Hosea Lesson 11

Israel’s idolatry - Hosea 4:15-19

It behooves us to review both the major argument of Hosea and why Hosea is important to us as believers. The book of Hosea is in the collection of the Old Testament called the Nabiim, Nabi is the Hebrew word for prophet, im is the plural ending. And the Nabiim consists, not of Daniel, but of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and the so-called twelve Minor Prophets, one of whom is Hosea. In the book of Daniel we found that the book of Daniel was a wisdom book which gives us some wisdom, chokmah, skill in living as believers as the kingdom of man. The Nabiim, books like Hosea, have as their practical effect in the Christian another area. Whereas Daniel gives common sense, Hosea is more directly related to sanctification because Hosea is a prophet who speaks to his nation. He updates and applies the Word of God given originally through Moses to his contemporary situation.

The prophet’s job was two-fold, it was to first convict the nation of sin in order that the nation might repent, and secondly he was to announce the coming judgment of God upon carnality and the eternal security of the nation. So the work of the prophet and all these prophetic passages of Scripture you will find yourself going back to when you are working through the deep problems of sanctification in your own soul. When you have areas and times when you know things aren’t going right and you have that conviction that there’s just something wrong somewhere, the prophets are the books to read then. If you’re working with someone in deep trouble, the point where carnality has spilled over into emotional problems, psychosomatic illness, etc. then the Nabiim are the books to read.

These are the books where we see sin exposed, specifically and concretely. We see, for example, in the argument of Hosea, the first three chapters, God establishes a historic parallel between His relationship with the nation and Hosea’s relationship with Gomer, his wife. And the whole point of those first three chapters is that God’s relationship with the believer is a deeply personal relationship, that God responds personally to our sin. You must see that God is not an IBM machine that blinks red lights when we sin and that’s all that happens. It’s not just voltage going into a few red bowls that’s the reaction of God due to sin; it is a personal reaction that at times can be violent, that at times can be sudden, and it can almost appear merciless. And that relationship that God has, and conversely when God blesses, astounding blessing.

So the first three chapters reveal that you, if you have trusted in Jesus Christ, God is interested in you personally and He’s going to respond to you personally. Chapters 4-14, the rest of the book, deal not so much with Hosea’s marriage and God’s marriage with the nation Israel, but these chapters point by point, verse by verse, present God’s lawsuit against the nation. The whole concept is a lawsuit, or a rib. Why a lawsuit? Why a rib? The Hebrew word for lawsuit is rib but pronounced as though it’s v, [reev]. Why the lawsuit format? To teach us about true conviction of sin. True conviction of sin is not by vague guilt feeling. All through these chapters you will see God pinpointing specific violations of the Mosaic Covenant, for example, you recall the first three verses.

In Hosea 4:1, “Hear the word of the LORD, ye children of Israel; for the LORD has a lawsuit [controversy] with the inhabitants of the land,” so there was a summoning of the court, a convening of the court in this suit. In verse 2 a specific point by point indictment based on the Ten Commandments, “swearing, lying, killing, stealing and committing adultery,” etc. All those points are specifics from the Mosaic Law. And thirdly, in verse 3, the sentence. You have the court procedure, the indictment, and the sentence. And, as a court should be run, a court should seek where specific points of law are violated, specific paragraph, specific clauses, specific descriptions, so also when God the Holy Spirit worked to bring conviction of sin upon His nation, it was always with reference to the framework of the Word of God. It was never vague guilt feelings.

Guilt feelings are not sufficient to confess. If you are a believer and you are operating in the power of the filling of the Holy Spirit, you’re submitting to what you know of the Word of God at that point in your life, and you commit a sin, you get out of fellowship and you’re out here some place, and the way to get back in fellowship is by confession of sin, you cannot confess sin unless you know what the sin is. And just being guilty doesn’t solve the problem; you have to be specifically informed so that you can take corrective action. Why is this? Because the act of confession is not an atonement; Christ has made the atonement. God doesn’t want you to go around feeling miserable and somehow the more ounces of misery that you have per hour somehow atones for the problem. That’s not the objective; the objective is simply correction and sanctification and moving on. And you can’t correct and you can’t move on unless you know concretely this is wrong, this is wrong, this is wrong so you can do something about it. All right, so true conviction of sin doesn’t involve guilt feelings. It involves just a perception and conviction about certain points of the Word. Always conviction comes by the Holy Spirit through the Word, through things taught in the Word. Don’t go into this subjectivism. Always the Holy Spirit works through His Word.

Now canonical Scripture becomes in our day the substitute for the living prophet. There is no living prophet today so we don’t have a Hosea to expose our sins, but we have something Hosea didn’t have, and that is the completed canon of Scripture. And since we have the indwelling Holy Spirit and the completed canon of Scripture we are well equipped to deal with the problem of confession.

Now when we work with this we have to understand the history of the nation. Remember that Hosea is convicting of national sin; we’re applying it to our personal individual sin, but we have at this point, from 930 BC onward in time the northern kingdom and the southern kingdom. The southern kingdom is called Judah, the northern kingdom is called Israel, sometimes in this book called Ephraim. Those are the titles for the northern kingdom. Hosea has his ministry in the northern kingdom and his ministry is a generation before the northern kingdom will be destroyed by the Assyrians in 721 BC. So he is living in the last hours of the existence of the northern kingdom and he is bringing God’s lawsuit against that nation and he is announcing why God is going to judge that nation and remove it from the face of the earth.

So we can apply what we are studying two ways; we can apply what we are studying individually and personally, that’s the direct application. But as believers as we read through here we see how serious the Word of God is. And Hebrews 2 says did not the Word, every violation of the Word of God receive discipline? Yes, so the first and primary application you can make as you study Hosea is to look through this and apply it to yourself, realizing that God has given you an expose of His will in the New Testament, and since He has you are held responsible for it. And God the Holy Spirit is working through the text to make us adhere to it. But a second and less primary application to Hosea is to ourselves as a nation. All nations basically function under God’s sovereign will. It is true that as a Gentile nation we’re not locked into His will as closely and as tightly as Israel was. However, God in the broad spectrum, we know this from Acts 17:26 and other passages, we know that God does hold Gentile nations broadly responsible. And so if God brings down judgment upon our nation it will be due to similar reasons. So this will help you and contribute to enlightening you for your citizenship function, for your intercession for the nation.

Now when you apply this to yourself we get back to a condition of compound carnality, and these books are a study in compound carnality and it’s good that we review this every once in a while. What is compound carnality? Compound carnality is that state when, after we’ve gotten out of fellowship, simple carnality is just when we get out of fellowship, we confess and get back in, compound carnality is when we’ve been out of fellowship for some time, out long enough to develop sinful patterns of behavior, perhaps even an entire lifestyle that is all screwed up. That’s compound carnality. Now in this situation certain things happen; there are certain things to look for so that this thing can be headed off at the pass. We have always indicated that this chaos in the heart that’s due to compound carnality has certain stages to it. These stages aren’t something that we just dream up, they’re given very clearly in Romans 1, Ephesians 4, Galatians and in the Old Testament. The sequence is always the same; the sequence always has the same results.

It starts off with negative volition toward God’s Word; that is we know what God’s will is and we just don’t want it. Please notice too that compound carnality usually begins with some non-moral, non-socially repugnant area. It does not begin… in fact I would guess that less than 5% of compound carnality cases start with something that we would call socially repugnant. In most cases it isn’t socially repugnant at all, it just starts out with just a simple “I don’t give a damn” attitude toward God’s Word. And how can this be spotted. It can be spotted in our lives several ways; lack of thanksgiving, Ephesians 5:20; Romans 1:21-23; 1 Thessalonians 5:18-20; ceasing of thanksgiving, the lack of it. Any lack of thanksgiving, lack of praise, dissatisfaction with God’s provision and a coveting mental attitude. These are signals of negative volition. These are signals that at this point we are not trusting God’s provision for our lives, we want to add something to God’s provision for our lives. We may be in a jam economically, we may be in a jam in our marriage, we may be in a jam in our family, at work, on the job, some place, but wherever the jam is, God’s provisions somehow aren’t sufficient, we have to add something to what God has provided. And this becomes an act of negative volition, a coveting, which is a violation of the tenth commandment.

The second step from this point always is a darkening of the soul. A darkening of the soul is due to the fact that since we are on negative volition we have turned from what our conscience tells us to be right, and since we have turned from what our conscience tells us to be right we gradually have a self-destruct mechanism begin to operate in the mentality of our soul. So, since we don’t want the light, God gradually closes off the light. What’s the outward indications of a darkening stage? Operation cover-up begins, here’s when we invent excuses why we didn’t do this, why we didn’t do that, why it’s not our fault, why it’s somebody else’s fault, why it’s the circumstances fault, why it’s my bosses fault, why it’s not my fault. This is one of those things because obviously we’re not listening to our conscience and since we’re not listening to our conscience we have failed to perceive the true nature of the thing and so we start blaming it on someone else. Lack of spiritual perception, Scripture becomes dull. Believers who have reached this stage always have a gripe; usually their gripe is well, we want something more in our church service than just teaching of the Word of God. We want something else, something in addition to the teaching of the Word, we don’t like just teaching of the Word because believers get spiritually fat under teaching of the Word, they don’t do anything. We need something else besides what God has taught. That’s a signal of darkening of the soul.

Then the third step, human viewpoint. This is where, as a result of the darkening of the soul we become open to satanic deception. Israel followed all these steps, you’ll see this in these indictments that Hosea makes; I’m just outlining the cause/effect relationship and we’ll go over this until you learn to recognize it. And you’ll see it so often in Hosea that by the time we reach the 14^th chapter you’ll know it backwards and forwards. Human viewpoint means deception. At this stage we begin to suck in the satanic doctrines that are just in the climate around us; you can’t help this, you pick up germs, you pick up the flu, you pick up bugs, you pick up human viewpoint. It’s the same story, and we become suckers for this thing. We can be deceived about doctrine. This is where false doctrine comes in; this is where true doctrine becomes distorted; this is where we can be deceived about people.

At this point human viewpoint attitudes start dominating in our relationships with other people. We begin to ascribe motives to other people that really weren’t there at all. We’re not the Holy Spirit, we don’t have omniscience, we can’t judge what the motive of someone is. You can guess but you can’t judge for sure. But at this point people usually feel very convinced that somebody is out to get them. So you have personal hang-ups begin to disrupt the congregation. This little click of believers can’t stand that little click of believers. This believer can’t stand that believer and so on, and obviously in any group of people of more than two you’re going to have some personality problems because there’s no such thing as total compatibility since the fall. And every believer in your group is going to do something at some time or other is just going to grate you the wrong way. And normally under the filling of the Holy Spirit that’s fine, you can pass it off and move on, no problem. But when the believer starts getting into this situation he can no longer take this kind of thing. And then when somebody crosses him then something goes and we have some sort of a gossip, maligning campaign or somebody gets mad and goes some place else. Personality hang-ups begin to influence. They were there before but only at this stage to they begin to be bothersome.

Then finally the fourth step which is the step that Israel had reached in Hosea’s day is idolatry. What about idolatry? What is this stage? This is more than just deception, this is more than just inheriting carnal attitudes and attributing false motives to people and allowing personality hang-ups and so on to nudge you out of Christian fellowship. At this point, when idolatry is reached, the believer basically orients his life to some phase of the creation. Now something else replaces God as the source from which are all things, through which and to which are all things. Something else, and it can be tested by Romans 11:36, by simply taking that verse, take out the word “which” and begin to test for things in your life to see whether something fits too comfortably in God’s place in Romans 11:36. It’s a convenient diagnostic test to test for the presence of idolatry. If something fits very comfortably in side Romans 11:36, then the chances are we are dealing with idolatry.

What are some favorite areas of idolatry in our generation? Sexual hedonism is one, either homo or hetero, Ephesians 4:19 and Romans 1. This is when this becomes a thing, this became the thing with Baalism. Baalism believed that the basic force in all life was fertility and therefore since fertility was the basic force, I partake of that basic force. That’s one; another one would be alcohol and drugs, Ephesians 5:18 talks about that, and here’s where you have another type thing, not in the sense of losing one’s mind in the thing, but rather just craving it because there’s something to it, there’s really something to it, it really gives me power, this kind of thing—the alcohol drug route. Another one that’s very common is the culture root, that anything that doesn’t conform to my upbringing, my particular set of taboos, is automatically against God’s Word. Hebrews is the epistle where you see this; those Hebrew believers under pressure were reverting all the way back to going back to their home grown culture of Judaism. That was more precious than Jesus Christ. That in fact was replacing Jesus Christ. And so it was idolatry.

And in this part of the country if you don’t preach the gospel just exactly the way the little church around the corner preached it for the last 55 years then there’s something wrong. If you don’t have people coming down the aisle, signing cards, there’s something wrong. If you exegete Scripture and use the four lettered words that the prophets used occasionally there’s something wrong. And there’s nothing wrong because this is the way the Word of God is; what’s wrong is the people that can’t take it; these people are hung up on their own idolatry, they have idolized their culture. Their culture is more important than the teaching of the Word of God and if they have to choose between the content and the Word of God and if they have to choose between the content of the Word of God and what they are comfortable with they will choose what they are culturally comfortable with. And if that’s the choice that’s being made, then that is idolatry.

Another favorite idol or our own generation is the urge to chaos, the urge to smash. This can take many forms, it can take mental form, in my imagination there is an urge to smash. This can be one. It can take verbal and overt forms, Galatians 5:20, the idea of rebellion against authority, just revolting for revolt’s sake, that kind of thing, always looking for a fight, that attitude. That’s just the urge to smash. We saw that in Nebuchadnezzar, Daniel 2.

And finally there’s another one, there’s more but these are sufficient as a sampling, and that is scientism, Romans 1:28, the idea that man’s thoughts, man’s rationality, is the measure of all things and that what does not conform to that is wrong, and I will stake my life, my degrees, all my work, all my hours of my life on the truthfulness of this proposition; I will serve this, in other words. So scientism becomes a belief and a god.

Finally, after all this idolatry proceeds for a while you’re going to reach the stage of frustration. Now in Hosea’s day the nation Israel had gotten up to this fourth stage and was just about to go into the fifth stage. Hosea ministered and told them and predicted this fifth stage. He told them and warned them this was going to happen. Where can we see this happening? What are some signs that we have reached the stage of frustration. Basically the frustration stage is that point when God’s self-destruct mechanisms begin to function in a real potent clear way. For example, we’ll have a breakdown in the soul in the authority of the emotions. Normally the mind thinks of something and the emotions respond. The emotions are your responder, they enjoy things. And so the emotions are always passive to what you’re thinking. You can think of something and then you can enjoy it; that’s normal, your emotions are fine.

But what happens when you have compound carnality last for any length of time is that since the mind is darkened up because of scar tissue between the conscience and the mind the mind becomes very weak because the mind needs an orientation for an absolute to be stable. It’s like a boat on the sea, and if the mind doesn’t have its compass and its gyroscope to orient in space, then the mind becomes weak and unable to lead, and when the mind becomes weak and unable to lead, then the emotions begin to lead, so instead of the mind subduing the emotions the emotions begin to subdue the mind and you have a chaos, you have a breakdown of the authority of the soul. And these people can become neurotic and psychotic in this stage.

Another evidence of this is to simply go through the various divine institutions; we know when we go through the various divine institutions that each one has an authority structure. So we can start going through the divine institutions; everyone of these will be smashed under this frustration stage. For example, in the first divine institution we are called upon to subdue the earth, we are called upon to produce, we’re called upon to use whatever talents God has given us to produce. And what happens? Under conditions of compound carnality we let circumstances dictate to us; we become total slaves of circumstance. Now obviously we don’t mean that the person has lost both arms in an accident and they have problems playing the piano. But we’re talking about the pressures of daily life, that kind of thing. And when we permit certain senses to dictate we have just ruined the first divine institution, we’ve denied personal responsibility. When we get in the attitude, well this trial is too big for me, and so on, we’re denying the first divine institution.

In the second divine institution what is the upheaval usually like? Well ultimate it winds up in divorce but before that you find a breakdown of authority there. Instead of the man leading the family in love you find the woman dictating, you find the woman taking over the leadership position, you have a reversal of roles. When you go to the third divine institution under these conditions you’ll find that in chaos. Instead of parents assuming authority over children you’ll find children telling off their parents, you’ll find the children manipulating the parents, you’ll find the children doing everything they can as long as they can get what they want. They maybe can do it with a smile, maybe with a tantrum, but whatever it is, the children are running the home, not the parents and that is an abdication of the third divine institution.

The fourth divine institution is also distorted this way. When we see the fourth divine institution in areas of compound carnality we find that instead of the law running the state men run the state; no longer is it a rule of law but it’s rule of men. So again we find a breakdown and upheaval, a reversal, and that was happening in Hosea’s day. Every one of these spheres breaks down under the pressure of compound carnality. So never say that the spiritual relationship that man has with Jesus Christ is irrelevant; it is very relevant for if it doesn’t continue each one of these godly institutions is broken.

We go to the fifth divine institution, the world scene, and instead of allowing each area, each tribe to develop its own culture in its own way we find men are artificially mixing them, we find men trying to ram, jam and cram things together that naturally won’t go together; we find man trying to set up world government without Jesus Christ’s authority, and we find a breakdown there. Wherever men try to set up world government you have tyranny.

Then we come to the church and the local church is also in a mess when you have mass compound carnality, again you have people running the church instead of the Word of God. It will always be something else, it will be this program, that program, some other program but not the teaching of the Word, because as the swan song goes, we all need something more worshipful than teaching the Word of God. When somebody says that they’re spiritually out of it. Worship cannot occur apart from the teaching of the Word of God because worship is response to God and you can’t know God apart from His Word.

That’s the delineation of compound carnality, now let’s finish up chapter 4. We stopped with verse 14 where God was enumerating the sins of the people, and He showed them specifically what was happening in their idolatrous worship. Now beginning at Hosea 4:15 He addresses Israel, and in the Hebrew it’s emphasized, the word “Thou,” verse 15, “Though thou, Israel, play the harlot, yet let not Judah offend; and come not ye unto Gilgal, neither go ye up to Beth-aven, nor sear, The LORD lives. [16] For Israel slides back like a backsliding heifer; now the LORD will feed them as a lamb in a large place.” I don’t know about you but when I first became a Christian I always heard this term, backsliding. And wondered what the heck is a backsliding person, I never could figure that out, someone sliding on their back or what is this. Finally somebody explained to me that’s just a Christian that kind of phases out, he just kinds of falls back and oh well, that’s a pretty good explanation, and went on, until I began to read and realized the word “backslide” isn’t backslide at all. This word does not mean backslide and a whole generation of believers apparently have gone along; there’s no such thing as backsliding believers. We’ll show you what it really means when we go through that verse.

Hosea 4:15, “Though thou, Israel,” now this is an address to the northern kingdom; the boundary is just north of Jerusalem, that boundary was established in 930 BC by a civil war, described in 1 Kings 12. “Though thou, Israel, though you are continuing to play the whore,” this is a present participle of continuous action; it is her continuous nature to do this and throughout Hosea the idolatrous stage of compound carnality is equated with adultery. Now why is this equated with adultery? For the reason that both involve a covenant and both involve a violation of that covenant. There is a covenantal oath at marriage and there is a covenantal oath at Sinai. So you have both relationships beginning with an oath.

That should cut a line across some people at least, and it should bug some people because if you’ve been brought up in modern America that’s not the picture of marriage you’ve gotten. The picture of marriage is a love marriage, you fall in love and then you get married. That happens to be the American picture of marriage, but that’s not necessarily so because in many places, in fact Cromwell was a good example, he didn’t fall in love and get married, his parents arranged that marriage; it was an arranged marriage and Cromwell, like many men and that woman, like many women, learned to love the one that they were in relationship to. That doesn’t mean that they didn’t have problems and it doesn’t mean that they didn’t have love but the point is that the love came after the oath. They learned to love one another, just as Israel learned to love the Lord, she didn’t love the Lord before Sinai. Israel’s love for the Lord was developed after Sinai. So the idea that you have to love and then you marry is not necessarily Scriptural at all. The issue is that you love the Lord and you see, His will. Besides, no couple that comes tripping down the aisle is really loves the other one, they think they do but they really don’t in most cases, and they don’t learn to love one another for years afterwards. So where this love business got started I don’t know but it really doesn’t correspond to true facts; it’s a nice story and makes everybody smile. So marriage starts off with a covenant in Scripture. And for this reason it is compared with Israel’s relationship to the Lord. That’s one reason for the comparison.

But there’s another reason for the comparison; both relationships represent God’s provision. See, that’s how a person with doctrine, his basic concern isn’t his response to the other person, the basic issue is the person themselves and God’s plan for their life; is this person God’s provision or not? That’s the basic question, now how I feel about it; not how I respond to it. The basic issue is the objective truth, what is God’s will in the matter. And so here the whole point is that God has given Israel certain assets and Israel has said God’s assets aren’t sufficient, I’ll go looking somewhere else. And same here in the marriage situation, God’s gift to me isn’t enough, I’ll look somewhere else; same concept. And this is why the parallel is there.

Let’s look further at Hosea 4:15, “Though thou, Israel, continue to play the harlot,” in other words, you continue to look elsewhere than what God has provided, “let not Judah offend,” this goes back to the geography. You see, Hosea’s ministering in the north and when he writes this passage… we don’t know, remember part of this is collective sermons delivered over his whole life, we don’t know what year he taught this passage and what year he taught that passage, we just don’t know, it was just collected after a while and this is the diary of Hosea; some of his students probably took notes on his sermons and this is how they collected the book finally. Now apparently this sermon was delivered down here toward the southern border, because as he begins to preach toward Israel for a moment his mind turns to Judah.

Judah is the southern kingdom so he says “Though thou, Israel, you continue to play the harlot, let not Judah offend,” now what’s on Hosea’s mind that he’s worried that Judah may offend? He goes on to tell us, “Come not ye unto Gilgal,” now Gilgal and Bethel are two cities just across the border and both are very, very important cultic centers for the idolatrous religion of the northern kingdom. The place of Gilgal was at one time a theological seminary; in Elisha’s day they taught prophets at Gilgal. Gilgal was a very, very orthodox place, and what it is is apparently an educational center, and so he says let not Judah come to this theological seminary that has gone apostate; stay out of it, don’t send your students, your pastor-teachers who are training their gift, to an apostate seminary because they’ll be fed false doctrine, they won’t learn how to exegete the Word and so on.

So, “let them not go to Gilgal, neither go ye up to Beth-aven,” now this is a name-calling device and every once in a while we think it’s unspiritual to use name-calling. Sometimes it can be but not always and here’s where Hosea is name-calling and it’s a pun on the word “Bethel.” Bethel looks like this in the Hebrew, Beth, Beth-el, el is the word for God, Beth is house, for example, Bethlehem, lehem is the Hebrew word for bread, Bethlehem is the house of bread. So how interesting that Jesus Christ was the bread of life and was born at Bethlehem. So here it’s Bethel, the house of God, and that was always the right name until 1 Kings 12:29, there was a great center, a great shrine of idols placed there by Jeroboam I, he decided that he had a little problem with politics. Jeroboam was the first king of this northern kingdom and God said okay Jeroboam I want you to rule that northern kingdom for me and I’ll let the house of David rule the southern kingdom. Now if you’ll just rule it politically fine, but God had ordained only one place for religious beliefs, for religious ceremony, for religious worship and that was Jerusalem.

Well, Jeroboam got to thinking in his palace, now this is a bad news situation because all my people in the northern kingdom, they have allegiance to me politically but what I’m afraid of is when they make they pilgrimages, which they had to three times a year, down there and come back the house of David is going to solicit their political allegiance. So Jeroboam said, without God’s authorization I will set up two worship centers, I’ll make it very efficient, they can have drive-in religion, one we’ll have in the south and one we’ll have in the north; in the south we’ll set it up at Bethel, and in the north, Dan. So if you have problems getting gasoline you drive up there or you drive down here, no problem. There will not be a place in the northern kingdom where you won’t be near a drive-in, and his southern drive-in was at Bethel.

So when Hosea goes to talk about it, he says Judah, don’t come to Beth-aven, and it’s a pun on the word because Beth-aven, here’s the word for house, and instead of using “el,” Bethel, he uses the word “aven” and the word “aven” means a rebellion or sinful deviance of the Word of God. So he calls this center, instead of the house of God, the house of defiance, don’t come there says Hosea. Now it never had that name, this is just a name-calling device, this is Hosea who’s hacked and so he’s going to call it by a name, “don’t come to Beth-aven, nor swear, The LORD lives.” And this is addressed back to the northern kingdom and he’s saying look, when you come to the northern kingdom and you start saying “the LORD lives,” what does this mean, “the LORD lives.” This was an oath that would be taken. It was an oath that underlay all business contracts and all marriages. Whenever you had a contract this oath was made, “as Yahweh lives.” He says don’t use that in your contract any more, just forget it.

And what Hosea is saying is that you have lost your right to call upon the name of God; if you won’t worship Him according to the Word, then don’t use His name. It’s like a lot of people in evangelical circles, they could care less about the Word of God, they’re always going around, “the Lord led me” to do this, “the Lord led me” to do that, etc. The Lord didn’t do anything, it’s just an overactive imagination. And it comes about because these people, these clods who hate the Word of God, are just getting all frothy and steamed up about their emotions and they’re attributing God did this and God did that. Do you why you can tell that God isn’t doing it? Because it doesn’t measure up to the Word. Have you ever watched this; God led me to this job, God led me to that job, and it’s usually uttered with a weakly voice, etc; God doesn’t direct this way, sometimes there are key turns but it’s not like this, God may turn but it’s more of a gradual thing, more of a continuity in your life. God doesn’t lead spastically and that’s exactly the way these people’s lives look.

Now let’s get to the backsliding. In Hosea 4:16 “For Israel has slidden back as a backsliding heifer,” that really communicates… the word “backsliding” in the Hebrew means to rebel, it’s not just somebody sliding down a hill because their breaks won’t hold, passive, under the influence of gravity. That is too passive an interpretation. That’s why I never could understand what backsliding meant. Backsliding is an irresponsible word; it connotes the idea that somehow my brakes failed and I’m just kind of rolling back down the hill. But that’s not what the word means, it’s more violent than that. It’s a tremendous picture. The picture is of an oxen that has a yoke on him; the master has put the yoke on the oxen to get work and production out of him and the oxen won’t budge, he refuses to produce. That’s the word. How it ever got translated backsliding I don’t know but the word means stubborn and rebellious against God’s calling. Keep in mind it’s an oxen and keep in mind it’s the concept of the yoke, the rebellion is against the yoke. It’s not just the animal alone either, this word connotes the fact that this is a yoked animal, that is yoked into a job and refuses to do the job. So Israel is rebelling as a rebellious ox.

Now the Lord, and this is another piece of how the Lord handles this kind of a situation because we have seen, you notice how when a person reaches this stage that counseling is impossible so you’re instructed to leave them alone, it says “now the LORD will feed them,” the northern kingdom, “as a lamb in a large place.” Now the word “large” means unprotected, and this tells us something about how God corrects believers. We have negative volition, darkness, human viewpoint, idolatry and Hosea is predicting this last stage in the nation and he’s saying okay, you people, you have been stubborn, God has called you to be a testimony and a light to the nation and you refuse, so God is going to feed you. And you know what Israel, God is going to be a perfect shepherd to you, He’s going to let you have all the green grass you want; only one catch, the large pasture has no fence around it, and the large pasture is completely open to the predators of the sheep. So what he is saying is that God will prosper them in Jeroboam II, he is the king at this time, there’s a tremendous business boom, the economy is fantastic in the northern kingdom at this time so God’s saying fine, just go right on ahead, but I am going to leave you like an abandoned flock of sheep on an open field, open to any wolves, open to any predators that wish to come into the field. And I’m not going to lift my hand; you wanted the green grass, you wanted it on your terms, go ahead, have it.

Now that’s a picture of God turning believers over to satanic forces; “feeding the lambs on an open field” is like saying okay believer, go ahead, I’ll remove My protection from you and you’ll be open to all sorts of demonic activity. Now to see where this happened in the New Testament turn to 1 Corinthians 5:5, where we read of a New Testament believer being turned over to Satan. Notice there’s no loss of salvation but there’s something else that happens. Paul says, I want you “to deliver such an one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.” There’s not a loss of salvation but there is physical death involved. There’s physical sorrow involved.

Turn to 1 Corinthians 11:30 we’ll see more of this, the communion service was turning into a drunken brawl. “For this cause many are weak and sickly among you, and many sleep.” Now you can’t inch your way through that verse without coming to the conclusion that physical sickness as well as physical death were due to disciplinary functions. Now this is not saying that all sickness is this way, there’s reasons for undeserved suffering and reasons for deserved suffering, and you know those. This is deserved suffering and some physical sickness is due to this kind of thing.

Turn to 2 Corinthians 12:7 you’ll see where this worked with Paul, Paul had a problem in his life, this isn’t an idolatrous case but it shows you the mechanism, Paul got fatheaded and he had one of the greatest revelations that had ever been given to man and to keep Paul in line, according to verse 7 God did something to him: “Lest I should be exalted above measure thorough the abundance of the revelations there was given to me a thorn in the flesh,” (comma) “an angel of Satan to buffet me.” Note the comma; so is Paul’s thorn in the flesh? It is a demonically given affliction and Paul had it all of his life. There was one demon that was assigned to Paul to do nothing but irritate him physically. And Paul had to do this, he beseeched the Lord three times, according to verse 8, let this be removed, he prayed and prayed and prayed, and it never would be removed. This is not an excuse for Christians to be passive; you haven’t had the revelations that Paul had so don’t put yourself in this position. That’s just to show you the mechanisms involved, that leading the sheep into an open field God says okay, I peel away My protection. You want to be stubborn, you want it your way, have it your way.

Hosea 4:17, “Ephraim,” he says, this is the northern kingdom, this is the other name the northern kingdom is known by, “Ephraim is constantly joined to idols,” a participle, continually joined to them. In idolatry when a person has gotten this far along, from the human point of view it’s hopeless because they’re linked solidly with this thing; their whole viewpoint… see they’ve got a new point of reference now, it’s no longer God, it’s whatever this thing is, and everything rotates about that thing, that becomes the new center of their life. So obviously since all this massive reorientation and rethinking that’s taken place the person is just programmed to move in this direction. And from the human point of view it’s a hopeless case. But we’re not looking at it from the human point of view. Hosea says God is going to get Ephraim out of a jam but it’s going to be through the exile. The nation is going to go into the fifth degree of discipline, the fifty cycle listed in Leviticus 26 and God will get them out of it because they’re elect, and God will never permit those who are elect to drop by the wayside, but it will be by means of sorrow and heartache.

“Ephraim is joined continually to idols” and so he instructs the prophets, “let him alone,” and that’s the instruction not to bother with a person that is this involved. Paul told the Corinthians that person, just let them alone, get them out of there; you cannot help these kinds of people, you waste your time trying. It’s far better to spend your time with somebody that isn’t so far along down the line. “Ephraim is joined to idols,” just let them alone.

Then in Hosea 4:18-19 he gives the conclusion and the fore view of their judgment, “Their drink is sour; they have committed whoredom continually; her rulers with same do love, Give ye [love shame more than glory], now this an all fouled up translation so let’s try to sort it out. “Their drink is sour,” this is one of the words for the strongest kind of liquor in the Bible, this is strong liquor, “Their drink has gone sour,” and the word, it’s not sure why this word… it isn’t the word “sour,” it’s the word “to turn,” and this is an inferred translation from the Hebrew verb to turn. So the idea is that it deteriorated; apparently they were drinking so much that they couldn’t get the liquor fast enough so they had to use quickly formed liquor which was of poor quality; their drinking consumed the market; the demand exceeded the supply so their quality of liquor deteriorated. Obviously it tells you what was going on in some of the parties and some of the religious ceremonies they were having for Baal.

“…they have committed whoredom continually,” now this is the infinitive absolute plus the main verb and in Hebrew this intensifies the mood and the mood here is the indicative mood so it should be translated “they have really committed fornication,” the idea is they’ve really done this thing. Then it says something interesting, because the word “they have committed whoredom” or they’ve committed fornication, and this is one that’s caused a lot of problems in this translation, is a hiphil. Now the Hebrew has several stems but for our purposes we’ll just talk about two of them. A qal stem is just a simple stem that you would use, “I kill,” that would be the qal stem. The hiphil stem is causative, “ I caused him to kill somebody.” Now here the word is in the hiphil stem. How do we interpret that? “Their drink has become sour,” that’s easy to understand, but then the next phrase, “they have surely caused to commit fornication,” but caused who to commit fornication, and who is it that’s doing the causing on the people that we don’t know are committing the fornication? There’s a causative effect. This is an anticipatory type syntax because the subject is given in the next clause, “her rulers,” it is the rulers that have caused and led these people into these ceremonies. The rulers have caused them to really commit fornication.

But then this third clause also has to be corrected. It should read, “her rulers have made love—[dash] they have made love with shame.” Now it’s reiterated, it’s reiterated twice because it’s one of these things where it takes the truth up to a point, drops it, comes back, takes it and extends it further. Now to see what this is talking about we have to understand the wording. The word “rulers” is the word for shields. And it was always used just for the shield, not for people; but the rulers are called shields because at this point they are the ones who are to have protected the people. In this case they are the ones who ought to have protected the people from the Assyrians, from the Moabites and so on. But they have not protected the people, they have not been the shield for the people, instead they have had them go into this human viewpoint religion; as a result that now the Assyrians, the Moabites and everybody else is going to come in because the shield, it’s the word…, your military rulers, the rulers that are supposed to provide you with national defense instead of providing you with national defense have been fornicating, they have been making love.

And then to emphasize the point, as only a prophet could, he says “they have been making love with shame.” That looks like a sweet little word, let’s find out what that word is all about? See the advantage of the original language. This is the Hebrew word for kolon, kolon is a word that is used throughout the prophets for sex with the wrong person. It’s not just shame, it’s the idea that they have fornicated with the person, it’s the idea of this adultery image in the background, the violation of the covenant, constantly in the background; the kolon, they have made love with the wrong person. Now to show you the Biblical attitude on this turn to Proverbs 5. Why does the Bible talk about this this way? The shame, why is it called shame; the word can also mean shame, but in this context kolon always means sex with the wrong person, but why is that depicted as shame? We still haven’t answered that question, we’ve just noted the identity.

Here’s why; Proverbs 5 is one of the classic passages in the Bible on sex. Proverbs 5 gives you the reasons why they called it shame. Proverbs 5:8, “Remove thy way far from her,” remember Proverbs, a Hebrew father talking to his sons, and he’s talking about the strange woman, “Remove thy way far from her, and come not near the door of her house, [9] Lest thou give thine honor unto others, and thy years unto the cruel; [10] Lest strangers be filled with thy wealth, and thy labors be in the house of a stranger, [11] And thou mourn at the last, when they flesh and thy body are consumed.” Now that is an entire euphemism, verses 8-10, for sexual intercourse. The whole thing is a euphemistic translation for sex. Verse 9, “Lest thou give thine honor unto others,” this is looked at from the male point of view, don’t give your honor to others, “and thy years unto the cruel.” That’s why it is called shame, the idea is that the right man was created to have sex with his right woman and when he doesn’t have sex with his right woman and has sex with the wrong woman he has given his honor, physically as well as character wise. “…and thy years unto the cruel,” and verse 10 looks at it from the female point of view, “Lest strangers are filled with thy wealth,” and the imagery carries on. So the whole passage is a euphemism for sex, and there you have tapped the Hebrew concept here of the shame; the shame is that we have taken something which was another person’s right and we’ve misused it.

The same concept comes in 1 Corinthians 7:3-5 so turn there and see the New Testament; same concept, just different words. “Let the husband render unto the wife due benevolence [her due]; and likewise also, the wife unto her husband.” Now that’s translated so innocuously you’d never guess where it was going till you got down there and realized it can’t be as harmless as it looks. The word “benevolence” means obligation, more than that it means covenantal obligation. “Let the husband render unto the wife continually her legal obligation, and likewise also the wife unto the husband.” Whether you feel like it or not is not the issue; the issue is it’s their right, period, by the oath of marriage. That is the objective state of the case.

Then verse 4, “The wife has not power,” literally authority, “over her own body, but the husband; and likewise also the husband has not authority over his own body, but the wife.” In other words, the right man and the right woman are made for each other, and each other Scripturally owns the other’s body in this state. That’s the concept. Then in verse 5 to underscore that that is indeed the correct translation of this whole thing you have the verb “defraud,” which means steal, you can’t steal unless you’ve stolen property that belongs to another person. And what is it that’s mentioned in verse 5? Abstinence, sexual abstinence, “Defraud ye not one the other, except it be with consent for a time,” mutual consent, “that ye may give yourselves to fasting and prayer; and come together again, that Satan tempt you not for your incontinency.” So obviously the word “steal” means steal property.

So that’s why this word shame came to be associated with this. We have to explain that because most people don’t see the connection. What’s shame? They think of that as a guilt feeling. No-no-no, the guilt feeling may be there but the shame that’s mentioned in the Hebrew text isn’t talking about your guilt feelings, it’s talking about an objective theft, that’s the shame, it’s not subjective, it’s objective.

Now back to Hosea, “Their drink is sour,” the quality of liquor has gotten bad, they’re manufacturing it too fast, and “they have committed whoredom continually,” the rulers have led the people into whoredom, and “the rulers have made love, they’ve made love with shame.” Now they may have been doing literally this in the orgies and the Baalite cults but the spiritual impact of this is they have made love with Baal; they should have made love to God, and they’ve caused the nation to go off into apostasy.

Finally, Hosea 4:19, the forward view of the final fifth degree of discipline, Hosea announces, after he said and characterized their violation of the covenant, he’s told them this has happened, and now pathetically the chapter ends, “The wind has bound her,” that is Israel, Ephraim, “The wind has bound her up in its wings, and they shall be ashamed because of their sacrifices.” “The wind has bound her up” is an expression for discipline by war in history. The wind characterizes just blowing across the map, and as the wind blows it blows the nation just like chaff on a flat field, the wind blows and it’s gone. The wind is the great surge of international power. The fact of the word “wind” can also be translated as spirit, suggested as a double meaning here behind this surface meaning, that it’s not just the wind, it’s the ruach. Remember God said I will feed you on an open pasture, Israel, an unprotected pasture, open to your predators. And now the wind, the spirit of the age has come, and has taken you into its wings to blow you who knows where. And that’s a perfect description of what happened in 721 BC, for the ten tribes were deported all over the place, and that’s why some have said they are the ten lost tribes; they’re not lost as far as God’s concerned, but they did suffer a radical deportation, unlike even the southern kingdom suffered in 586 BC. And then one further note in Hosea 5:19 and with this further note we are again face to face with some insights about compound carnality. At that moment, when the wind comes and blows the nation away in 721 BC, “they,” who’s “they?” In the context it would be the people and their rulers of verse 18, “and they shall be ashamed because of their sacrifices.” Now what does that mean? Don’t read that over too quickly and think you’ve got it. That is a hard sentence, “they shall be ashamed because of their sacrifices.” What is that?

Well, we know that “they” must refer to the northern kingdom. The word “ashamed” means to be humiliated in the sense that you trusted something and it’s caved in; that’s always the way this particular word is used; the word in the Hebrew is bush, long “u” and that word means to be not just embarrassed as we would use the word embarrassed, but to be utterly humiliated, you put your whole weight on something and as you try to put your weight on it, oomph, the thing suddenly collapses. That’s the concept behind this word shame. So the very fact that that verb is used for shame in verse 19 indicates that a trust has occurred.

Now we understand those “sacrifices,” “they shall be humiliated because of sacrifices.” What sacrifices? Well, the sacrifices that they offered at Dan, the northern and southern drive-ins there, down at Bethel and up in Dan, all of the time that these people were going there what were they doing? They were offering sacrifices along with their worship. What did good Jews hope that the sacrifices were doing? Atoning for their sins; they thought all the time that they were confessing their sin, when all the time God had no respect to their confession of their sin. And when the discipline finally fell in on the nation in 721 BC the shock that hit them, didn’t we confess our sins, why are You thus treating us God, why do You treat me this way, I’ve confessed my sin. And they will be ashamed because of their sacrifices; this was a false confession. And why was it a false confession? Because it was given to the false gods; God accepts confessions and He wants to mercifully cleanse us from our sin but He insists that when we confess our sins we come to Him as the God of the Scripture, who has total control over all things, who has an objective revelation given to us, to which we must adhere, and the God from whom, through whom and to whom are all things. God does not want to be part Baal and part Jehovah.

True confession in a state of compound carnality is very, very difficult, it can be done, but it is very tricky and very difficult. A person who has been out of fellowship for a long, long time will have a great deal of difficulty making genuine confession. It is possible because God is the author of the possible, and the person obviously can come back out of it, the man in 1 Corinthians 5 did, we read about it in 2 Corinthians, how he made it. But it’s difficult. It can’t be just cursory confession and saying well, it’s all over, because remember these people, in 721 BC, thousands and thousands of people thought they had confessed their sins, and hadn’t.

Father, we thank You….