If you'll look with me towards
the back of your Old Testament, where the smaller books are,
you'll find the book of Hosea. It's the first of what we call
the minor prophets. Not minor in the content of their
message, but shorter in length, and so Hosea is the first of the minor
prophets, and we've been looking in this prophecy on Wednesday
nights. I wanted us to consider verses
four and five in chapter three this morning. Hosea chapter three,
verses four and five. Let's ask the Lord's blessings. Our gracious Heavenly Father,
thank you for putting in our hearts a desire to be here, to
worship Thee, to open Your Word. Lord, if we're To be blessed
this morning, we now are completely dependent upon you to open our
hearts and open the meaning of your
word and cause us to find our hope in thy dear son. Set our
affections on things above. Lord, far too often and for far
too long we've been distracted from thee by the things of this
world. Lord, if you would enable us
to set those things aside, this hour and the next, speak to our hearts and, Lord,
give us hope and comfort and peace and forgiveness and grace. Lord, save us. for Christ's sake,
for we ask it in his name. Amen. Hosea chapter 4, I've titled
this message Lost in Babylon. Lost in Babylon. Now Hosea is
prophesying what will happen to the children of Israel when
they're taken into exile. And these things did happen. After Hosea's death, the Babylonians
did come in and they took the people of God into exile. Hosea tells us in verse 4 what
will happen to them while they're in exile. He says, for the children
of Israel shall abide many days without a king and without a
prince and without a sacrifice and without an image and without
an ephod and without a teraphim. These are the things that you
will lose while you are in Babylon. But the loss of these things
will cause your heart to grow fonder of me. And your need for these things
will cause you to long to be returned to the place of worship. And so when I've finished my
work of mercy for you, this is not punishment, this is corrective. This is the Lord showing mercy
toward his children in causing them to have a heart for him.
And just as absence does cause the heart to grow fonder, and
just as we don't really know, we don't really appreciate what
we have until we've lost it. So the Lord is going to do this
for his people. And in loss of these things,
Verse five, afterwards, after I've duly corrected you and accomplished
my work of grace in your heart, after these things, shall the
children of Israel return. And they shall seek the Lord
their God and David their king and shall fear the Lord and his
goodness in the latter days. When the Bible speaks of the
latter days, you know it's speaking of that time period between the
first and second coming of the Lord Jesus. You and I live in
the latter days. In Revelation chapter 19, the
Lord tells us this, the testimony of Jesus. What is the testimony
of Jesus? It is the gospel. That word testimony
means witness. Oftentimes we hear people speaking
of their testimony. Our testimonies are at best subjective. Our testimonies are at best very
uncertain. We look back to our experiences
and we don't know how much of it was really the Lord, how much
of it was our emotions, how much of it was our circumstances,
our testimony. is subjective. His testimony, the testimony
of Jesus, the witness of the Lord Jesus Christ, the meaning,
the message, the sum and the substance of who he is and what
he accomplished. And the rest of that verse says,
the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. So we're
looking at a prophecy right now. We just read two verses of a
prophet that God gave words to. Yes, in their immediate context,
they were for the Old Testament church, the people of God who
would be carried off into Babylon. But oh, that the testimony of
the Lord Jesus Christ himself would become the spirit of this
prophecy for us, for us right now, today. Babylon. The word translated means confusion. It goes all the way back to Genesis
chapter 11, when the people got together and they said, let us
build a city and a name for ourselves. And let us build a tower that
will reach up into heaven. We call it the Tower of Babel.
And we still use the word Babel in our English language to describe
language that doesn't make sense. Well, they're just babbling.
And the reason why Babel is called Babel is because that's where
the Lord confused their language so that they couldn't understand
each other and they all went their own separate ways. And
they gave off of the building of that city. The scripture says
that they fashioned in the building of that city from their hands
bricks for stone. So they didn't have a rock, which
is a picture of Christ on which the church is built. He is the
cornerstone. They fashioned with their hands
bricks for stone. And then they use, the Bible
says, slime for mortar. They put these bricks together
with tar. And it's the same word that describes
what Noah used when he covered the entire ark with a covering
to make it waterproof. And it's a picture of the atoning
work of the Lord Jesus Christ. That ark was covered, it was
sealed. The rain that fell from heaven
was a picture of God's wrath and God's judgment and it could
not enter into the ark because of the clovering that Noah had
put on that. And that word clovering is the
same word that we have for atonement. And so it is all a picture. The spirit, the testimony of
Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. All of these pictures, all of
these types are allegories. They are, in a sense, parables.
They are picturing for us what would be accomplished by the
Lord Jesus Christ, who is our covering. He is our atonement.
He is the one who keeps the wrath of God from us. by his shed blood. But what do we have a picture
of at the Tower of Babel? They had brick for stone, fashioned
with their hands. And they had slime for mortar.
Now slime might work really good as a covering for an ark, but
it wouldn't work very well in the middle of a desert at over
100 degrees in putting brick together, that tower would fall. But here's what we have a picture
of in Babylon. And this is the application to
you and me. The works of man's hand paired
with the atoning work of Christ. Works plus grace. That's the
Tower of Babel. And every man-made religion of
the world, every single one of them, is a mixture of man's works
and God's grace. The problem with that is that
they are contrary to one another. You cannot mix works and grace.
They cannot be reconciled. The Lord tells us in the book
of Romans, if it be of works, then it can no longer be of grace,
otherwise works is not works. It has to be all of grace, or
it's a works gospel. So if we add any of our work
to the accomplished, finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ,
we have a Babylonian gospel, we have Babel, we have confusion. We have a message of salvation
that can't be made sense of. And yet, most men will listen
to that confusing message and they won't ask any questions. They will happily become residents
of Babylon. They will live their entire lives
in confusion, seeking ways to build a tower to heaven, seeking
ways to save themselves, seeking ways to have some sort of peace
and some sort of comfort and some sort of rest, even though
everything around them is nothing but confusion, especially their
religion, especially their religion. Now that's what Babylon is. The
children of Israel are carried into Babylon for 70 years. The
life of a man, three score and 10. And so it's a picture of
our life in this world. Many of those who were carried
off into Babylon had experienced true worship of God in Jerusalem
before their captivity. And now they're longing for these
things to return. Others were born in Babylon and
they didn't know anything about these things other than what
they were told by the ones who had come out. Some of them believed the testimony
of the ones who had experienced these things. And they too longed
in their hearts for an opportunity to return. Many made their home in Babylon. Many became very accustomed to
the customs of Babylon. and they became comfortable in
Babylon. And when Ezra and Nehemiah brought
the children of Israel back after 70 years, many of them stayed
behind in Babylon. Now you and I come into this
world believing in a God who requires us to do something in
order for him to be able to save us. That's our nature. We have a works mentality about
salvation by nature. And unless the Lord applies this
truth to our hearts and causes us to find ourselves without
a king, and without a prince, and without a sacrifice, and
without an image, and without an ephod, and without a teraphim,
we will not long to return. Now, the truth of this message
not only applies to those who have made their home in Babylon,
they're born in Babylon, it's a false gospel, they're comfortable
there, but the message also is for the child of God, who if
you are anything like me, hundreds of times a day. Find yourself
losing sight of Christ. Find yourselves being attracted
to Babylon. Find yourselves trying to find
comfort and hope and peace and happiness in something other
than the Lord Jesus alone. And this attraction of Babylon causes you to find yourself without
a king, without a prince, without a sacrifice, without an image,
without an ephod, and without a teraphim. And being without
those things, you find yourself seeking and returning to the
Lord. This is our life. This is our life. And it's by
God's mercy. Now, the story of Babylon is
carried all the way through the scriptures to the book of Revelation. And Babylon is described in Revelation
chapter 17 and 18. Mystery Babylon, the great whore
of Babylon. who has perverted the gospel.
And then in chapter 18, that great city of Babylon shall be
thrown down and shall be found no more. And the Lord shall establish
his kingdom, which shall be forevermore. This Babylonian world that you
and I live in, this confusing world, how many times we find
ourselves confused. How many times we find ourselves
not at rest, not at peace, but running to and fro trying to
fix things and trying to figure out why things are the way they
are. And in that experience, the Lord
does a work of grace in our hearts. And he causes us to remember
to remember what it was like to sit at the Lord's feet and
to hear his voice, and to have a king, and to have a prince,
and to have a sacrifice, and to have an image, and to have
an ephod, and to have a teraphim once again, and we seek him. And then even though our circumstances
don't change, our hearts are changed, and we're at rest, and
there's no more confusion. there's peace. This is the spirit of this prophecy. If I don't know Christ and never
have had Christ, or if I lose sight of Him, either
way, I find myself without these things. And the absence of these things
is what causes my heart to long for Christ, because all of these
things are found in him. They're all found in him. A king. A king. What did the, uh, What the Pharisees
say when they wanted the Lord crucified, what they say to manipulate
Pilate and try to get him to agree, we have no king but Caesar. In another place, the Lord gives
a parable of a man who sends his son to receive honor from
the servants. And what did they say? We will
not have this man to reign over us. The natural man has put himself
on the throne of God. The natural man has made himself
to be king. But oh, to be left in confusion. when you are trying to reign
your own life. Because without a king, without
a king in a country, there's nothing but chaos. There's nothing
but confusion. In the book of Judges, the scripture
says, each man did what was right in his own eyes. Does that not
describe the world in which we live? Everybody has set for themselves.
Well, this is my truth and that's your truth. And this is my God
and that's your God. And it's just complete nonsense. It's complete confusion. And if we become attracted to
that Babylonian spirit, we find ourselves without a reigning
monarch, without a sovereign to give to give order and control
and power. And we realize, no, Caesar's
not my king. No, I do need a man to reign
over me. No, I have no control over myself. I've got to have a sovereign. I've got to have one who loves
me and one who is all powerful and one who knows what's best
for me to take control of me. And he's not found in Babylon.
they will be left without a king in Babylon. Every time the children of Israel
in the book of Judges, we studied Judges a couple of years ago
and every man did what was right in his own eyes and then confusion
set in and then God put them under the under the control of
another nation, and then, the scripture says over and over
again in the book of Judges, then they cried out unto the
Lord, and the Lord sent them a king. He sent them a judge.
He sent them one to put things back in order. What a blessing
it is when the Lord allows us to get ourselves in such a confusing
situation, and when he ordains circumstances into our lives
that causes us to see how how out of order we are and how out
of order this world is and how desperate we are to have a king. And then the children of Israel,
the true children of Israel. Now all these prophecies are
fulfilled in Christ for his church. Old Testament Israel is the Old
Testament church. And the difference between the
New Testament church and the Old Testament church is that
most of them were unbelievers. And scripture says in the book
of Hebrews, for the New Testament church, from the least of them,
even to the greatest, they shall all know him. The only way into
the New Testament church is by the new birth, is by the new
birth. And we know him. to be a subject of the king. Oh, there's no greater honor
and no greater blessing and no greater peace than to be brought
again to the feet of the throne of God and to realize Though
things might seem confusing to me, though things might seem
out of order to me, though my sin seems uncontrollable to me,
he is sovereign and all is well. All is well. The king reigns.
Our God reigns. Say unto my people, their God
reigns. He reigns. Oh, he puts, He puts
kings in their places, he raises up nations, he brings down nations,
he causes it, but he does it. He does it. And all confusion,
all confusion goes away when the Lord causes us to return
unto him and to set our affections on him and to realize and to
believe that he's controlling all things. Everything is exactly
where he purposed it. And he does all things well.
And I can trust him because he does all things for my good. A king. You need a king. A prince. I can't get access
to the king except through the prince, the son of the king. We have a reigning sovereign,
but in order for me to approach His throne, I must find his throne
to be a throne of grace. I can't go before a throne of
justice. I can't go before a throne of
the law. I can't demand access to the
king. I have to have an advocate. His
son is gonna have to plead my case. His son is gonna have to
satisfy his justice on my behalf. His son is gonna have to make
his throne a throne of grace. Then I'm able to come boldly. I'm able to come with confidence,
knowing that the king is propitious toward me. I have a propitiation,
and that just simply means that the justice and the judgment
and the wrath of the king has been appeased. It's been put
away. There's a sign out on the I-4
interstate that says, God is not angry. You can't make that
general statement to the world. Psalm 711 says that he's angry
with the wicked every day. We would never make a general
statement to the world, God's not angry, but I can say to you,
child of God, you coming to the throne of grace in the person
of his son, and you approach the king in the person of his
prince, he's not angry. He is not angry. He's got nothing
for you but compassion and love and grace and mercy. There's
no anger whatsoever that was all spent when the fiery wrath
of his justice fell on our substitute. God is not angry with his children,
with his people, with those that come to the king in a prince. If I'm going to have peace with
God, I must have the prince of peace to advocate for me. I must
have him. This word prince in the Old Testament
language is also translated captain. Captain. The captain of our salvation. The captain of his army. The
one who we follow is none other than the Lord Jesus Christ. And
when I'm in Babylon, and when my heart's drawn to Babylon,
and when my eyes are diverted away from the true worship of
God in the person of Christ, I find myself without a king,
without a prince, and the Lord stirs my heart to know I've got
to have a king. I've got to have one to reign
over me. And if I'm going to have access to him, and if he's
not going to be angry with me, I've got to have his son as my
prince to intercede on my behalf. Without a sacrifice. All men know that God is just
and that God requires a sacrifice for sin. Babylon, when men scattered from
Babylon. And there's some documentaries
I've enjoyed watching that show these ancient, they call them
prehistoric pyramids and structures that are all over the world.
And the archaeologists and the scientists are trying to figure
out what they're there for. And they're all a little different
than the rest of them. They're all towers of Babylon.
When they scattered, they went all over the world. Well, we've
got a better idea for how to build this city. We're not going
to use slime. We're going to fit these megaliths
together without mortar. And they're going to stand as
a structure and as a testimony and as a name to ourselves. And
they're going to reach up into the heavens. And these ruins are everywhere.
And they're all a little different. And they are a testimony to man-made
religion. They're all the same. Doesn't
matter whatever flavor of Christianity you want to look at, whether
it be our neighbors who are Muslim, or whether it be our friends
in India who are Hindu, They're all the same. It's a mixture
of grace and works. God's done his part. We do our
part. We fashion bricks with our hands.
We put them together with his atonement and we'll build a name
for ourselves. And so the testimony of religious
men always calls attention to the self, to self. You listen
to the testimony of religious people and that always starts
with I. I was here and I was there and
I did this and I did that and I got saved. I got saved. You know the terms
got saved is nowhere to be found in the Bible? To be saved is found multiple
times. What's the difference between
getting something and being something? I could say, well, I got a new
car, but I would never say I've become a car. And yet therein is the difference
between what men mean when they say I got something and what
believers know that they have become something. Because it's
no less impossible, it's no less impossible for a man to become
a car than it is for a sinner to be made new in Christ. It's just as great a miracle. And if we've been made to be
something, then everything's new. Everything's changed. It's
not a possession that I have. It's something that's been done
to me. It's a complete change of everything. Everything. But that's the testimony of the
unbeliever. They'll tell you what they did and what they got.
And for them, God is nothing more than a possession. They
carry him in their pocket and pull him out when they need him.
Like a rabbit's foot, they'll rub him a little bit with a prayer
here and there and get out of the situation that they're in
and then put him back in the pocket and move on. I've got to have a sacrifice. I can't be satisfied with the
sacrifices of religion. The whole point of the last couple
of minutes is to say that every religion has a different set
of rules and regulations as to what's required for you to do
or for you to abstain from in order for you to be saved. That's
the only difference. But it all works in grace. It's
all Babylon. And here's what happens when
I become attracted to Babylon, when I look to Babylon, when
I divert my attention from my sacrifice, my only sacrifice,
the Lord Jesus Christ, and I begin to think that there's something
that I need to do, something that God, that would obligate
God to bless me if I did this or that. And then I realize I can't be
satisfied with that. God's not satisfied with it.
He's satisfied with his son. And I've got to be found in him. And once again, in Babylon, without
a king, without a prince, without a sacrifice. And the loss of
those things turns the heart of the children of Israel back. they seek the Lord and they fear
him and they worship him what a blessing the Lord is not going
to allow us to have those things while we're in Babylon or at least not to have the blessing
of them in our in our experience no no trip to Babylon, however
long it might be, will cause my God to forsake me. But he
will withdraw the awareness of his presence and make me wanting
and make me longing after him if I go to Babylon. And as I said, it happens to
the child of God hundreds of times a day. how oftentimes the
Spirit of God reminds me of what I have in Christ and puts in
my heart a longing for Him. Turn with me to Hebrews chapter
10. Look at verse 8 in Hebrews chapter 10. above when he said, sacrifice
and offering and burn offerings and offerings for sin thou wouldest
not. God is not going to put away
my sin. God is not going to save me. God is not going to be propitious
toward me based on any sacrifice that I make. I might, I could
become a martyr. But if I'm looking to the sacrifices
that I'm making, Now, God calls us to be something
that we weren't before, makes us into something that we never
were before. Oh, sacrifices will be the calves
of our lips, the scripture says. We'll be offering to him praise
and worship. And our willing, heartfelt, desire,
loving service toward him will be the delight of our lives.
That'll be our joy. It won't be burdensome for us
to serve the Lord. But if I'm looking to my religious
activity, my sacrifices and my offerings and my burnt offerings, I can be sure that he would not. Look at the rest of this. Neither
had pleasure therein which are offered by the law. Then said
he, the Lord Jesus, Lo, I come to do thy will, O God. He taketh
away the first, that he may establish the second. You see, all man-made
religions go back to Babylon. They're trying to build a tower
to heaven. They're trying to work their way to heaven. They're
trying to do something in order to earn favor with God. And here's
the difference between man-made religion and the gospel of God's
free grace. God came down. What's the tallest building in
the world? I don't know. I guess over in Dubai or something.
Maybe it reaches into the lowest clouds. But it certainly doesn't
get to the stratosphere, and it certainly doesn't get to heaven. Man cannot build his way to heaven. God had to come to where we are. He had to leave heaven. and be
made in the likeness of sinful flesh, he had to bear our sins
in his body upon the tree of Calvary. He had to shed his precious
blood as an atonement, as a covering. He taketh away the first, that
he may establish the second. He taketh away a works gospel
to establish a gospel of God's free grace, by the which will
we are sanctified, made holy, through the offering of the body
of Jesus Christ once for all. There's the sacrifice, there's
the offering. The Lord Jesus did not die on
Calvary's cross to make himself an offering to us to be accepted
or rejected by our will. He made himself an offering to
his father. And the father accepted the offering
that he made. And the father said, I'm satisfied. You now have a prince. You can
now come into the very presence of a sovereign, almighty God. and find it to be a throne of
grace. You have a sacrifice. And you
have an ephod. Now the ephod was what Aaron
wore. When Aaron would go in, it was
the priestly breastplate, it was called an ephod, and it had
the names, it had 12 stones embedded in it, and in each stone, precious
stones, and in each of the precious stones was the name of one of
the 12 tribes of Israel. And it's a picture of our high
priest, the Lord Jesus Christ, who went into the holies of holies,
and he put his blood on the mercy seat. as our priest and as our
representative of the whole nation of Israel, all the people of
God. We have an ephod in Christ. We have one who intercedes for us. who offers up his prayers for
us, who receives from God the approval of that offering and
shares it with his people. That's what a priest did. A priest
was an intercessor. I miss one. Look back with me
in verse four in our text of Hosea chapter three, an image,
an image Now the first place this word image is used, you
remember the story of Jacob fleeing from his brother Esau after having
stole his birthright and he finds himself in the place of Bethel,
the house of God, and he goes to sleep and he has a stone for
a pillow. He's resting his head on a rock.
Great picture of our rest in Christ. And God gives him a vision. And in this vision, there's a
ladder going into heaven and the angels are ascending and
descending upon this ladder. The ladder is Christ. And the
angels are the messengers of God that bring that message down
to the earth. I pray that's what we're doing
right now. Just a messenger. When Jacob woke up the next morning,
he took that stone and took some other stones and he made a pillar
and he poured oil on that pillar. And he said, this will be a memorial. This will be a monument of the
promise that God gave me in that vision, that he would send his
messengers to me and give me access to him. That's the word
image. Now, it used to be, some of you
young people wouldn't know this perhaps, but it used to be that
if your house caught on fire, the first thing that you would
do when you went into the house to try to, would not be for the
jewelry box, it'd go for your pictures. That's all you had. That was
your memorial of your loved ones was those pictures. Now they're
all loaded in the cloud. Now when we write about pictures,
we'll get our silver and gold. We go back into the house now.
But it used to be you'd get your pictures. That was the most precious
thing to you. Why? Because it was a memorial.
It was a memory of those who you loved. It was a representation
to you. That's what Jacob is doing. He's
making a memorial, a monument, and he's pouring oil on it. Now,
when we're in Babylon, what do we lose? What is our memorial
that has the oil poured on it? Where do we find the pictures
of Christ? When the fire comes, what do
we do? We run for the pictures. We run
for the representations. We run for those beautiful types
and stories and revelations that the Lord Jesus makes of himself
because he is our loved one. And the oil of his spirit has
been poured on this word. And by God's spirit, he reveals
to us the glory of Christ. But in Babylon, we're without
an image. With Babylon, we're without an
ephod. And in Babylon, we're without
a teraphim. Now this word teraphim represents
an object that is used to discern God's will or to invoke God's
blessings. In pagan religion, a teraphim
would be an idol or a shrine that you went to in order to
get a message from God. But for the believer, the teraphim is the, I said that Aaron wore this ephod. Well, in the ephod was a pouch. And in that pouch was the Urim
and the Thumen. And the Urim and the Thumen,
we know very little bit about it. except that, like a teraphim,
it was used to discern God's will and to invoke God's blessings. One thing we know about the Urim
and the Fumen is that they, too, are a picture of Christ. For
outside of him, we cannot discern his will. Outside of him, we
cannot invoke his blessings. The word Urim means light. And the word Thumen translated
means perfection. And Aaron's name translated means
light bringer. Light bringer. So Aaron's a picture
of Christ. The ephod, a picture of his priesthood
ministry. The Urim and the Thumen is a
picture of Christ. The Lord Jesus said, I am the
light of the world. He that followeth me shall not
walk in darkness, but he shall have the light of life. What do we have in Babylon? Darkness,
confusion, cloudiness. Would I have a king? Would I
have a prince? Would I have a sacrifice? We
don't have a memorial. We don't have an image, an ephod,
or a teraphim. And the absence of those things shall cause the children of Israel
to return and seek the Lord their God and David, that's Christ,
their king and shall fear the Lord and his goodness in the
latter days. What a blessing, what a merciful
God that we have, that every single time we look to Babylon,
he would do this for us. And for those of his children
that were born in Babylon or still in Babylon and can't find
any hope and peace in Babylon, believe the testimony of those
who have been to Jerusalem, the holy city, and worshiped God
in this way and come, come. Thank you. Thank you.