A Withering Condition

We are living in a prosperous time, financially, in America, with the stock market still hitting new highs, and many are hitting new levels in their net worth. But something else is taking place, something much more urgent and important than the economy. The nation is in a moral free fall, unlike any other time in its history.

Society is in the grip of godlessness and moral degeneracy. The church is on a mad rush to grow its campus, and crowds are strained in the parking lots. But although it appears healthy by numerical additions, the church lies in a withering condition by way of a sad spiritual declension.

It all looks like an old-time movie set, with a facade where the buildings look healthy on the outside, but inside it's all death and decay. The title of my message this evening, friends, is A Withering Condition. I think we will find the reason why from our text this evening.

Turn in your Bibles, friends, to the book of Hosea. We will be in chapter 5 and verse 6. And I believe that the situation that existed in Hosea's day between God and Israel is a vivid picture of the stark reality of the prayerless and powerless church today here in the West. Israel had gotten to a place of self-sufficiency, and the people of God in the time of Hosea had stopped being sincere toward God because they had become full of themselves.

We see in Hosea 5.5 the indictment from heaven against them. And the pride of Israel doth testify to his face. Therefore shall Israel and Ephraim fall in their iniquity.

Judah also shall fall with them. So God in heaven has an issue, a bone of contention, against the straying people who have moved away from him in their hearts. They were full of themselves with pride.

I've never seen a time in my life where the church was so prideful, where pastors are so full of boasting of what they've done and what they have. I had lunch with a pastor a while back who boasted to me, my church, he bragged, has thirty-three hundred on Sunday. Well, it's not his church anyhow, and who really cares if he has three thousand or three hundred on Sunday? The Lord God Almighty is not impressed by numbers.

All you have to do is go read the story of Gideon and his army, and you see how unimpressed God is with our little denominational armies. But something happens here in Hosea chapter 5. Something tragic has taken place. We see what it is in verse 5, which our text for this evening declares.

They shall go with their flocks and with their herds to seek the Lord. Let me pause here to say, friends, here is a picture of a self-satisfied people, enlarged materially and on their way to worship, bringing all they have with them in a show of wealth. But they shall not find him, the prophet says.

They seek God, but they cannot find him. Why? The answer is found in the rest of the text. He hath withdrawn himself from them.

This is a sad declaration indeed. The people of God can't find their God. He does not want to be found by them.

He no longer enjoys their company. He has withdrawn himself from them. The reason, of course, is that their sins have separated themselves from God.

They are in a broken relationship. There is a chasm there between them. They walk around seeking God, but he is not to be found.

He doesn't want to be found. Verse 7 has the reason. They have dealt treacherously against the Lord.

That word treacherously in the Hebrew is the word balgad. It means to deal deceitfully, unfaithfully, to be traitorous. This is how the people of God have treated God.

It is no wonder that he has withdrawn himself from among them, from such traitors. And this brings us to the church in our day, friends. When was the last time you saw the power of God in a meeting? He has gone away from us as well.

He has withdrawn himself from us as well. Why? I believe the answer is found in the book of Revelation in chapter 3 and verse 17, which states, Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing. And knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked.

Why would God want to hang out with us today? Why would God want to have fellowship with such a self-satisfied people? He would not. He will not. I believe J. Sidlow Baxter summed it up best by saying, How can a man, full of himself, preach the Christ who emptied himself? They shall go with their flocks and with their herds to seek the Lord, but they shall not find him.

He has withdrawn himself from them. Let us pray.