Hosea, Part VIII

The Divine Prosecutor is not giving any quarter to those who lead the people. God is furious at how His priests--people who are called to serve Him and teach the people--are actually deleterious to His kingdom.  He lays the blame squarely on the shoulders of those who know better, but do not do better.

This is rather startling, but how often do religious leaders benefit from the very people they purport to serve?  Religion puts a respectable patina over carnal motivations.  The leaders can justify what they do because the people love them: 

I just love when my people look up to me, and you know what, why not? I heard the call from the Lord and I am doing His will. He has blessed me and I am indispensable in the lives of my people. They look to me to teach them about God, and that's what I do.

The money I receive is compensation for all my hard work. Why shouldn't I use that money to buy a jet, a big house, a fine wardrobe or those things that show that my followers love me and how God is blessing me? I am showing them how much I love them by letting them see how much I enjoy what they give me! It's a win-win for everyone.

What do the followers say?

Oh, I just love it when my teacher opens up her Bible and teaches me.  I actually understand it.  How could she be so wonderful if God wasn't working in her?  She has so many people come to hear her.  Yes, I know.  Sometimes her words are more, well, her words, rather than God's holy word, but she seems to know what she is doing.  I trust her.  I should open my Bible and pray for His wisdom, but I trust she is getting it from God and so I get it from her.  

So, the followers trust the teachers to explain the Word and they do not study it themselves. The leaders exploit the trust of their followers to meet their material needs at the expense of God's truth. 

Has anything really changed? 

What does the Divine Prosecutor say? 

“When the people bring their sin offerings, the priests get fed. So the priests are glad when the people sin!" (4:8)

Wow. The priests have clearly created an environment where they do not excoriate sin by emphasizing  how contrary it is to Yahweh, but then act all indignant when the people sin, demanding that they bring sin offerings! It's a twisted win-win. 

It's as if the priests are spiritual loan sharks:

Hey, go visit those temples!  It's not that big of a sin!  Yes, you've heard Yahweh doesn't like when you sin, but I am His priest and I say what you are doing in those temples with those prostitutes and all the offerings you are making is really not that offensive to Yahweh.  Don't listen to those old priests--they are so out of touch with what Yahweh is revealing to us today.  

Sometime later that day...

You did what?  You stepped over the line with that! I said going to the temple wasn't all that wrong, but you went multiple times last week?  You're kidding, right?  No? OK, this calls for some serious offerings to offset your lack of judgment. Hand it over.  No, I mean more.  This is going to take more.  Much more. 

So the ugliness continues. The priests are capricious in their teaching as to what Yahweh demands of His chosen, and the people are are confused as to which way is up. 

Jesus had no tolerance for the spiritual loan sharks of His day. In Matthew 23, He is uncompromising when He expounds the seven woes of the Pharisees and how they have used their authority to destroy His Father's place in the lives of His people.  This particular woe captures what the priests of Hosea's day were doing:

“But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut the kingdom of heaven in people's faces. For you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves." (Matt. 23:13-15) 

In other words, out of the evil hearts of the Pharisees came evil teachings, making the Jewish people of Jesus' day confused at best.  But at worse, the people emulated the behavior of the Pharisees and committed evil themselves.  The nation of Israel was then a terrible witness to the Gentiles around them.

Back to Hosea's day: How can the priests of Yahweh minister to the Canaanites when their teachings are really no different from the priests of Baal?  How can the Israelites be a blessing to all nations when they are no different from all nations?  

But the Divine Prosecutor is not going to let the people off the hook.  They have the Torah.  They have the history of God's mighty deliverance from the slavery of Egypt, His provision in the desert and the founding fathers of the faith: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  

The people know. Thus, they should be pushing back on the priests, by telling them that what they are doing is contrary to Yahweh. 

9 "'And what the priests do, the people also do.'

So now I will punish both priests and people
for their wicked deeds.
They will eat and still be hungry.
They will play the prostitute and gain nothing from it,
for they have deserted the Lord
to worship other gods." (9-10)

It takes two to sin, and in this case, priest and pupil are culpable. 

Does this message about leaders and followers ring true today?  Yes.  How much teaching is being done in the name of Christ, and is contrary to the Word of God outright?  Or, how much teaching has been based on a few proof-texts, twisted to construct a whole new theology? The leaders then benefit, because many people flock to hear and follow them, making the leaders celebrities.   

Why?  Because we would rather have someone tell us what the Word says, rather than partner with the Holy Spirit and allow Him to teach us.  He will not teach a verse here and there, but He will show us the full counsel of God. 

But we must humble ourselves.  The people of Hosea's day lost humility as they arrogantly sought a "better" way than the Torah.  As a result, their behavior degraded and mocked the values of Yahweh. 

We are no different, and God's warnings are as relevant today as they were then.   

Hosea, Part VII

Wow.  We left our last look into Hosea with the verse from chapter 4: "Don't point your finger at someone else and try to pass the blame!" (verse 4).

We have a universal and rather nasty habit of saying that our woe is caused by someone or something "out there"--it has nothing to do with whatever actions or decisions we have made. 

No way.

This goes back to our very beginning.  Remember when God confronts Adam and Eve with their transgression?  What is Adam's response?

The man said, “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.” (Gen. 3:12)

Look at what Adam does. He blames God outright (with no reverence or respect here) for placing her with him in the first place.  He dehumanizes Eve by calling her "the woman." She has lost her name, her identity, her oneness with him--she is now "the other." He blames her for being in his space--he implies that he would have never sinned if Eve weren't in the Garden with him. Oh, and don't forget:  She gave him the fruit and he (helplessly? without any choice? ignorantly?) ate it.  

Classic. (a) It's God's fault I am where I am. (b) It's that person/group who has caused me such woe.  They don't deserve respect.  The other is not like me. (c) Can we just remove that person/group from my/our space?  Life would be so much easier. (d) Choice?  What choice?  Why are you blaming me? I am the victim here.

Now, a quick moment with Eve: 

"Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate” (verse 13).  

God asks her what she did, not who is involved.  God wants her to dissect her action--seeing if she understands why it is wrong and if so, why. Regardless of the serpent's involvement, she did not follow God's instructions to not eat the fruit.  Period. She passes the blame to the serpent.  

She had no choice?  She didn't fully understand? She thought that somehow the serpent's words were more important than God's?  Who provided everything around her with its beauty and bounty? Who gave her Adam? Who walked in the Garden with her, enjoying her company and vice versa? 

Classic. (a) I was deceived--I didn't know what I was doing. I blew it because that ______ was more important than following God and His ways. I knew better, but that temptation drew me in and I couldn't help myself. (b) I know what I needed to do, but those people around me confused me, and I wanted their approval. They were so persuasive--you can't blame me. (c) Yes, I know.  God loves me, but if He does, why did He make a world that is so contrary to who He is?  Is He just trying to make it hard on us humans? 

So, blame is nothing new. God thwarts the blame game. God will not brook the "logic" of His people who are justifying what is going on.  How do I know this?  If the people had come up to Hosea and said, "We know.  We truly have fallen short of the glory of God.  Please ask God to forgive us," that would indicate they were willing to take responsibility for their actions and the consequences thereof. 

Didn't happen. 

God shoots straight at the target: the priests.  Jesus will take the religious leaders of His day to task as well.  Why?  The leaders know better.  They have the Law. 

If they haven't gone deep into the ways of God, that's on them.  If they have gone deep into the ways of God, and have not followed what they've learned, that's on them.  If they don't really know or understand the ways of God, but haven't rectified their ignorance with study, that's on them.  

The priests, by the virtue of their office, have a moral responsibility to teach the people--not what they think is best, but what God says.  In order to teach the ways of God, you must be cultivating an ever deepening relationship with God.  You can't teach Him if you don't know Him, or you know Him only superficially.

So here it what Hosea says:

My complaint, you priests,
is with you.
So you will stumble in broad daylight,
and your false prophets will fall with you in the night.
And I will destroy Israel, your mother.
My people are being destroyed
because they don’t know me.
Since you priests refuse to know me,
I refuse to recognize you as my priests.
Since you have forgotten the laws of your God,
I will forget to bless your children.
The more priests there are,
the more they sin against me.
They have exchanged the glory of God
for the shame of idols. (4:4-11) 

I think of Jesus' words against the Pharisees: "Leave them; they are blind guides. If the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit.” (Matt. 15:13) 

Blindness: The deliberate ignoring of the Law means that when the priests step forward to teach the people, their blindness leads them to teach all sorts of things--whatever passing fancy they have that day--and the people perish for a lack of true vision. James made it clear that teachers bear a greater responsibility because their knowledge becomes the people's. If it is wrong, the people will stumble and fall: "Not many of you should become teachers, my fellow believers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly." (3:1) 

The priests "refuse to know Me."  This is not ignorance.  This is defiance. 

Why do the priests defy the Lord?  Because the world has taken over.  In this case, it's the alluring world of pagan practices and an arrogant sense that because we do what the gods tell us to do, the gods are obligated to do as we tell them to do.

Shocking?  Yes.  Welcome to the world of pagan thinking.  The gods make all sorts of demands. The people do them. Consequently, the gods must act.  

Let me give you an example.  The sexual act between a temple prostitute and an adherent is a signal to the gods to give a reproductive bounty.  The man's semen is analogous to rain, the woman's womb is the earth and thus the act is a demonstration of what the gods should be doing: Bringing forth rain to make the earth productive.  This is called sympathetic magic, whereby what you do is a reminder of what the supernatural beings should be doing. 

Thus, after the sexual act is complete, having fulfilled what the gods demanded, they must act.

If you engaging in temple prostitution, the gods will not act.  Or, if the rains do not come, you did it wrong. Or not enough. You seek to control the gods with your actions, but in the end, the gods are capricious and unpredictable, so you, a mere human, can never be entirely sure of the gods acting in your favor. But most of the time you succeed. 

Do you see how contrary this is to Yahweh?  

We don't control Him by what we say and do.  He acts out of His love.  He acts out of His covenant with us ("covenant" comes from the Hebrew word meaning, "lovingkindness"--hesed). His covenant still stands with us and even when we are disobedient, the rains fall, the plants flourish and the animals frolic with their babies. Yes, sometimes God will use a drought or a famine to remind the people that He alone is in control and desires their obedience.  He does this not out of anger but out of love, for He knows what is best for us and is trying to ger our attention.  

Why did the priests of Yahweh exchanged "the glory of God" for idols?  They wanted to be in control.  They wanted to control the spiritual narrative by dictating to the people what they must do to appease the gods. It wasn't hard to persuade the people, for everything about paganism speaks to the flesh, and humans love that, especially if you put a religious patina over it:  Hey!  We're engaging in human sacrifice and ritual sex to get the gods to do what they said they would do!  And they do!  Look at this land, filled with milk and honey.  And you know why?  Because of us!

So, let's summarize the charges so far that Yahweh is bringing against His children in this Divine Court:

1. The people are not faithful, kind and don't seek God to understand Him.
2. They break vows.
3. Murder, theft and adultery are rampant.
4. Violence is everywhere.
5. The priests are tantamount to false prophets: they do not speak the truth and choose to not know God or they allow false prophets a place from which to spew their sinful words.
6. The people are ignorant because of the moral failure of their priests.
7. There is an ever-increasing number of priests spreading their sinful knowledge to the people and acting in ways that are contrary to Yahweh.
8. These priests are pagans in Levites' clothing--wolves among the sheep.


The Divine Prosecutor is just getting started.

Hosea, Part VI

Chapter 4 has a different kind of feel to it.  We have moved from a domestic setting--with children running about, tears of a pleading husband, the shameful grimace of a broken wife--to a courtroom. It's as if God has moved His message to a more public arena, broadening the venue as to drive the point more fully home.

Did people discount Hosea's message, dismissing it as the ramblings of a distraught husband? 

Of course Hosea is ranting and raving at us. What kind of man names his children those ridiculous names?  His wife's a whore--no wonder he's burdened with sorrow and grief.  He then has the unmitigated gall to turn his anger on us!  Making us out as some kind of whore towards God!  What? Yeah, maybe we do engage a little too much with those pagans, but it's hard to deny their success!  The god Baal does an awful lot to provide for them.  Every season, the fields are full of grain.  The rains come and the streams overflow.  The animals have lots of babies and so do the people. Yes, sacrificing a child is hard to take, but hey, if that means a bounty for the rest of the family, so be it!  And to everyone else!  Yeah, that sexual stuff is strange, but hey, if the god requires it and we benefit from it, why not?  Hosea is miserable with his own weird family-- that is his problem.  We have been able to balance Yahweh with Baal, and we get results!  All Hosea gets is unhappy children and a wife who sleeps around.  He's made his problem our problem, and we don't buy it. 

God is now acting as a Dvine Prosecutor, speaking through Hosea, and no longer having him demonstrate the unfaithfulness of Israel in his personal life. 

God will take on any role He can to get our attention, even the role of Son. Here we go!

In 4:1-3, we hear:

Hear the word of the Lord, O people of Israel!
The Lord has brought charges against you, saying:
“There is no faithfulness, no kindness,
no knowledge of God in your land.
You make vows and break them;
you kill and steal and commit adultery.
There is violence everywhere—
one murder after another.
That is why your land is in mourning,
and everyone is wasting away.
Even the wild animals, the birds of the sky,
and the fish of the sea are disappearing.

God does not mince words as to cause and effect.  If you turn away from the value system of Yahweh--where life is sacred, the Law is essential and others are family--then what do you get? Remember how your founding mother and father didn't want God's knowledge but took a bite from a tree of good knowledge (what you determine it to be) and bad knowledge (what you don't see until you are drowning in its evil depths).   

Here's the bitter fruit of your own knowledge: 

Violence. 

 

Adultery. 

Murder. 

False testimony. 

No love for God.  

No love for others. 

No loving your neighbor as yourself. 

No seeking after the ways of God.

(Just a thought here--did your pursuit of sexual perversion and watching babies burn to death harden your hearts?  Are your souls seared by sin?  Are you now utterly deaf to your conscience?  That is the greatest "gift" of Baal:  The Prince of Darkness, using this false god as a mouthpiece, now whispers to your heart and you follow his lead.  Your society, as a result, is being degraded by sin's tyranny.)

(Oh, yeah. One more thought.  Slavery is never advertised as slavery, but as freedom...  

Freedom from such antiquated thinking such as the Law of Moses.  

Freedom from anything that restricts you.  

Freedom to be non-judgmental towards others, and to embrace the good they have to offer.  

Freedom to pick and choose your own morality because this isn't the desert anymore--this is the land of milk and honey and it's hard to ignore all of its god-given bounty. 

But, Israel, did you hear the metal sound that the shackles made as they slammed tight around your wrists and ankles? Oh wait!  That's what God is trying to do through Hosea: He wants you to see just how enslaved you are!)

God is also using nature to drive home His point. Remember how He judged every god of Egypt, by overcoming their supposed rule over the earth?  The god of light couldn't prevent the utter darkness that descended over the land; the god of the Nile couldn't stop the waters from changing into blood and Pharaoh, claiming to be a god himself, couldn't save his own son. 

No difference here: the gods of Canaan can't stop the fish, the birds and the wild animals from disappearing.  People are starving.  Where's your god Baal now?   Where's his provision?  Didn't all that sex done before the gods and all those screaming babies make any difference?  

Then, God doesn't give the children of Israel a chance to start the blame game: “Don’t point your finger at someone else and and try to pass the blame!" (4:4)

God will then launch into holding the leadership--the priests--for having aided, abetted and benefitted from the sin of the people. 

Stay tuned.  These are powerful (and deeply convicting) words from the Lord.

Hosea, Part V

I love how the previous passage ends in chapter 2:

I will plant her for myself in the land;
I will show my love to the one I called ‘Not my loved one.’
I will say to those called ‘Not my people,' ‘You are my people’;
and they will say, ‘You are my God.’” (v. 23)

God is all about restoration. He is the father in the parable of the prodigal son: He is always waiting for His children to come home. 

But God doesn't ignore the sin that led His children to wander in the first place. The father says his prodigal son was "lost" but now is "found."

Lost.  Estranged. Wounded. Alienated. Alone.

That is the fruit of sin. To put it another way: Sin never advertises itself as slavery.  It brands itself as freedom and it's not until we hear the shackles' sickening metallic sound as they clamp around our legs and feet that we realize just how devastating sin really is.

He admonishes Israel for their spiritual adultery. They have shackled themselves to gods who are not real; engaged in child sacrifice and sexual immorality; taken on a value system antithetical to Yahweh's and walked away from their beautiful covenantal relationship that is their inheritance.

God made it clear from the moment that Moses descended the mountain with the Ten Commandments, which are the heart and soul of how the children of Israel were to conduct themselves with God and with each other, that: 

You must worship no other gods, for the Lord, whose very name is Jealous, is a God who is jealous about his relationship with you. (Ex. 34:14)

Strong's Concordance says that the word is Hebrew for "jealous" is qanna and means that God will have no rival, and will destroy those who depart from Him. 

Before you assume God is being rather petulant and unforgiving, realize you are seeing Him through a fallen lens. 

Think of God in the Trinity, where He has an unbroken fellowship of adoration with His Son and with the Spirit. 

When God created Adam and Eve, He made a kind of replica of the Trinity: He had an unbroken fellowship of adoration with His children. His children gazed lovingly into His eyes, with no other desire than to walk with Him and hear His voice, marveling in His creation and in each other. 

Sin changed all of that.

Now, because of how sin has stained our love and fellowship with God and with one another, we see God's adamancy as too harsh and rather scary.  

God desires us.  When we even consider a rival to the Lover of our souls, we are allowing sin to dictate the terms of our engagement with God.  Rivals cause us to lose our first Love. Why wouldn't God be  angry and anguished? 

How do we respond when we find out that the one we love is being unfaithful? We are angry, hurt, stunned and feel utterly betrayed. Betrayal is a kind of repudiation:  I no longer care about you.  I have given myself to a rival.  What we had, who you are, where we were going and what we shared no longer matters. 

If we grieve over someone we love being unfaithful, why do we expect God to pat us on the head? God uses the metaphor of being Israel's husband for a reason.  

God's love is not harsh or scary.  It is devoted. Uncompromised. Deep. All-encompassing. 

God speaks through Hosea not only to bring Israel back but to celebrate the coming restoration. He says:

The Lord said to me, “Go, show your love to your wife again, though she is loved by another man and is an adulteress. Love her as the Lord loves the Israelites, though they turn to other gods and love the sacred raisin cakes.”

So I bought her for fifteen shekels of silver and about a homer and a lethek of barley. Then I told her, “You are to live with me many days; you must not be a prostitute or be intimate with any man, and I will behave the same way toward you.” 

For the Israelites will live many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or sacred stones, without ephod or household gods. Afterward the Israelites will return and seek the Lord their God and David their king. They will come trembling to the Lord and to his blessings in the last days. (3:1-5)

Gomer is now probably in debt. Hosea must now redeem her.  So her sin has lead her into an ever deeper literal bondage.  

So has Israel.  They love the gods and the raisin cakes:  They are now indebted, if you will, to follow the rituals that the gods of the Canaanites demand: child sacrifice and temple prostitution. They are in bondage to a set of values that the society demands they enact. Yes, they may do it willingly, but what if they have qualms the day they are to show up with their child who is to be put into the arms of a fiery bronze god?  When they hear their wee one scream has its tiny body touches down on the scalding hot metal? 

The pain.  The guilt.  The questioning.  Having to smile and say, "Praise Molech." Walking home with empty arms and retuning to the house where the little baby bed is now empty.  If that is not bondage, I don't know what is.

But God is faithful. God promises a king who will defeat His enemies and bring Israel back to a place of worship, faithfulness and adoration. 

David will be a representative of the One to come.  Let's travel to the day of when Jesus confronts the woman caught in adultery.  She is brought before Him.  She is in bondage to sin:  She is paid by men for sex and in her degraded state, is dragged before Jesus by her gleeful detractors (are any of them customers who are trying to hide their sin by acting righteous, until the next time they come a-calling?) 

Jesus confronts sin on all of its ugly levels. First, her detractors:

They kept demanding an answer, so he stood up again and said, “All right, but let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone!” (John 8:6-8) 

The religious leaders and the crowds drop their stones.  They know, deep in their hearts, they are not perfect.  But do they realize just how enslaved they are? Judgement, anger, self-righteous, and wanting to trap Jesus as opposed to learning from Him has enslaved their hearts and minds.  They use this poor woman to discredit Him.  All done, I might add, in the name of serving their version of God. 

Next, Jesus confronts the bondage that the woman is in:  

Then Jesus stood up again and said to the woman, “Where are your accusers? Didn’t even one of them condemn you?”

“No, Lord,” she said.

And Jesus said, “Neither do I. Go and sin no more.” (8:10-11) 

Wait a minute!  She calls Him, "Lord."  Not Rabbi.  Not Jesus. But Lord.  She has repented right then and there:  She is facing the true Lover of her soul, and she senses His disappointment in her sin, but also she feels His redemptive call in His voice. 

That what God in Hosea was trying to do and what Jesus was trying to do: Acknowledge your wandering but focus on returning.

Paul puts it another way:

Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. (1 Cor. 13: 6-7)

God is love. So let's capture this idea even more deeply: God does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. He always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Amen.