“The Bible: Counted as a Strange Thing” 
February 5th, 2012

The central theme of the second half of the Book of Hosea, which includes chapters 8-13, is the Message of Hosea. In last week’s message, we learned from Chapter 4:6 that the Lord’s people were being destroyed for lack of knowledge. The priests as well as the people were indicted by the Lord’s spokesman for rejecting God’s authority over their lives, as inferred by the word, “knowledge.”

Verse 12 of Chapter 8 says, “I have written to him the great things of my law, but they were counted as a strange thing." Here the indictment against the Lord’s people centers around their response to His written and prophetic word – Israel counted the word of the Lord a “…strange thing.”

The word “strange” used here means they saw the Lord’s word as it were a thing with which they had nothing to do. That should immediately impress upon our spirits as antithetical to conforming to the expressed will and purposes of God in any age for a people devoted, consecrated to, and created to honor, serve, praise, worship, represent, and give glory to the Lord of all creation.

Article I of the Baptist Articles – The Scriptures – says, “We believe that the Holy Bible was written by men divinely inspired, and is a perfect treasure of heavenly instruction; that it has God for its author, salvation for its end, and truth without any mixture of error for its matter; that it reveals the principles by which God will judge us, and therefore is, and shall remain to the end of the world, the true center of Christian union, and the supreme standard by which all human conduct, creeds, and opinions shall be tried.”

Christianity is the religion of a Book. Christianity is based upon the impregnable rock of Holy Scripture. The starting point of all doctrinal discussion must be the Bible.

Upon the foundation of the Divine inspiration of the Bible stands or falls the entire edifice of Christian truth.—“If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?” (Psalm 11:3).

Surrender the dogma of verbal inspiration and you are left like a rudderless ship on a stormy sea—at the mercy of every wind that blows.

Deny that the Bible is, without any qualifications, the very Word of God, and you are left without any ultimate standard of measurement and without any supreme authority.

It is useless to discuss any doctrine taught by the Bible until you are prepared to acknowledge, unreservedly, that the Bible is the final court of appeal.

Grant that the Bible is a Divine revelation and communication of God’s own mind and will to men and you have a fixed starting point from which advance can be made into the domain of truth.

Grant that the Bible is (in its original manuscripts) inerrant and infallible and you reach the place where study of its contents is both practicable and profitable.

It is impossible to over-estimate the importance of the doctrine of the Divine inspiration of Scripture. This is the strategic center of Christian theology, and must be defended at all costs.

The Lord’s people were indicted by the Prophet Hosea for discounting the value and the authority of the Word of God to them; they reckoned it something with which they “…had nothing to do.”

Here’s a question for you, my beloved. After you've read from Genesis to Revelation and closed the book, whom do you credit for the book just read?

The men He used to pen the words do not claim the honor for the book just closed. The author of all that exists and is deemed it needed and appropriate to make this very personalized appeal to sinful man.

He did not leave it to man to have to guess or decipher what things would be approved of God; He has written the instruction out of His great love for us.