Sin's Inevitable Consequence | Sunday, July 21, 2024

Thank you, Anthony. Praise the Lord! Good morning, Cross Connection. You can be seated.

We sang in that song about having a hope of Heaven, that the Lord is preparing a place for us. In John chapter 14, Jesus said to His disciples, "Let not your heart be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in Me. In My Father's house, there are many dwelling places. Were it not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you, and if I go and prepare a place for you, I will

Reading through and studying these texts, I kind of know the basic story of it. However, when you get into the weeds of it, it is not a very popular message. It can be challenging to preach. The story we have here in Hosea is, sadly, at this moment, an all-too-familiar story. In fact, the time in which this prophet lived was marked by economic instability and political upheaval in his nation. There were even coups and assassinations—sound familiar?

There was a moral decline among his people, civil conflict, and social inequality. Rising foreign powers sought to obtain dominance over the world, and there were foreign wars and geopolitical pressures all around the people of Israel. The individual Hosea lived through a familiar story, and at this very moment, we are sitting a week and a day out from an attempted assassination of the leading political candidate for his party, vying for the highest office in our nation and arguably for the highest power in the world.

As we sit here on this day, Sunday, July 21st, the opposing candidate, the incumbent president of the United States, is being pressured by powers within his party to step down. This may actually happen today or within a matter of days; at least, that's what is being reported in the leaked news. This is a fascinating, unprecedented thing to consider. It is not following the legal process outlined in the Constitution for how these matters ought to be handled. Instead, what we are witnessing are powers behind the scenes conspiring.

What is that? It's called a conspiracy. We don't like to talk about that. I mean, how dare you be a conspiracy theorist? But this is an open conspiracy. How strange is this? Do you realize we are living through historic times that, in a hundred years, will be written about and taught to your kids and great-grandchildren? It's insane what we are watching unfold. Let me tell you, that was the same story in Hosea's day. The things that were going on then were equally insane. At this very moment, we sit amidst generationally high tensions.

Inflation and interest rates are at a time where there is generationally high civil division and conflict, along with historically high inequality and inequities. There are multiple foreign wars happening that could escalate into global conflict. God, please no! We should be praying that this not be the case. We have rising tensions from rising powers who are seeking global dominance. Additionally, there is moral confusion and decline that I think is higher than at any other time, at least in my life. We are living in torrid and strange times.

Hosea was living in similar circumstances. The story of Hosea's time was quite comparable. In 752 BC, King Pekah rose to power in the nation of Israel, the Northern Kingdom, by assassinating his predecessor, Pekahiah. Pekahiah had only served two years, and the Scriptures tell us in 2 Kings chapter 15 that he had done evil in the sight of the Lord. He did not depart from all the sinful things that the kings had done among the children of Israel in the north, and he caused the people of Israel to increase and escalate their sinfulness and wickedness before God. After two years of being king, he was assassinated by Pekah.

In 2 Kings 15:25, it says, "Then Pekah the son of Remaliah, an officer of the king who had been reigning for two years, conspired against him and killed him in the capital city, Samaria. He killed him and reigned in his place."

Now, King Pekah, when he rose to power in 752 BC, predated Jesus by more than 700 years, but he could have benefited from Jesus's teaching in Matthew chapter 26, where He says, "Those who live by the sword will die by the sword." Pekah came to power by assassinating his predecessor. What do you think probably happened to him twenty years after he rose to power? In 732 BC, we know from history that Hoshea, who has the same name as Hosea and may have been connected—perhaps they were from a similar family in the Northern Kingdom—led a conspiracy against Pekah, the son of Remaliah, and struck and killed him.

He reigned in his place, and the northern kingdom was an absolute mess in the eighth century. The nation was experiencing economic devastation due to a famine. We know that during the period of time that Hosea reigned, there was a great famine in the northern kingdom. The northern kingdom was a very fertile area, and their economy was almost entirely based on what they produced agriculturally. When a famine comes and devastates them agriculturally, it devastates everything downstream from that. They were lacking food for themselves, and they were also experiencing an economic downturn.

During this period, there was the ascendency of the Assyrians. You can study about the Assyrians in the eighth century and see how this great global power emerged during that time under the reign of a group of kings: Tiglath-Pileser, Sargon, and others. They led the Assyrians on a march toward global power, toppling city-states throughout the region we know today as the Fertile Crescent. Next on their map, if you will, was Syria, just north of the northern kingdom of Israel, and immediately after that would be Israel.

In the midst of this, the kings of the northern kingdom, Pekah first and then Hoshea, were trying to avert disaster. They were attempting to stop the march of this ascendant power, doing everything they possibly could. However, they were not a big nation and were struggling with economic problems and various issues. They tried to fend it off by creating alliances and paying taxes or tributes to Assyria, but the Assyrians were on the march.

There were geopolitical tensions, foreign aggression, civil unrest, and division within the nation of Israel during this period. There were two major groups: the elites, who were often very closely connected to the ruling power in the capital city, Samaria, and those who were part of the priestly group within the nation. They were rich and doing well, but there was a wide divide between the high-up elites and the lower-class people in the nation. The latter were experiencing great famine and were poverty-stricken in many ways.

When you look at the history of Israel in the eighth century BC during the time of Hosea, it was the worst of times. Why was it the worst of times? The text of this passage in Hosea provides insight into this dire situation.

He says, "Do not rejoice, O Israel, with joy like other peoples, for you have played the harlot against your God." Underline that; maybe in your Bible, it says they have played the harlot against your God. They had turned to immorality and idolatry. They had turned away from faithfulness and faith towards God, and they had done this consistently and perpetually for centuries. For at least 500 years, they continued in persistent idolatry in very wicked and immoral ways. They had brought this judgment upon themselves.

"You have played the harlot against your God. You have made love for hire on every threshing floor. The threshing floor and the winepress shall not feed them, and the new wine shall fail in her. They shall not dwell in the Lord's land, but Ephraim shall return to Egypt and shall eat unclean things in Assyria. They shall not offer wine offerings to the Lord, nor shall their sacrifices be pleasing to Him. It shall be like the bread of mourners to them; all who eat it shall be defiled, for their bread shall be for their own life. It shall not come into the house of the Lord."

All of these things that were happening in Israel—the famine, the economic collapse, the great divide between the haves and the have-nots, the political pressures and issues of coups and assassinations—were earthly manifestations of spiritual issues. Underlying them were spiritual problems. This is hard for a culture such as ours, where many people do not believe in another world, a spiritual realm. They don't think that there is a spiritual realm that has any effect on the temporal or physical realm.

But if you're a Christian, you're given a peek behind the veil, where you're able to see that there's something more to what's going on. Here’s the thing we need to recognize: when things are failing and falling apart in this earthly realm, it is an indication that something is happening in the spiritual realm. For the children of Israel, all of these downstream effects—economic collapse, political pressures, and rising powers coming to destroy them—were connected to their unfaithfulness to God. It was a spiritual problem. Israel was in dire straits because of their sin; they did evil in the sight of the Lord. As I shared in my message last week, they did it to themselves. They had engaged in evil for centuries, and they were experiencing the consequences.

What are very clearly the inevitable consequences of sin? What is the expected outcome? The people had given themselves wholesale to immoral idolatry. They were serving a multiplicity of gods, a kind of pantheon of gods. They had Baal, which was a common deity among the Canaanite peoples, and Asherah, another common deity among them. They also returned to golden calf worship, which had seduced them when they were at Mount Sinai all the way back during the time of Exodus.

So, they were worshiping all these things while trying to keep up the pretense of faithfulness to God. They were engaging in immoral ways of worshiping these idols, yet they still attempted to observe the feast days and the times of rejoicing for God in Israel. It is important to understand and recognize that you cannot actively engage in and participate in wickedness and expect outcomes that are not just bondage, suffering, and destruction. Those are the inevitable outcomes, the consequences of sin.

Now, after centuries of unfaithfulness to God, He has given His word to the people through the prophet Hosea. Hosea ends up being the last prophet to speak to the people before their exile and destruction. God had been sending prophets—some of the names we know, but many we do not—for generations to these peoples, calling them back to repentance. However, they would harden their hearts and not listen to the prophets. In fact, they would mock the prophets; sometimes they would beat them, but at the very least, they would reject what the prophets had to say.

Hosea is the last one. He is the last to bring this word to the people, and what is his message? He says, "Do not rejoice, O Israel, with joy like other peoples, for you have played the harlot against your God. You have made love for hire on every threshing floor." He says joy and rejoicing are going to cease.

Now, what is the joy and rejoicing he is talking about? He is referring to the joy and the rejoicing of the harvest. He indicates that an indication of God's judgment in this present circumstance is that their joy in the harvest is going to go away. What does that mean? It means they are not going to have a harvest. The famine is going to cause a lack of food, and they will not even be able to rejoice over it.

What we see here is a truth that is evident throughout the Scriptures as it relates to wickedness, evil, and sin. It is a very clear point that we need to remember: sin always...

Bringing people down is the inevitable consequence of engaging in evil and sin. Evil consists of those things that oppose God's ways and word. Therefore, you cannot walk in ways that oppose God's principles and expect to have anything other than a life of devastation, brokenness, bondage, and suffering.

Solomon, the great wise king of Israel, observed the same thing. He said, "Righteousness exalts a nation." If you walk in what is right before God, following the pattern and principles laid out in the Scriptures, as well as the law written upon your heart, you will experience exaltation and blessing. However, if you do not, sin is a reproach to any people. Disregard and disobedience to God's law always lead to separation, suffering, and death. This should not surprise us, as it is observable and revealed in the Scriptures. The consistent reality of Scripture is that if you walk in ways that oppose the principles and teachings of God's word, you will suffer the consequences.

It is also important to remember that God does not desire for us to suffer these consequences. He does not want us to experience this pain. I shared last week from Ezekiel that God does not delight in the death of the wicked. This highlights the difference between God and us; we often find a sense of vindication when we see someone who is openly wicked and evil judged. However, God does not delight in that in the same way we do. He desires rather that people would turn to Him and live.

Nevertheless, God allows us to choose sin instead of righteousness. By choosing to walk contrary to God's word and ways, we are also choosing to suffer the consequences of those actions. Israel had openly walked against God's ways for hundreds of years, and God had allowed Israel to do what was right in their own eyes. He permitted them to engage in evil, even though He knew very well the outcome of their choices.

Inevitably, it was going to lead to their destruction. They were going to experience suffering. Because He is patient, because He is kind, and because He is loving, for centuries He has lovingly sent them prophets. What were the prophets doing? They were calling the people to turn away from the path that was going to lead them to inevitable destruction and to return back to God. But they would not turn. Therefore, what is going to happen? He says, "The threshing floor and the wine press shall not feed them, and the new wine shall fail in her." These are just poetic words telling of a famine.

Hosea sees what is coming. Israel, you have been walking in open disobedience and rejection of God's word, and the inevitable consequence is that you are going to experience a famine. That is what is going to come. Why would there be a famine in the land? Again, it is the inevitable consequence of sin. God told them this hundreds of years before through Moses. I have referenced it so many times that by this point, you are probably wondering when I am going to stop talking about this.

In Deuteronomy 28:15, God said through Moses, 700 years before Israel is now experiencing this: "It shall come to pass." It will happen, is what that means. If you do not obey the voice of the Lord your God to observe carefully all His commandments and His statutes which I command you today, all these curses and blessings will come upon and overtake you.

What is one of them? Verse 18 states, "Cursed shall be the fruit of your body and the produce of your land, the increase of your cattle, the offspring of your flocks." This is the unsurprising consequence of sin. It should not be shocking because God said this is exactly what would happen. Since this outcome—famine—should not be surprising, the very next step in the process should not be a shock as well.

What would be the next step after the famine? Hosea says, "They shall not dwell in the Lord's land, but Ephraim, the northern kingdom, shall return to Egypt, and they shall eat unclean things in Assyria." Israel was about to go into bondage. They were about to experience the final step of God's judgment prophesied by Moses in Deuteronomy 28, which is exile from the land. Those who had been graciously given the promised land were now going to have it taken from them. This is God's final step.

Hosea is there as the last prophet, saying to the people, "Okay, this famine that you're now experiencing is exactly what Moses said would happen. If you don't repent, if you do not turn to the Lord, then the next step after this is exile. You are going to experience the same bondage that your great-great-great-great-great-great grandfathers experienced in Egypt. It won't be in Egypt this time; it will be the same kind of bondage, but now it's going to be in Assyria. You are going to be exiled to Assyria. It will no longer be bondage along the banks of the Nile; it will be bondage along the banks of the Tigris and the Euphrates."

This is the inevitable consequence. Seven hundred years before Deuteronomy 28:25, the Lord will cause you to be defeated before your enemies. You shall go out one way and flee seven ways before them, and they shall become troublesome to you. Why? Verse 47 of Deuteronomy 28 states, "Because you did not serve the Lord your God with joy and gladness of heart for the abundance of everything. Therefore, you shall serve your enemies whom the Lord will send against you in hunger and thirst, in nakedness, and in need of everything. He will put a yoke of iron on your neck until He has destroyed you."

The Lord will bring a nation against you from afar, from the end of the earth, as swift as an eagle flies. It will be a nation whose language you will not understand, a nation with a fierce countenance that does not respect the elderly nor show favor to the young. They shall eat the increase of your livestock and the produce of your land until you are destroyed. They shall not leave you grain, new wine, or oil, or the increase of your cattle or the offspring of your flocks until they have destroyed you. The exile was forthcoming.

Isaiah says, "This is what is headed toward you." At the same time that Hosea is delivering this message, there were other prophets in the nation of Israel whom we would call soothsayers. Hosea's message and the message of the true prophets was not popular. It was not popular to the point that they were often rejected, mocked, imprisoned, and beaten. The soothsayers were the ones saying to the people, "Don't worry about Assyria. God is going to defend you. God is going to protect you. You are God's people; you are the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. You have the promised land; everything's going to be okay." That message sells, and we see it in our day as well. That message is popular, but that message is...

False Jesus would say, "Beware of false prophets. They come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves." This is true in our day, just as it has been throughout thousands of years of history. They are often in it for their own personal greed and gain.

The message of Hosea was unpopular. Famine was already striking the people, and the next step that was to come would actually happen in 722 BC. The city of Samaria would fall to the Assyrians, and the people of Israel, the northern ten tribes, would become what we know of today as the Lost Tribes of Israel, lost and scattered among the nations. This punishing famine was upon the children of Israel, an extreme famine to the point that Hosea says in Hosea 9:5, "What will you do in the appointed day and in the day of the Feast of the Lord? For indeed they are gone because of destruction. Egypt shall gather them up; Memphis shall bury them. Nettles shall possess their valuables of silver; thorns shall be in their tents. The days of punishment have come; the days of recompense have come. Israel knows the prophet is a fool; the spiritual man is insane because of the greatness of your iniquity and the great enmity."

What Hosea prophesies here is total destruction, first by famine and then by the invading army of the Assyrians. He says that because of this famine, they will have nothing to offer to God. This is somewhat crazy because the people of Israel were worshiping false gods: Baal, Asherah, Molech, the golden calves, and whatever other deities they bowed down to. Yet, they still maintained a pretense of righteousness by observing the feast days.

Hosea says, "Listen, the famine is going to be so severe that you won't even have anything to offer to God on the feast days. You will have nothing to present before Him." They were wholesale given to immorality, but they were still keeping up an appearance before God, pretending to walk in righteousness before Him. This is the foolishness of sin. It is amazing how sin robs people of reason, allowing them to bow down to all kinds of immoral practices while maintaining a facade of righteousness.

Evil things can lead us to a strange calculus. We often tell ourselves that as long as we go to church at least once a month, we will be okay. This is the mindset that many adopt while walking in wickedness. We might think, "I'm okay because I go to church," or "That guy I work with is just as immoral as I am, but he doesn't go to church, so I'm fine." This behavior mirrors what the children of Israel were doing during a particular period of time, revealing a truth we need to remember.

Point number two: sin always makes people foolish. Paul observed this in Romans chapter 1. He writes in verse 21, "Because although they knew God, they did not glorify God as God, nor were they thankful. But they became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools." Sin always makes people foolish.

The psalmist also noted this, and it is recorded twice in the Psalms. In Psalm 115, we find a fascinating picture of what sin, specifically idolatry—bowing down to things that are not God—does to a person. The psalmist states in Psalm 115:4, "Their idols, the idols of humanity, are silver and gold, the works of men's hands." People worship the things they create; they worship their own making. These idols have mouths, but they do not speak; they have eyes, but they do not see; they have ears, but they do not hear; they have noses, but they do not smell; they have hands, but they do not handle; they have feet, but they cannot walk; nor do they mutter through their throats.

This observation by the psalmist highlights that these idols are deaf, dumb, and blind—stupid things that foolish, sinful people bow down to and devote themselves to. The key verse is verse 8, which states, "Those who make them are like them; so is everyone who trusts in them." What does this mean? The idols we bow down to in this world are deaf, dumb, blind, and foolish. If you devote yourself to those things, you will become deaf, dumb, blind, and foolish.

As I reflected on this passage, I was reminded of the greatest Bible teaching I ever heard on Psalm 115. It emphasized that while these idols have eyes, they do not see; they have mouths, but they do not speak.

Not many people speak about it, but it was delivered by a pastor who once had an incredibly awesome ministry in our nation and within the movement of churches that we're connected to. His name was Koy, and he pastored the largest church in Calvary Chapel, as well as one of the largest churches in America, with some 20,000 people in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. All the while that he was preaching these dynamic messages, he was living a duplicitous, sinful life that was ultimately exposed and destroyed his life. It destroyed his family and nearly destroyed the church.

By God's grace, the Lord raised up a new pastor, Pastor Doug. It is just heartbreaking to see someone that I and so many other people looked up to, listened to his Bible teaching on the radio, and followed. I remember the message that he gave on this passage; it was powerful. Yet, he was living a sick, sinful, duplicitous life. That's exactly what Israel was doing in the eighth century BC, and I regret to inform you that it's exactly what many people in our time are doing as well.

Some might say, "But I go to church on Sunday, so everything's okay." No, it's not. What that means is you will have a greater accountability when you stand before God. Although you knew God, you did not worship Him as God, and your foolish heart was darkened. Israel had departed from faith and faithfulness to God, and therefore they were suffering the inevitable consequences of sin. The days of punishment, Hosea says, and the recompense have come.

Now, that word "recompense" means the payment of a wage. What is the wage of sin? Romans says death. You cannot engage in sin and not expect to reap the consequences of sin. One of the consequences of sin for Israel at this moment was a severe famine in the land that they were enduring. Soon, they would experience the next step, which would be exile from God's promised land. Hosea says these things, as did all the prophets, not just to make the people feel bad. He says these things that they might return and repent. Instead of returning and repenting, they would mock the prophets. They would say, "Oh, Hosea, he's a fool." The same thing was said about Isaiah, which you can read about in Isaiah chapter 28.

Isaiah was a contemporary of Hosea, but just several miles to the south in the southern Kingdom of Judah. He was giving very much the same message, although he was much more long-winded, kind of like me, than Hosea. Isaiah was delivering this message to the people of Judah: the same message as Hosea, that they needed to repent and turn to the Lord or they would be destroyed by the Assyrians.

The people responded, saying, "Ah, we don't like to listen to Isaiah. All he ever says is line upon line, line upon line, precept upon precept, precept upon precept." This is found in Isaiah 28:10-13. It's amusing because many pastors today claim, "Hey, we teach the Scriptures line upon line and precept upon precept," which is true. However, we sometimes fail to recognize that this phrase was actually used as a mockery of Isaiah. When you read it in Hebrew, it conveys the sentiment that Isaiah only repeats, "line, line, line, line; precept, precept, precept, precept." He was like a broken record, although they didn't have records back then, and neither do we. He just kept saying the same thing over and over again, to the point where people no longer heard him.

I'll never forget Pastor Jason. Before he worked here, he was employed at an office in town, specifically in their IT department. Every time I stopped by to visit him, there was this server that emitted a constant beep, like a warning signal. It was so nagging that you would think, "Gosh, why don't you guys do something about this?" It beeped all day long, and you know what? Jason just stopped hearing it because he was there all the time. It's like your brain tunes it out when you're exposed to it constantly. This is exactly what the people did with the prophets; they tuned them out and mocked them.

In verse 8, it states, "The Watchman of Ephraim is with my God." Hosea was one of the Watchmen of the nation of Israel, speaking God's word to them. However, the prophet is a snare in all his ways, enmity in the house of God. They are deeply corrupted, as in the days of Gibeah. He will remember their iniquity; he will punish their sins.

I have found Israel like grapes in a wilderness. I saw your father as the first fruits of a fig tree in its first season, but they went to Baal Peor and separated themselves to that shame. They became an abomination, like the thing they loved. God had loved Israel. In fact, the...

Scriptures say He loved them with an everlasting love, but they rejected Him. To God, the people of Israel were like a very sweet thing. He uses this poetic language, saying that they were like the grapes of the wilderness, the first fruits of a fig tree in its first season. The picture is this: imagine you are out in an arid, dry desert with nothing to eat and nothing to drink. Then you come upon an oasis, and there are fresh fruits there. How sweet would those things be to you? He says, "You, my people, you were like that. You were sweet to me. I loved you with an everlasting love." Yet, they rejected God and turned to idols. Because they had joined themselves to idols, as mentioned in Hosea 4:17, God says, "Let them alone." They had turned to wickedness, specifically the wickedness of Gibeah and the wickedness of Baal Peor.

These are references that His hearers would understand. The wickedness of Baal Peor was when the children of Israel departed from faithfulness to God and served idols during their wilderness wandering. You can read about it in the book of Numbers. The wickedness of Gibeah, however, is something we will discuss when we return to the Book of Judges in about a month and a half. The latter chapters of the Book of Judges contain one of the most vile stories in all of Scripture about what took place in a place called Gibeah and the outcome of it, which almost destroyed the entire tribe of Benjamin in Israel because of the wickedness of their sin. I won't get into it today because I don't have enough time, but in about two months, we will talk about this vile horror that took place in Gibeah.

Hosea says this is basically what you've done throughout the entire nation; you are deserving of judgment. Why? Because sin always invites God's wrath. That is the inevitable consequence of sin. It is directly opposing or going against God's word and His ways. It is a transgression against His very nature and His will, and it always invites His wrath. The wrath of God will be revealed from Heaven upon all unrighteousness and ungodliness of those who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, as Paul observed in Romans chapter 1. Now, God is very patient.

God is very slow to anger; He is longsuffering. But ultimately, judgment will come. God has been longsuffering with Israel for five centuries, but now judgment is at the door. I don't like to think about this reality that sin always invites God's wrath. There is nobody who could say to me at this moment in any way that would be believable that our nation is walking in rightness before God.

Now, God is longsuffering, and it took some five centuries before He ultimately brought judgment upon Israel. We are only halfway there; we'll celebrate 250 years as a nation in two years. Maybe God will continue to be longsuffering, but for His grace, that's it. There is no way you could prove to me that our nation is seeking or walking in rightness.

In verse 11 of Hosea chapter 9, it says, "As for Ephraim," which is another name for the northern kingdoms, "their glory shall fly away like a bird." They are going to lose their glory, and what will be the evidence that they will lose their glory? This is interesting: one of the evidences that their glory is being taken from them is no birth, no pregnancy, no conception. There is going to be a collapse of birth rates.

What is the glory of a nation? It is that they have children. God says that glory is going to be removed from them. This seems like a judgment, and it is, but it's also a mercy. Why? So that those children would not be destroyed in God's judgment. Even if they bring up their children and raise them, yet I will bereave them to the last man. Yes, woe to them when I depart from them. Woe to these children when I remove my presence from them.

It is actually God's mercy that He allows them to have a collapsing birth rate, but He says, "Woe to them when I remove my presence from them." Just as I saw Ephraim like a tree planted in a pleasant place, so Ephraim will bring out his children to the slayer, to the murderer. He says if you do have children that survive the famine, that survive the devastation, they are going to be destroyed by the slayer, the enemy that comes against them.

"Give them, O Lord, what will You give them? Give them a miscarrying womb and dry breasts." So Hosea prays this strange prayer. He says, "Lord, it would be better that they have no children than that the children..."

Would suffer this shame, so don't allow them to have any children.

Point number four: sin always multiplies suffering and sorrow. You can expect this if you continue to engage in wickedness without repenting and turning to the Lord. Sin always multiplies suffering and sorrow; that is the inevitable consequence of sin. Sadly, Hosea's dreadful declaration is not finished.

In verse 15, he states, "All their wickedness is in Gilgal," a place that had once been a place of great glory for Israel. It was the very first place that they celebrated the Passover when they crossed the Jordan River and came into the Promised Land under Joshua. It was the very first place that they reconsecrated themselves to the Lord and affirmed their covenant with Him. Yet, this place that had been so glorious in Israel's history had now become a place of idolatry and wickedness.

He says, "All their wickedness is in Gilgal; for there I hated them." These people that I entered into a relationship with, now I hate them because of the evil of their deeds and their own sinfulness. "I will drive them from my house. I'm going to exile them. I will love them no more." All their princes are rebellious. Ephraim, the nation of Israel, is stricken; the root is dried up. They shall bear no fruit. Yes, were they to bear children, if they did have children in this collapsing birth rate, I would kill the darlings of their womb. How striking is that?

I don't think you could read any more striking words from God: "I will kill their children because of their wickedness." My God will cast them away. Why? Because they did not obey Him, and they shall be wanderers among the nations. They had taken this once great place, which was just one of many Gilgals, this once great place of their relationship, a memorial to their relationship with God, and turned it into a place of vile wickedness.

I can't help but think—and I almost feel wrong to bring it up—but look at the once great places of our nation. Just earlier this year, there was a leaked video of one of the most vile, reprehensible, sinful things happening in one of the rooms of Congress released online. You might say, "Well, you don't even need to look at that," and I hope that you don't. But back up 25 years: what was happening in the West Wing of the White House 25 years ago? The once great places of our nation have changed dramatically.

The nation is totally soiled by sin. Those whom God had loved with an everlasting love were going to become a hated thing because of their idolatry and the evil of their deeds. God said, "I will drive them from my house; I will love them no more." I can think of hardly any more tragic words than those. If they bring up children, God said, "I will kill their darlings."

Why would this happen? Well, it didn't have to happen, and God does not delight in such judgment. But He gives the answer: "My God will cast them away because they did not obey Him, and they will be wanderers among the nations."

Point number five, and I'll wrap it up: sin always removes us far from God. These are the inevitable consequences of sin. Sin always brings people down; it always makes people dumb. It always invites God's wrath, multiplies suffering and sorrow, and removes people far from God.

You might say, "Well, Pastor, that's very optimistic and hopeful. Thank you very much for that. Where do you go from here?" Well, you go to this: there is only one remedy for sin. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned everyone to his own way, and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all. He was wounded for our transgressions; He was bruised for our iniquities. The punishment for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed, restored, redeemed.

Jesus came to seek and to save that which is lost. He came to redeem and to give His life as a ransom for many. That is the good news. That is the news that will bring grace, restoration, forgiveness, and redemption. This is the only ultimate remedy for Israel 2,800 years ago and for America in 2024.

There is no political or economic remedy for the woes of our nation. The woes of our nation are the consequences of sin, the inevitable consequences of sin. So, if you want to deal with the woes of the nation, you must deal with the root cause of it, and it is sin. There is only one remedy for sin: it is Christ.

Jesus, that needs to be the message. That needs to be the sign you put up in your yard—not a political sign. The message that we have is the message that redeems sinful people back to God and brings restoration to their lives individually and to a nation. Sin is a reproach to any people, and we are experiencing the reproaches of sin. The only answer is the gospel. I'm just going to keep beating this gong as long as I have to; that is the only answer.

I am just as drawn and sucked into all the political craziness every four years that you probably are, and I have to remind myself seventy-two times a day that there is only one answer, and it's not a better political candidate. It's only the gospel. He was wounded for our transgressions.

I'm going to invite Anthony and the worship team up because today we're going to partake of communion. I had forgotten that we were going to partake of communion until they came into my office this morning and said, "Oh, by the way, we're doing communion." I went, "Oh wow, it just so happens that it fits with the message." So, praise God for that. He was wounded for our transgressions; His blood was shed to ransom us, to save us from our sins, so that we do not experience the devastating consequences of sin. He reminded us to remember this regularly, and so we're going to worship the Lord in just a moment after I pray.

If you have not already taken these little things when you came in, our ushers will be coming to distribute them, and we'll partake together after we praise the Lord.

Father God, would you help us to orient our focus to You in this moment? If there is anything that is keeping us from You, any sin that separates us, Lord, would You reveal it and expose it so that we can confess it? Because You died for our sins; Your blood was shed to release us from the penalty, the punishment, and ultimately the presence of sin. Lord, would You help us to be released also from its power? God, we thank You for Your body broken, Your blood shed. We worship You now in Jesus' name. Amen.

Jesus, we do remember, as we are reminded today, that You not only came to deal with sin, but You came to, as Paul said in 2 Corinthians, be sin for us.

To stand in our place, to absorb all of the guilt, shame, and punishment for our sins, so that we might receive Your righteousness. Lord, we thank You for Your grace. We praise You.

Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 11:23, "I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you: that the Lord Jesus, on the night in which He was betrayed, took bread; and when He had given thanks, He broke it and gave it to His disciples and said, 'Take, eat; this is My body which is broken for you. Do this in remembrance of Me.'" Let's partake together.

In the same manner, He also took the cup after they had eaten and said, "This is the cup of the New Covenant in My blood. This do, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me." Let's partake together.

Lord, we know from the Scriptures that there is no removal or remission of sins without the shedding of blood. The blood of animal sacrifices, bulls, and goats could only cover for a time and had to be repeatedly offered. But You, Jesus, came, and Your life was shed. You died; Your blood was shed once for all. We rejoice in the salvation that we have from You, the redemption You provided. You gave Your life as a ransom for us.

God, I pray that we would rejoice in that this week, but also that we would have opportunities in some way to share that reality with others. There are so many people in our culture who are in bondage to sin, experiencing the suffering and death that sin brings. You desire to draw them into a relationship with You. God, would You use us to be lights in a dark place? Our culture desperately needs the light of Your grace and truth. We praise You.

Let's stand together. You can pass your cups to the center aisles; the ushers will collect them if you'd like. May the Lord bless and keep you. May He make His face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. May He lift up His countenance upon you and give you His peace. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God the Father, and the fellowship of His Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.