Hey everybody. Welcome back to another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. Hey. It's revival week. We just come off of VBS week straight into revival week. That's right. Same people are going. Yeah. A lot of 'em are. I know. I was talking to some of our leaders going, why did we do this? Why did we stack 'em like this? I don't know. I don't know if we were able to do it much differently. Yeah, that's fair. That's fair. No, but they leave tomorrow. And if you were at church yesterday, you saw some ways to be praying during announcements for revival and for this retreat. We talked about it a couple days ago on the podcast too, so just be doing that. It's gonna be awesome. Remind us, pastor Rod, where's the team going? It's called Latham Springs. It's about two hours south of us and. Providentially two hours north of Hill Country. Again, we're going to this place with our sister, church Compass, Bible Church, hill Country new Braunfels area. So we're excited about this. They bring a lot of kids. They're bringing most of the servants who are supporting things like worship and hospitality, things like that. So right now we're getting to ride their wave. At some point in the near future, though, maybe even as soon as next summer we're gonna have to pull some weight. And bring some of our people to do some of these things because it really makes a big difference when you have an all hands on deck, just like what we did for VBS. Yep. Having that same mentality for our students at summer camp really unlocks the door for some really great things to happen. Just think about the decor that you saw this week, that stage with the doors and the shingles and everything. That was so cool. Yeah, it was. Now we do that, we have done that historically for our students, our junior hires and high schoolers. We go all out to make this camp the best that we can make it without dying. Yep. And we get pretty close to the lines of years. So all that to say, they're gonna Latham Springs, you can look up their website and see some of the cool stuff that they'll have a chance to do. Yeah, and I'm sure we'll bring back some videos and photos as well where you can get a sense of how it was. Yeah. But we're looking forward to it. We're praying for that. That's awesome. Yeah, it's gonna be a good time. Our rest of our staff is here though. So Lewis, our student ministries director, he's leading the team. He's down there. Rest of our staff is here and just plugging away and doing work. So we're happy to have VBS behind us. As great as it was it's great to, as you were just saying off, it's great to be done. To be done. Yeah. Have a good tired of being like, okay. Alright, let's keep going. We're excited for that. We've, we got one more week in the minor profits and then we're gonna have a transitional week, and then we're jumping into first Peter in a few weeks here, so I can't wait for that series. I think just tackling full books at a time, especially full minor prophets at a time, has made me hungry to get into the traditional expository preaching mode again. But it's gonna be good. Yeah, I'm excited about that too, Peter. It's such a great book. You probably should read it. I, if you haven't read it in a while, pick it up, dust it off, make sure you read it before you start the preaching series. It's just so good. It is. There's so many good themes in there. And I wonder if you're trying to prophesy about our future here in Texas. Oof. I maybe. Yeah. Wow. I wear that kind of church nail, huh? Yeah. Read the book and you'll have to figure out why that might be the case and why we might say Oof on that one. Yeah, man. Let's let's jump into our text for today. We are finishing Hosea, so Hosea eight through 14. It's, uh, it's a lot. Hosea is not a small book, 14 chapters. We covered the first seven yesterday, and though today we, we jump in and wrap it up. So in chapter eight, we are, again, we're midstream, and so he's still in judgment mode. He's still in judgment mode with his people and specifically with the northern kingdom here. And you'll notice he says in verse four, they. The Northern Kingdom made kings, but not through me. That's a reminder to us that they are not the covenant people of God. That they are not the Davidic line in the north, that the Davidic line went through the southern kingdom, went through the kingdom of Judah and not the kingdom of Israel. And that's why the Kings of Israel were those that always did evil in the side of the Lord. They were not. Of him, they were not part of the lie that he had established there. God's judgment is coming against them verses four and five. It talks about the idols that they made even to their own destruction. And this is the start of this was with ome. And Ome set up this golden calf and he says, I've spurned your calfs five oh Samari, my anger burns against them. How long will they be incapable of innocence? And that's even a reminder to us of something that we refer to as. Total depravity, incapable of innocence, and nobody is born innocent. And and with a nation like Israel, their rebellion just heaps guilt upon guilt as they continue to drift from the Lord. And he is indicting the idolatry of them again. Verse seven, they sow to the wind and they reap. The whirlwind the sowing to the wind, it seems to be a reference to just the vanity of their worship, the vanity of their kingdom, the vanity of their existence. And what they're gonna reap is the storm, and that's the whirlwind that's gonna come in. And so instead of getting the favor that they were hoping to get from these false guys, these false idols, they're gonna get a storm, they're gonna get God's judgment in response, and they're gonna turn to the, these other nations, but they're not gonna find help there. And God's not gonna forget their iniquity, but remember it. And Assyria is gonna become their new Egypt, and that's verse 13. And so if you remember back to the beginning of Israel being enslaved in Egypt, now it's gonna be a different one. He's gonna remember their inequity and punish their sins. They would show return to Egypt, not Egypt specifically, but they're gonna go into exile. And they're gonna be enslaved, and that's gonna come through the people of Assyria In the short term here you mentioned total depravity. Let's quickly camp on that, just a few brief moments here, because I wonder if people understand that theology as well as they should. Does total depravity mean that I'm as sinful as I could possibly be? And is that also true for my neighbors? Yeah, good question. No, the answer is we are not as totally depraved as we possibly could be. And that's why people re reject this doctrine at the outset, is they misunderstand that. They'll say, okay, but there's, I can point to this person's more evil than I am, and so how can I be totally depraved if I haven't done the same things that Hitler did or that these other evil people over here did? Total depravity is. You can think about it as saturation that we are as human beings, saturated with the guilt of Adam from the word go. And so we are totally depraved in the sense that we don't have a, an inherent righteousness or even a neutrality in us, that we are born with this opportunity to live a good life that would be policing to the Lord We are born. At odds with the holy God, because Adam was our representative head, and we all, as the Bible says, sinned in him when he sinned. So that's the inheritance that we get from our first father, from Adam, which inclines our heart always to evil unless Christ comes in, into our life and through the Spirit, enables us now to be set free from sin and to choose him. So it's a matter of breadth and not depth. Everything that, that's a good way to put it, is touched by our humanity is infected. With the sickness called sin, but we're not as bad as we could be in every conceivable way. And that's true for every human being, right? There are ways in which God has protected us from that. He restrains our wickedness so that we're not as evil as we possibly could be. How does that concept connects to the idea of common grace? What is common grace then, and how does that interact with our total depravity? So common grace is the idea that. The rainfall. This is just one common example, no pun intended, that the rain falls on the good and the evil. So God provides things that are good on those, for those that are still inherently evil and wicked. The fact that there's food provided for some of the corrupt people that they can eat and even be satisfied and eating is a common grace. Now, common grace. Is intended by God to point people towards him as the provider. But apart from Second Corinthians four, the God re removing the scales from our eyes to be able to see that common grace is probably for the believer more of an instrument of judgment against him. Passage judgment, though it may be than it is something that is a blessing for him. It's misinterpreted right now as a blessing man. I get to eat, I get to drink, I get to be satisfied. I'm happy. I live a long life. And I reject God and yet all of that is a common grace that he's gonna have to answer for 'cause God's gonna say, you misinterpreted all of these gifts and use them for yourself. You worship the creature rather than the creator. It's Romans one in so many different ways. Absolutely. That's a helpful insight. So total depravity, you're not as sinful as you possibly could be, but it does touch everything. It's about breadth, not depth, common grace, the ways in which God gives rain and sunshine and food and. Oxygen to all of humanity. It is common and it's not special. Okay. Last clarifying question. Yeah. Common grace in contrast to special grace. Yeah. What's the difference? So special grace or specific grace, however you wanna put it. Yeah. Special grace is salvific. It is the grace that we receive as believers to believe in Jesus Christ. It is the free gift that is salvation. It's regeneration. It's having our eyes that we're blind to God open so that we can see him. It's the ability to. Exercise faith in him. And so that, that's at its core that the foundation of special grace. There are other elements of grace that are unique to believers. And I think, so you see some of that even in some of the ordinances in the church with the administration of communion and baptism and even the preaching of the word. Gathering together in fellowship with brothers and sisters in Christ. Those are elements of God's grace that are uniquely enjoyed by Christians that can't be enjoyed by somebody who's not a believer. And so that's why they are special in that sense to be enjoyed within the church. Now, the difference between us and the Catholic Church is we don't believe that those are. Necessary for salvation. In other words, we don't believe that there is something that is conveyed in communion or baptism or the preaching of the word that completes a grace that you first receive when you first chose to believe in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. The grace that God gave you when he regenerated you is sufficient for your salvation. This is more of. Perhaps a sanctifying grace. It's a progressive grace that he continues to bestow upon us that is good and right, and I would even say necessary for us as Christians, but not necessary to our position as whether or not we're saved in Christ superb and all of that in the middle of Hosea. You never expected that. There we go. You're welcome. Yeah. I think Jose, chapter nine, man, the opening words rejoice not what struck me here is just the principle that godly people grieve over sin. And that's what Isaiah is calling for. He's saying, rejoice not over your current state. Don't rejoice in your rebellion against God. You should be grieving over this. And chapter nine goes into what's coming for Israel, which is the exile that they are going to, into exile, into foreign lands. And again, Egypt is signified here, but it's. It's symbolic in verse six, for behold, they're going away from destruction. But Egypt shall gather them. Memphis shall bury them. In other words, you're gonna be buried in foreign lands, and that's not gonna be Egypt proper, but that's gonna be the Assyrians that are gonna come in and do this on behalf of them. So why does he use Egypt? I think he uses Egypt because it was such a tangible and symbolic. Memory for the people of Israel that this is, the exodus was huge. It was massive, right? Slavery, all of that captivity to suggest that it's coming back again is more impactful for them than to say, Hey, Assyria is gonna come and do this. He says, describing their view of these messages in verse seven, the prophet is a fool. The man of the spirit is mad. So these are stubborn people refusing to listen to the warnings of God. And he says that the judgment is coming. Verse 15, every evil of theirs is in Gilgal. Gilgal was the center of idol worship in the northern kingdom. That's why it's there. That was their main sanctuary. That's where it was located there in Gilgo. So when you read Gilgo, that's why it's being indicted here in chapter nine. Chapter 10, then we get more of this and similar again the vine language. Israel is a luxurious vine that yields its fruit. The more its fruit increase, the more altars he built. And so this is a, I think Isaiah five the vine prepared by God. And yet, when God came and looked for good grapes, what did they produce? They. Wild grapes. And so the imagery is similar. Here we find the calf imagery again in verse five. The golden calves that ome set up, the calf of Beth Haven for it is departed from them. The calf is gone. It's gonna be carried to Assyria. And that's where we know, and that's why we say this is not Egypt. This is gonna be Assyria. And. History bears that out too. But this is God indicting their past and their present idolatry. He says, when I please, I will discipline them, and nations shall be gathered against them when they're bound up for their double iniquity. I think a lot of people, myself included, would say that double iniquity is probably an illusion to their idolatry in the past. The things that their forefathers did and the things that they themselves are doing currently here, and God is saying I'm not gonna put up with it anymore. I'm bringing judgment against it. Yeah, a couple quick notes here in Chapter 10. The first few verses that you refer to here, I just wanna point out to you in verse one, it says, the more his fruit increased, the more alters he built, which is interesting because you wouldn't expect that. You would expect that God blesses them. They receive a harvest, they're doing well, and they would be more committed to the Lord, but instead by contrast, they are further from the Lord, which always reminds me that prosperity is not necessarily a gift because your temptation will always be to trust the prosperity and not to trust the Lord. Of the prosperity. He is the ultimate good gift, not the stuff. Keep that in mind. Number two in verse 12. He says Here, you reap what you sow. You've heard this in Galatians chapter six here. So for yourselves righteousness, reap steadfast love. There's a connection there between your righteous standing in Christ and the steadfast love that you'll experience break up the fallow ground for it is the time to seek the Lord that he may come and reign righteousness upon you. So think about the satisfying effects of rain upon a dry in parched land. He's saying, look, you want. Spiritual satisfaction while the way that you do that is you break up the fallow ground of your heart, break up all of that compacted soil and prepare to receive his righteous reign. This is a beautiful image for us to take note of because it really calls us to have a tender heart before the Lord. And I would encourage you before you go to church, before you open up your Bible in the morning or in the evening, whenever you do that. Make sure you're breaking up the fallow ground. Make your heart ready to receive it. Have you ever read your Bible or gone to church? Yes. And you felt man, it was, yes. I hope so. And felt I didn't benefit from that. Yeah. I, my heart was hard. I was distracted, or he was saying good things, or the Bible was giving me interesting insights, but I just didn't feel like I walked away having experienced it the way that I want to, the way that it should. I wonder if maybe it's because we're not preparing our hearts. We're not breaking up the fallow ground, the ground in our hearts and our minds and our lives that we just let alone, as opposed to saying, man, I wanna shake things up so that I can truly encounter God's presence. Hosea chapter 10, verse 12 is a good place for you to start to say, I wanna be ready to encounter the Lord. That's good. That's good. Chapter 11, we get into some contrast here. God is lamenting almost and also grieving over the current state of Israel. And at the same time, looking forward to this time of future redemption. And this is where we get aligned that. Is applied to Christ in 11 verse one. When it says out of Egypt, I called my son. So contextually it fits what he's about to do. He's about to send Israel into captivity. So in the immediate context, he's saying, there's gonna be a future when I'm gonna deliver you again from captivity and even from the northern kingdom, though the northern kingdom is not gonna be a thing anymore. The faithful remnant, those that are part of the northern kingdom, those are part of those tribes. They will still be there. And in fact, when we go to the very end of time. During the millennial kingdom. And during the tribulation period, there are 144,000 Jews that are gonna be sealed, and those Jews are gonna be 12,000 from every single tribe in Israel. That tells us that these northern tribes are god's not done with them, and so he's going to bring them back. That's what's being alluded to there in that opening verse, but also this is applied to Jesus in the New Testament out of Egypt. I called my son when Jesus was first born. And the help me out. Herod was trying to kill the children there. Herod. It was Herod. Thanks. They fled down to Egypt. And then what happened? God, after the death of Herod he and called Joseph and Mary and Jesus to come back. Into the region where Jesus was going to minister during his earthly ministry. So this is applied to Jesus as well. All that to say but this chapter is really about the jealousy of God. Verse five, they shall not return to the land of Egypt, but assy shall become the king because they've refused to return to me. But then he goes on and you see the love for God. How can I give you up om and remember Jose one through three? Because here I think we see it, Jose. It. I assume, had a love for Gomer that grieved him when she was unfaithful to him. And I think that's what we see here. Now. God's saying that's me and Israel. Yes, I'm gonna judge Israel because that's what justice demands, and I'm jealous for their affection. But at the same time, man, how can I completely de, I can't quit you. I can't completely destroy you. I can't give you up because you are still part of the people that I've chosen for my own possession. I think that's chapter 11 there. Yeah. I just love that. The words that he uses here, he says, my heart recoils within me. My compassion grows warm and tender. I will not execute my burning anger. I will not again destroy Ephrem four. I am God and not a man. The holy one in your midst, and I will not come in wrath. God is appealing to his godness to say, I am faithful and I can't be anything other than that. I love that because it means our salvation is secure. If he was this way with Israel, with the covenant that he made with him unilateral covenant, surely he will be even more so through Christ. If there was glory in the old covenant under Moses, then surely. There is more glory in Christ under the new covenant. Praise God for that. That's amazing. Yeah, for sure. Chapter 12 is really a summary chapter for us, and it's a summary chapter of Israel's rejection of God and of their idolatrous ways. Verse 14, the end of chapter 12, here it says, EEM again. The northern kingdom has given bitter provocation, so the Lord will leave his. Blood guild on him and will repay him for his disgraceful deeds. So chapter 12, interjects here with this summary of what's going on. And then that yields in, in chapter 13, more judgment. More judgment that's coming from God. Verse four, he says, I am the Lord your God, from the land of Egypt. No God but me and besides me, there's no savior. Their activity, in other words, was an act of treason. That they were rebelling against the only true God, against the God that had redeemed them. They were his people and they were rebelling against him as an act of treason. And he says in verse six, this emerged because they had grazed in the land and become full. And they were filled with their heart and their heart was lifted up. Therefore they forgot me. This is that contempt breeding, complacency, breeding familiarity. And that's something that we have to be careful too as well. We are in a. A, a good season right now of church planting and setting up and tearing down. We just did a lot of that this past weekend and it's easy for us with that and thankfully so to depend upon God and say, man, God, this is hard and there's, we don't like it. There's a lot of sacrifice we don't like. This is hard, but. There, Lord willing, will come a time when we are in a permanent facility and it's gonna get easy for us to grow comfortable and to have full bellies and to have a nice place and air conditioning and not have to set up and tear down. And we might be tempted to forget how dependent upon God we are. Whereas right now we're in a season where we're mindful of how to dependant upon God. We are. And so let's make sure that we hold fast that 'cause Israel didn't and they drifted into complacency and they rebelled against. It forgot God. Yeah. Prosperity is not always a gift, and adversity is not always a curse. Sometimes it's the very gift that God uses adversity that is suffering to sharpen us and to make us more aware of our dependency upon him. What does Paul say in Second Corinthians chapter 12? It is in weakness that I realize I'm strong in Christ when we're strong and we're living our best life now and we're on our A game with our disciplines and our spiritual habits, and everything is wonderful. The temptation is always gonna be. I love myself. I trust myself. I'm doing a great job. I'm fat and happy, spiritually speaking, and God doesn't want us ever to be there. Yeah. Yeah. Chapter 14, as the book lands it, it lands with another call for repentance, this urging for repentance. He says, return verse one, oh, Israel to the Lord your God, for you have stumbled because of your iniquity. This is interesting. He says, take with you words and return to the Lord. I think there's something here that's indicative for how we should repent. That it's important for us to confess, to use our words to before the Lord, to say, Lord and I identify our sin before him. It seems to be what the prophet is calling them to do here. Don't. Don't leave your words behind, bring your words with you. Confess these things turn from these things. Now again, to go back to the difference between what the Catholic church has made that out to be and what we're talking about here, the Catholic Church would say, you have to come into the church and sit down in a confessional and you need to use your words to confess to a human being and tell this human being, here's all the sin I've done, and that human being is then gonna tell you, okay, here, you need to go pray this many Hail Marys and do this many, much penance. Penance and so forth and so on. We would say that's not only wrong, but it's unbiblical. It's a misunderstanding. It sets aside everything that's written in Hebrews about the fact that we have one mediator between God and man, and that's Christ Jesus, and he is sacrificed once for all time and is seated at the right hand of God, but. This is speaking to the person that goes God understands that I've sinned and that I'm sorry for it. So I don't really need to bring anything up and I can just move on with my life and soothe my conscience that way. I think this is, I think it's good for us to sit before our holy God and to name our sins before him and to ask for forgiveness for these things. And that seems to be what's being called for here in Jose 14. Yeah. I love the idea of being intentional with the way that you approach God and one of the benefits of being in our particular strain our tradition of. Christianity is that we're not as casual, not casual. We're not as formal or as liturgical as some of the other high churches, as we often call them. And one of the downsides is that we can come too casually. We can come to the Lord with a blase attitude that doesn't fit who he is and what he's about. And so it's helpful for us to have a mental corrective to say the Lord is the holy and righteous one of all the earth. He's the king. He's not only just the king, he's the king of kings. And it's good for us to have a high view of God as we try to promote all the time. It's one of our distinctives, it's one of our values, and I think. Hosea 14, two highlights that take words with, ahead of time, what to say, know what you're going to say to the Lord. Because you're prepared, you're thinking about it. It would be like dating your spouse or interacting with a high ranking official. You probably will put work into thinking ahead of time. What would be a good. Mode of conversation. What should we say? What should we what kind of things should we discuss? I think that's what Jose is getting at. Don't just show up in front of God show up, ready to have that conversation. In particular, in this case, most directly words of repentance. Yeah. And the good news for us is. Verse four, I will heal their apostasy. I will love them freely for my anger has turned from them. John says, if we confess our sins, he's faithful and just forgive them. So we can know that we can go before God with these things and he will indeed forgive us. And that's such good news. And so we can repent, we can return to the Lord, we can press on and know him. All of these good things that Jose has been talking about for us. We can take these things away and say, okay, Lord, help us to apply these things. Let's pray and then we'll be done with another episode. God help us to have that mindset. We want the high view of you. We want to not approach you overly, casually, even as Pastor Rod was saying earlier in this episode, we want to break up the fallow ground of our hearts before we come before you, before we pray, before we read your word, before we come to church and sing songs with our brothers and sisters in Christ. We don't wanna do so just to go through the motions and think that you're gonna be pleased by that. Just because we're here and checking the box. And so help us to have a view of you that, that sees you as holy, even as Isaiah, which we're gonna be talking about again tomorrow. Holy is the Lord God Almighty. We wanna have that view of you and at the same time, understand that you have made a way for us to draw near to you and what a joyful paradox that is. And so we're grateful for that and we just pray that we would never grow complacent and comfortable and and. To grow contemptuous over that, but that we would always be so grateful and humble about that as we do come before you, as our Heavenly Father. So we thank you, we pray these things in Jesus name. Amen. Amen, keeper in your Bibles. Tune again tomorrow for another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. Bye bye.

thanks for listening to another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. This is a ministry of Compass Bible Church in north Texas. You can find out more information about ourChurch@compassntx.org. We would love for you to leave a review to rate to share this podcast on whatever platform you happen to be listening on, and we will catch you against tomorrow for another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast.