Hosea 10:12 Sow to yourselves in righteousness, reap in mercy; break up your fallow ground: for it is time to seek the Lord, till he come and rain righteousness upon you.
	In this passage, we have the voice of the prophet Hosea calling forth to the people whom he loves, the people whom God loves. He is urging them to turn from their wickedness and idolatry, and to turn again to the Lord. Hosea knows what is involved in that heart turned unto God. He has a sense of what the love of God toward this wayward people entails. He has experienced a measure of the pain that  unrighteousness and treachery brings to all hearts involved with one another. 
	We need not recount the story of how Hosea became a living expression of God’s heart of love for His adulterous people. Rather, let us deal with the aspects of the what is involved if we heed the call of Hosea unto the people of God. There is much that lies at the nucleus of our beings in our response to this passage.
	Initially, we need to realize that our entire focus must be set, centered, and grounded in the Lord Jesus Christ. It is only then that we can experience the living righteousness that is ours in Him at the heart of God’s presence. We often used to sing the song “I am covered over with the robe of righteousness that Jesus is to me.” We have a basic understanding, at least in our minds, of the fact that Jesus is become our righteousness. That, in Him, we have a right standing before God. We know this in our thoughts, but is it evident in our lives before God and before man?
	That is the sense that we have in this passage. The Children of Israel knew who they were. There was no doubt in that regard. They had the history, they had the teaching, they had the name. What they lacked was the heart to seek after God as was His desire and His plan and purpose for them. Rather than living their lives after God, they had a selfish lust after themselves. They wanted what they could get out of life, that with which they could pleasure themselves. They were practicing the rituals that excited them, mixing and matching for their own self-gratification. They would adopt a ritual from this infidel nation and from that pagan nation and mix it up with some of the things that had been brought from Egypt, throw a Hebrew name on it, and call it their own brand of belief.
	It was too rigid to follow wholly after the God of Abraham and David. That demanded too much of them and their lives. It was far easier to sacrifice to the man-made gods, as did the heathen nations. That was something they could afford to do, even if it meant sacrificing their own children to the altars before wood, stone and gold.
	The righteousness of the Holy God is the ultimately demanding standard. There is no fault that can come before Him. The sacrifices of the Old Testament time had to be perfect to be acceptable. The offering of those sacrifices had to meet the highest and most rigid of measures. One could not just haphazardly approach the things of God. To do so meant death. Consider that even the High Priests, who were permitted into the Holy of Holies had to wear ropes around their ankles in the happenstance that they had not prepared themselves and their hearts fully to come into the presence of God. If that were the case, they would be struck down, and the only way to retrieve the body was to pull it out by that rope lest others also die in their lack of preparation before the Lord.
	The Children of Israel did not want to have such rigid, perfect restrictions put upon them. They wanted the freedom to be themselves, to make their own choices, to wallow in the filth and the mire of the age and not have to worry about consequences for their actions and for their lusts. They wanted to have things their way, for their own pleasure, no matter what the cost. They celebrated as the heathens because to do so was to show the world that they belonged, that they were a nation just like the rest of the nations. They wanted to be special, but special in a sense that would elevate their self-interests above the rest of the world. They had no thought, no desire after being the peculiar people unto God that would love God with all their hearts and beings in a manner that would set them apart from the nations of the earth. 
	They tried everything to be like the world, and that everything brought them only slavery, misery, devastation, dissolution, and death at the hands of those nations they were trying to emulate. There is no way for anyone to avoid that which is sown. Hosea is pointing this out in a manner dealing with righteousness. Gal. 6:7+8 Also deals with the truth of sowing and reaping Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption. The Apostle Paul, with all his learning and studying in the ways of his forefathers, and knowing the writing of Hosea, had to be making reference to the same thing that Hosea was pointing our in our current passage.
	Hosea is calling forth to those lost in their iniquity. He is pointing out the fact that the Children of Israel need to return to God for they will be facing a day of reckoning that will show forth the misery of their pitiful existence. He knew the pitiable state of Gomer, his wife, on the day of her redemption. He knew the agony and the pits of hell that she had inhabited before her redemption. He was watching as the people of God were being dragged into that same depth of depravity. The nation was already divided and was now becoming so ingrained in the ways  of the world that it seemed as if it would simply cease to exist.
	Such was the woeful state of that once proud and glorious nation, renowned throughout the world in the days of Solomon. Such was the pity that his heart, God’s heart held forth unto these stiff-necked and arrogant people who refused to acknowledge their place before God. To these people, it was made known that their actions would bring forth consequences. They could not just act with thoughtlessness and expect nothing to develop from that action. Every action creates a reaction. That is a law of nature, that is a law of God. Everything that is done brings forth some reaction, some consequence. Whether intentional or unintentional, there will be a consequence. 
	The people of that day refused to heed Hosea as he brought forth that truth in a positive manner. Please note how he invoked this reality as he addressed it, Sow to yourselves in righteousness, reap in mercy; break up your fallow ground. He is telling the people that they must seek after the Lord in righteousness. If they do, they will reap His mercy. Hear the prophet in the streets, “Repent, leave your wickedness! Turn your hearts back to the Lord, throw yourself upon His mercy. Beg for His forgiveness and reap the beauty of His Grace and Truth. You are His people, not of this world, get rid of those weeds of this realm. Break your hearts before God as you would break the ground for planting. Cultivate righteousness before God and you will reap bountiful harvests of His mercy in His Love.”
	Yes, Hosea brought forth the good word of God to his people. He laid out the course that would open the people to God, to be received of God in His Love and mercy. So often, we think of the Old Testament as a time of judgment. We think of the God of the Old Testament as being a harsh and a just God, Who could only punish the unholy. But, just in this passage, we see that God was more than willing to lay forth His mercy to His people, if they would but return to Him. The whole passage of Hosea shows the heart of God to His people in Love, willing to redeem them if they would but desire it. He is the One Who has been betrayed by His people. He is the husband abandoned simply because He loved a people who rather chose to seek after the lovers of this realm rather than after her Husband.
	The Apostle Paul also notes the fact of the failure of the people to respond to that call of God with his statement that we cannot hope to deceive God in any measure. God is Omnipotent, all-powerful. He is Omnipresent, always with us. And He is Omniscient, all-knowing. No one can do anything that God does not see and know. No one can secret him or herself away in sin, thinking that it matters not to anyone else. It matters to God. It matters to Him because He loves us and He knows what the consequences are, to us and in us. He finds no pleasure in watching us undergo all the agony of our disobedience. He is not a gloating monarch, sitting on a throne, watching as His people bring torment upon ourselves in the corrupt choices we make. He does not rejoice in seeing the pain of those who disregard His loving warnings and admonitions. No, He suffers along with those He loves. He stands with them through their agony and torment. He searches for any avenue to make known a better way of life, a fruitful one and a blessed one. He gave everything in Jesus Christ, to redeem us unto Himself. He did so in order that our lives would not be ensnared by the filth of this realm. Now, even after manifesting such unfathomable Love, He must endure the agony of seeing us, His chosen people, prostitute ourselves before this world, in complete deference to our God. That utter disregard for the great work of God in Christ must bring forth heartache and lamenting of the Holy Spirit within us. 
	We are just like the people of Israel, who spurned the words of Hosea. With that refusal, they sentenced themselves to the physical slavery of this world. In serving the world, they took upon themselves the vile yoke of the sowing of unrighteousness. They opened their hearts to the filth and the depravity planted by this age and found themselves ensnared in its torment and anguish. The fallow ground remained a seedbed of weeds and thistles with no purpose but to choke and to kill any profitable plant that tried to find life within that desolate soil. They sowed to the flesh, and they reaped more than 150 years of physical abuse in slavery.
	Oh that we would see the mercy of God in the example of a people lost in themselves. God has shown, through the example of Israel, what the course of life entails when we do not seek after the righteousness of God. Too many feel that seeking Christ is a crutch for those who are too weak to handle the problems of life with their own measure of ability. Even those of the Christian persuasion are loathe to give up their own ways and means of making a place for themselves in this realm. To state that we are living by Christ is seen as a cop out to the problems that we all have to face, and, sadly, that is exactly how some try to live their lives. They take no responsibility for the choices, just the credit if things go well. The blame, on the other hand is freely lavished abroad, including even upon God in all His tender kindness and loving mercy to see us through the mess we make in this realm.
	Where do we get the audacity to place any blame upon God? It is utterly inconceivable that we would throw our shame and our anger at the One Who has made every provision for our life on this earth. Yet, sadly, we do so, and we do so far too frequently. He becomes our scape goat, so to speak, and we tell the world that if only God would do this or do that, we wouldn’t be in our current dilemma. Rather, we should be thanking the Lord that we aren’t deeper into the quick sand of our self than we are already. We need to accept the truth that when we sin, we have set into motion forces beyond our comprehension. It is only by the grace of God, that we are not torn to shreds by the consequences of our actions and deeds. Thank God that He so loves us, that He has placed us into the protection of His loving arms forever. Yes, we pay a price for our trespasses, but that price pales in comparison to the price that God paid for all our sins.
	In discussing some of this with our young people, we were struck, at least I can say that I was struck, with just some of the truth of what was involved in our redemption through Jesus Christ. Think about those whoring people of God in Hosea. Think of the fact that, like it or not, as judgmental as we may be toward them, we were as guilty in our own lives of grievous and indescribable sins before God. Rom. 3:10 ...There is none righteous, no not one: We were all under the sentence of death for our sinful nature. Then, because of the great love with which He loved us, God sent His only begotten Son, born of a virgin, perfect, into this world. 
	Can you imagine what that was like for Christ, for the Son of God to be born unto this earth in the midst of all the depravity that necessitated His coming from the heart of God? It is impossible to even begin to comprehend what was completely suffered by Christ, as He saw the defilement of those things which were holy to God. He saw the twisting and the corruption of the things of His Father, for the purpose of gaining earthly treasures and earthly recognition. The wonderfulness of God’s truth was trampled by the swine of this age, and ignored as too strenuous and too demanding. Hatred for the truth filled the air. Wherever He went, He was met with derision and insults to the point that He was jeered and scourged and severely accosted to give into the temptations of this world’s power. All of this He suffered long before the cross. His entire life was an anathema to this world age. He was the perfect Son of God, perfect in every way. That perfect heart after God alone stood out from the evil of this age. It brought upon Him the abhorrence of this darkened realm. He was a light shining in the world, and the world hated Him, as any creature dwelling in darkness hates the light. Under His total illumination, this world plotted against Him and all that He stood for in the righteousness of God. 
	Then, when the power of this age seemed to have Christ in its grasp, it wasted no time inciting the crowds to demand the release of one after their own heart. The murderer, Barabas, was the crowd’s choice over the Perfect One, whose witness bore truth to the defiled nature of the people. They cried out, “Crucify Him! Crucify this one who causes us pain and torment! He is not like us. He knows no sin. He does not join in our wickedness. He is beyond the touch of our corruptness! We have no power to debauch Him! Away with Him! He causes us to see ourselves, and that is too painful to bear. He is without sin, and without sin, He is not one of us. He is too pure, too clean, too righteous. Crucify Him and extinguish the illumination of the pure light that shines into the depth of our depraved hearts!”
	Yet, He bore it all. He bore it in order to pay the full, absolute price for our sins. The One Who knew no sin, became sin in order that we would reap the righteousness of God, the right standing before God in Him. Yes, what we sow, we reap. That principal applies even to God. It is in place because He is in place. Has that truth ever manifested itself into our hearts? I wonder. We concentrate on the negative aspect of this reality. We warn ourselves and our children of the consequences of our actions. And, there is a place for that. But do we see, as did Hosea, what the real purpose of this sowing and reaping is? We are so quick to complain that we can’t get away with anything, that we always have to pay the price for our actions. We see this truth as a curse upon humanity. 
	Yet the same principal, seen from the heavenly vantage point, is equally true in the most holy sense in God. What He sows, He reaps. When He sowed His Love into this world in Jesus Christ, He reaped a manifold harvest of those hearts who would respond to that great Love! Christ’s unparalleled sacrifice, offering Himself in all His perfection to become the only way of salvation in taking our sin to death on the cross, redeemed more than a single nation unto God. The power of the Love of God over-flooded the nation of Israel and flowed undeterred unto the nations of the entire earth. His great Love is that sweeping and that effective! All who call upon God, through the Lord Jesus Christ, are now made righteous in Him. We are a people who are the fruitage of God’s immense act of Mercy, Grace, and Love.
	As such, He should be the focal point of everything we do, everything we say, everything we think, every aspect of our sojourn on this earth. There should be that same revulsion in us as we watch the deterioration of this realm, as there was in Christ as He walked on this earth. He refused to partake of anything that was defilement to the heart of The Father. He passed by those adulterated hearts and poured out His Love, while never allowing anything to remove Him from the path of righteousness. Oh, that we would allow Him to live His life out from us in the same manner. That our beings would respond to the Lord, rather than to this world. Our lives need to be the sowers of righteousness in Christ, rather than the sowers of the vileness and wickedness which so infests this realm. 
	Is this simply a good idea that can be achieved through practice? Hardly! It is a new life that must be lived! It is not by will-power, it is not by our strength and our determination. It is not by positive thinking. No, any time we try, we fail.
	The only manner in which to sow righteousness, is as our heart’s desire is removed from seeking after this world, and its tawdry offerings, and becomes singly and resolutely focused on God. To please Him and Him only in these lives which we have given over to Him, must be the only desire for our life on this earth. When we seek Him with all our heart and with all our soul and with all our being, then will we naturally sow forth His righteousness. We will never be Christ. We will never be the perfect Lamb of God. He stands in that place alone, and thank God that He does. However, as we learn to live by Him, Christ living His life out from us, so will our sojourn on this earth manifest more and more of Him, and less and less of our old nature. And, when we err, thank God that He is there, right there in our hearts to show us what needs to be done in our repentance and willing submission to Him and to His path of righteousness. Please seek after the Lord and allow the Holy Spirit the freedom to bring forth that desire in our hearts, individually, as families, and as a corporate body, to have only Him as our focus of life. It matters not the cost, it matters not the road, nor the means. Nothing else matters at all. It is Christ and Christ alone!
	Sow to yourselves in righteousness, reap in mercy; break up your fallow ground: for it is time to seek the Lord, till he come and rain righteousness upon you.
	And as it is written in Is. 51:16 And I have put my words in thy mouth, and I have covered thee in the shadow of mine hand, that I may plant the heavens, and lay the foundations of the earth, and say unto Zion, Thou art my people.
	Let us depart with the admonition of the Apostle Paul to the Philippians (1:9-11) in our hearts, And this I pray, that your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and in all judgment; that ye may approve things that are excellent; that ye may be sincere and without offence till the day of Christ; Being filled with the fruits of righteousness, which are by Jesus Christ, unto the glory and the praise of God. Amen