Episode Transcript
Take your Bibles, turn the book of Hosea, please.
While you're turning, I want to remind everybody that next Sunday we'll be having dinner on the grounds.
Dinner on the grounds.
Our weekly total, we had 124 Gospel contacts, and that brings our yearly subtotal up to 1,981.
So keep the good work up.
Thank you for all those who are passing the tracts out, sharing the Gospel, and turning in those numbers.
And don't forget to pray for the people who come in contact with them.
Hosea 11, verse 7.
The title of the message this morning is "Hanging Limbs."
Hanging limbs.
In verse 6 last week we learned that when you worship a false God, you have to serve the king through whom that false God reigns.
In Israel's case, they worshiped the false gods of the nations around them, and that means they were going to have to serve the king that ruled those nations.
And that king, the Lord said, would cause the sword to abide on Israel's cities and devour their land, because they would not forsake those false gods and return to the Lord their God.
God said their branches would be devoured, but praise God, not their root.
It would remain, and when Christ, who is their root, comes again, they will flourish as a nation.
And now as we move into verse 17 this week, the Lord continues to speak through Hosea about the sad condition that Israel was in during Hosea's time.
And remember, when we learn about the problems that were associated with Israel's condition, we learn about our own.
Let's pray.
Father, we thank you so much for your precious Word.
Thank you, Lord, for the Sunday School classes that we had today.
Thank you for each and every person, Father, who came today to hear your Word.
I pray, Lord, you'll remove every distraction from our hearts, that we won't just sit and tolerate church, that our minds will not be on something else at home or what we're doing afterward.
But, Father, we'll take this time and set it aside as a holy to hear what your Word says, to learn, Father, from you, to be fed by your Spirit, we pray.
In Jesus' precious name, amen.
God said Hosea's branches would be devoured.
Now look with me in verse 7, "And my people are bent."
And my people are bent.
Man, I had a good time studying this particular passage of Scripture.
The Hebrew word translated "bent" here, it literally has the idea of something being suspended or hanging in the air.
In fact, because of the literal definition of it being suspended and hanging, it is where we get our language from when we say, "Hey, don't leave me hanging."
Or, "Hey, man, this movie has left me in suspense."
Because you're not on the ground, you're just hanging there waiting to fall, waiting for something to happen.
My neighbor used to have a big, dead tree in his backyard.
And every time the wind blew, I was afraid that tree was going to drop some of those big limbs and tear up my house or some of my property.
And so I had a tree man come out and I said, "You cut every limb that hangs over my property."
Every one of them, off that dead tree.
So my neighbor gave the tree man permission to get in his yard and he cut down every limb that hung over my property.
And there was a big, straight limb here and the electric line from the pole ran right through this big limb and the other limbs that hung over his property.
And I told him, I said, "Now, when that tree falls, it's going to fall this direction and your power line is going to be yanked out of your roof when that tree falls."
The neighbor would not heed my warning.
And guess what happened?
That tree fell and it yanked the weatherhead out of his house and left a big hole in his roof.
And it's quite an amazing thing.
The tree was near my fence, but the limbs, when we got through, it was hanging over my neighbor's property.
The limbs were bent from the trunk and were suspended over his property.
You getting the idea?
The limbs were not in my neighbor's yard.
They were hanging over my neighbor's yard.
They had not fallen, but because of where they were hanging, I knew where they would land.
I knew where they would go when the wind blew hard enough.
And because the limbs were hanging over my neighbor's property, where do you think those limbs were going to land?
They would land in my neighbor's yard.
The direction they were bent would be the direction they would fall.
Make sense?
That doesn't just work for trees, that works for people too.
Because God said Israel's bent.
Because the direction Israel was bent, they had a predictable place they would go when the wind blew.
Like those limbs, God said, "My people are bent."
As the limbs had a predictable tendency to go in a certain direction, so God's people had a predictable tendency to go in a certain direction.
God's people weren't bent to praying.
God's people weren't bent to going to the temple.
God's people weren't bent to helping their neighbor.
They weren't bent to serving God.
God said, "My people are bent," look in your text now, "to backsliding from me."
That's the direction they were bent.
We're thinking about backsliding.
I hear a lot of people sometimes, I've heard a lot in my lifetime.
Let me get my water here.
This is holy water, by the way.
I've heard a lot of people in my lifetime, they say, "Well, I'm a Christian, I'm just backslidden."
Kind of making a lot of it, "I'm just a backslidden Christian."
Man, they don't know what backslidden means.
I bet most of us don't know what backslidden means in here.
And God will learn about being backslidden this morning.
He said, "My people are bent to backsliding," watch the preposition there, "from me."
From me.
They weren't bent to backsliding to God, who had brought them from the land of Egypt.
They were bent to backsliding from God, back to the place they had previously been.
Take your pens, if you would, that word backslidden, "sliding."
Underscore the prefix "back."
It's really a compound word.
Underscore the first half of that compound word "back."
And then circle the last half, "sliding."
Backsliding.
Reverse the words, and what do you get?
Sliding back.
Sliding back.
Now the Hebrew word that's translated "backsliding" here, it comes from a root word that means to return.
When you think of backsliding, think of the word "returning."
You might want to write that out in your margin across from backsliding.
Write down "returning."
They're bent to returning from me.
The Hebrew word translated "backsliding" here, it comes from that root word that means to return back to the place you came from.
It doesn't mean that God is here and I'm walking close to God, and now suddenly I get my attention off of God.
I start doing things I shouldn't do in life, and so now I'm not walking as closely to God as I was.
That's not the idea of backsliding.
The idea of backsliding is returning, what's that word we underscored?
Returning back to the place God has brought us from.
In this case, Israel had been taken by God and brought from the land of Egypt, taken out of the land of Egypt, and what did God say a few weeks back?
They will return to Egypt.
They would and they wouldn't.
They'll return to Egypt spiritually, just not geographically, but He said they're going to return to Egypt.
That's backsliding.
Going back to the place God has taken you from.
Now I want you to listen to how this root word is used, the root word from which we get our word backsliding.
Listen to how this root word is used in Genesis chapter 3.
This is the first time we see it in the Bible.
Genesis chapter 3 verse 19.
God told Adam, this is after Adam sinned.
God told Adam, "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread till thou," here it is, "return," same root word from which we get our word backsliding from, "till thou return unto the ground.
For out of it was thou taken, for dost thou art, and unto dost shalt thou return."
There's that root word again.
So whether they're returning to Egypt where God pulled Adam from the ground, Adam's going to go back to the ground.
He's going to return back to it.
God pulled Israel out of Egypt.
Egypt's going to return.
They're going to go back to it.
And so Adam came from the ground, so because of Adam's sin, Adam would return to the place he came from, the ground.
Here's the kingdom of truth for you this morning.
Our flesh is bent to backsliding from God.
Our flesh is bent to backsliding from God and returning to the place it came from.
Repeat that again.
Our flesh is bent to backsliding from God and returning to the place it came from.
Because of the sin nature that we inherited from Adam, one day, do you know what our bodies are going to do?
In fact, they're in the process of doing that now.
Every one of our bodies are in the process of doing this now.
They're in the process of sliding back to the place they came from, which is the ground that God brought them from.
Now, because our bodies have not been redeemed by the blood of the Lamb yet.
The Bible says the redemption of our bodies will occur when Christ comes again at the resurrection.
And so until that happens, we have holy people.
If you're a believer in Jesus Christ, if you're born again through faith in Christ, we have holy people living in backslidden bodies.
They are bent to backsliding from God, to returning to the place that God has brought them from, and it's all because of sin.
Do you know what's in the cemetery?
You go to any cemetery, you know what's out there?
A bunch of backslidden bodies.
That's what it is.
Bodies that slid back from God to the place they came from, the dust of the ground.
When Adam rejected God's word in the Garden of Eden, he took God off the throne of his heart and he chose to serve sin instead.
Adam made sin his captain.
And when you serve sin, it takes you from God back to the place you came from.
Think about that.
Adam took God off the throne of his heart.
He made sin his captain.
And when you serve sin, it takes you from God back to the place you came from.
Romans 6, verse 16.
If you're taking notes, Romans 6, 16, "Know you not that to whom you yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants you are to whom you obey."
Now watch the direction here.
Whether of sin, making sin your captain, whether of sin unto death, see how it returns back to where you came from?
Back to the ground.
Whether of sin unto death or of obedience unto righteousness.
All depending on what captain you have on your heart.
Are you going to serve sin or are you going to serve God?
One is going to take you in the direction of sliding back to the place you came from.
The other is going to take you in the direction that God wants you to go.
People backslide when they serve the wrong captain.
He says, "Know you not that to whom you yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants you are to whom you obey."
And you're either obeying sin, takes you back to death, back to the ground, or righteousness.
In other words, the Word of God, you're obeying God and that takes you where God wants you to go.
So people backslide when they serve the wrong captain.
I want you to think back with me to when Israel was in the wilderness.
Those rebellious Israelites in the wilderness.
Numbers chapter 14.
Numbers chapter 14.
Now remember, them coming out of Egypt was a picture of God redeeming us from sin and death.
But a lot of the people that came out of Egypt, they were just following folks.
They weren't believers.
They were going through the motions.
They came to church.
They sat in the pews.
They sang rock of ages, hide thou me.
They did all the stuff.
They even shook their heads sometimes when the preacher preached.
But they weren't believers.
And listen to what they said in Numbers 14.4.
And they said one to another, "Let us make us a captain and let us return."
There's that word.
Return into Egypt.
You know what they were literally saying?
Let's make a captain.
Let's take God off the throne of our hearts.
And let's make a different captain and let's backslide to Egypt.
Let's slide back to where we came from.
We don't like the direction that we're going.
They wanted to return to Egypt because they had their own captain sitting on the throne of their hearts.
Now I want you to notice to return to Egypt, they would have had to have gotten a different captain.
They knew that.
Why would they have to get a different captain?
Because the captain that brought them out of Egypt wasn't heading in that direction.
He was taking them to the Promised Land, the land of milk and honey, the land of rest.
One day as Joshua was preparing to lead Israel into the Promised Land, Joshua saw the Lord Jesus Christ in the Old Testament.
Joshua chapter 5 verse 13 through 14 says, "And it came to pass when Joshua was by Jericho that he lifted up his eyes and looked.
And behold there stood a man over against him with his sword drawn in his hand.
And Joshua went unto him and said unto him, 'Art thou for us or for our adversaries?'
And he said, 'Nay, but as captain of the host of the Lord am I now come.'
Joshua fell on his face to the earth and did worship and said unto him, 'What saith my Lord unto his what?
Servant!
Know ye not that to whom ye yield yourselves to obey, his servants you are to whom ye obey, whether of sin unto death going back to the place you come from into Egypt, or obedience unto righteousness going to the Promised Land.'
It depends on what captain you serve.
Here was the captain that took them out of Egypt.
Here was the captain of whom the blood of the Passover lamb represented.
Here was the captain that part of the red seas.
Here was the captain that sent manna down from heaven so they could live.
And then when he came in the New Testament said, 'I'm really that manna that you need.'
That manna represented me.
Here was the captain, Captain Jesus, and he says, 'I won't take you in that Promised Land.'
That's how come Israel had to say, 'We're going to get us another captain and we're going to head back to the place we came from.'
Again Romans 6, 'Know ye not that to whom ye yield yourselves to obey, his servants you are to whom ye obey, whether of sin unto death or of obedience unto righteousness.'
Joshua served the captain of God, the Lord Jesus Christ.
The captain that brought them out of Egypt was headed to the Promised Land and every heart in whom Christ reigns is headed there as well.
Praise God.
That's where he's going.
You believe in Christ as your Savior, one day you're going to live in the Promised Land that he's made for us forever.
Hebrews chapter 2 verse 10 says, 'For it became him,' speaking of Jesus, 'for it became him for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings.'
Jesus was the captain of Israel, saving them from Egypt.
Jesus is the captain of the church, saving us from our sins.
And our captain was made perfect, the perfect captain through his sufferings.
Jesus was the captain of Israel's salvation and he is the captain of our salvation because he suffered for us on the cross to save us from our sins.
Jesus led Israel victoriously into their Promised Land.
It was a picture of him leading us victoriously into his promise of everlasting life.
The promise he gave Abraham, he passed down to Isaac, he passed down to Jacob, he passed down to the twelve apostles and they passed it down to us and I'm passing it down to you.
Praise God.
Here's the kingdom of truth this morning.
Where the captain goes, the servant follows.
Where the captain goes, the servant follows.
Why was Joshua going into Jericho?
Because that's the direction the captain was going.
He says, 'What saith my Lord unto his servant?'
Where the captain goes, the servant will follow.
Jesus said in the Gospel of John chapter 12 verse 26, he said, 'If any man serve me, let him follow me,' listen to this principle now, 'and where I am, there shall also my servant be.'
You listen to that?
If you have acknowledged God as your God and Christ as your Savior, Jesus says, 'Where I am, there also shall my servant be.'
For all eternity, wherever Jesus is, that's where I'm going to be.
Wherever Jesus is, if you trust in him, that is where you're going to be, where I am.
There shall also my servant be.
Where the captain goes, the servant follows.
That's why those who reject Jesus as their captain shall follow the captain they made into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels.
John chapter 14 verse 3, Jesus said to those who believed on him, 'And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself, that where I am, there ye may be also.'
So, we have a lake of fire prepared for the devil and his angels, and we have a place prepared for those who believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.
Two places have been prepared.
A captain is headed to both places, and the servants of each are going to follow them there.
People following one captain will forever slide back from God.
Man, I tell you what, while I'm thinking about it, there is this craziness right now being taught by some free grace theologist.
I have been labeled as free grace, and I don't mind being called that at all.
I'd rather be called a Bible believer, but there are some people that are so bent on no works, no nothing of ourselves, just free grace, and they swing the pendulum too far.
Some of them say repentance is not necessary for salvation, and so they actually swing the pendulum too far, to the point that they say—and I read one the other day that said, if a person quits believing on Christ and ends up rejecting Christ as their Savior, they'll still be saved.
That's a lie from hell.
That's a lie.
Man, where the captain is, the servant's going to follow.
There will not be a single person in the kingdom of God that does not bow the knee to King Jesus.
That's simple.
I'm not talking about works.
I'm talking about our belief, our belief in who God is and who Christ is to us.
He is our God.
He is our King.
He is the captain of our salvation.
Anybody that says, "Let us make us another captain in return," Jesus is no captain to theirs.
Whoever believes on Christ as their Savior will continue to believe.
The Bible says we are kept by the power of God through faith.
So we're kept, praise God.
It's all of grace.
It's none of us, but we're kept through faith.
Anyone that says, "I don't believe, but I used to," they never did, and they're on their way to hell.
I got to get that off my lungs here.
So the people are going to follow one captain, and they're going to forever slide back from God.
The people following Captain Jesus, they're going to ever slide to God.
This relates in Hosea's time they were bent to sliding back from God because they had rejected him as their captain, and they were serving false gods.
People who are serving false gods, they clearly don't believe in the one true God.
Like the tree in my neighbor's yard, they were hanging over bondage and death, just waiting to fall and return to the place they came from.
People in our nation right now, people in our world right now that despise God, they're the same way.
They have outright rejected him as their captain.
They have rejected his word, and they want us to return to a world without him.
They are bent to backsliding from God, and their limbs will one day forever fall in the direction they are leaning.
God said Israel was bent to backsliding from him.
Look back in your text.
"Though they called them to the Most High."
The "they" there is the prophets, the Old Testament prophets.
We looked at that in previous verses.
God's prophets had called Israel to the Most High God, but they rejected him as their captain.
They didn't want to serve God, and they hated the prophets who called them to come to him.
God loved these people.
He had given them an open invitation to come.
They were commanded to come to him.
God loves you, whoever you are.
You have an open invitation to come, a commandment to come to God, to turn from your rejection of him and your sin, and to come to him as your God, your king, and your Savior.
He said, "Though they called them to the Most High, none," look back in your text, "none at all would exalt him."
If you would, underscore the word "high" in Most High, underscore the word "high," and then underscore the word "exalt."
You see a relation there between those two words?
If you exalt something, do you put it down or lift it up?
You lift it up.
Here's what God is saying.
God is the Most High.
He is above all.
He has a name above every name, right?
God's the Most High, but the people had a low opinion of God.
They didn't think anything of God.
They refused to exalt him in their hearts.
Here was God's position, and here was their opinion of God.
The prophets told them who God was.
God is your God.
He is your creator.
He is the one true God.
He is above all.
He's the God of heaven and earth.
Their hearts would not believe that message.
If their hearts believed that message, what would their hearts do?
They would say, "I agree with that.
God is the God of all.
He is above all."
Their heart would come into agreement with what God's word says about him.
By doing that and by changing their mind and going from a low opinion of God to now acknowledging that God is above all, that's repentance.
That's a change of mind.
I did have a low opinion of God, whether I didn't believe in him at all or I thought ill of him or whatever.
Now I change my mind and I agree with what God's word says about him.
That's exalting God.
It doesn't mean they're lifting God up.
It means now their view of God has come up to the place it's supposed to be.
God said, "We called them to come to God, but none at all would exalt him."
Romans chapter 1 verse 21.
Romans chapter 1 verse 21 describes this in the New Testament.
Because that when they knew God, they glorified him not as God.
You see that?
They knew God.
They knew God was high, but in their hearts they would not exalt him.
They would not give him the honor of confessing who he was.
They glorified him not as God, neither were thankful, but became vain in their imaginations and their foolish heart was darkened.
I was at the doctor's office the other day and there was this brilliant man that was talking to me and he was describing the, what is it I have?
AFib.
He was describing AFib.
He drew a picture of the heart and he was showing little electrical signals, going haywire up there.
This man's brilliant.
An electrophysiologist.
He's a high paid electrician.
He tells me, he says, "We don't understand what causes this."
I'm sitting there thinking, "All these wires, God's got all this wiring in my body.
The wiring in my body, it makes the wiring in this building look like a cakewalk."
Every electrician can figure out the wiring in this building.
Here's a man that's been to school forever.
He can't figure out the wiring in our body.
We don't understand it.
We just know this is the way it is.
When he told me that, you know what I did?
I was sitting there in his office, in my heart I started saying, "Thank you, God.
I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
I will praise thee.
I am fearfully and wonderfully made and let my soul knoweth right well.
These people don't know they're just men."
I remember thinking right there and then in that office, I remember thinking, "These people who say there's no God, they know better.
They're just not glorifying him as God.
They're not exalting him to the place they should be.
Their foolish hearts been darkened.
The direction Israel's heart was leaning was in the direction that people's hearts are leaning today.
They refuse to exalt God.
They say we believe in fairy tales and that they want us to believe that a man can have a baby.
These unbelieving limbs, they're suspended over hell and one day they're going to fall into it.
They're going to fall.
Where the captain is, the servant shall follow.
But for those of us who exalt the Lord Jesus Christ, acknowledging God as the Most High and Jesus as the Savior he sent to redeem us from our sins, their limbs are presently suspended over God's kingdom and one day we shall forever follow our captain there.
Praise God.
Father, we thank you so much that we have a captain who will never return, Father, to the tomb.
The Bible says that he came out of the grave and death has no more dominion over him for in that he died he died in the sin once and that he liveth he liveth unto God.
Our captain, the captain of our salvation has come out of the grave never to return back again.
And one day when he comes, God, we thank you that where the captain is the servant's going to follow.
We thank you, Father, that we'll never go back, never slide back, not because of our own capabilities, not because of our works, not because, Father, of our determiness, but because, Father, we have a captain who is by his grace redeemed us from our sin, crucified us with him on the cross, raised us from the dead, and set us forever in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.
In his name we pray and we thank you.
Amen.
