (4-6)
Read Hosea 4:4-5. The prophets get a little stick, but mostly this is about the priests.
Priests in those days had two main roles:
- Firstly, they served God at the temple by maintaining the daily, monthly and annual cycle of sacrifices. Those things were given by God to enable sinful people to approach him, to know him, and to dwell near him.
- Secondly, the priests’ role was to teach the people God’s law. Not as a strict headmaster waiting to trap them doing something wrong. But as a means of remaining in close relationship with the living God who dwelt among them.
That’s because God’s law does a number of things for us:
- It reveals God’s love for us, and how he cares for the weak, the poor, the vulnerable.
- The law also highlights our sin to us, reminding us that we are naturally far from God.
- But it also provides the means by which sinful people can draw near. In the Old Testament, that meant sacrifices where an animal would die instead of you. And that was given as a shadow, a picture, of the perfect once-for-all sacrifice of God’s Son, Jesus, who died instead of sinners, taking their punishment.
But in Hosea’s day, the priests had abandoned their role as teachers of God’s law by abandoning their own obedience.
The rote and routine of religion had replaced true awe and right relationship on God’s terms. In abandoning the law, they redefined what sin is. They lost sight of God’s grace and majesty.
A Modern Problem
The Church of England are just the latest in a long line of Christian organisations to be doing just this at their senior level. You might well wonder how many bishops are even saved.
Because: How can a someone teach what they don’t know?
- I can tell you about my favourite part of Handel’s Messiah, how it makes the hairs on my arms stand out and move me to tears.
- Or I can talk about looking up from rural Wales, looking into the Milky Way in the dark skies with no light pollution!
- Better still, I can tell you about the utter goodness of God’s love and faithfulness, and how he carries me through all of life.
But here’s the thing: I’m to experience God and to know him so that I can teach you about him him because it’s for you to know and experience as well. Knowledge and experience of God is not something for pastors, priests and vicars to keep to themselves.
Israel’s priests were to teach. Everyone was to know.
Catholic mass used to be carried out in Latin. The phrase “this is my body” in Latin is “Hoc est corpus meum”. It was seen as some kind of magic for the priests only, not to be understood or enjoyed by the congregation. “Hoc est corpus meum” became the phrase “hocus pocus” – secret magic.
The truth is that to be a teacher of God’s word is highly honourable, but also they are accountable to God for you. So:
Understand and Discern (7-14)
Attention switches from teacher to taught in these verses. It’s in two sections, each ending with a kind of proverb.
- Verses 7 to 11 deal with parody religion.
- And verses 12-14 are about false faith.
Imagine a place where Bible teachers are more led by the people they’re leading than the Bible itself. Teachers like that become very popular! They sell lots of books, and get rich. They end up with a feedback loop where the preacher gives what the hearers want to hear, and they tell him he’s a great preacher.
Little by little, drifting further away from the Bible’s ethics and into the world, sin becomes redefined. And the more sin is normalised, the more popular a preacher can become with sinners.
What does God think of that? Read Hosea 4:7-11.
Such people will “eat and not be satisfied” – something Jesus said of those who will not come to him: Jesus is the Bread of Life, and he said, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread he will live forever” (John 6:51).
A form of religion that seems ok but is divorced from God’s word is just a parody – and those who take part in it are fooled. If you’re not to be taken in, you need understanding.
You need to listen to what’s said and ask, “Is this really what God is saying in the Bible?”
That’s not so that you become the sermon police. But you are to be a learning disciple. Because (Hosea 4:9), “The same judgment will happen to both people and priests.” You can’t sit under bad preaching forever. You’re accountable as a hearer, and as a doer of what you hear.
So God will judge all parody religion. Likewise for false faith.
False faith
Read Hosea 4:12-14.
You say, “Of course we don’t consult wooden idols” (v12). Touch wood. Fingers crossed. Lucky underpants.
The message of the Bible is crystal clear on this: There is One God and One Way to come to him – Jesus Christ. That is an exclusive claim. So all other religions – including atheism – are really idolatry in disobedience to God.
It might look a culture or society is ok, but there will be elements that are profoundly wicked. The Incas of South America were spectacularly advanced in science and engineering. Yet they’d offer slaves and children as human sacrifice to the sun god. Our own society sacrifices unborn children to the values of choice, independence, freedom, autonomy. That’s wrong, and history will condemn this generation. God already has.
There is no pleasing God with parody religion, or with false faith.
False faith is faith, but it’s faith in the wrong thing. So don’t hedge your spiritual bets.
Go ‘all in’ on Jesus. There can be no synthesis with other religion or worldview.
- Hosea 4:11 Promiscuity, wine, and new wine take away one’s understanding.
- Hosea 4:14 People without discernment are doomed.
You’re doomed without Christ. So what’s the answer?
Repent and return to Christ
Read Hosea 4:1 again. So where is truth, faithful love, and knowledge of God to be found? Jesus Christ is those things himself. And he lived those things out in every moment of his life on earth, and still does.
Can you enter into that truth, faithful love, and knowledge of God? Yes: Read Hosea 2:19-20.
As you enter into that relationship that he invites you to, you partake of his divine nature. You’re a changed person; he changes your desires. The “cursing, lying, murder, stealing, and adultery” of v2 have no place among people in union with Jesus. They are not ‘of God’ so they are not to be ‘of his children’ either.
Are you sick and tired of your sin? Trust in Jesus.
Do you feel the weight of guilt before God? Trust God to forgive you, and ask him. He will, because Jesus has been punished in your place. Don’t tie yourself up in knots with “Did I say it right?” – Just trust him.
If you’re a Christian and you’re struggling with sin in your life, the answer isn’t just, “Try harder.” Rather, Jesus calls you to repent, to love him, and to love what he loves.
You’re doomed without Christ, but you can live with him. Bible teachers like me aren’t to be idolised; you don’t put your trust in me. Trust Jesus to have done all that is needed for your eternal salvation.
Know God in Christ
If you’re feeling distant from God, struck by sin or guilt, or even just feeling like a fraud, what can you do?
- Your life for and with God will always be as deep or as shallow as your knowledge of him.
- If your experience of him is paper thin, you’ll not cope with loss, or pain, or illness, or temptation, or trouble.
- But the greater you grasp his grace and power in your life, the greater and richer and deeper peace you will have.
- And he loves you, and calls you away from your sin and into that deeper relationship with him forever.
So:
- What’s wrong – in your life, in society? A lack of the experiential knowledge of God.
- What’s the cause? Routine religion replacing living relationship with God – caused by religious leaders who themselves haven’t experienced God.
- But the knowledge of God is for everyone: So understand and discern.
- Don’t settle for parody religion or false faith.
- Repent and return to Christ. Live out your union with him in a godliness of living that has depth of relationship.