Sermon: From Glory to Shame: The Bitter Truth About Idolatry

Well, over the past few months, we have been working our way through the book of Hosea, and Hosea has had no shortage of discussion about sin, particularly the sin of idolatry. And so, week after week as this series has gone on, you might be tempted to think, "Okay, Hosea, we get it. Heard enough about sin. I understand what I'm supposed to understand about idolatry." However, we should note that that is probably the same

attitude that Hosea's listeners would have had as well. They would have heard enough about idolatry, and they would have thought, "We don't need to hear anymore." But they did, and so do we. Because idolatry is so pervasive. It is everywhere we look. You can't walk down the road or go for a run without seeing something that's pulling your heart to covet. You can't turn on television without something appealing to you to do

something, to buy something. It's like the very air that we breathe. And because of that, we can be desensitized to idolatry. So in the Lord's kindness, He has given us text after text and story after story to remind us of the dangers of idolatry so that we would see it for what it is and we would turn away from it. And such is a text before us this evening in Hosea 10. So what I want us to do is look at three truths from

Hosea 10 about idolatry, so that we might be persuaded to turn away from it and flee to Christ. That's the goal. So three truths about idolatry. First, idolatry divides the heart. Second, idolatry distorts the senses. And third, ultimately, idolatry will destroy the soul.

First, idolatry divides the heart. In verse one, we read that Israel is a luxuriant vine that yields its fruit. It says, "The more his fruit increased, the more altars he built, and as his country improved, he improved his pillars." Now, if you read through the Old Testament, you will know that God had prospered Israel above all the other nations. They had an abundant land. They had a massive army. Their crops produced year in and year out, for the most

part. And we could say that it is not a figure of speech that their land was literally flowing with milk and honey. God had given them rest on every side. And more than that, God had given them His law, and He had made covenant with them, and they were able to enjoy fellowship with the God of the universe. They were able to be called God's people. They were, in every sense of the word, we might say, very prosperous. A very prosperous people.

So when we read in verse one that Israel's altars increased, we might be tempted to think that this was a good thing, that Israel was prospering, and as they prospered, they built altars to God. But as you know, that is not the case. These altars were built not by the direction of God, but by the influence of the culture. And thus, because of that, these altars were not pleasing to the Lord. And we know this for two reasons. First, in verse two, Hosea says

that their hearts are false, and we'll come back to that. And the word here is sometimes translated faithless or devious, but the vast majority of English translations translate this word to mean divided. It has this sense that something is not singularly focused. It's broken up into parts. It's divided. So Hosea says, in reference to Israel's worship and their devotion, that their hearts are not singular towards God,

but that they're divided. These altars were not used to worship Yahweh, but they were used to worship the false gods of the nations. But secondly, we know this because God had warned Israel time and time again not to build altars wherever they wanted. If you remember, the Canaanites would build altars under all sorts of trees or wherever their heart desired, and God warned them not to do that. He says in Deuteronomy 12,

"You shall tear down the altars of the nations and dash in pieces their pillars and burn their Asherim with fire. You shall chop down their carved images of their gods and destroy their name out of that place. You shall not worship the Lord your God in that way, but you shall seek the place that the Lord your God will choose."

So the question then that we need to ask is why in the world did Israel build these altars? Why did they build these altars and worship other gods? And the reason is because as they continued to build these altars, so their land continued to prosper. As their fruit increased, they built more altars. As they built more altars, their fruit kept increasing. So it appeared to Israel as though the reason for their prosperity

was because they were worshiping these false gods. Why abandon the false gods if our crops are producing? Doesn't make a lot of sense. Back in Hosea chapter two, we read that Israel had said, "I will go after my lovers, who give me my bread, and my water, and my wool, and my flax, and my oil, and my drink." But God said to Israel, "Israel did not know that it was I who gave her the grain, the wine, the oil, and who lavished on her silver and gold, which they use for

Baal." Israel had fallen into the same trap that so many people easily fall into, and that is to believe that good things, the best things in this life, come from some other source, but not from God.

This is, in many ways, the same lie that our first parents bought into in the garden. If you remember, when the serpent came to tempt Adam and Eve, he didn't try to convince them that God didn't exist, didn't try to convince them that God hadn't spoken. Rather, he tried to convince them that all the good things in life can be gained without God. Apart from God and apart from His commandments, there is life. In other words, you don't need God to enjoy all the good things in this world.

And that is at the root of idolatry. You might say that idolatry is a subtle belief that there are other means of protection and preservation and ultimate satisfaction besides God. And when we begin to believe that lie, inevitably what happens is our hearts become divided, and we no longer pursue God alone for the things that we enjoy in this world, but we pursue the gifts themselves.

Now, it's very easy for us to look at Israel and say, "How could they build altars? How could they worship these false gods? How could they be so foolish?"

Perhaps a better question to ask is what altars are you building?

What activities and ideas are you devoting yourself to because you believe that ultimately they will bring you satisfaction, and preservation, and protection? What things are you giving yourself to because ultimately you believe that they will make you happy?

And those things, if we don't check them, will become our functional gods. Show me what you think most often about. What most arouses your affections? What satisfies the desires of your heart? What you indulge in during times of joy and run to during times of pain? What most occupies your time? What do you look to as your source of peace and comfort and security? That is probably your god.

Israel lost track of what we so easily lose track of ourselves, and that is that there is only one person who can satisfy us, and that is God Himself. All the gifts that God gives us are meant to be arrows that point us back to God.

One of my favorite quotes from C.S. Lewis, somewhat of a long quote, but it's worth it, talking about the gifts versus the giver. He says, "The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust in them. It was not in them. It only came through them. And what came through them was longing. These things, the beauty, the memory of our own past, are good images of what we really desire. But if we mistake

them for what they are not, they turn into dumb idols, breaking our hearts, for they are not the thing itself. They are only the scent of a flower that we have not found, an echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country that we have never visited." Lewis is saying if we make the mistake of trusting in the gifts instead of the giver, we're just going to be disappointed. And rather, we should let the gifts turn our affections toward

God Himself. Which brings us to our second point this evening, idolatry distorts the senses. Idolatry gives us a false sense of reality. That is, your thinking when you enter into idolatry, after a period of time, your thinking becomes so corrupt that you just become out of touch with reality We see this all over Hosea 10. In verse three, Hosea tells us that the people no longer feared the Lord. In verse four, he says,

"They utter mere words, and with empty oaths they make covenants. They no longer regard things to be sacred." In verses five and six, Hosea tells us that they had worshiped these golden calves. In verse 13, it says that, "They have plowed iniquity and reaped injustice." They just live as though right and wrong no longer really matter. And then at the end of verse 13, he says that, "They trusted in their own way and in the strength of their warriors instead of

the Almighty God." Idolatry just makes us senseless.

It just makes us dumb. We just don't think clearly when we're worshiping idols. It makes you see the world in a distorted way. If you remember in Romans 1, very famous passage, Paul says that, "For although people knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal

man and birds and animals and creeping things." When we don't honor God as God, idolatry. When we don't do that, Paul says we become fools.

When we are given to idolatry, it is as though we think we are wise, but really our thinking is futile. And the result is that we're willing to exchange the glory of God for other things. This is exactly what happened in Hosea 10. If you look back with me in verse five, we read that, "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." If you remember, under the leadership of King Jeroboam, he set up these two golden calves in different places in the Northern Kingdom. And also, famous story, Aaron did the same thing, set up a golden calf when Moses was delayed coming down the mountain. And in both of those instances, this is what it says that both Aaron and Jeroboam said. They said, "Behold, your gods." These calves. "Behold, your gods

that brought you out of the land of Egypt." And Hosea says that those people rejoiced over the calves and their glory.

The most devastating effect of idolatry is that it distorts your sense of significance, your sense of worth, your sense of glory, your sense of divinity. "Behold, your gods." Those aren't gods. Those are stones. Those are rocks.

But when you're given to idolatry, you're just not thinking correctly. There's only one God, infinite, eternal, unchangeable, and that is the God of heaven. Idolatry causes you to mistake the insignificant for the significant, the common for the uncommon, the ordinary for the precious, and ultimately, the transient for the eternal.

Not only that, but idolatry also distorts our sense of God's holiness. If you look in verse three, Hosea says that the people will say that, "We have no king, for we do not fear the Lord. In a king, what could he do for us?" Commentators don't all agree on the way to interpret this verse. A bit of a difficult verse. Some read it as though Hosea is making a future reference to after Assyria had conquered Israel and the king is obviously no

more. That when the king is in captivity, the people will say, "We have no king." But other commentators understand this to be saying that the situation in Israel is so bad, that it's like they don't even have a king. That their government is so corrupt that it's like there's no one in charge. And even if we did have a king, what could he do for us? Because it was so bad. Either way, Hosea tells us why that happened. Verse three,

"They did not fear the Lord." It is as though you can hear echoes from the Book of Judges when things were so detestable and the last line of the Book of Judges said, "Behold, in those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in their own eyes." Once the fear of the Lord is gone, every system and structure of society inevitably will start to break down. Calvin said, "Every wickedness flows from a disregard of

God." For as the principal part of wisdom is the fear of God, when we depart from that, there remains in us nothing right or pure. In short, as it is a restraint of our wickedness, so when the fear of the Lord is wanting, we feel at liberty to indulge in every kind of evil. It's like Calvin was reading Hosea 10.

That's exactly what we see, all because of idolatry.

What so often happens to us is we hear warnings from God's Word, and at first they have our attention, but then we dabble a little bit with sin. So we keep going. Nothing seems to happen, so we go a little further, and then no lightning bolt comes from the ceiling, so we persist more and more because nothing happens. But something does happen. Day by day, your heart becomes hard, your conscience becomes seared, and slowly but

surely, the fear of the Lord evaporates. And that is the path to destruction, which leads us to our third point, idolatry destroys the soul. Idolatry destroys the soul. Without a doubt, the most devastating consequence of idolatry is that if left unchecked, it leads to judgment. And all throughout this chapter, we see picture after picture and verse after verse about what God must do at some point because of idolatry.

In verse seven, we read that the king will be cut off. In verse nine, Hosea says that war will overtake them. In verse 10, God will discipline them and the nations shall be gathered against them. Verse 11, Ephraim will be put to the yoke. Verse 14, all of your fortresses shall be destroyed. And verse 15, even mothers and daughters will be dashed to pieces, all because of Israel's idolatry. Now, if we're honest, some of those verses

are a bit unsettling.

Some of them are downright shocking.

And that is not by accident. They ought to shock us. But the first thing that we should think of when we read verses like this, read verses about God's judgment, we should not think, "Oh, how severe is God in his judgment," but, "Oh, how severe is my sin?"

How offensive it must be to God if the perfect, holy, just God of the universe treats idolatry like that.

How terrible must it really be? And not only that, but we see in this passage, this picture, this story of judgment is ultimately just a small picture of what will happen at the end of the age. Hosea says in verse eight that when Israel is overthrown, thorn and thistle shall grow up on their altars, and they will say to the mountains, "Cover us," and to the hills, "Fall on us." This is the same language that Jesus picks up in Luke chapter 23.

It's also the same language in Revelation chapter six. In Revelation,

speaking of the wrath of God, it says, "Then the kings of the earth and the great ones and the generals and the rich and the powerful and everyone, slave and free, hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains, calling to the mountains and to the rocks, 'Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who is seated on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb, for the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand?'"

This is the fine print to idolatry.

These are the things that Satan doesn't put in front of you when he tempts you to covet, when he tempts you to lust, when he tempts you to worship other things besides Christ. Now, when we read passages about judgment and about wrath, we must see that in view of the cross. We see God's judgment over here. In the same frame, we should see the cross. We can't look at them separate. Judgment makes sense when we see the cross.

The cross makes sense when we see God's judgment. They go together.

The cross is indeed the foundation of our hope. But sometimes, we can do that wrongly. Sometimes, we can do that in a way that justifies unrepentant sin.

Sometimes we can think, "Well, God forgives me. Not that big of a thing," and persist in sin. And as a result, we can read right over passages like Hosea 10, can think, "God's judgment doesn't apply to me. I can just skip it." Well, if you are in Christ this evening, you are correct that there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, and that is a wonderful reality. But we must know that the way that Christ keeps you

is that he gives you warnings from his word, so that you will take heed and not be led away into a life of idolatry. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 10, talking about the Old Testament scriptures, he says, "These things took place as examples for us, that we might not desire evil as they did. Do not be idolaters as some of them were; as it is written, 'The people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play.' We must not indulge in sexual immorality as some of them did,

and 23,000 fell in a single day. We must not put Christ to the test as some of them did, and were destroyed by serpents. Nor grumble as some of them did, and were destroyed by the destroyer. Now these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come. Therefore, let anyone who thinks he stands take heed, lest he fall." And then in verse 14, "Therefore, beloved,

flee from idolatry."

The point of these examples is not to discourage assurance but to motivate holiness, that we would see sin for what it is, that we would despise it, that we would turn away from it, and that we would pursue Christ. That is exactly what Hosea 10 is meant to do to us. We should be astonished by the sin that takes place.

But perhaps the most astonishing thing about this chapter is not Israel's sin. It's not God's judgment.

It is God's offer of grace toward sinners. Verse 12, "Sow for yourselves righteousness; reap steadfast love. Break up your fallow ground, for it is time to seek the Lord, that he may come and rain righteousness on you." What is so amazing is not that God would send people to hell, but that there is this moment, an open door in heaven to sinners.

Even on the brink of Israel's judgment, even in their last hour, God is here extending a hand of mercy to them and calling them to come back. He is offering them grace that they do not deserve. Despite all of Israel's sin, despite all of their idolatry, all of their unfaithfulness, there is an opportunity right there that God gives them for him to come and rain righteousness upon them. And likewise, despite your sin, despite your unfaithfulness,

there is an outstretched arm from Christ to you right now.

You have not outdone his grace. But notice that that opportunity for grace does not last forever. Notice Hosea says, "It is time to seek the Lord." There is a time to seek the Lord. It is a limited time.

That means it won't last forever. It's for a period of time. And when is that time? Today. It's right now. Today is the day of salvation. Behold now. Right now is the appointed time. J.C. Ryle said, "Tomorrow is the devil's day, but today is God's day. Satan does not care how spiritual your intentions are or how holy your resolutions, only if they are determined to be done tomorrow."

You may not have tomorrow. I may not have tomorrow. But you have today. You have right now. So what does it look like then for us to take advantage of God's offer? Hosea tells us back in verse 12, he says, "Break up the fallow ground. Sow for yourselves righteousness, and reap steadfast love, and the Lord will rain righteousness upon you." Hosea is not telling us that we can earn our salvation. He's not telling us we need to do some preparatory work before we come to

God. We need to clean ourselves up. Hosea's just telling us to repent.

So we should ask ourselves, what does repentance look like in your life tonight? What secret things do you know that should be put away?

Hosea is telling us the same thing that Isaiah tells us in Isaiah 55. He says, "Seek the Lord while he may be found. Call upon him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts. Let him return to the Lord, that he may have compassion on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon." Hosea is just telling us to humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God, and God will exalt us.

He's just telling us to be honest about ourselves and acknowledge our sin, and live wholly and solely for God. He's telling us to stop sowing to the flesh,

and to live our lives in total devotion to Christ. The first step to that is acknowledging those idols in your life. Ask yourself, if you were to be led away from Christ, if that could happen, what would the idol be? What would the thing be that would lead you away?

Find that thing and forsake it.

That idol, whatever it is, I can promise you that it will not give you the satisfaction that you seek from it. It cannot bear up under the weight that you put on it. None of the things that we turn to, to worship can produce what we want them to produce. None of them can hold up to their promise. None of these things will last. None of them will endure, and therefore, none of them are worthy of our worship. But only Christ

is worthy of our worship. So in closing, I want us to notice one last thing about Hosea 10. Every single idol, every single supposed object of worship and glory in this chapter, one by one, let Israel down. Their altars, their pillars were destroyed. Their government failed them. Their golden calves carried to exile. Their warriors were overcome. Their fortresses came to nothing. Even their king, in verse 15, was utterly cut off.

Every single one of these things let them down, and so will our idols also. But there is one who will not let you down. There is one who will not fail you.

Those things failed them. It even says in verse 15 that their king was cut off, and their king failed. Well, there's another king, and He has not failed, and He will not let you down. Every single idol that you and I are tempted towards, one day will let you down, but Christ will not. Every other idol will abandon you or disappoint you, but Christ will not. At the end of the day, when you are there alone before the throne of God,

all of those idols will be cast away, but there will be Christ, who has never left you or forsaken you. And so He says to you this day, "Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and you will find rest." Let's pray.

Our Father, we are overwhelmed by the magnitude of your glory. Lord, we are overwhelmed by the magnitude of our sin.

And Lord, we pray you would help us to also be overwhelmed by the magnitude of your grace, that we would indeed see Christ as precious, sin as poison, and turn away from it and pursue Christ. We pray you would be with us this day, Lord, this week. Help us to forsake idols and love Christ. We ask you in His name, amen.