Hosea 11:12-13:16
Have You Learned Your Lesson?

I. Have You Been Learning Lately?
1. We like to think we learn lessons with time so that we grow in wisdom and maturity.
2. Many people never seem to be able to learn past what their beliefs allow them to learn.
3. If you don’t learn from history, you are doomed to repeat it. Today, we think we’ve corporately learned.
4. People are ideological; they have ideas through which they interpret the world.
5. If you don’t change those basic beliefs, they won’t learn from history. Change people’s basic ideas.
6. “History repeats itself” because people, being ideological, only learn what their faith lets them learn.
7. Today, people’s basic belief is that they are autonomous and that the purpose of life is selfish pleasure.
II. History and Destiny Cycle 1 (11:12-12:6)
1. Their recent history is that they surround the Lord with lies and deceit. Their image of God was a lie.
2. Today leaders in some “churches” say there’s such a thing as “same-sex marriage”. It’s a lie.
3. It is like, “feeding on the wind,” on nothing, a “windbag religion.” They’re empty people, full of hot air.
4. They didn’t learn from their history and so they’re repeating it. They were connivers from the beginning.
5. His “memorial name” is the name He is to be remembered by, part of the name Yeshua, Jesus, the Lord.
6. They’ve reverted back to Jacob because of their ideology, like Jacob before he wrestled with God.
7. Don’t forget our history, that the Lord Jesus took up His cross and told us we will have to do the same.
8. Their destiny is that the Lord will punish “Jacob.” The Lord will “repay him.”
9. Change your mind, your basic ideas; learn your lessons; learn from history so that you aren’t doomed.
III. History and Destiny Cycle 2 (12:7-14)
1. The recent history is that like the Canaanites, they love to oppress. They're living like Canaanites.
2. Like the Canaanites, their merchants cheat, oppress, use deceptive business practices.
3. The Lord brought them out of Egypt, from living in tents for a generation. He spoke to their prophets.
4. They had no sense of their sinfulness, they thought they were moral and religious and so were arrogant.
5. Today, there is very little preaching of the law, so many people don’t know how sinful they are.
6. So we have a bizarre combination today of much self-righteousness interwoven with unrighteousness.
7. They don’t learn from their history that they came from nothing, from Jacob fleeing with nothing.
8. They’ll be doomed to repeat their poverty, their transience.The Lord will leave their bloodguilt on them.
9. Have you become a Canaanite, an exploiter, so you look at a life as a chase to the money you want?
IV. History and Destiny Cycle 3 (13:1-11)
1. Their history was that they were once a powerful, dominant nation: “Ephraim,” the Northern Kingdom.
2. The result of their worldliness, “they sin more and more.” It started as a small compromise and grew.
3. Images represent how we think about God. Images are projections of ourselves.
4. They’ll become like the mist, the dew, the chaff, the smoke. Like mist, you’ll fade away in the heat.
5. That’s the destiny of those worship only a projection of themselves. Change you mind about God.
6. The lesson that they should have learned is that they need the Lord to sustain them.
7. If you think the history of your life is the story of you succeeding with grit alone, you’ve forgotten God.
8. They had once been a powerful, prosperous nation and so were full and smug, self-satisfied.
9. In 721 BC, the Assyrians destroyed them, ripping them apart, mauling them like a bear or lion.
10. Have you learned that He’s your helper? That every good gift comes from Him?
V. History and Destiny Cycle 4 (13:12-16)
1. Their history is one of iniquity, of sin, of failure, of foolishness. Their iniquity is bound up like grain.
2. Israel is like a child to be born that won’t be delivered. Is he dead? “Shall I ransom them from” death?
3. Will the Lord buy them back from death? That depends on who they are, which Israel they are.
4. For those He will have mercy on He will save them from death. He will purchase them out of it.
5. Their history is one of iniquity. Their destiny is divided: one destiny of compassion and another without.
6. You destiny depends on whether you’ll learn your lesson. Learn that you’re sinful and need redemption.
7. Their history had been success but because they didn’t deal with their sin, they will bear their guilt.
VI. Conclusion: Our history is sin. Our sin must be paid for. Either it is paid by us, suffering eternally under death, or it is paid for by the Lord who has ransomed us from death. Our destiny, can be, by the help of our God, by the ransom of the blood of Jesus, eternal life. Which destiny is for you?