The Inverse Harvest: When Blessings Breed Contempt Text: Hosea 4:7-10
Introduction: The Poison of Prosperity
We live in an age that has made a god out of blessings. Our prevailing assumption, both inside and outside the church, is that if God is pleased with you, He gives you more stuff, more influence, more numbers. And if you have more stuff, influence, and numbers, it must be because God is pleased with you. This is the logic of the health and wealth gospel, but it is also the quiet, unexamined assumption of many who would claim to despise such a theology. We instinctively equate multiplication with divine favor.
But the prophet Hosea is sent by God to detonate this entire way of thinking. He comes to a people, the northern kingdom of Israel, who had experienced a season of great prosperity under Jeroboam II. They were fruitful, they were multiplying, and they were utterly corrupt. They had mistaken God's patience for His approval. They thought the long fuse on the divine dynamite was actually a benediction. They had grown fat and insolent on the goodness of God, and had come to the conclusion that their spiritual adultery was no big deal. After all, business was booming.
Hosea's message is a bucket of ice water to the face of a slumbering drunk. He tells them that the very blessings they point to as evidence of God's favor are, in fact, the fuel for their sin and the basis for their coming judgment. God had given them much, and they had used it all to sin against Him all the more. This is a terrifying spiritual principle: that God's common grace, when met with an unregenerate heart, does not produce gratitude, but rather a greater capacity for rebellion. A rich sinner can sin in ways a poor sinner can only dream of. A numerous people can commit corporate abominations that a small remnant cannot.
In this passage, God lays out the grim mathematics of covenant unfaithfulness. He shows how blessings, when poured on a sinful people, simply accelerate their ruin. And He shows how His judgment is not arbitrary, but is always a precise, ironic, and fitting reversal of the sin itself. The punishment will be tailored to the crime with a terrible poetic justice.
The Text
The more they multiplied, the more they sinned against Me; I will change their glory into disgrace. They eat the sin of My people And lift up their soul toward their iniquity. And it will be like people, like priest; So I will punish them for their ways And cause their deeds to return to them. They will eat, but not be satisfied; They will play the harlot, but not break forth in number, Because they have forsaken Yahweh to keep harlotry.
(Hosea 4:7-10 LSB)
The Multiplication of Sin (v. 7)
We begin with the foundational principle of Israel's corruption:
"The more they multiplied, the more they sinned against Me; I will change their glory into disgrace." (Hosea 4:7)
The first command God gave to mankind was to be fruitful and multiply. This was a central plank of the covenant with Abraham. God promised to make his descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and the sand on the seashore. So, multiplication was a sign of God's covenant faithfulness to His promise. But here we see the tragic inversion. The gift has become the weapon. Every new Israelite, born under the covenant sign, was another soul dedicated to the worship of Baal. Every increase in their population was an increase in the ranks of God's enemies within His own house.
This is a direct assault on any theology that sees numbers as the ultimate metric of success. A church can grow, a movement can expand, a nation can prosper, and all of it can be an abomination to God if that growth is not matched by faithfulness. Growth in numbers without growth in holiness is simply the fattening of a beast for the slaughter. They took the glory of their numbers, the glory of their prosperity, the glory of their covenant status, and they used it to whore after other gods. So God says, "I will change their glory into disgrace." The Hebrew is potent; it suggests an exchange, a swap. You have traded my glory for idols, so I will trade your glory for shame.
Their very name, Israel, meant "he strives with God." Their glory was their unique relationship with Yahweh. But they had turned it into a cheap brand. So God would strip it from them. He would make them a byword, a hissing, a people contemptible among the nations. The thing they were most proud of, their numerical strength, would become the source of their deepest humiliation when they were scattered and decimated.
The Gluttony of the Priests (v. 8)
Next, God identifies the corrupt leadership that was not only permitting this sin, but profiting from it.
"They eat the sin of My people And lift up their soul toward their iniquity." (Hosea 4:8 LSB)
Who is the "they" here? It is the priests. How do they "eat the sin" of the people? The priests received a portion of the sin offerings brought to the temple. This was God's ordained provision for them. But it had become twisted. Instead of grieving over the sin that necessitated the offering, they began to rejoice in it. More sin meant more sacrifices, and more sacrifices meant more meat on the priestly table. Their livelihood became dependent on the iniquity of the people.
So they "lift up their soul toward their iniquity." This means they eagerly desired it. They longed for the people to sin, because it was profitable. Imagine a doctor who secretly hopes for a plague because it's good for business. This is the ultimate pastoral malpractice. The shepherds were fattening themselves by encouraging the diseases of the sheep. They were not just tolerating sin; they were craving it. They had a vested, economic interest in the apostasy of God's people. This is a profound warning to all who are in ministry. When you start to see the sins of your people as a means to an end, whether that end is sermon material, counseling revenue, or just job security, you have become a Hosean priest.
Like People, Like Priest (v. 9)
Because the leadership was corrupt, the corruption was systemic. God declares a principle of shared guilt and shared judgment.
"And it will be like people, like priest; So I will punish them for their ways And cause their deeds to return to them." (Hosea 4:9 LSB)
This is a proverb of spiritual contagion. The priests wanted the people to sin, and the people were more than happy to oblige. It was a symbiotic relationship of corruption. The people wanted priests who would tell them what they wanted to hear, who would make no hard demands, who would rubber-stamp their syncretistic worship. And the priests were happy to provide that service for a fee. The blind were leading the blind, and they were all marching merrily toward the same ditch.
Therefore, the judgment will be corporate. God will not make fine distinctions here. "I will punish them," plural. The people will not be able to say, "Our priests misled us," and the priests will not be able to say, "The people were ungovernable." They were in it together, and they will be judged together. God will "cause their deeds to return to them." This is the law of the harvest, the principle of lex talionis. What you have done will be done to you. The judgment will be a perfect mirror image of the sin. And the next verse spells out exactly how.
The Curses of Futility (v. 10)
Here, God details the ironic judgments that will befall Israel. Their punishment will be to get what they were chasing, but to find it utterly empty.
"They will eat, but not be satisfied; They will play the harlot, but not break forth in number, Because they have forsaken Yahweh to keep harlotry." (Hosea 4:10 LSB)
First, "They will eat, but not be satisfied." The priests ate the sin offerings, and the people feasted at idolatrous shrines. Their whole lives were oriented around consumption and appetite. So God says, "Fine. You can keep eating. But I will remove all satisfaction from it." This is a curse of divine futility. It is the curse of the treadmill. They will be filled with food, but their souls will be hollow. This is the very definition of a materialistic life apart from God. You can acquire everything and possess nothing. You can have a full stomach and an empty heart.
Second, "They will play the harlot, but not break forth in number." The worship of Baal and the other Canaanite gods was deeply connected to fertility cults. The pagan logic was this: you engage in ritual prostitution at the shrines, and the gods will see this and make your fields, your flocks, and your families fertile. They were committing spiritual adultery in order to secure the blessing of multiplication. So God says, "Fine. Go ahead. Indulge your lusts. But the wombs will be barren." The very thing they were sinning to get is the very thing God will withhold. Their harlotry will not lead to multiplication, but to subtraction.
Why? The reason is given at the end. "Because they have forsaken Yahweh to keep harlotry." The word "keep" here is the word for guarding or watching over something precious. They had abandoned the true God in order to treasure, protect, and cultivate their relationship with false gods. They forsook the fountain of living waters and hewed out for themselves broken cisterns that could hold no water. The entire enterprise of sin is an exercise in ultimate futility. It promises everything and delivers nothing but dust and ashes.
Conclusion: Forsaking Futility
The message of Hosea is not just for ancient Israel. It is for us. We live in a culture that has forsaken Yahweh to keep harlotry. Our idols are not made of stone and wood; they are the idols of sex, money, power, and self. And we are promised that if we just bow down to them, we will be satisfied and we will be fruitful.
But God's diagnosis remains the same. The more we multiply in our sin, the more our glory turns to disgrace. Our leaders, both spiritual and secular, often have a vested interest in our iniquity. And the curse of futility hangs over our entire civilization. We eat, but are not satisfied. We pursue every form of sexual license, and our birth rates plummet. We are awash in entertainment and dying of boredom. We are connected to everyone and know no one.
The only escape from this inverse harvest is to return to the one we have forsaken. The entire book of Hosea, for all its thunderous judgment, is a love story. It is the story of a faithful husband pursuing His adulterous wife, promising not only to judge her sin but to woo her back, to strip her of her idols so that she might love Him alone, and to ultimately restore her.
This is the Gospel. We have all played the harlot. We have all forsaken Yahweh to keep our idols. But God, in Christ, did not forsake us. He entered into our disgrace. On the cross, the glory of God in Christ was changed into the ultimate disgrace. He endured the ultimate curse of futility, crying out "I thirst," eating the bread of affliction, and being cut off from the land of the living. He did this so that our deeds would not have to return to us. He took the harvest of our sin upon Himself, so that we, in Him, could receive the harvest of His righteousness.
Therefore, the call is to forsake our futility. It is to abandon the idols that promise satisfaction and multiplication but deliver only emptiness and death. It is to return to our true Husband, the Lord Jesus Christ, who alone can satisfy the hunger of our souls and make us truly fruitful for His kingdom.