Hosea 11-13: God and Mammon

1.  Read Hosea 11:1-4.

It is difficult to come to grips with all the different images of God in Scripture. Even though people can say it is like a painting or a tapestry that can only be expressed in a thousand different strokes or threads, it is a challenge – at least for me. Different characteristics have been prominent in different parts of my life. Maybe it is the same for you. Of course, it is complicated by the fact that in English we have so few words to describe God – God, Father, Lord – and in Hebrew there were at least 15 different words and descriptions of God. There was even one word – Yahweh – which could not be written or spoken.

Look at the range of images we juggle when we talk about God.

a. The fearsome and dangerous God of Exodus. Read 19:16-21.

b. The loving Shepherd of Psalm 23.

c. The philosophical Logos of John 1 – The Word.

d. The overwhelming God who speaks out of the storm in Job 40:9-14.

e. The Creator of the Universe – what you see when you look at the Hubble photos. Ultimate designer, intelligence, engineer, physicist, scientist, architect, creative ubergenius. This is the most difficult for me and yet the one that attracts my curiosity. I am drawn to it but it is so distant and unimaginable. I think this is how David must have felt in Psalm 8. Read. Why would such a God create and be mindful of men?

I think about John Wesley’s own observation about himself in Sermon 50: “So I am convinced, from many experiments, I could not study, to any degree of perfection, either mathematics, arithmetic, or algebra, without being a Deist, if not an Atheist: And yet others may study them all their lives without sustaining any inconvenience. None therefore can here determine for another; but every man must judge for himself, and abstain from whatever he in particular finds to be hurtful to his soul.”

Seems like an odd thing to say but I find the same to be true for me. The more I look at Hubble photos the more distant I feel from God the Father, the Shepherd and as we see in Hosea, the God of kindness.

f. The God of Hosea 11:1-4. Read. How can the God of Mt. Sinai and Job and Genesis 1 be the one who bends down to feed us? Clearly, we are being introduced to God here as we meet him in Jesus ultimately. He is apart from us – His ways are not our ways – but he is Immanuel – God with us.

2.  What is Israel’s condition?

a. They are willfully in rebellion. Not out of being deceived but out of choice. They are “determined to turn from me” and they “refuse to repent.”

b. They have “surrounded me with lies and deceit”. There is no truth about God being taught – only what people want to hear.

c. They love to defraud. That is different from simply fraud. They have come to love their deceit and to be proud of it. It is like what we experienced with “moral hazard” a few years ago. Bankers were originating mortgages they knew were worthless and selling them upstream to others. They had perfected their deceit and were giddy with the pleasure of it.

d. Their success and wealth had isolated them from the rules. They were not only too big to fail but they knew they were above the law. They were able to buy justice. They were without conscience. Deceit and greed were not wrong. Greed was good.

e. Their success had made them forget God. Hosea 13:6: “When I fed them, they were satisfied; when they were satisfied, they became proud; they forgot me.” How many different places in Scripture this theme is repeated. Success is a gift – and a curse at the same time. Proverbs 8:30: “Keep falsehood and lies far from me; give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me only my daily bread.” How difficult that is to pray!

3.  What does God say he will do? Destroy? No. Out of compassion, he will make them live in tents again. 12:9. He will for their own good return them to the days of dependence on him. How would we handle that? What would it mean to have neither poverty or riches but just our daily bread? My father kept a list of what he would give up immediately if needed. It didn’t stop him from enjoying those things while he had them but he intentionally never became attached to them or allowed them to define him. He remembered when he lived in tents and wanted to be prepared to go back. It’s not a bad exercise to review what we would do. It doesn’t mean we don’t enjoy them while we have them but we don’t let them define us.

4.  That leads us to 1 Timothy 6:9-10 and 17-19. Paul’s warning to those who desire to be rich and his admonition to those who are already rich. Two different things.

5.  Wealth is not bad. It is a blessing…or can be. As Os Guinness says, “it is a blessing, a curse or a test.” Read Sermon 50 of John Wesley for the best sermon I’ve ever read on Money and Wealth. In that sermon you find his formula for how to handle wealth.

“It is true, were man in a state of innocence, or were all men “filled with the Holy Ghost,” so that, like the infant Church at Jerusalem, “no man counted anything he had his own,” but “distribution was made to everyone as he had need,” the use of it would be superseded; as we cannot conceive there is anything of the kind among the inhabitants of heaven. But, in the present state of mankind, it is an excellent gift of God, answering the noblest ends. In the hands of his children, it is food for the hungry, drink for the thirsty, raiment for the naked: It gives to the traveler and the stranger where to lay his head. By it we may supply the place of an husband to the widow, and of a father to the fatherless. We maybe a defense for the oppressed, a means of health to the sick, of ease to them that are in pain; it may be as eyes to the blind, as feet to the lame; yea, a lifter up from the gates of death! It is therefore of the highest concern that all who fear God know how to employ this valuable talent; that they be instructed how it may answer these glorious ends, and in the highest degree. And, perhaps, all the instructions which are necessary for this may be reduced to three plain rules, by the exact observance whereof we may approve ourselves faithful stewards of “the mammon of unrighteousness”.”

First, gain all you can by legitimate means.

Second, save all you can by living simply. Not saving as hoarding but saving as not being caught up in extravagance or luxury.

Third, give all you can knowing the power of money to do good but also that we will be held accountable one day for what we did with money.

6. Read Ecclesiastes 2:24-26; 5:19-20; 6:1-6. What do we learn about wealth and work? They are not meant to drive us but as a gift to enjoy. That is what Paul means by “life that is truly life.” This is what God intends and what we should desire.

Let me close with these words from John Wesley:

“At this hour, and from this hour, do his will: Fulfil his word, in this and in all things! I entreat you, in the name of the Lord Jesus, act up to the dignity of your calling! No more sloth! Whatsoever your hand findeth to do, do it with your might! No more waste! Cut off every expense which fashion, caprice, or flesh and blood demand! No more covetousness! But employ whatever God has entrusted you with, in doing good, all possible good, in every possible kind and degree to the household of faith, to all men! This is no small part of “the wisdom of the just.” Give all ye have, as well as all ye are, a spiritual sacrifice to Him who withheld not from you his Son, his only Son: So “laying up in store for yourselves a good foundation against the time to come, that ye may attain eternal life!”