Let's open our Bibles to Hosea
chapter four. Hosea chapter four. There's a verse in Philippians,
I think it is, where Paul speaks of strife within the church among
believers. And he pairs strife with vainglory. And anytime there's strife among
men, it's because somebody is not getting the praise or the
glory that they think they deserve. And the Lord calls it vainglory. Don't be in strife with another
man because he doesn't give you the credit you think you deserve. There's a verse here in Hosea
chapter 4 that speaks of having strife with God. And we could apply the same thing
as what Paul said in Philippians. There's strife with God when
man glories vainly in himself. There's strife with God when
man does not give to God all the glory. All the glory. His glory is not vainglory. His
glory is true glory. His glory is earned glory. His
glory is manifested glory beyond our understanding. But the Lord
tells us here in Hosea chapter 4 why he has strife with men. The word controversy in verse
1 is the word strife. Hear the word of the Lord, you
children of Israel. Only the children of Israel,
the true children of Israel, will hear the word of the Lord.
I love that. The Lord speaks to his children,
and they hear what he says, and they agree, and they amen, and
they rejoice, and they believe. They believe. Hear the word of
the Lord, you children of Israel. For the Lord hath a controversy
with the inhabitants of the land. He has a strife with the people
of the land, and he wants his children to hear what the cause
of this strife is so that we can avoid any appearance of having
controversy with God. We want to be at peace with God.
We don't want there to be any controversy with him. And so
the Lord's telling us the reason why he has strife with men for
our good, for our good. The Lord hath a controversy with
the inhabitants of the land, three reasons, because there
is no truth, because there is no mercy and because there is
no knowledge of God in the land." Truth, mercy, and the knowledge
of God. Isaiah asked a question in Isaiah
chapter 45. He says, woe unto him. And that word woe, particularly
when Isaiah uses it, is a word of condemnation. It's a word of eternal wrath
and judgment. Woe unto him that striveth with
his maker. The Lord has put in our hearts
a need to be at peace with him. And he's taken away all strife
so that that woe does not apply to the children
of Israel. They don't have controversy with whatever God says. Whatever
truth, whatever mercy, whatever revelation he's made of himself,
we bow. We might. interpret this word controversy
or strife as dispute or quarrel or contention. Here is the reason
why God has a dispute with a man. Here's the reason why God quarrels
with a man or has contention with a man or has a controversy
against a man. This is the reason why a man
does not have peace with God. And so the Reverse of that is
this is the reason why we do have peace with God. And if we
have these things, then the Lord is assuring us that there's no
controversy. There's no controversy with those
who have these things. That's why I wanted to read that
passage in Micah, where the Lord tells us the three things that
he requires of a man is to do justly. To do justly. He's not talking about just being
fair with your fellow man. He's talking about being justified
with God. To love mercy. All sinners love
mercy. And to walk humbly with thy God. If the Lord has revealed himself
to us, the result of that will be a humble spirit before God. walking humbly with him." The
Lord is telling the people of Israel the cause of
all their corruptions and the reason for the judgment that's
going to come upon them because there's no truth and there's
no mercy and there's no knowledge of God in the land. Now, these
are the three things that the Lord gives to his children when
he gives them the new birth. Truth, truth. We say with that Syrophoenician
woman when the Lord called her a dog, truth, Lord, truth. Lord, here's our testimony. Here's our experience in the
new birth. We agree with God that we're sinners and that there's
nothing in us but sin. Everything about us is sinful.
Apart from the righteousness that we have in Christ, we have
no righteousness before God. In me, that is in my flesh, dwelleth
no good thing. That's the truth that the world
doesn't have. The world believes that there's
some spark of life, there's some merit, there's something that
they can offer God. They don't have, they're not
like other men. They're like that publican in
the, in the Pharisee in the temple. God, I thank thee that I'm not
as other men. And men compare themselves to
men. But in the new birth, in the
new birth, God stands us in his presence and reveals his grace
and his glory in Christ. And the conclusion we come to
is the truth about ourselves. The truth about ourselves. Psalm 40, David said, blessed
is the man that maketh the Lord his trust, that maketh the Lord
his trust and turneth not again to lies. Satan is the father
of lies, and he's been lying from the very beginning. And
what a blessing it is when the Lord says to us, I have no controversy. with those who are in the truth. It's what the Lord said to Pilate
when Pilate said, what is truth? The modern day relativism is
not a phenomenon. It goes all the way back to the
garden. Pilate was being relativistic when he said, truth. What is truth? There's no such
thing as truth, don't you know that? You've turned this whole
city upside down over truth. What have the Lord said to Pilate?
For this cause was I born, and for this reason came I into the
world, to bear witness unto the truth. And they that are of the
truth hear my voice and they follow me. We have the truth. about ourselves. The false prophets
prophesy lies in the name of God. Look at verse two. Here's the contrast to truth. By swearing and lying and killing
and stealing and committing adultery, they break out and blood toucheth
blood. Now, these lies that are being told
are lies about God, lies about man. You can do this. You can pray this prayer. You
can make this decision. You can, you know, God loves
everybody. Christ died for everybody, all
those sort of things. And they spread these lies in
the name of our God. And so they're swearing and lying
in their preaching. No mass murderer
has ever killed more men than false gospel has destroyed souls. So when we read what the Lord
says about those who, here's why I have controversy with the
inhabitants of the land, because they have no truth. It's not
that they have some truths. We might hear a false prophet
preach and we might hear something that he says that's true. But
the word true is an adjective. It describes something, and a
person can say something that's true. But the word truth is a
noun. And the Lord Jesus said, I am
the truth. They that hear my voice, they
follow me. So to have Christ is to have
the truth, and the Lord revealing the lies of these false prophets
by saying they're using the Lord's name in vain whenever they prophesy
lies and whenever they kill men's souls and whenever they rob God
of His glory. Look at verse two, stealing. What worse robbery is there than
to rob God of His glory in salvation and to credit man? with something
that he's done. This is what God said. I have
controversy with these people, with the inhabitants of the land.
And if you have controversy with them over these things, then
that's a good thing. Because that's the testimony
that you have the truth, that you have the truth. Don't you
hate it when people say, well, you know, I don't agree with
you, but I respect your religion, and I respect your opinion. No,
we don't. We have controversy. We don't
respect it at all. Now, we respect the fact that
a man can believe what he wants. He can hold to whatever position
he wants to hold to. And we're not up for someone
who wouldn't want to. Couldn't do it anyway. It's not
that we have respect for other man's religion. No, we have controversy
with it. Why? Because they're prophesying
lies in the name of our God. And if there's any truth at all
to what they're saying, then it robs God of his glory and
it robs me of my hope. Commit an adultery. forsaking
their maker as their husband and giving their love and loyalty
to another? What adultery is worse than that? And blood toucheth blood. As
soon as they performed one act of bloodshed, they go on to another.
It's just a continual repeating action of lies against our God
and lies towards men. Now, those that are of the truth
make righteous judgments about themselves, about God, and about
how it is that God saves sinners. Yes, there is an absolute truth,
and the Lord has been pleased to put away the controversy that
we would have in striving with our maker by revealing to us
the truth and giving to us Christ, who is the plumb line by which
all lies are measured. All the crooked lies are revealed
in the in the straight line of the Lord Jesus Christ, who himself
is our truth. We believe that our God is sovereign.
We believe that he's omnipotent. We believe that he hath done
whatsoever he pleases. And why? Because he's revealed
the truth to us. We believe that salvation is
of the Lord. And he gets all the glory for
it. He's done it all. from predestination
and the covenant of grace and eternity past all the way through
to our glorification and everything in between. He's the one that
opened the eyes of our understanding. He's the one that gave us the
revelation of the gospel. He's the one that redeemed us
perfectly and completely at Calvary's cross and paid for all of our
sins. He's the one that regenerates
us. gives us faith to believe on
Christ. He's the one who keeps us from
falling and continues to put in our heart a need for our daily
bread to come back to the throne of grace over and over and over
again. The truth of what we are as sinners
is being revealed to us every day. Every day we see ourselves
in need of a savior, in need of a substitute, in need of a
sin bearer, in need of one who can stand in our stead before
God and be our advocate before a holy God. Those who have the truth, I have
no controversy with them. No controversy. I'm at peace
with them. we have peace with God through
our Lord Jesus Christ. Any message of salvation that
makes God dependent on anything or anybody in order for him to
be able to save is a lie. Any message of salvation that
denies that man is dead in his trespasses and sins and that
he has no righteousness and that all of his righteousnesses are
as filthy rags before God is a lie. Any message of salvation that
says that dedication or decision or dissent is in any way meritorious
toward God is a lie. We don't believe it. We don't
believe the lie. But those who have no love for
the truth God sends them a strong delusion that they should believe
the lie. The Lord hath controversy with
the inhabitants of the land, children of Israel. Listen, listen,
this is why I have controversy with men. This is why I strive
with them. And look at the second thing
that he tells us in verse four. And in Micah, they that love
mercy, and here the Lord says, I have controversy with them
because they have no mercy. Mercy is for sinners. It's for sinners. You know, the
world says that your sin is not really your fault. it's because of your circumstances
or it's because you've become a victim to a disease. Every bad habit now is an addiction
and has a disease name attached to it. With the proper medication
and the proper therapy, you can you can get yourself out of this
problem that you've been unwittingly thrown into. That's the counsel
of the world. The counsel of freeware religion
is, well, yeah, sin is your fault, but you can remedy the problem. You can make a decision. You
can pray a prayer. You can do this and do that,
and you can Fix it, you can fix it. The gospel
says sin is all your fault and you can't fix it. What a difference, that's the
truth. It's all your fault, every bit of it. You're not a victim.
You know, the blame game goes all the way back to the garden,
doesn't it? Adam, you know, this is in our, Well, it's in our
sin nature. I was going to say it's in our
DNA, but it's in our sin nature. The woman that you gave me, well,
Adam was blaming God. He's blaming God. And how quick
we are to justify ourselves, and how quick we are to turn
to blame somewhere else. But when the Lord puts away that
strife and that controversy, and he causes us to believe the
truth about ourselves, oh, how we love mercy. How we love mercy. Mercy is for sinners. Mercy is only needed for the
guilty. Victims don't need mercy. If it's someone else's fault,
I don't need mercy. But here's the truth that every
believer believes. If God judged me worthy of heaven
or hell based on the best thing that I ever did, the sentence
would be swift and it would be final. I would spend all eternity
in the lake of fire. If God judged me based on the
best thing that I ever did. Now I've got to have mercy. I've
got to have a substitute. I've got to have a righteousness
outside of myself. I've got to have a sinless savior
to stand in my stead before God and plead my case and present
himself on my behalf for all my righteousness. What did Micah say? To do justly. To do justly. To do justly before God is to
see that I have a need to be justified. and I can't justify
myself. He's gonna have to put away my
sin. He's gonna have to provide for me a righteousness that I
cannot provide for myself. That's why the Lord said to the
Pharisees, I will have mercy and not sacrifice. Go and learn
what that means. Go and learn what that means.
You know, Micah was saying, could I, rivers of oil, thousands of
sheep, could I, if I gave my firstborn, would the fruit of
my body be sufficient to make up for and atone for the sins
of my soul? Those are all rhetorical questions
in that verse we just read. And Micah, no, none of those
things will be sufficient. But these Pharisees were going
about, as all men do, and as we would do, trying to establish
their own righteousness, ignorant of the righteousness of God,
not knowing that the Lord Jesus is the end of righteousness for
everyone that believeth. I will have mercy, not sacrifice. Your sacrifices aren't going
to atone for your sins. The only thing that's going to
atone for your sins is the blood of Christ. And you're going to
have to be a mercy beggar. You're going to have to be made
a sinner before you'll turn and look to him for your righteousness. This is why I have controversy
with the inhabitants of the land. And this is what gives me peace
with the children of Israel. They have the truth. They love
mercy. And they have a knowledge of
God. Now, almost when I was preparing
this message, I thought I should preach this in reverse order.
Because the knowledge of God is what leads me to see my need
for mercy and shows me the truth. Here's the way the Lord gave
it to us in his word. No truth, no mercy, no knowledge
of God in the land. The Lord says in John chapter
17, verse three, this is life eternal, that they might know
thee the only true God and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent. If we're going to know God, he
must reveal himself. He must make himself known to
us. And I've often had the thought,
do I know God or do I just know things about God? What is the
difference? What is the difference between
knowing God and knowing things about God. Well, the Bible says
that knowledge puffeth up, but love edifies. If my knowledge
of God causes me to be proud, it causes me to be arrogant,
it causes me to be argumentative, It causes me to take that knowledge
and use it to my advantage to make myself look good against
someone else and to make them look bad. If that's the knowledge
that I have, then I would be afraid that that's nothing more
than knowledge about God. That knowledge puffeth up. That would be nothing more than
information. If the knowledge I have of God
has been given to me by divine revelation and he's inspired
my heart to know him, then all the opposite of those things
is going to be true. Turn with me to the book of James,
James chapter three. I believe there's a verse here,
a few verses that'll answer this question. much more clearly than
I can answer it. James chapter three. And we'll begin reading at verse
13. Who is a wise man and endued with knowledge among you? Let
him show out of a good conversation his works with meekness and with
wisdom. But if you have bitter envying
and strife in your heart, glory not and lie not against the truth.
This wisdom descended not down from heaven, but is earthly and
sensual and devilish. The wisdom that comes from above, whereas there's envying and strife
is, there is confusion and every evil work. But the wisdom that
is from above, is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, easy
to be entreated, full of mercy, good fruits, without partiality,
without hypocrisy, and the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace
of them that make peace. I believe that's what Micah was
talking about when he said these are the three things that God
requires to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly before
thy God. If I know God, oh, what humility. What slaying of my pride will
come as the Lord makes himself more and more known to me? to walk humbly with thy God. If I'm not walking humbly before
him, we can be proud before one another. When I come into the
presence of my Lord, I'm humbled. And I want my walk among men
to be as James described it here. The other thing I see in the
scriptures about having a true knowledge of God, a discernment,
an understanding of who he is, is that it gives liberty, it
gives freedom. Isaiah chapter 5 verse 13 says,
therefore my people go into captivity because they have no knowledge.
There's no knowledge in the land. That's why I have a controversy
with them. That's why I have strife with them. But where there's
knowledge, there is freedom. If the Lord make you free, you're
free indeed. Free from what? Free from the
condemnation of sin. Free from shame and separation
from God. Free from the fear. of wrath
and judgment, free from the fear of death. That's where that,
free, I'm free. If I know God, if I just know
things about God, there's not gonna be much liberty in that. But if I'm free in Christ, I'm
able to walk humbly before my God, that what a, where the spirit
of the Lord is, there is liberty. I'm able to cry, Abba, Father,
by the power of His Spirit. And this knowledge of God is
a progressive thing. It is. Some people say sanctification
is progressive. That's not true. Sanctification
is my is my position before God. I'm holy in the presence of God
by virtue of my union with Christ. But my growth in grace, the knowledge
of God, that is progressive. That's little by little. Let me show you that. Turn with
me to the book of Philippians and we'll close. Philippians. Look at chapter three in Philippians. As Paul's speaking now, he had
a knowledge of God. Verse eight of Philippians chapter
three. Yea, doubtless I count all things
but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus
my Lord, for whom I suffer the loss of all things and do count
them but dung that I may win Christ. All those things that
I was trusting in for my salvation, circumcised the eighth day, Hebrew
of Hebrews, tribe of Benjamin, all those accolades that the
Jews were so impressed with. And Paul said, now, oh, that
I might know him, that I might win him. For the knowledge of
God, all those things are done to me, that I might be found,
verse 9, in him Not having my own righteousness, which is of
the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness
which is of God by faith. It's how I know God. I have no
righteousness. I've got to have the righteousness
of God, that I might know him, the power of his resurrection. That when he was raised from
the dead, I was raised from the dead. He was offered up for my
offenses and raised again because of my justification. The resurrection
of the Lord Jesus Christ proves that everything he said he came
to do, he actually accomplished. That's what the resurrection
proves. And Paul's saying, oh, that I might better understand
the power of the resurrection. Because in understanding that,
And knowing the truth of that, I have the assurance that everything
Christ said he came to do is done. And the fellowship of his suffering. The Apostle Paul suffered much
in preaching the gospel. Beaten, shipwrecked, left for
dead. He's not talking about that. He's talking about the fellowship
that he had Spiritually speaking, when Christ died on the cross,
he said, I was crucified with Christ. Nevertheless, I live,
yet not I, but it's Christ that liveth in me, the life that I
now live. I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me
and died for me. Oh, that I might better understand
that union that I had in my sin bearer in my substitute when
he hung on Calvary's cross and that the full justice of God
was satisfied and the full fury of his wrath was poured out on
my on my substitute. I fellowship with his suffering
and I have some understanding of the power of his resurrection. being made conformable unto his
death, if by any means I might attain unto the resurrection
of the dead. He's talking about dying daily
to self. I have to reckon myself to be
dead indeed unto sin every day, that my life is but alive unto
God through Jesus Christ. My life is Christ. He is my life. And outside of him, I have no
life. Not as though I had already attained, either were already
perfect, but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that
for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus. He's got a hold
of me, I don't yet fully have a hold of him. I wanna apprehend
him. I wanna know him. This is what the Lord says. I have controversy with the land
because there's no knowledge of God. How do I know that I know God? I tasted of that
heavenly gift. It's sweet. I want more. I want
more. Brethren, I count not myself
to have apprehended, verse 13, but this one thing I do for getting
those things which are behind. I can't live off of yesterday's
manna. I can't wallow in the fear and
shame of yesterday's failures. I can't glory in yesterday's
successes. I can't question. I can't, that's
all behind. forgetting those things which
are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before,
I press towards the mark for the prize of the high calling
in Christ Jesus. Let us, therefore, as many as
be perfect." We are perfect in Christ. In Christ, There's no
controversy. In Christ, there's no strife
with God. In Christ, I have perfect peace
with God. Let us, as many as be perfect, be thus minded. And if in anything you be otherwise
minded, How oftentimes we forget these
things. How oftentimes we lose sight
of Christ. How oftentimes we're tempted
to go back to Egypt and feed on the leeks and the garlics.
God will correct us. He'll keep bringing us back time
and time again. And he will show us. I have no
controversy with the children of Israel. because they do justly, they
love mercy, and they walk humbly before their God. They have the truth. They love mercy. And by my grace, they have a
knowledge of who I am and what I've done. Our Heavenly Father, thank you.
Thank you for settling the controversy that you had with us. Lord, we
could not, we could not reconcile ourselves to thee, but oh, what
hope we have in knowing that we are reconciled. in the person of thy dear Son,
our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. For it's in his name we pray.
Amen. Number nine in the spiral hymnal.
Let's stand together.