Hosea

Double Iniquity.

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Samaria’s king shall perish like a twig on the face of the waters. The high places of Aven, the sin of Israel, shall be destroyed. Thorn and thistle shall grow up on their altars, and they shall say to the mountains, “Cover us,” and to the hills, “Fall on us.”

From the days of Gibeah, you have sinned, O Israel; there they have continued. Shall not the war against the unjust overtake them in Gibeah? When I please, I will discipline them, and nations shall be gathered against them when they are bound up for their double iniquity.

Ephraim was a trained calf that loved to thresh, and I spared her fair neck; but I will put Ephraim to the yoke; Judah must plow; Jacob must harrow for himself. Sow for yourselves righteousness; reap steadfast love; break up your fallow ground, for it is the time to seek the Lord, that he may come and rain righteousness upon you. – Hosea 10:7-12 ESV

Over in the book of Jeremiah, God accused the nations of Judah of having done something even the pagan nations would have never considered. “Has a nation changed its gods, even though they are no gods? But my people have changed their glory for that which does not profit” (Jeremiah 2:11 ESV). Even the idol-worshiping pagan nations would have never dreamed of abandoning their false god for another one. And yet, the people of Judah had forsaken the one true God for a plethora of false gods. And God went on to say, “for my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water” (Jeremiah 2:13 ESV). They had turned their backs on God, the source of all life, hope, blessing and fruitfulness. Like a source of clear water in the desert, God was to have been vital to their very existence. But instead of relying on His life-giving sustenance, they turned to man-made sources of help and hope that could never deliver. Like cracked cisterns that could not hold water, their idols would prove to be incapable of meeting the expectations of the people of Judah. They had left God and replaced Him with false gods.

The people of northern nation of Israel were guilty of the very same thing. Which is why God warned them that they would be “bound up for their double iniquity” (Hosea 10:10 ESV). Their destruction was coming at the hands of the Assyrians. Their guilt was long-standing, going all the way back to the events surrounding Gibeah. It was there that the concubine of a visiting Levite was brutally raped and murdered by the men of the town who were actually desirous of having sexual relationships with the Levite. Like Sodom and Gomorrah, this town had become highly immoral and completely corrupt. And God accused the entire nation of having followed the example of Gibeah. Immorality, corruption, idolatry, and moral decay had spread throughout the nation. Now God was going to discipline them for their unfaithfulness.

The king and his capital city of Samaria would be destroyed. The high places where the Israelites worshiped their false gods would be abandoned and overgrown with weeds. The city of Bethel, which meant “house of God” would become known as Beth-aven (house of wickedness or vanity). They had abandoned God and now they would discover what it was like to have God abandon them. They would find out what it was like to no longer have His hand protecting them or providing for them.

God compared Israel to a young heifer used for threshing grain. In the early days of His relationship with the nation of Israel, they had enjoyed a unique and relatively easy relationship with Him. Threshing involved a cow or ox walking over the recently harvested wheat in order to separate the edible grain from the chaff. The cow was unmuzzled and free to eat the grain as it worked. It was rewarded for its labor. But now Israel was going to learn what it was like to be under the yoke of oppression, laboring under the hand of its new master, the Assyrians. Rather than threshing grain for God, they would plow for their oppressors. But God told them it was not too late. Even in their captivity, they could seek Him. So He encouraged them, “Plant the good seeds of righteousness, and you will harvest a crop of love. Plow up the hard ground of your hearts, for now is the time to seek the Lord, that he may come and shower righteousness upon you” (Hosea 10:12 NLT). While living in exile in Assyria, they could seek God. They could choose to do His will. As they endured God’s loving discipline, they could respond in repentance, turning from their idolatry and renewing their commitment to and dependence upon Him.

They had committed two sins: They had forsaken God and then tried to replace Him with gods of their own making. And while God, because of His holiness and justice, was required to punish them for their sins, He was also willing to forgive and restore them. But they must willingly return to Him. They must forsake their false gods and return to the fountain of living water. It was Jesus who said, “Anyone who is thirsty may come to me! Anyone who believes in me may come and drink! For the Scriptures declare, ‘Rivers of living water will flow from his heart’” (John 7:37 NLT). He told the woman at the well, “Anyone who drinks this water will soon become thirsty again. But those who drink the water I give will never be thirsty again. It becomes a fresh, bubbling spring within them, giving them eternal life” (John 4:13-14 NLT). God is all about restoration and renewal. He wants to redeem the lost and restore the wandering. So He calls. He invites. 

“Is anyone thirsty? Come and drink—even if you have no money! Come, take your choice of wine or milk—it’s all free! Why spend your money on food that does not give you strength? Why pay for food that does you no good? Listen to me, and you will eat what is good. You will enjoy the finest food. Come to me with your ears wide open. Listen, and you will find life. I will make an everlasting covenant with you. I will give you all the unfailing love I promised to David.” – Isaiah 55:1-3 NLT

False Gods. False Hearts.

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Israel is a luxuriant vine that yields its fruit. The more his fruit increased, the more altars he built; as his country improved, he improved his pillars. Their heart is false; now they must bear their guilt. The Lord will break down their altars and destroy their pillars.

For now they will say: “We have no king, for we do not fear the Lord; and a king—what could he do for us?”  They utter mere words; with empty oaths they make covenants; so judgment springs up like poisonous weeds in the furrows of the field. The inhabitants of Samaria tremble for the calf of Beth-aven. Its people mourn for it, and so do its idolatrous priests—those who rejoiced over it and over its glory—for it has departed from them. The thing itself shall be carried to Assyria as tribute to the great king. Ephraim shall be put to shame, and Israel shall be ashamed of his idol. – Hosea 10:1-6 ESV

The nation of Israel as a prolific and fruitful grapevine was a common image in the Old Testament. The psalmist wrote, “You brought us from Egypt like a grapevine; you drove away the pagan nations and transplanted us into your land. You cleared the ground for us,
and we took root and filled the land. Our shade covered the mountains; our branches covered the mighty cedars. We spread our branches west to the Mediterranean Sea; our shoots spread east to the Euphrates River” (Psalm 80:8-11 NLT). And over the years, Israel had been prolific, but also unfaithful, which led God to declare, “But I was the one who planted you, choosing a vine of the purest stock—the very best. How did you grow into this corrupt wild vine?” (Jeremiah 2:21 ESV). It seemed that the more God blessed Israel, the more unfaithful the nation became. As they grew and prospered, the number of temples to false gods, shrines and high places they built. They were using the land given to them by God to build places of worship for other gods. They were using the grain, wine, and flocks that God had graciously provided for them to make sacrifices to false gods. Their ingratitude was shocking and their audacity was unbelievable.

God was going to forcibly remove their altars by removing them from the land. He would see to it that all their places of worship were destroyed and the people taken captive to Assyria. Their false gods would not protect them. Their allies would prove to be helpless in saving them. The day was coming when they would no longer have a king. Hoshea would be the last king over the northern kingdom of Israel. We can read of what happened in 2 Kings.

King Shalmaneser of Assyria attacked King Hoshea, so Hoshea was forced to pay heavy tribute to Assyria. But Hoshea stopped paying the annual tribute and conspired against the king of Assyria by asking King So of Egypt to help him shake free of Assyria’s power. When the king of Assyria discovered this treachery, he seized Hoshea and put him in prison. – 2 Kings 17:3-4 NLT

Even in defeat, the king of Israel remained stubborn and somehow thought he could escape the looming destruction, even though it had been decreed by God Himself. The fall of Israel would be great.

Then the king of Assyria invaded the entire land, and for three years he besieged the city of Samaria. Finally, in the ninth year of King Hoshea’s reign, Samaria fell, and the people of Israel were exiled to Assyria. They were settled in colonies in Halah, along the banks of the Habor River in Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes.

This disaster came upon the people of Israel because they worshiped other gods. They sinned against the Lord their God, who had brought them safely out of Egypt and had rescued them from the power of Pharaoh, the king of Egypt. They had followed the practices of the pagan nations the Lord had driven from the land ahead of them, as well as the practices the kings of Israel had introduced. The people of Israel had also secretly done many things that were not pleasing to the Lord their God. They built pagan shrines for themselves in all their towns, from the smallest outpost to the largest walled city. They set up sacred pillars and Asherah poles at the top of every hill and under every green tree. They offered sacrifices on all the hilltops, just like the nations the Lord had driven from the land ahead of them. So the people of Israel had done many evil things, arousing the Lord’s anger. Yes, they worshiped idols, despite the Lord’s specific and repeated warnings. – 2 Kings 17:5-12 NLT

Sadly, when all this eventually took place, the people of Israel would mourn the loss of their idols. There would be no repentance, no sorrow over their sins. They would cry over their missing idols, even though these false gods had done nothing to protect them or prevent their defeat at the hands of the Assyrians. This reveals just how hardened their hearts had become. Over and over again, God had sent His prophets to call the people back to Him. But they had repeatedly refused to listen. “They rejected his decrees and the covenant he had made with their ancestors, and they despised all his warnings. They worshiped worthless idols, so they became worthless themselves. They followed the example of the nations around them, disobeying the Lord’s command not to imitate them” (2 Kings 17:15 NLT). So their lack of repentance led to their rejection by God.

Things had reached an all-time low in Israel. “They even sacrificed their own sons and daughters in the fire. They consulted fortune-tellers and practiced sorcery and sold themselves to evil, arousing the Lord’s anger” (2 Kings 17:17 NLT). But it had not happened over night. This had been a slow, steady decline that had begun with a refusal to obey God. And their failure to obey God was based on a lack of trust in His word. They had not believed that what He had said was true. They had not trusted that what He had promised He would do. Their disobedience had begun with disbelief and distrust. And that is how it always goes. Our failure to take God at His word creates doubt and the enemy works diligently to turn that doubt into disbelief. And soon our disbelief turns into unbelief, and before we know it we are placing our hope and trust in something or someone other than God. We look elsewhere for our satisfaction, security, safety, and salvation. Since we doubt God’s goodness, we seek it elsewhere. Since we don’t believe God will come through for us, we sell our affections to the highest bidder. Like Hosea’s unfaithful wife, Gomer, we end up prostituting ourselves to false lovers – turning our back on the One who loves us more than we could ever know. And while we may think this could never happen to us, we must always recognize that our hearts have a natural propensity for unfaithfulness. We can easily allow our disbelief to turn into disobedience. Our hearts can stray and our allegiances can shift from God to false gods. Which is why we need to seek Him constantly and trust Him diligently.

The God-less Life.

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Like grapes in the wilderness, I found Israel. Like the first fruit on the fig tree in its first season, I saw your fathers. But they came to Baal-peor and consecrated themselves to the thing of shame, and became detestable like the thing they loved. Ephraim’s glory shall fly away like a bird—no birth, no pregnancy, no conception! Even if they bring up children, I will bereave them till none is left. Woe to them when I depart from them! Ephraim, as I have seen, was like a young palm planted in a meadow; but Ephraim must lead his children out to slaughter. Give them, O Lord—what will you give? Give them a miscarrying womb and dry breasts.

Every evil of theirs is in Gilgal; there I began to hate them. Because of the wickedness of their deeds I will drive them out of my house. I will love them no more; all their princes are rebels.

Ephraim is stricken; their root is dried up; they shall bear no fruit. Even though they give birth, I will put their beloved children to death. My God will reject them because they have not listened to him; they shall be wanderers among the nations. – Hosea 9:10-17 ESV

To fully understand the nature of these verses, we have to take a look at what happened at Baal-peor. God is looking back at the history of Israel, long before the split of the kingdom, and condemning them for their long track record of unfaithfulness. Even while still wandering in the wilderness, the people of Israel repeatedly proved themselves incapable of remaining faithful to God, worshiping the gods of the pagan nations instead. Moses recorded what happened at Baal-peor.

While the Israelites were camped at Acacia Grove, some of the men defiled themselves by having sexual relations with local Moabite women. These women invited them to attend sacrifices to their gods, so the Israelites feasted with them and worshiped the gods of Moab. In this way, Israel joined in the worship of Baal of Peor, causing the Lord’s anger to blaze against his people.

The Lord issued the following command to Moses: “Seize all the ringleaders and execute them before the Lord in broad daylight, so his fierce anger will turn away from the people of Israel.”

So Moses ordered Israel’s judges, “Each of you must put to death the men under your authority who have joined in worshiping Baal of Peor.” – Numbers 25:1-5 NLT

It was at Baal-peor that they “consecrated themselves to the thing of shame, and became detestable like the thing they loved” (Hosea 9:10 ESV). There had been a time when God saw Israel as delightful as grapes in the wilderness or the first figs of the season. They were His chosen. He had set them apart as His own. But they proved to be unfaithful and disobedient. They did not fully appreciate all that He had done for them. And they repeatedly and willfully gave their hearts, resources, trust and attention to false gods.

As a result, God determined to bring upon them all the curses He had promised. Their days of fruitfulness were over. He was going to remove His hand of blessing and they would discover what life without Him was really like. They would also learn just how impotent and useless their false gods really were. While the people of Israel had been able to procreate and proliferate easily, those days were over. Conceiving children was going to become increasingly difficult and for those who were able to bear children, they would find that the infant mortality rate was radically increased. While we may find this news harsh and difficult to understand, we must realize that God was simply fulfilling what He had promised. He was removing His hand of blessing. They had chosen to live their lives without Him and now they were going to discover exactly what life without God was like.

Too often, we fail to realize just how vital a role God plays in our lives. We don’t recognize His hand of mercy on our lives. We don’t appreciate the grace He shows us each and every day. And like the people of Israel, we begin to take Him for granted. We forget Him. Rather than worship Him as indispensable to our lives, we give our time, resources, attention and faith to other things. We end up worshiping our own brand of false gods. And then God allows us to discover the ramifications of placing our trust in anything or anyone other than Him. If we want to place our trust in money and materialism, God will allow us to find out just how unreliable they can be as gods. If we think that our own intellect and talents can make a better gods, we will soon discover just how powerless and impotent they are. When God removes His hand of blessing, we are left defenseless, powerless and hopeless.

God warned the people of Israel, “It will be a terrible day when I turn away and leave you alone” (Hosea 9:12 NLT). And Hosea paints a vivid and disturbing picture of the fate of Israel when God chooses to abandon them to their own desires: “My God will reject the people of Israel because they will not listen or obey. They will be wanderers, homeless among the nations” (Hosea 9:17 NLT). God will simply give the people of Israel what they seem to want more than anything: independence from Him. But they will find out just how dangerous that desire can be. The only thing that set Israel apart from all the other nations was the presence of God in their lives. If He removed Himself and His hand of blessing, they would become just like all the other nations of the earth. It is God and His undeserved grace and mercy that sets us apart. Without Him, we are nothing. We don’t deserve His blessings. He is not obligated to provide for us, as if He somehow owes us for all that we have done for Him. His goodness is undeserved. His grace is unmerited. And our gratefulness and faithfulness should be unprecedented. And yet, like Israel, we can find it so easy to believe that we can somehow survive and even thrive without God’s help. We believe we can make it through this life without His input and apart from His strength. Our stubborn self-sufficiency and prideful desire to run our own lives can cause us to reject His will and attempt to live according to our own. And sometimes God allows us to have exactly what we want. But what a painful lesson it is to learn that life without Him is never what we think it will be. The God-less life is ultimately a joyless life. The man who removes God from the center of his life will discover he has no life at all.

Evicted From the Land of Promise.

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Rejoice not, O Israel! Exult not like the peoples; for you have played the whore, forsaking your God. You have loved a prostitute’s wages on all threshing floors. Threshing floor and wine vat shall not feed them, and the new wine shall fail them. They shall not remain in the land of the Lord, but Ephraim shall return to Egypt, and they shall eat unclean food in Assyria. They shall not pour drink offerings of wine to the Lord, and their sacrifices shall not please him. It shall be like mourners’ bread to them; all who eat of it shall be defiled; for their bread shall be for their hunger only; it shall not come to the house of the Lord. What will you do on the day of the appointed festival, and on the day of the feast of the Lord? For behold, they are going away from destruction; but Egypt shall gather them; Memphis shall bury them.

Nettles shall possess their precious things of silver; thorns shall be in their tents. The days of punishment have come; the days of recompense have come; Israel shall know it. The prophet is a fool; the man of the spirit is mad, because of your great iniquity and great hatred. The prophet is the watchman of Ephraim with my God; yet a fowler’s snare is on all his ways, and hatred in the house of his God. They have deeply corrupted themselves as in the days of Gibeah: he will remember their iniquity; he will punish their sins. – Hosea 9:1-9 ESV

The land of Canaan had been meant to be a land of promise, blessing and abundant provision. Even before they had entered it and taken possession of it, Moses had told them, “The Lord your God will soon bring you into the land he swore to give you when he made a vow to your ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. It is a land with large, prosperous cities that you did not build. The houses will be richly stocked with goods you did not produce. You will draw water from cisterns you did not dig, and you will eat from vineyards and olive trees you did not plant. When you have eaten your fill in this land, be careful not to forget the Lord, who rescued you from slavery in the land of Egypt. You must fear the Lord your God and serve him” (Deuteronomy 6:10-13 NLT). God had kept His word and had given them the land as their possession, but they had forgotten all about Him. They had failed to fear Him and serve Him. So now, God was bringing curses upon them for their disobedience. The land that had once provided them with abundant provision would no longer do so. “So now your harvests will be too small to feed you. There will be no grapes for making new wine” (Hosea 9:2 NLT). Not only that, they would no longer be able to stay in the land. They would be forcibly removed by the Assyrians and taken into captivity. They would experience the indignity of slavery in a foreign land just like their ancestors had. There in the land of Assyria, they would attempt to appease God with sacrifices and offerings, but it would do them no good. It would be too little, too late. Hosea warned them, “None of your sacrifices there will please him. They will be unclean, like food touched by a person in mourning. All who present such sacrifices will be defiled. They may eat this food themselves, but they may not offer it to the Lord{ (Hosea 9:4 NLT).

Even if they could somehow escape the Assyrians, they would suffer defeat at the hands of the Egyptians. There was no way out. Their destruction was inescapably inevitable. For years, they had rejected the warnings of God’s prophets. Men like Hosea had been pleading with them to repent and return to the Lord, but they had said, “The prophets are crazy and the inspired men are fools!” (Hosea 9:7 NLT). They could not imagine that God would actually destroy them, because they were His chosen people. They wrongly believed that they were untouchable and immune to God’s judgment. And yet, God had warned them for generations that failure to obey His commands would have dire consequences. And He had given them ample warning and more than enough opportunities to repent. But God’s sad prognosis was, “The things my people do are as depraved as what they did in Gibeah long ago. God will not forget. He will surely punish them for their sins” (Hosea 9:9 NLT). To understand just how bad God viewed their sinfulness, we have to go back and see what happened in Gibeah. A Levite and his concubine were traveling and stopped in the town of Gibeah to rest. They were greeted by an old man in the town square and he encouraged them to stay with him, but not to remain at overnight night in the open. That night, some men from the town surrounded the house.

While they were enjoying themselves, a crowd of troublemakers from the town surrounded the house. They began beating at the door and shouting to the old man, “Bring out the man who is staying with you so we can have sex with him.”  The old man stepped outside to talk to them. “No, my brothers, don’t do such an evil thing. For this man is a guest in my house, and such a thing would be shameful. Here, take my virgin daughter and this man’s concubine. I will bring them out to you, and you can abuse them and do whatever you like. But don’t do such a shameful thing to this man.” But they wouldn’t listen to him. So the Levite took hold of his concubine and pushed her out the door. The men of the town abused her all night, taking turns raping her until morning. Finally, at dawn they let her go. – Judges 19:22-25 NLT

This story is very reminiscent of what took place in Sodom and Gomorrah during the days of Abraham. Gibeah, an Israelite town, had become as immoral and corrupt as Sodom. God ended up destroying Gibeah for what had happened. And now Hosea warns that God viewed the entire nation of Israel as evil as He had the people of Gibeah.

There are times when we believe our sins are not all that bad. We somehow think that what we are doing is not offensive to God and we justify our actions as somehow acceptable and tolerable to Him. But God desires holiness and He has given us His Spirit to make the life of holiness possible. He wants to bless us and abundantly provide for us. But like the people of Israel, we can be guilty of turning our backs on Him, rejecting His will in favor of our own. We can become disobedient and stubbornly resistant to His warnings to return to Him. Yes, He is gracious and merciful. God is ready and willing to forgive. But we must always understand that God cannot tolerate sin. As believers, we will never have to suffer the penalty of sin, because of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on our behalf. But we will always have to face the consequences of our sinful behavior. We can miss out on the blessings of God and fail to enjoy the joy, peace, comfort and provision He so richly offers us. Like the Israelites being evicted from the land of promise, we can find ourselves living in exile from His blessings and suffering the consequences of our stubborn refusal to live in submission to His Spirit and according to His gracious will for our lives.

Forgetting God.

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For they sow the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind. The standing grain has no heads; it shall yield no flour; if it were to yield, strangers would devour it. Israel is swallowed up; already they are among the nations as a useless vessel. For they have gone up to Assyria, a wild donkey wandering alone; Ephraim has hired lovers. Though they hire allies among the nations, I will soon gather them up. And the king and princes shall soon writhe because of the tribute. Because Ephraim has multiplied altars for sinning, they have become to him altars for sinning. Were I to write for him my laws by the ten thousands, they would be regarded as a strange thing. As for my sacrificial offerings, they sacrifice meat and eat it, but the Lord does not accept them. Now he will remember their iniquity and punish their sins; they shall return to Egypt. For Israel has forgotten his Maker and built palaces, and Judah has multiplied fortified cities; so I will send a fire upon his cities, and it shall devour her strongholds. – Hosea 8:7-14 ESV

Futility. That is the message in these verses. Sowing to the wind. Headless grain. No flour. Useless vessels. Stubborn wild donkeys. Impotent allies. Cash-strapped kings. An ungrateful, unfaithful nation.

Years of idolatry and rejection of God’s grace, goodness and mercy were going to catch up to the nation of Israel. Their stubborn unwillingness to keep their covenant with God was going to result in their own destruction. While their kings were busy building palaces and erecting idols to their false gods, God was plotting their destruction at the hands of the Assyrians. Thinking they could somehow prevent the inevitable from happening, they made alliances with other nations, like Egypt. And the irony of that should not escape us. They were turning to their former slave masters as their source of deliverance.  Little did they know that they would end up back in slavery just like they had experienced in Egypt, but this time in Assyria. Their sad, sordid history was about to come full circle.

They had had their chance. When they entered the land of Canaan after 40-plus years of wandering in the wilderness, God had commanded them:

When you drive out the nations that live there, you must destroy all the places where they worship their gods—high on the mountains, up on the hills, and under every green tree. Break down their altars and smash their sacred pillars. Burn their Asherah poles and cut down their carved idols. Completely erase the names of their gods! – Deuteronomy 12:2-3 NLT

But rather than follow God’s orders, they did things their way. They failed to rid the land of idols. They intermarried with the pagan nations, accepting their false gods as their own. They compromised their standards and treated God’s commands with contempt. Somehow they thought they knew better than God. They rationalized their behavior and justified their attempts to model their lives after the nations that occupied the land. And now they were going to have to pay for their insolence and insubordination. God’s laws had become superfluous and somehow optional. They felt no obligation to obey God. They saw no compelling reason to believe that God would keep His promise to bring curses on them if they failed to obey His commands. But they would soon discover just how wrong they were.

Sure, they were still offering sacrifices to Yahweh, but not on His terms. In fact, their offerings to God were little more than reasons to enjoy a good meal. They would sacrifice a bull or a lamb, not with a mind to receive forgiveness for their sins, but to satisfy their own sinful appetites. Feasting had taken precedence over forgiveness. Self-gratification was more important to them than God’s grace and mercy. Israel had forgotten its Maker (Hosea 8:14). They had turned their back on God. They had long ago forgotten His miraculous deliverance of them from slavery in Egypt. His provision for and protection of them during their wilderness years was a distant memory. The memories of their God-ordained conquest of the land of Canaan had faded a long time ago. The glory days of King David and the nation’s preeminence as a major power were things of the past. They had long ago become God-less and self-sufficient. They were God-followers in name only. In fact, their sinfulness had become so bad that they were actually worse than the pagan nations around them. God would later say of the southern nation of Judah, “You people have behaved worse than your neighbors and have refused to obey my decrees and regulations. You have not even lived up to the standards of the nations around you” (Ezekiel 5:7 NLT). God was appalled at the obstinate attitude of both Israel and Judah. Their unfaithfulness to Him was unprecedented. The prophet Jeremiah wrote, “Has any nation ever traded its gods for new ones, even though they are not gods at all? Yet my people have exchanged their glorious God for worthless idols!” (Jeremiah 2:11 NLT). Even the pagan nations would never have considered turning their backs on their gods. They were more faithful to their false gods than Israel and Judah had been to the one true God.

The Israelites were guilty of forgetting God. It had begun with them taking Him for granted. He was their God and they were His people. They felt a certain sense of security and smug superiority. They somehow believed God was obligated to care for them and to continue to forgive them, no matter what they did. The sacrifical system had become little more than a get-out-of-jail free card, requiring God to forgive them whether they were repentant or not. They thought nothing of offending God by their actions. Worshiping false gods just seemed to make common sense. Putting their trust in foreign governments for protection was just good governmental policy. Intermarrying with the pagan nations around them was profitable and preferable to God’s unrealistic policy of isolation. They had become wiser than God. And in time, God’s goodness, holiness, love, power and mercy faded from their memories. They forgot God. And it’s a lot easier to do than we might think. Because God is invisible, He can easily become indiscernible. Since we can’t see Him, we can easily forget about Him. We forget about His love. His holiness becomes a faded memory. His promises of future blessings become overshadowed by present pleasures and the pressing problems of the day. When we forget our Maker, we lose sight of our purpose in life. We end up seeking fulfillment from the things of this world. We begin to live by sight instead of by faith. The desire for worldliness replaces the pursuit of holiness. But we can rest assured that while we may occasionally forget God, He never forgets us.

It Is Not God.

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Set the trumpet to your lips! One like a vulture is over the house of the Lord, because they have transgressed my covenant and rebelled against my law. To me they cry, “My God, we — Israel — know you.” Israel has spurned the good; the enemy shall pursue him. They made kings, but not through me. They set up princes, but I knew it not. With their silver and gold they made idols for their own destruction. I have spurned your calf, O Samaria. My anger burns against them. How long will they be incapable of innocence? For it is from Israel; a craftsman made it; it is not God. The calf of Samaria shall be broken to pieces. – Hosea 8:1-6 ESV

Ever since the split of the kingdom, the northern nation of Israel had made a habit of ignoring God, transgressing His covenant and rebelling against His law. It had all begun with King Jeroboam’s disastrous decision to make his own gods, in an attempt to keep the people from going back to Jerusalem in the south to worship.

So the king took counsel and made two calves of gold. And he said to the people, “You have gone up to Jerusalem long enough. Behold your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.” And he set one in Bethel, and the other he put in Dan. Then this thing became a sin, for the people went as far as Dan to be before one. He also made temples on high places and appointed priests from among all the people, who were not of the Levites. – 1 Kings 12:28-31 ESV

Jeroboam had deemed himself a god-maker and led the entire nation into idolatry. And now, years later, after decades of unfaithfulness to God, the Assyrians were poised, ready to wreak destruction on the people of Israel – as part of God’s punishment for their blatant forsaking of Him as their god. But now that their world was falling apart, they had suddenly decided to call on God, saying , “My God, we — Israel — know you.” But nothing could have been further from the truth. Had they truly known God, they would not have committed the blatant acts of unfaithfulness that had marked their brief and less-than-stellar history. They had appointed kings without God’s approval. They had set over themselves princes and leaders without seeking God’s direction. And the original two golden calves had not been the only idols they erected and worshiped. Idols to Baal and other false gods were located throughout the kingdom.

But God condemned their idols, made with human hands, and He declared, “It is not God.” They were going to discover the simple truth behind that statement as they called out to their false gods in hopes of escaping the wrath of the Assyrian army. And when their idols failed to provide them with a miracle of deliverance, they would finally turn to God. But it would prove too little, too late. Their return would not be heartfelt and would lack true repentance. Their sorrow was not for their sins against God, but because of their circumstances. They weren’t repentant. They were simply remorseful. And their calling on God was nothing more than a last-minute attempt to escape the disaster looming over them.

It is not God. That is the key lesson they were to learn. Their false gods were not gods at all. They were man-made objects lacking life and devoid of any ability to provide help or hope. Their golden calves would end up broken and destroyed. Their places of worship would be torn down. Their reliance upon Egypt and other foreign powers would prove futile. Their real hope should have been in God alone. As the psalmist wrote, “Some nations boast of their chariots and horses, but we boast in the name of the LORD our God” (Psalms 20:7 NLT). The prophet Isaiah warned against placing your trust in anything other than God. “What sorrow awaits those who look to Egypt for help, trusting their horses, chariots, and charioteers and depending on the strength of human armies instead of looking to the LORD, the Holy One of Israel” (Isaiah 31:1 NLT).

But how easy it is to trust in what we can see. How quickly we can turn to those things that appear to be real and worthy of our trust – instead of trusting in God. But as God’s people, we are to place all our confidence in Him. He is to be our strength, our comfort, protector and provider. But God is not to be treated like an in-case-of-emergency button. He doesn’t want to be our go-to God when all else fails. And yet, so often, we turn to God only after we have exhausted all other options. When we no longer have any tricks up our sleeves, we reach out to him for help. Our desperation prompts us to display an insincere form of remorse. But what God wants is true repentance, a brokenness of heart that causes us to reach out to Him in love and sincere sorrow. David said it well. “The sacrifice you desire is a broken spirit. You will not reject a broken and repentant heart, O God” (Psalm 51:17 NLT). The prophet Joel provided a picture of the kind of response God desires from His people:

That is why the Lord says, “Turn to me now, while there is time. Give me your hearts. Come with fasting, weeping, and mourning. Don’t tear your clothing in your grief, but tear your hearts instead.” Return to the Lord your God, for he is merciful and compassionate, slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love. He is eager to relent and not punish. Who knows? Perhaps he will give you a reprieve, sending you a blessing instead of this curse. Perhaps you will be able to offer grain and wine to the Lord your God as before. – Joel 2:12-14 NLT

God desires hearts that are sincerely sorrowful over their sin. He longs for His people to return to Him in heartfelt repentance, legitimately willing to turn from worshiping false gods and ready to place their hope in Him. If our only goal is to escape His judgment, we miss the point. If our repentance is not motivated by His love and a desire to be restored to a right relationship with Him, we are treating Him as nothing more than a get-out-of-jail-free card. Sometimes our difficulties and trials are an opportunity for us to realize that the thing we have been worshiping is not a god. The things we have been putting all our hope in is incapable of delivering what we have been expecting. It is not God. But He is. And He wants to be the God of our lives, providing hope, healing, help, and an ever-increasing holiness of character in our lives.

False Gods. False Hope.

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They do not cry to me from the heart, but they wail upon their beds; for grain and wine they gash themselves; they rebel against me. Although I trained and strengthened their arms, yet they devise evil against me. They return, but not upward; they are like a treacherous bow; their princes shall fall by the sword because of the insolence of their tongue. This shall be their derision in the land of Egypt. – Hosea 7:14-16 ESV

These three verses paint a very pitiful picture of the state of the people of Israel. They had become so addicted to their worship of Baal and other false gods, that even in their times of greatest need, they continued to turn to the very gods that were the cause of their problem. Like a addict who takes more drugs to stem off the tremors caused by withdrawal from those drugs, the Israelites couldn’t bring themselves to turn away from their false gods. God describes them as wailing upon their beds in agony and discomfort, but refusing to call on Him. And in order to convince the god, Baal, to give them abundant harvests of wine and grain, they gashed themselves as part of their worship. This should remind us of the encounter between the prophet, Elijah and the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel. Elijah had challenged the 450 prophets of Baal to a contest to prove whose god was the one true God.

“Let two bulls be given to us, and let them choose one bull for themselves and cut it in pieces and lay it on the wood, but put no fire to it. And I will prepare the other bull and lay it on the wood and put no fire to it. And you call upon the name of your god, and I will call upon the name of the Lord, and the God who answers by fire, he is God.” And all the people answered, “It is well spoken.” – 1 Kings 18:23-24 ESV

Elijah allowed the prophets of Baal to go first, reminding them, “Choose for yourselves one bull and prepare it first, for you are many, and call upon the name of your god, but put no fire to it” (1 Kings 18:25 ESV). And we read, “they took the bull that was given them, and they prepared it and called upon the name of Baal from morning until noon, saying, ‘O Baal, answer us!’ But there was no voice, and no one answered. And they limped around the altar that they had made” (1 Kings 18:26 ESV). As Elijah mocked their efforts and the seeming indifference of their god, they amped up their efforts.

And they cried aloud and cut themselves after their custom with swords and lances, until the blood gushed out upon them. And as midday passed, they raved on until the time of the offering of the oblation, but there was no voice. No one answered; no one paid attention. – 1 Kings 18:28-29 ESV

As part of their religious ritual, they cut themselves, mutilating their bodies in an attempt to get the attention of their god. But no one answered. No one paid attention. There was no voice and no response, because there was no god. And God accused the Israelites of calling on Baal in the same pitiful way, cutting and gashing their bodies in an effort to get the attention of a non-existent god. And the sad reality was – all they had to do was call on God in repentance and He would have answered them. He was the one who had “trained and strengthened their arms” (Hosea 7:15 ESV) and yet they refused to turn to Him. In fact, they were guilty of turning to anyone but God in their moments of need. They appealed to their false gods and they sought the aid of pagan nations, in the hopes that these unhealthy alliances would protect them from the threat posed by Assyria.

It would be easy to roll our eyes in disbelief at the stubbornness and stupidity of the Israelites. We could wonder how they could be so hardheaded as to refuse to turn to God when He was the one disciplining them for their rebellion against them. But before we shake our fingers in judgment, we need to take stock of our own lives and see if we are not guilty of the same thing. How many times have we turned to our own “gods” of comfort, and convenience when we have faced difficulty? How often have we looked to something other than God when confronted when confronted with a need of some kind? We find it so easy to turn to our own capabilities and rely on our own intelligence. If we’re sad or despondent, we turn on the TV in the hopes of finding relief, even if just for a moment. If we face a financial need, we find it easier to go into debt to get what we need rather than to ask God for help. And in doing so, we end up worse off than when we started. Our false “saviors” never alleviate or eliminate the problem, they only enhance it. Our sophisticated “gods” give us the same response as the prophets of Baal received: No voice. No answer.

One of the saddest outcomes of all of this is that the lost world laughs at those who call themselves followers of Christ, because our beliefs seem to make no difference in our lives. We claim to believe in God, but we tend to turn to anything and anyone other than God for our help and hope. We go to church on Sunday, but the rest of the week we put our faith in the gods of this world: government, money, materialism, entertainment, health, wealth, work, pleasure, and human reasoning. We chase these false gods, spiritually mutilating and harming ourselves in an effort to make them respond to our calls for help. But God wants us to call on Him. He wants us to trust Him and rely on Him for all our needs. God will not tolerate our affections for other gods. He will not compete for our love. He has proven Himself faithful and loving. He will allow us to chase after our false gods until we realize that they provide neither help or hope, and we return to Him in humble repentance.

 

Diluted, Not Distinct.

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Ephraim mixes himself with the peoples; Ephraim is a cake not turned. Strangers devour his strength, and he knows it not; gray hairs are sprinkled upon him, and he knows it not. The pride of Israel testifies to his face; yet they do not return to the Lord their God, nor seek him, for all this. Ephraim is like a dove, silly and without sense, calling to Egypt, going to Assyria. As they go, I will spread over them my net; I will bring them down like birds of the heavens; I will discipline them according to the report made to their congregation. Woe to them, for they have strayed from me! Destruction to them, for they have rebelled against me! I would redeem them, but they speak lies against me. – Hosea 7:8-13 ESV

God had called Israel to be distinct and set apart as a people. He had given them His moral, ethical and civil code to manage their lives and to differentiate them from all the other nations. When they prepared to enter into the land of Canaan which God had promised to give to Abraham and his descendants, God had made it clear that they were not to intermarry with the inhabitants of the land.

When the Lord your God brings you into the land you are about to enter and occupy, he will clear away many nations ahead of you: the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites. These seven nations are greater and more numerous than you. When the Lord your God hands these nations over to you and you conquer them, you must completely destroy them. Make no treaties with them and show them no mercy. You must not intermarry with them. Do not let your daughters and sons marry their sons and daughters, for they will lead your children away from me to worship other gods. Then the anger of the Lord will burn against you, and he will quickly destroy you. – Deuteronomy 7:1-4 NLT

God had gone on to tell them that He had called them to be His own, not because they were many in number or somehow deserving of His blessing, but simply because He loved them. And if they kept His commands, He would bless them beyond belief.

If you listen to these regulations and faithfully obey them, the Lord your God will keep his covenant of unfailing love with you, as he promised with an oath to your ancestors. He will love you and bless you, and he will give you many children. He will give fertility to your land and your animals.

When you arrive in the land he swore to give your ancestors, you will have large harvests of grain, new wine, and olive oil, and great herds of cattle, sheep, and goats. You will be blessed above all the nations of the earth. – Deuteronomy 7:12-14 NLT

But the people had failed to keep God’s command. Rather than eliminate the pagan nations as God had commanded, they ended up intermingling with them, allowing their sons and daughters to intermarry with them, and ultimately accepting their false gods as their own. Which is why God describes Israel as a half-baked cake, made from an inappropriate combination of ingredients. Not only was the recipe unacceptable to God, Israel, like a pancake cooked on one side, was unappealing and unappetizing. They had become revolting to God.

These other nations had become like “strangers” infiltrating their midst and the people of Israel were oblivious to it. They were like gray hairs that subtly show up on a person’s head without them even noticing it. Over time, Israel had become diluted by the presence of these pagan nations. They lost their distinctiveness, their holiness. God had called them to be different and instead, they had become dangerously diluted by the presence of these pagan nations among them. Not only that, Israel had begun to turn to foreign nations as a source of help and hope. When trouble came, rather than turn to God, they made alliances with foreign powers, seeing them as their source of strength and salvation, instead of God.

God accused Israel of insurrection and rebellion. He said they lied to Him and strayed away from Him. They had failed to obey Him and now God was going to have to punish them, just as He had said He would. They had broken their covenant with God and now, all that God had warned them about was about to happen. Destruction was coming. Rather than doing things God’s way, they had chosen to follow their own path, march to their own drummer, and do things their own way. And they were about to discover that turning your back on God never turns out well. Pride and arrogance had driven their rebellious behavior and now they were going to experience humility and brokenness.

God had chosen the nation of Israel to be His people and to live according to His ways. As His children, they were supposed to stand out from among all the other nations. Their worship was to be different, because their God was different. Their lifestyle was to be distinctively different, because God had given them His law. Their relational interactions were to stand in marked contrast to that of the pagan nations among them, because God had called them to express their love for Him through their love for one another. God was to have been their source of strength, comfort, provision, protection, hope, help, joy, peace and blessing. But they were guilty of turning to anyone and anything other than God to have these needs met. They were guilty both individually and corporately. And God had had enough. God had not deserted them, they had turned their backs on God. He wanted to redeem them, but instead of repenting and turning back to God, they spread lies about Him. Rather than seeking God, they sought their own satisfaction. Rather than listening to their all-wise, all-knowing God, they followed the counsel of men whose wisdom was of this world.

As Paul warned the believers in Corinth: “Stop deceiving yourselves. If you think you are wise by this world’s standards, you need to become a fool to be truly wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness to God. As the Scriptures say, ‘He traps the wise in the snare of their own cleverness’” (1 Corinthians 3:18-19 NLT). Like Israel, we need to understand that God’s call to distinctiveness is non-negotiable. He has set us apart as His people. He desires to bless us and to reveal His power in us and through us. He wants to be our God and to use us as a vivid illustration to the world what it means to be His children. But if we allow ourselves to become contaminated by the world, our light dims and our effectiveness diminishes. Which is why we should listen to the warning of the apostle John:

Do not love this world nor the things it offers you, for when you love the world, you do not have the love of the Father in you. For the world offers only a craving for physical pleasure, a craving for everything we see, and pride in our achievements and possessions. These are not from the Father, but are from this world. And this world is fading away, along with everything that people crave. But anyone who does what pleases God will live forever. – 1 John 2:15-17 NLT

Before the Face of God.

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When I would heal Israel, the iniquity of Ephraim is revealed, and the evil deeds of Samaria; for they deal falsely; the thief breaks in, and the bandits raid outside. But they do not consider that I remember all their evil. Now their deeds surround them; they are before my face. By their evil they make the king glad, and the princes by their treachery. They are all adulterers; they are like a heated oven whose baker ceases to stir the fire, from the kneading of the dough until it is leavened. On the day of our king, the princes became sick with the heat of wine; he stretched out his hand with mockers. For with hearts like an oven they approach their intrigue; all night their anger smolders; in the morning it blazes like a flaming fire. All of them are hot as an oven, and they devour their rulers. All their kings have fallen, and none of them calls upon me. – Hosea 7:1-7 ESV

As children of God, it is sometimes far too easy to forget that He is there and that He sees all that we do. Because He is invisible to our human eyes, we can find ourselves acting as if He is nowhere in sight and wrongly conclude that He is unaware of our actions. But God is all-knowing and ever-present. He sees all. Nothing escapes His sight. In fact, the author of Hebrews warns us, “Nothing in all creation is hidden from God. Everything is naked and exposed before his eyes, and he is the one to whom we are accountable” (Hebrews 4:13 NLT). The psalmist tells us, “The LORD looks down from heaven and sees the whole human race” (Psalm 33:13 NLT). And in the book of Proverbs we read, “The LORD is watching everywhere, keeping his eye on both the evil and the good” (Provernbs 15:3 NLT). So the idea that somehow God is oblivious to our actions is ludicrous. Nothing is hidden from His eyes. And as followers of Jesus Christ, we should live with that insight in mind.

The idea of living our lives with a constant awareness that God is watching is biblical. When Adam and Eve sinned, God knew immediately. When Cain murdered Abel, God confronted Cain and asked him two questions: “Where is Abel your brother?” and “What have you done?” (Genesis 4:9-10 ESV). God was not asking for an update. He was not in need of a status report regarding what had gone on down on earth. He knew. He was looking for a confession from Cain, but instead He heard lies and denials. Many years later, when Abraham, the father of the Hebrew nation, was 99-years old, God appeared to him and said,  “I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless” (Genesis 17:1 ESV). God was literally saying to Abraham, “live your life before my eyes.” God wanted Abraham to conduct his life with a constant awareness that He was watching. When God called Abraham to “be blameless”, He was not asking for sinless perfection. The Hebrew word translated “blameless” carries the idea of wholeness or completeness. Abraham was to have no hidden areas in his life. There was to be no compartmentalization, no sacred and secular split, where some things belonged to God and others were reserved for Abraham. What God was asking of Abraham was that he live his entire life, every area of his life, with a constant awareness that God was watching, because He was.

So what does all this have to do with Israel and Hosea? Everything. If you notice in verse 2, God says, “their deeds surround them; they are before my face.” The Hebrew word is פָּנִים (paniym) and it is the same word used in Genesis 17:1. God was telling the Israelites that they were committing their sins “in His face.” While they probably thought their actions were invisible to God, He made it clear that every single sin they committed was visible to His all-seeing eyes. Their kings may have approved of their behavior, but God didn’t. He not only saw what they did, but He knew the motivation behind their actions because He knew their hearts. God spoke through the prophet, Jeremiah, saying, “The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is? But I, the Lord, search all hearts and examine secret motives. I give all people their due rewards, according to what their actions deserve” (Jeremiah 17:9-10 NLT). Jesus Himself said, “But the words you speak come from the heart—that’s what defiles you. For from the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, all sexual immorality, theft, lying, and slander” (Matthew 15:18-19 NLT).

The Israelites had a heart problem. Their hearts were far from God and it was reflected in their actions. They no longer knew God. They had no fear of God. They acted as if He could not see what they were doing and, even if He did, He would do nothing about it. Sadly, that is how many Christians live their lives today. Rather than understanding that God sees all that they do and even knows the motivation behind what they do, they live as if God is somehow oblivious or disinterested. But God would remind us, “The eyes of the LORD search the whole earth in order to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him” (2 Chronicles 16:9 NLT). He is looking for those who want to live their lives in keeping with His will and with an awareness that He sees all that they do. God doesn’t demand perfection from us, only dependence. He has given us His Holy Spirit to empower us to live the life to which He has called us. Abraham was far from perfect, but he was called the friend of God (2 Chronicles 20:7). David was anything but sinless, and yet he was called a man after God’s own heart (1 Samuel 13:14). God wants us to live our lives in His strength, according to His will and right in front of His face. He is watching. He cares. He rewards those who seek Him. But He also disciplines those who refuse to rely upon Him and live in obedience to Him. The saddest statement in this entire passage is God’s indictment against Israel that said, “none of them calls upon me” (Hosea 7:7 ESV). May that never be said of us as His children.

A Lack of Light.

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But like Adam they transgressed the covenant; there they dealt faithlessly with me. Gilead is a city of evildoers, tracked with blood. As robbers lie in wait for a man, so the priests band together; they murder on the way to Shechem; they commit villainy. In the house of Israel I have seen a horrible thing; Ephraim’s whoredom is there; Israel is defiled. For you also, O Judah, a harvest is appointed, when I restore the fortunes of my people. – Hosea 6:7-11 ESV

At the heart of Israel’s sin was their failure to keep their covenant with God. When He had delivered their ancestors from slavery in Egypt, God had given them His law and made a bilateral covenant with them at the base of Mount Sinai in the wilderness. That remarkable event was accompanied by thunder, lightning, smoke and fire. After seeing this dramatic display of God’s power and hearing the holy requirements of God, the people were petrified. “Now when all the people saw the thunder and the flashes of lightning and the sound of the trumpet and the mountain smoking, the people were afraid and trembled, and they stood far off and said to Moses, ‘You speak to us, and we will listen; but do not let God speak to us, lest we die.’ Moses said to the people, ‘Do not fear, for God has come to test you, that the fear of him may be before you, that you may not sin’” (Exodus 20:18-20 ESV).

God had chosen the people of Israel as His own. They were to be His representatives on earth, living according to His holy law and revealing to the world the blessings that come with obedience to His will. But God had warned them that there were going to be consequences to their disobedience. “The Lord will send on you curses, confusion, and frustration in all that you undertake to do, until you are destroyed and perish quickly on account of the evil of your deeds, because you have forsaken me” (Deuteronomy 28:20 ESV). Over the years, the nation of Israel proved remarkably unfaithful, even before the kingdom was split in two. And after God had divided the kingdom, the ten northern tribes, known as Israel, took their unfaithfulness to a whole new level. And as a result, God was forced to keep His word. He was going to bring about their destruction.

Forsaking God always has dire ramifications. You cannot ignore God and hope that all will go well for you. Failure to honor and worship Him as God always leads to devastating consequences. In the case of Israel, their sinfulness spread like a plague among the people. Murder and robbery became common place, even in those cities that had once been known as sacred sites. The priests and religious leaders, rather than being icons of spiritual virtue, were fully complicit in the immoral and unethical acts of the nation. They were guilty of leading the nation astray, not only by advocating the worship of idols, but in committing acts in direct defiance of God’s commandments. God had made His will crystal clear. His commands were non-negotiable and free from interpretation.

You must not have any other god but me. You must not make for yourself an idol of any kind or an image of anything in the heavens or on the earth or in the sea. You must not bow down to them or worship them, for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God who will not tolerate your affection for any other gods … You must not misuse the name of the Lord your God. The Lord will not let you go unpunished if you misuse his name. Remember to observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy … Honor your father and mother … You must not murder. You must not commit adultery. You must not steal. You must not testify falsely against your neighbor. You must not covet your neighbor’s house. You must not covet your neighbor’s wife, male or female servant, ox or donkey, or anything else that belongs to your neighbor. – Exodus 20:3-17 NLT

And Israel had violated them all. Just as Adam, the first man, had broken God’s covenant in the garden, disobeying His command to not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the Israelites had willingly and persistently broken God’s covenant with them. They had failed to take God seriously. They had doubted His word and ignored His warning about curses and promise of blessings. It is interesting to note that their failure to love God as expressed in their disobedience of His law, manifested itself in a lack of love for one another. Murder and robbery are relational crimes committed by one individual against another. Just as murder followed the initial sin of Adam and Eve, the Israelites’ forsaking of God was followed by a hatred for one another. The great Shema, based on Deuteronomy 6:4-9, was a required daily prayer for all Israelites, learned at an early age. It reads:

Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. – Deuteronomy 6:4-9 ESV

The law of God and a love for God were to be inseparable. God’s commands contained both vertical (God-focused) and horizontal (man-focused) elements. If someone obeyed God’s law out of love for Him, they would automatically express love for those around them. Obedience to God would manifest itself in mutual respect and love for others. But notice that the Shema contains the admonition to teach God’s commands to the next generation. They were to be a constant part of everyday life, dictating and determining behavior and influencing every aspect of life. But failure to keep God’s laws always follows failure to keep God as the center of your life. Disobedience is a byproduct of disbelief and distrust. Adam and Eve sinned because they listened to Satan and doubted God’s word. The people of Israel had sinned because they had forsaken God. Just as darkness is an absence of light, so sin is an absence of God. Walking away from God is like walking away from a light. You will eventually find yourself stumbling around in the dark, incapable of knowing where you are going and what you are doing.

The apostle John wrote, “God’s light came into the world, but people loved the darkness more than the light, for their actions were evil. All who do evil hate the light and refuse to go near it for fear their sins will be exposed. But those who do what is right come to the light so others can see that they are doing what God wants” (John 3:19-21 NLT). Israel had walked out of the light and into darkness. Their behavior was a result of their failure to honor and esteem God. And we can experience the same tragic outcome if we fail to keep God as the central focus in our lives, honoring Him for who He is and lovingly obeying His will because we know He loves us.