Hosea 13:14
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Hey church, you might want to grab a Bible and turn to Hosea, our verse is printed on the bulletin, but I'm going to refer to a couple verses around it. Many of you know that I served in Erbil, Iraq. I love my work there. I was the senior pastor of the Erbil Baptist Church.
But when my parents fell ill, I returned to take care of them, to help take care of them. My mother passed away about a year after I came back and my father died a few years later. You know, it's a spiritual moment when you sit by the bed of one you love as they face the power of the grave. I don't mean to be morbid, but death is a major theme of our text today.
And as I've become older, death has become something that seems more a regular part of my days. Our parents are gone, cousins, aunts, uncles, So many friends my age are gone. It's sobering. You know, we have a young church, by and large, and many of you have been spared the sorrow of death personally. But you will know it someday. Others of us in our church family are just weeks into grief right now for the loss of loved ones.
But whether you're suffering right now or simply looking to the horizon of that day, death always feels somewhat unnatural. As common as death is, it somehow doesn't seem to fit. You know, science echoes a sense that death is an anomaly. I studied microbiology in university and from strictly a biological standpoint, there's no truly compelling reasons for us to die.
Our cells possess the machinery for repair and regeneration. Theoretically, the blueprint of life doesn't mandate our destruction. But more than the laboratory, more than there, death feels like an intruder because the Bible says it is. Death is evidence that our world is broken, sinful, under judgment. A judgment that came from our rebellion.
God's command was clear in Genesis 2. God commanded the man, saying, But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat. For in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die. So when Adam disobeyed, death came to us all. Jesus knows the unnaturalness of death. He wept at the grave of Lazarus. He had compassion on the widow who lost her son, as we saw this morning. I have three sections to our short devotional tonight.
Three headings. Number one, salvation belongs to the Lord. Point two, the wages of sin is death. And point three, the gift of God is eternal life. Jesus changes everything. So point one, salvation belongs to the Lord. Now our text, as I mentioned, is in Hosea about death, and it's a difficult text.
Not only because it's about death, but it's a verse that haunts translators. Let me read it in two ways. These are two Bibles I just picked up from the pew in front of you. And in one edition, this is the ESV Bible, same page numbers, but in one edition it says, I shall ransom them from the power of Sheol. I shall redeem them from death. Oh, death, where is your plagues? Oh, Sheol, where is your sting?
But you pick up the other one, it has a different take on it. Now, read that away, of course, it's a promise of rescue. It's a victory shout. But if you look at another edition of the ESV Study Bible, or this Bible, the Pew Bible, it sounds like God is asking him a question. Shall I redeem them from the power of Sheol? Shall I redeem them from the power of death? Oh, death, where is your plagues?
Oh, Sheol, where is your sting? Such a small change, right? Did you notice that? It's shall I or I shall. Just swapping two small words, but in a big way, it makes a big difference. In Hebrew, the difference is a matter of inflection. It's the difference between a degree and a challenge. Interpreters have studied this passage, this verse, for centuries and been struggling with it for those years.
So even as we see in the ESV, there's different understandings of what we should think about when we look at this verse. And why does that matter? Well, in one sense, it doesn't matter. It's a statement, if it's a statement of fixed action where God is saying, I will redeem, I will ransom. Or if it's a question of God asking himself, shall I, will I ransom and redeem?
Either way, the power over life and death is in God's hands. And it ends in one of two ways. Redemption or judgment. Even John Calvin struggled with this verse. He noted that the prophets often combine the threat of destruction with the hope of the remnant. He argued that God uses the terror of the law to make the grace of the gospel sweet.
He said we cannot jump to the hope until we smell the smoke of judgment. So Calvin saw that whether it's a question or a statement, one thing is clear. The power to save belongs to God alone. That's a quote from Jonah. Salvation belongs to the Lord. But let's talk about point two. The wages of sin is death. Now, Hosea prophesied that God's judgment was coming from the Assyrian nation.
That's northern Iraq today, where we lived. We lived in northern Iraq. The Assyrians were the world's first true superpower. They didn't win wars with the sword. They won them with the environment. The Assyrians built huge dams to block water from flowing to their enemies. I have a picture of Tristan, son Tristan and daughter-in-law Emily in northern Iraq at Harvard's archaeological dig. They're standing on a massive cube of granite.
The stones there were a part of a sprawling network of ancient Assyrian dams that stretched from that northern plain all the way to Nineveh, or what would be called Mosul today. And in effect, those dams were weapons of war. They choked out the life before they breached the walls. It was an engineered line of death. Hosea knew exactly what those dams were for. He had seen the parched earth that they left behind, and he writes in chapter 13, verse 16, just a couple verses below our verse, about fountains drying up and springs being laid waste.
These are not poetical metaphors. He's describing the death sentence that was coming to them because of the lack of water. Now, interestingly, as our family discovered, each of those massive stones that we stood on had carved inscriptions from King Sargon II. That was the king that laid the siege of the northern kingdom of Israel. And he reveled in his brutality.
Listen to one of the inscriptions. These were written in Assyrian on these blocks. You can see them today. I built a pillar over against the city gate and I flayed all the chief men who had revolted and covered the pillar with their skins. Here's another. We piled up heads like grains of wheat. Hosea 13, verse 15 through 16 describes the horrific end the east wind the Assyrian wind comes to dry up the fountains the biblical text is brutal it describes the slaughter of infants and the ripping open of pregnant women and that was the Assyrian way the way of war for them they desecrated the future they ensured that the seed of the enemy was erased and God uses the Assyrians as a picture of the end of the road for the
unrepentant and it's just as true today if we refuse to turn to him from our sin we are walking into the power of Sheol, of death, and of the second death that we call hell. The Assyrians are a picture of hell looming over Israel. And really, all humanity in one sense, in that they form this image of what it means to reject the living God to the very end.
You know, we take sin so lightly. Sin rests so lightly on us. And part of the world's blindness to this reality is that we treat sin sort of like a parking ticket. We think we've broken some minor rule and God's a distant clerk writing some kind of fine for us. But as Timothy Keller said, sin is not a peripheral thing. It is the putting of someone else in the place where only God should be.
It is a rejection of the personhood of God. R.C. Sproul says it this way, sin is cosmic treason. It puts all of us in league with Judas the traitor. Hosea understands Israel's sin as an atrocity. They had given up worship of the living God for centuries and turn to worship Baal. This involves sacred prostitution and the sacrifice of children in the fire.
Over the course of the book of Hosea, he gives images to illustrate the foolish sin of Israel. A donkey in heat, a silly dove flying into a net, an ungrateful child. But most pointedly, God gives us a parable through the life of Hosea when God told his prophet to marry a prostitute. She is his wife who for a time lived with him and bore him children.
But eventually she leaves a faithful husband to chase lovers who abuse her. And so it forms a picture of God's pain over the addiction of his people for the idols of Canaan. God wants Israel to understand that the idols of Baal and Molech were not just treason against a king. It's the breaking of a husband's heart. The parable of Hosea's marriage to an unfaithful wife expands our understanding of sin from breaking a rule to breaking a heart.
it's hard to imagine the depth and pain of her sin for Hosea and we are no different today brothers and sisters we are no different when we sin we aren't just breaking a code we're breaking the covenant we're telling God who gave us breath that he's not enough every sin does that but the third point but the gift of God is eternal life Jesus changes everything which has direct bearing on our verse, verse 14 shall I ransom them shall I redeem them I believe that's the right understanding of verse 14 shall I, God is asking himself a question, will he bring redemption to Israel, that is the northern kingdom at this point in history and given the context of the passage about how God speaks about
this time and the fact that the fact that the Assyrian army completely wipes out the northern kingdom never to be seen again the answer to God's question shall I was clearly no after centuries and centuries of mercy. Compassion, as Hosea says in verse 14, the end of the verse that we did not read was hidden from God's eyes. It's a picture of the unrepentant having rejected the living God to the very end and so they chose the grave and God gave them over to death.
You know, God is sovereign in his judgment. He does not owe us a ransom. Redemption is never a right. Brothers and sisters, think of this this way. Every time we pray, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven, we are praying for final judgment to come to the earth. Final judgment. but but as we saw this morning in Luke 7 Jesus changes everything the Gentile centurion recognized the power of Jesus just speak the word to stop the plague and Jesus did at the gate of name Jesus merely touches the coffin of the widow's son and he is raised to life Jesus has the power to redeem us from the grave
the curse of sin a kinsman redeemer in the Old Testament was a relative who had the right, the responsibility even to buy a family member out of poverty or slavery you see it so beautifully in the book of Ruth but you see it in Hosea too he understood it personally Think of Hosea's wife, Gomer. After a time of selling herself to other men, God tells Hosea, Go, again.
Love a woman who is loved by another man and is an adulteress. So Hosea searches for her and finds her discarded by her lovers in the dirt for sale on a slave block. Hosea went to the market. The text says about his purchase, he paid 15 shekels of silver and a large amount of barley to buy back his own wife. He paid for what was already his by right.
And this is an enacted definition of ransom, paying a price to liberate a captive. Do you know why it's 15 shekels and a large amount of barley? Why it's recorded like that? 30 shekels was the slave price. When you purchased a slave, it was 30 shekels. Apparently, Hosea didn't have 30 pieces of silver.
He had to scrape together 15 shekels and he had to raid the kitchen to get her with all the barley he had. He paid with everything he had. He loved her. And we're Gomer. That's who we are. Unfaithful, chasing lovers that promise life and give us death. We were for sale on the block for sin and death. Slaves to sin, Jesus called us.
Jesus buys us. He buys us back. And he does not pay with silver and barley. He paid with the ransom of his blood. He took the plague of death, the sting of death, the judgment we deserved upon himself. So Jesus is not just our redeemer. He became our ransom too. Oh my word. It was so hard to see that in the Old Testament. So hard to see.
And this is the answer Paul understands in Hosea 13, 14. Jesus makes all the difference. So when Paul picks up this verse from Hosea in 1 Corinthians 15, verse 55, he knows it's no longer, shall I redeem? He knows, I shall redeem. I shall ransom. Oh, death, where is thy sting? Paul taunts death.
He taunts death because he knows that for every believer the debt has been settled in the blood of Christ for all who put their faith and trust in Jesus. He goes on to say, thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. The ransom is paid. The wayward wife is brought home. The slave is made a son. because he loves us.
This is good news. There's an exit door to the path to Sheol. As Greg so masterfully told this morning, it's not about being good enough. Our goodness, our goodness is the handle, that handle on that door, The exit door from Sheol is found in the ransom a Redeemer purchased through His work on the cross. Jesus will redeem.
Jesus will ransom any and all who simply put their faith in Him. For those who know the Lord, death has no sting. If you have never trusted in Christ, do it now where you sit. Do it right now. Turn from your rebellion to Him. And let me make it clear what rebellion is. Rebellion, the greatest sin in the world, is holding Christ off, telling Christ to shove off.
Leave me alone. I don't have any part of you. If you have put your faith in Jesus, brothers and sisters, rejoice for our great salvation. Amen. Amen. Let's pray. Lord God, we thank you. Oh, we thank you for this marvelous salvation that you've brought to us. Lord, help us have a right understanding of death, of sin, and the incredible thing that you've brought to us through forgiveness and eternal life, this great gift.
Thank you for being our redeemer and our ransom. We pray in your precious name, Lord Jesus. Amen.