Finally this week we see in verses 10-15 of Hosea 5 a scene summed up in the first and last verse of the hymn Come Ye Sinners.

Come ye sinners, poor and needy, weak and wounded, sick and sore; Jesus ready stands to save you, full of pity, love, and power.

Come, ye weary, heavy laden, lost and ruined by the fall; If you tarry till you’re better, you will never come at all.

This last point from our text this week is “Sick and Sore.” Here we read, “The princes of Judah are like those who remove a landmark; I will pour out My wrath on them like water. Ephraim is oppressed and broken in judgment, because he willingly walked by human precept. Therefore I will be to Ephraim like a moth, and to the house of Judah like rottenness. “When Ephraim saw his sickness, and Judah saw his wound, then Ephraim went to Assyria and sent to King Jareb; yet he cannot cure you, nor heal you of your wound. For I will be like a lion to Ephraim, and like a young lion to the house of Judah. I, even I, will tear them and go away; I will take them away, and no one shall rescue. I will return again to My place till they acknowledge their offense. Then they will seek My face; in their affliction they will earnestly seek Me.”

We see a spiritual condition that is much worse than fighting sickness and soreness in our daily lives. For those who would seek to serve self, or seek to use the gospel for their own gain, the end will be only sickness and soreness. It is to seek self-fulfillment only to grow sick of this life, to be sick of this world, sick of the false promises that we have believed, sick of abuse and mistreatment, sick of hard times, sick of living in despair, and it is a sickness for which we find no cure.

The people are removing God’s boundaries. They make allowances, excuses, exceptions. Little by little they erode the standard of truth and cast doubt on God’s Word. God says worship at Jerusalem, but the nation is divided and that makes things difficult, so we can make an exception and worship Him here at Beer-sheeba instead. We are still worshipping God, right? And that after all is what matters?

And yes, God said not to incorporate images into worship, but we can better teach the people and they can better visualize how great and power and strong God is if we let people see a golden calf to aid in their worship of God. We aren’t worshipping an idol after all, the calf represents Yahweh.

From there we find the moving of the landmark. See what happens when we decide that we can approach God how we want instead of hos He wants? We change the boundaries all the while forgetting that with God there is no change. James 1:17 reminds us that with God “there is no variation or shadow of turning.”

The result here of moving the boundaries that God had established is that those who lead the nation will be drenched in wrath. “I will pour out My wrath on them like water,” God says.

Not only have they moved the boundaries, God also adds here that Israel “willingly walked by human precept.” They replaced the boundaries set by God with the traditions of men. We never replace the standards of God’s Word with human traditions, do we? No, not us! We do every time we do what we want to do instead of what God tells us to do.

The results to Israel and Judah is that they will be crushed in judgment. They will be broken. Smashed. Dashed. Now not at first though. God says He will come like a moth and like rottenness. A moth flying around is a bother, a nuisance. But if left alone it will eat your clothes. They are like flying goats! But it starts small and goes unnoticed at first. This is like the conviction of the Holy Spirit. To Israel at this point God’s conviction was a bother, a nuisance, something to be swatted away.

When food goes bad, likewise, it doesn’t all go completely bad at once. It is a gradual corruption. There is a process. And over time the results are nasty and putrid.

He goes on then, “When Ephraim saw his sickness, and Judah saw his wound, then Ephraim went to Assyria and sent to King Jareb; yet he cannot cure you, nor heal you of your wound. King Jareb means the King Warrior, this is the big kid on the block – this was Assyria. In times of judgment, as God was working to correct and convict His people, they thought they would find aid from Assyria. Assyria is the nation that eventually conquers Israel as part of God’s judgment, but before that both Israel and Judah went to Assyria for help. And God tells them that Assyria could not help and had no cure.

Where should they have gone when they had a need? When they were dealing with the effects of God’s judgment? When times were tough? They should have humbled themselves before the Lord. This is where we find the right application of 2 Chronicles 7:13-14.  “When I shut up heaven and there is no rain, or command the locusts to devour the land, or send pestilence among My people, if My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.” Instead the people turned to another nation. Now their enemies know their weaknesses.

Because of this misdirection, because they went to Assyria instead of to the Lord, now God says in verse 14, “For I will be like a lion to Ephraim, and like a young lion to the house of Judah. I, even I, will tear them and go away; I will take them away, and no one shall rescue. Suddenly we want to go back to the moth – give us the moth. We have moved from the bothersome moth to the tearing, devouring lion. You see, when the Spirit’s work is ignored or dismissed God has no problem turning up the volume.

If we ever underestimate the power, strength, or abilities of God, we will soon learn that He is God and there is no other! We are at His mercy, literally.

Jesus said it this way in Matthew 10:28, “And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. But rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.”

 Verse 15 says, “I will return again to My place till they acknowledge their offense. Then they will seek My face; in their affliction they will earnestly seek Me.”

God is turning them over to judgment. And here for them to acknowledge their offense means that He is waiting for them to confess their sin, and the judgment falling on them will go on and on until they are broken and call out to Him in confession and repentance.

“Then,” He says, “they will seek My face; in their affliction they will earnestly seek Me.” And as we will see next week, the people then will say, “Come, and let us return to the Lord; for He has torn, but He will heal us; He has stricken, but He will bind us up. 2 After two days He will revive us; on the third day He will raise us up, that we may live in His sight. 3 Let us know, let us pursue the knowledge of the Lord. His going forth is established as the morning; He will come to us like the rain, like the latter and former rain to the earth.

 God is going to bring the nations of Israel and Judah to the end of themselves. And there they will find that He is all they have and will turn to Him. Here we see that the purposes of God’s discipline bear the fruit of reconciliation. Here we see the father of the prodigal son, waiting and watching for him to come back home, and running to greet him on the road when he does.

When the people thought they were seeking God they were actually only seeking to serve self. So for us, how can we know we are seeking Him? It is when we seek Him, His Kingdom and His righteousness first – it is when we prioritize our lives according to His standard and not our own.

In Jeremiah 29 we find these words proclaimed to Judah as they were facing captivity and judgment, these words in a letter Jeremiah has written and that Daniel later read and came to understand when the captivity would end. God says through Jeremiah, “For thus says the Lord: After seventy years are completed at Babylon, I will visit you and perform My good word toward you, and cause you to return to this place. For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon Me and go and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart. I will be found by you, says the Lord, and I will bring you back from your captivity; I will gather you from all the nations and from all the places where I have driven you, says the Lord, and I will bring you to the place from which I cause you to be carried away captive.”

You will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart. Are you seeking the Lord with all your heart? The fruit that is being produced in your life is the evidence to support your claim. Seek Him and love Him with all that you are!