The Politics of Self-Destruction Text: Hosea 13:9-11
Introduction: The Suicide of a Nation
We live in an age that has perfected the art of blaming God for the calamities that we diligently bring upon ourselves. When a man spends his inheritance on prostitutes and riotous living and ends up destitute in a pigsty, he curses the heavens for his empty stomach. When a nation abandons the law of God, celebrates perversion, and murders its own children, and then finds itself dissolving into chaos and ruin, its leaders convene committees to analyze socio-economic factors. But the prophet Hosea, speaking for God, cuts through all such therapeutic nonsense. He walks right up to apostate Israel, a nation rotting from the head down, and says, with brutal clarity, "You have destroyed yourself."
The problem with modern man, and the problem with ancient Israel, is a profound and willful confusion about the nature of help and the nature of ruin. Israel believed that their political alliances, their golden calves at Dan and Bethel, and their human kings were their help. They saw God's law, His prophets, and His exclusive requirements for worship as the source of their troubles, the great cosmic hindrance to their progress. They were exactly upside down and inside out. They were like a man who thinks the poison is his medicine and the medicine is his poison. The result of such thinking is not progress or liberation. The result is death. It is ruin. It is self-inflicted, spiritual suicide.
This passage in Hosea is a divine diagnosis of a nation on its deathbed. God is revealing the fundamental reason for their terminal condition. It was not the Assyrian military might. It was not a failure in foreign policy. It was not a weak economy. Their ruin was this: they were against God, who was their only help. All their political machinations, all their attempts to find a savior in a human king, were simply expressions of this core rebellion. And God, in His terrible sovereignty, often disciplines a people by giving them exactly what they ask for.
The Text
It is your ruin, O Israel, that you are against Me, against your help. Where now is your king, that he may save you in all your cities, and your judges of whom you said, "Give me a king and princes"? I gave you a king in My anger and took him away in My wrath.
(Hosea 13:9-11 LSB)
The Core of the Indictment (v. 9)
The first verse of our text is the thesis statement for the collapse of an entire civilization.
"It is your ruin, O Israel, that you are against Me, against your help." (Hosea 13:9)
God does not mince words. The Hebrew is direct: "I destroyed you, O Israel." But the sense, as the translators render it, is that Israel's opposition to God was the very instrument of their own destruction. God is the one who ultimately brings judgment, but the fuel for the fire is their own sin. They held the match, they soaked the house in gasoline, and when the whole thing went up in flames, they wondered why they were homeless. God here simply points to the smoking ruins and says, "You did this."
Notice the juxtaposition. "You are against Me, against your help." This is the great paradox of all sin. To rebel against God is to declare war on the very source of your own existence and well-being. It is to saw off the branch you are sitting on. God is not an impediment to human flourishing; He is the necessary precondition for it. He is our help. He was the one who brought them out of Egypt. He was the one who parted the Red Sea. He was the one who gave them water from the rock and bread from heaven. He was the one who drove out the Canaanites. Their entire national existence was a testimony to God as their help.
But they forgot. They grew proud. They began to think that they were the source of their own prosperity. And they came to resent the one to whom they owed everything. This is the essence of apostasy. It is a declaration of autonomy which is, at its root, an act of self-hatred. When you are against God, you are against your only help. You are for your own ruin. Every sin, every act of rebellion, is a vote cast for your own destruction.
The Failure of Political Saviors (v. 10)
Having stated the principle, God now applies it to their political idolatry.
"Where now is your king, that he may save you in all your cities, and your judges of whom you said, 'Give me a king and princes'?" (Hosea 13:10)
This is divine sarcasm, and it is blistering. God says, "Alright, you rejected Me as your king. You wanted a human king, a man on a horse, a political messiah to make you feel secure and respectable like the other nations. You got what you wanted. So where is he now? As the Assyrians are bearing down on you, as your cities are about to be besieged and burned, let's see what your great political hope can do for you."
This verse is a direct echo of 1 Samuel 8. The people of Israel came to Samuel and demanded a king. Their reasoning was explicit: "that we also may be like all the nations, and that our king may judge us and go out before us and fight our battles." They were rejecting the living God, who had fought all their battles, in favor of a man in a shiny hat. They wanted a visible savior, a tangible hope, something they could see and manage. They wanted a political solution to what was a spiritual problem.
And this is a perennial temptation for God's people. When we are afraid, when the culture seems to be collapsing, our first instinct is to look for a political savior. We want a king, a president, a strongman who will fix everything. We want a prince who will make our enemies tremble. But God's question echoes down through the centuries: "Where is your king, that he may save you?" Political power can do many things, but it cannot save. It cannot change the human heart. It cannot grant forgiveness of sins. It cannot defeat death. To place our ultimate hope in any political figure or system is idolatry, and it is an idolatry that God will mock in the day of trouble.
Sovereign Anger and Wrathful Mercy (v. 11)
God now reveals the true nature of their political "success."
"I gave you a king in My anger and took him away in My wrath." (Hosea 13:11)
This is a terrifying and glorious statement of the absolute sovereignty of God. We must get this straight. Israel's demand for a king was a sin. It was a rejection of God. And what was God's response? He answered their prayer. He gave them what they wanted. But the gift itself was a judgment. "I gave you a king in My anger."
The first king, Saul, was the embodiment of this principle. He was exactly what they asked for: tall, handsome, a man who looked the part. He was a king "like the other nations." And he was a disaster. His reign was characterized by pride, paranoia, disobedience, and ruin. God gave them the very thing they craved, and the gift itself became their punishment. This is one of the most fearsome aspects of God's sovereignty. Sometimes the heaviest judgment God can bring upon a person or a people is to stop restraining them and simply let them have their own way.
And just as He gave the monarchy in anger, He took it away in wrath. This refers not just to the end of Saul's dynasty, but to the impending destruction of the northern kingdom of Israel and its whole line of wicked kings. The institution they looked to for salvation would be violently uprooted and cast aside. Their help would become their ruin. Their savior would be the instrument of their condemnation. God is sovereign in the giving, and He is sovereign in the taking away. He sets up kings and He removes kings, and He does it all for His own purposes, weaving even the sinful rebellion of men into the tapestry of His perfect plan.
Conclusion: The King We Need
This passage diagnoses the ruin of Israel, but it also, by implication, points us to the only cure. If our ruin is to be against God our help, then our salvation must be to be for God our help. If the problem is looking for salvation in a human king, the solution must be found in a divine King.
The story of Israel's monarchy is a long, sad story of failure. Saul, David, Solomon, and all the rest, even the best of them, were flawed, sinful men. They could not ultimately save. The entire institution was designed by God to create a great, king-shaped hole in the heart of His people. It was designed to make them long for a true and better King.
God gave Israel a king in His anger, but He also promised a King in His love. Through the prophet Isaiah, He promised, "For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given; and the government will be upon His shoulder... Of the increase of His government and peace there will be no end, upon the throne of David and over His kingdom, to order it and establish it with judgment and justice from that time forward, even forever" (Isaiah 9:6-7).
God did not give Jesus in His anger; He gave Him from the foundation of His eternal love. God did not take Jesus away in His wrath against us; rather, He poured out His wrath on Jesus in our place. On the cross, God took our true King away, subjecting Him to the ultimate expression of divine wrath, so that we, who were against God, might be reconciled to Him. Jesus is the only King who can save us in all our cities. He is the only ruler who does not fail. He is the ultimate Help against our self-inflicted ruin.
Therefore, the question for us is the same one God posed to Israel. Where is your king? In whom do you trust? Is your hope in a political party, a charismatic leader, or the strength of your nation? If so, you are trusting in a gift given in anger, and it will be taken away in wrath. But if your trust is in the Lord Jesus Christ, you have a King whose kingdom cannot be shaken. To be against Him is ruin. But to bow the knee to Him is to find your only true and eternal Help.