Hosea 4

Order of Service

• Call to Worship — 1 Chronicles 16:8-12
• Hymn — Thy Works, Not Mine, O Christ (#524)
• Westminster Shorter Catechism — Questions 33 & 34 (Justification and Adoption)
• Hymn — A Child of the King (#525)
• Pastoral Prayer
• Scripture Reading — Hosea 4:1-19
• Sermon
• Hymn — When This Passing World Is Done (#545)
• Benediction — 2 Corinthians 13:14

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Sermon Title: Ignorance Is Not Bliss

Scripture: Hosea 4:1-19

I. Ignorance in the People

A. The charge against Israel: no faithfulness, no steadfast love (hesed), and no knowledge of God (Hosea 4:1)

1. The marriage covenant theme: Israel has broken covenant with Yahweh, their bridegroom
2. Hesed — covenant love, faithfulness within the bounds of a covenant relationship

B. The fruit of ignorance: violation of the latter six commandments (Hosea 4:2)

1. Swearing and lying — breaking the ninth commandment
2. Murder — breaking the sixth commandment
3. Stealing — breaking the eighth commandment
4. Adultery — breaking the seventh commandment
5. Bloodshed follows bloodshed — all bounds broken loose

C. The order of moral collapse

1. Breaking covenant with God → loss of knowledge of God → lawlessness in the land
2. Losing the first table of the law inevitably leads to losing the second table
3. The land mourns as a result of corporate sin (Hosea 4:3)

D. The Adam and ground (adamah) connection

1. Corporate Israel is a new Adam placed in the land; their sin causes the land to mourn
2. Parallels to Genesis 3:17 and the curse on the ground, and to Genesis 6 and the universal wickedness of mankind
3. In the flood narrative, what appeases God is not the flood itself but Noah's substitutionary burnt offering (Genesis 8:20-22)
4. The cycle: wholesale sin → judgment → consecration back to God through sacrifice

E. Christ as the fulfillment of all three sacrificial types

1. Expiatory (sin offering) — removes guilt and sin
2. Consecration (burnt offering) — "Into your hands I commit my spirit"
3. Peace offering (fellowship) — "Peace be with you"; breakfast with disciples after resurrection (John 20-21)
4. Both adam (man) and adamah (ground) benefit — Christ brings a new creation

II. Ignorance in the Priests

A. The indictment shifts from people to priests (Hosea 4:4-6)

1. The people are destroyed for lack of knowledge because the priests rejected knowledge
2. As the teacher goes, so goes the people

B. The priority of pastoral study and sound teaching

1. The apostles appointed deacons so they could devote themselves to the ministry of the Word (Acts 6)
2. A pastor's primary calling is to be in the Word — yet this is neglected in much of contemporary ministry
3. The result: widespread doctrinal ignorance among professing Christians

C. Bad teaching compounds itself (Hosea 4:7)

1. Bad teacher begets bad teacher — moral and spiritual degradation accelerates

D. Priests feeding on the sins of the people (Hosea 4:8)

1. A wordplay on the Levitical practice: priests received meat from the sin offering (Leviticus 6)
2. More sin = more benefit for the priest — no incentive to feed the people Christ
3. Parallels to the sale of indulgences at the Reformation (Tetzel)
4. A present danger in Protestant and even Reformed Christianity: leaders cultivating neediness in the people for personal gain

E. Judgment falls equally on priest and people (Hosea 4:9)

1. Teachers face stricter judgment — James 3:1
2. The temptation to separate ministerial performance from personal holiness
3. Richard Baxter: the best sermon preached is when a pastor preaches first to himself

III. Ignorance and the Passions

A. "Passions" defined: disordered, God-denying fleshly lusts (Ephesians 2:3)

B. Context: Israel's economic prosperity bred complacency and idle flesh (Hosea 4:10-14)

1. Judah warned not to enter Israel — gilgal and Bethel (now Beth Aven, "house of emptiness") on the border
2. Comfort and prosperity filled with satisfying fleshly lusts: sexual immorality, wine, cult prostitution
3. Boredom begets sin

C. The key sequence from Hosea 4:10

1. Forsaking the Lord → satisfying the passions of the flesh → loss of understanding
2. Man is not primarily a thinking being but a desiring being — we are creatures of deep affection made for God
3. The serpent's strategy in the garden: manipulate desires, not primarily impart false information — and foolishness follows (Genesis 3)

D. Disordered desire, not lack of information, is the root of foolishness

1. The drug addict example: the mind follows where the heart is engaged
2. Regenerate Christians — regardless of education — are the most truly wise because their desires are rightly ordered toward God
3. Paul's frustration with the Corinthians: given rightly ordered desires, yet still feeding on milk rather than solid food (1 Corinthians 3)

E. Closing exhortation

1. The regenerate have been given a new heart — every faculty transformed: body, soul, mind
2. The "foolishness" of the cross is wiser than all human wisdom (1 Corinthians 1)
3. Set your minds on heavenly, eternal things — where neither moth nor rust destroys