August 14, Hosea 5
"I know Ephraim, and Israel is not hidden from me; for now, O Ephraim, you have played the whore; Israel is defiled. Their deeds do not permit them to return to their God. For the spirit of whoredom is within them, and they know not the LORD." - Hosea 5:3-4
When a visitor to New England and especially Maine asks a local citizen for directions, the New Englander might tell them, "You can't get there from here." When that line made its way into a movie several decades ago, it became a popular way of explaining that a destination or goal was either far away or hard to find.
Israel was in a similar predicament to the lost traveler who hears that he can't get where he wants to go from his current location. They arrived at the place they were in the days of Hosea because their unfaithful idolatrous hearts had turned away from God to embrace idols. They persisted in their sinful thoughts and actions until God (who saw what they did and knew their hearts) said that their deeds did not permit them to return to the Lord. He said the "spirit of whoredom" was within them. When God examined them, they could not plead the Fifth Amendment and refuse to testify, lest they incriminate themselves with their words. Their thoughts, as well as their deeds, testified that they were faithless, prideful covenant breakers.
The northern kingdom of Israel reached that sad point of no return when they followed their wicked leaders. Jeroboam had introduced calf worship and set up a false priesthood after ten of the twelve tribes rebelled against Rehoboam and formed a separate nation. The evil rulers and the counterfeit priests led the people to abandon any semblance of holiness to the Lord to immerse themselves in pagan idolatry. They broke their covenant vows to God, and defiled themselves with vulgar acts of idol worship. They raised godless children who did not know the Lord. They resisted admonitions to return, and persecuted the prophets who warned them and pleaded with them to turn back to God. Their thoughts and lives were a toxic mix of idolatry, pride, ignorance, indulgence and injustice.
When the inevitable consequences began to affect them, they saw their sickness. The Israelites went with sacrifices to seek the Lord, but they could not find him. He had withdrawn from them in their ungodliness. They realized they were in trouble. But instead of returning to God, they went to Assyria (the same Assyria that would destroy them a couple of decades later) to plead for help, but no human being can save himself or others from God's hand of punishment. When God withdrew from them, he allowed their enemy to devour them and make their cities desolate. What the prophets warned came to pass.
The contagion of idolatry spread into the southern kingdom of Judah. They too would embrace idols, and about a hundred years later find themselves in the same impossible dilemma that their sister Israel had experienced. These people were supposed to be holy to the Lord. But they had abandoned God and destroyed themselves. They reached the point which the author of Chronicles called the sad state of "no more remedy."
You and I should be warned by their horrible example to honor our commitment to Jesus as the Lord of our lives. We should not let illicit affection for anyone or anything steal our heart's first love away from God. When someone walks away from his covenant vows to God and embraces that which is no God, he may reach the place that Jesus described as an eternal sin (because they are past repentance). John warned about the "sin unto death." The writer of Hebrews said people who came to know Christ and then forsook him could reach a place where it was impossible to renew them to repentance. He also warned that a person who persisted in willful sin could reach a place where there was no longer a sacrifice for sin.
Maybe you’ve been in some situations where it seemed you couldn’t get where you wanted to go from where you were. But especially in spiritual matters, we must be vigilant about our thoughts, words and actions. We must not allow our flesh or our pride to draw us away from full reliance on God. We cannot afford to reach such a state of hardened rebellion and disobedience that we can't get back to God from the broken place where we find ourselves.
Copyright © 2024 by Michael B. McElroy. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Today in God's Word—August 2024
East Tallassee Church of Christ
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