Doug Enick's Podcast

We had some technical difficulties and failed to get the entire sermon recorded. 

In reading Hosea, we’re reminded of what took place at Sinai:  the marriage covenant between God and Israel.  That’s where Israel became God’s wife, as it were.  This way of characterizing the relationship is commonplace in the prophets.  God is the provider and protector of Israel like a man is for his wife; and Israel is to be faithful to God as a woman is to be faithful to her husband.  When Israel goes off to worship other gods, they are compared to an adulterous woman stepping out on her husband and violating her vows.

This is what we have in the book of Hosea.  Hosea is speaking to Jehovah’s unfaithful wife.  The whole book is about the pain God experienced over Israel’s adulterous behavior (i.e., worshiping other gods).  Hosea himself will become an object lesson. The Lord orders him to marry a prostitute for illustrative purposes for all the world to see what it was like for God to have married Israel 

The Lord again indicts his people for injustice, one of the primary sins for which he decreed the end of Israel.  Previously, the focus was on injustice in the gate, i.e., in the judicial system--corrupt judges who took bribes and perverted justice.  In this passage, the emphasis is on injustice in the marketplace--unscrupulous, dishonest business practices.  Israel had failed to follow the law laid down in Deuteronomy:

"You shall not have in your bag two kinds of weights, a large and a small .  You shall not have in your house two kinds of measures, a large and a small.  A full and fair weight you shall have, a full and fair measure you shall have, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.  For all who do such things, all who act dishonestly, are an abomination to the Lord your God" (Deut. 25:13-16).

It is not either/or proposition:  either we preach personal redemption for the salvation of souls or we seek to establish justice in the gate.  We can and we should seek to do both.  If we love our neighbors, as God calls us to do, then of course we will want to see them treated fairly under the law, not taken advantage of, robbed, or killed.  If we love them, we will want to see them both come to know the Lord for their eternal salvation and to enjoy the blessings of freedom, peace, and prosperity under the rule of law. 

We want no part of either a false pietism that avoids addressing worldly concerns or a false “social gospel” that only address worldly concerns.  It’s possible to err in either direction.  Let’s err in neither.  God shows himself to be deeply interested in people’s well-being in this life as well as in the next.  We should be deeply interested in both, also.