Hosea Lesson 8
God announces withdrawal of common grace
because of idolatry- Hosea 4:4-6
In Daniel we have been dealing with a book of the writings of the
Kethubim; in Hosea we’re dealing with the book of the Nabiim or the prophets
and immediately this should clue you as to how to use the contents, the
doctrine, taught in these books. When you are reading a book from the Kethubim,
or a book of the wisdom writings, then the primary areas will be in decision
making and divine guidance in wisdom, in working with the details of life, in
Daniel’s case working politically.
Now when you come to the Nabiim, the primary thrust of these writings as
I’ve indicated before, and which has been confirmed by the experience with
believers with deep problems of carnality is that in the Nabiim you have an
exposure and conviction of sin, not so much the surface features of your
particular sin pattern, but the deeper level where sin starts in the
heart. When a person is in compound
carnality, when a believer has gone of for days and days, months and months,
even years out of fellowship, your soul builds learned behavior patterns, and
these learned behavior patterns become automatic and so you find yourself
responding to certain situations automatically, and you can confess your sin
and be back in fellowship and 30 seconds later you’re out of fellowship again
because of sin. So you confess and then
sin, then confess, then sin, then confess, then sin, and it’s that kind of
cycle. And that cycle will continue
until the compound area of the carnality is dealt with. How is the compound area of the carnality
dealt with? It is dealt with first
recognizing that as a learned behavior pattern, but secondly the Holy Spirit
bringing out the root underneath these overt activities and actions.
And in the Nabiim and in the prophets that root, the idolatry, the
autonomy is exposed. So the books of the
Nabiim are the books you ought to read when you are having these kinds of
problems. If you’ve got another believer
that you’re trying to help, the person comes to you, maybe he’s not going to
get help unless you happen to be the one able in that situation to give it to
him, you may be next to another believer in the shop or on the street or some
place and for some strange reason the Lord gives you the opportunity with that
person. Know that the Nabiim, the
prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Hosea, these are the books that that person ought
to read; these are the books that the Holy Spirit can use to reach quickly the
idolatry and autonomy involved.
Now Hosea 1-3 dealt with a role playing situation of Hosea in his
marriage and God and His marriage with
And in this section in Hosea 4 we have Jehovah introducing the lawsuit
to the nation. So Hosea 4 becomes a capsule
summary of the entire section, from chapters 4-14. We have dealt with verses 1-3; the three
parts of a rib controversy, or a
lawsuit controversy. Verse 1 was the court procedure; verse 2 was the
indictment; verse 3 was the sentence.
God’s indictment in verse 2 was simply a portrayal of the Ten
Commandments. That’s why, by “swearing,
lying, killing, stealing and committing adultery they break out, and blood
touches blood.” So the indictment is
specific; the indictment as against the Word of God that they already knew,
which introduces an interesting principle.
When the Holy Spirit convicts you of sin He will convict you of
something you already know, not something about which you know nothing. The Holy Spirit will take what you have been
exposed to in your study of the Word and use that in your heart. So as you become more acquainted with the
Word of God, this means the Holy Spirit has more tools in your soul to work
with. This is why learning the Word can
be a very enjoyable experience; it can be painful because obviously if the Holy
Spirit has more your soul to point out where you are doing wrong then you seem
to get it more. And some believers have
noticed this; things were great until I started getting in the Word, and the
reason is that God is holding you responsible for the revelation you now have,
He didn’t hold you responsible before.
Now things that you were able to get away with before you can’t get away
with now. But conversely there are
blessings now that you couldn’t get before too, tremendous blessings.
So Hosea 4:1-3 deal with this covenant and the basis of it. Now verses 4-14 which is the next section of
the chapter, we have God announcing His withdrawal of common grace because of
idolatry. God is announcing the
withdrawal of His common grace, not absolutely but relatively; God is going to
take the lid off the pot of their sin nature and let it boil. And the reason that God is going to break off
His restraining grace is because of something called idolatry. And as we study Hosea 4 we will study it
slowly so I’ll have time to point out the true nature of idolatry. This is an area we haven’t study before, an
area of exposure to what idolatry is. We
studied it in brief form but Hosea will be the first time we’ve studied it in
depth. Therefore we proceed slowly
because there are so many aspects to idolatry; it’s not just a case that if you
don’t have a statue of Buddha in your closet that you’re not in idolatry. That is not the issue; you can be an idolater
in 20th century
Beginning in verse 4, when God goes to deal with the nation He announces
a strange thing; something exactly opposite to what you would think He would
say. Here is a nation that needs
reproof; here is a nation that needs correction, and what, of all things does
God announce in Hosea 4:4, “Let no man strive, nor reprove another; for thy
people are as they that strive with the priest.” In other words, God does not want any man to
sue; the word “strive” is the word rib,
it is the verb form of lawsuit, “Let not any man accuse,” let not any man take
the nation into court. And that includes
Hosea. He is saying that this nation has
progressed to a point where judgment cannot be avoided. Now as we go through this and look at
idolatry, the thing where you can get a lot out of this as a believer is to
back off and make yourself the nation, and make all the parts of the nation
parts of your soul, and that’s the way you’ll see the connection. First you’ve got to see it in the historical
context to understand it. But then to
apply it, visualize yourself as the nation.
Now what has happened in Hosea 4:1-3, we’ve seen in verse 1 the court
procedure; in verse 2 we’ve seen the indictment, and in verse 3 the sentence
has already been made. Since the
sentence has already been made, the sentence is now not something that is a
future contingent threat but the sentence is something in the future that is
now certain; it is no longer contingent.
By Hosea’s time, within a generation, Hosea’s ministering around 740 BC
and by 721 BC the northern kingdom will be destroyed; within that generation
that nation will be obliterated as a national entity. It will suffer, it will collapse, there will
be massive suffering among the population.
The reason there will be suffering is because of their sin. Now this is not the great tribulation. Somehow believers, because we are
pretribulational we’re not going to have any tribulation. These people were pretribs too but they got a
lot of tribulation; they got tribulation because of the principle that God is
going to national entities that sin. And
we’re just swallowing in our American arrogance if we think that God isn’t
going to judge the nation that has had so much light and has turned and defied
Him at practically every point, and apparently is quite proud about doing
so. And since we are stuck as American
citizens in it, if God chooses to judge the nation we get clobbered along with
the nation; category three suffering.
So within one generation the sentence that was passed in verse 3 will
descend upon the nation irrevocably, it cannot be reversed, no matter how many
people become Christians it will not stop the execution of the sentence. Hosea has had, is it were, an entrée into the
heavenly courtroom, he has watched the trial of the nation, he has seen God the
Father slam the gavel to the desk and announce the sentence; it is now
something that is certain, not contingent.
And therefore God says in verse 5 through Hosea, therefore let no man
bother any more, “Let no man strive, nor reprove another,” the time of
counseling is over. Counseling has been
tried and tried and tried and these people have rejected, rejected, rejected
and I want the counseling stopped. There
is a time, in other words, to counsel, and there is also a time not to counsel,
and this is one of those times.
When believers reach compound carnality to the point that the northern
kingdom has, counseling ceases, because the point has been reached when the
only way that kind of person can be reached is no longer by verbal messages;
you can tell them and it will go in one ear and right out the other. It doesn’t make any difference, the time has
come for severe shock type discipline.
And God is going to do that to the northern kingdom. And He explains it because the next clause is
an explanatory clause, “For thy people,” your people Hosea, notice He doesn’t
say My people, “your people are as they that strive with the priest,” and the
word for “strive,” is marab, the verb
from which we get the marabah in the
earlier portions of the Old Testament; it means to rebel and to revolt against
God’s authority.
To see what he is talking about when He says “thy people are they that
rebel with the priest,” we have to know the Law. The prophets presuppose that you know the
Law, it’s on the basis of the Law that they’re bringing conviction. So like last week when we had to turn back to
the Law to explain verse 2, the Ten Commandments, so this week when we come to
“they that strive with the priest,” we must turn back to the Law, and we turn
back to Deuteronomy 17:8. Here is what
Hosea means; here is the characteristic of a person on negative volition,
striving with the priest. This is the
part of the Torah, or the part of the Law that Hosea has on his mind; the
situation involving courts and in particular appeals.
Deuteronomy 17:8, “If there arise a matter too hard for thee in
judgment, between blood and blood, between plea and plea, between stroke and
stroke, being matters of controversy within thy gates, then thou shalt arise,
get thee up into the place which the LORD thy God shall choose. [9] And thou shalt come unto the priests, the
Levites, and unto the judge who shall be in those days, and inquire, and they
shall show thee the sentence of judgment.”
Now the priests had several functions.
The priests, first, were leaders, that means they conducted worship
services, that is that the supervised the sacrifices, they took care of the tab
and they dealt with the showbread, they dealt with putting oil in the lampstand
and so on, the cultists or the center of the worship service. That’s the tabernacle. The second thing the priests did was that
they Bible teachers or actually literally Torah teachers. They concentrated on the first five books of
the Bible. The third thing that the
priests did, which we have here is that they judged. Since they knew the Torah they would be the
best people for judging or evaluating.
They were God’s representatives when they did because the people would
come to the priests to find out the divine viewpoint of the controversy; the
priests who know the Torah would then, to the best of his ability, give them
the divine viewpoint of the controversy.
Deuteronomy 17:9, “And thou shalt come unto the priests, the Levites,
and unto the judge who shall be in those days, and inquire,” now “the judge”
means this is the place which would correspond to the Supreme Court, it was one
judge who was at the tabernacle. And
suppose we had somebody, the tabernacle is near Jerusalem, and suppose we had
somebody up north of Jerusalem some place, and they went to their leaders of
the town and it was a very complicated case and they couldn’t get a judgment
because the elders said hey, we don’t know, we can’t figure this out; it’s not
one court giving an opinion and then going to the Supreme Court to overrule the
lower court, it’s not that kind of an appeal.
This is where the lower court couldn’t come to a decision, and when the
lower court couldn’t come to a decision the people had to go to the tabernacle
and it’s that process that’s being spoken of here in Deuteronomy 17.
Deuteronomy 17:10, “And thou shalt do according to the sentence,” that’s
“the sentence” of the man in the tabernacle, “which they of that place which
the LORD shall choose,” that’s Jerusalem, “and thou shalt observe to do
according to all that they inform thee. [11] According to the sentence of the
Torah which they shall teach thee, and according to the judgment which they
shall tell thee, thou shalt do; thou shalt not decline from the sentence which
they shall show thee, to the right hand, nor to the left. [12] And any man who
will do presumptuously, and will not hearken unto the priest who stands to
minister there before the LORD thy God, or unto the judge, even that man shall
die; and thou shalt put away the evil from Israel. [13] And all the people
shall hear, and fear, and do no more presumptuously.”
Now that was the way they had of dealing with people who defied the
authority of the Word. Now it’s not the
priests have this great authority in themselves, it’s simply that the priests
are passing on what the Torah says. And
you have a situation, a person comes for counseling and they want to know what
God says about it, so you tell them what God says about it. Now the person is exposed to the Word of God,
after hearing what God’s will is, then they turn around and say well I’ll think
about it, or I’ll decide two years from now whether or not I’m going to get
with it, and there’s no problem of faith, they know, they’re convinced it’s the
will of God, there’s no problem there, and having been convinced they still
defy, that’s the sin of presumption, and these are the people that are striving
with the priest. In other words, it’s
not a faith problem here. These are
people who are convinced of the validity of the thing, and then they turn their
back on it. That’s the problem.
So turning back to Hosea, these are the people Hosea has on his mind;
they have become as people who continually “strive with the priest,” and the
word “strive” is the Hebrew participle which means continuous action; it is
part of their nature to do this over and over and over again. They have had all the light that is necessary
to decide and they still reject. When a
person gets in that state there is nothing that you can do for them. The Apostle John tells you don’t even bother
to pray for them at that point; just forget it.
There’re in God’s hands, there’s nothing you can do about it, so just
stop bugging God, turn it over to Him and let Him take care of it and relax.
That’s the only thing you can do when you have people that are in this kind of
a state. They have rejected, rejected,
rejected, rejected; don’t waste your time, God doesn’t want you to waste your
time with some clod, there are other people more deserving of your
attention. Now this is an act of love;
it doesn’t sound like it but that’s what it is.
It’s an act of love because God loves them so much He’s going to clobber
them and He doesn’t want us to get between the paddle and their rear ends, so
He says get out of the way and leave them alone, I will take care of them.
So He instructs Hosea and through Hosea the nation, forget it, call off
your prophets, don’t bother any more, these people have had all the Bible
lessons necessary, they’ve heard all the Bible teaching that is sufficient for
their situation, they’ve rejected and rejected so just forget it.
Hosea 4:5, “Therefore shalt thou fall in the day, and the prophet also
shall fall with thee in the night, and I will destroy thy mother.” Now “thou shalt fall in the day” refers to
believers falling in a time of prosperity; the day is when you can see things,
you’re confident that you’re not going to fall in the day. And God says precisely to that kind of a
believer in compound carnality, just when you think you are so confident that
you’ve got it made, then you will
fall. “You will fall in the day.”
Now the next part of this, “and the prophet also shall fall with you in
the night,” is a reference to a person in compound carnality who meets a crisis
in his life, he doesn’t know which way to go and so he frantically goes to the
prophet to find out. This is at night,
the time when he doesn’t see the way clearly.
And when he can’t see the way clearly he seeks direction on which way he
should go, then God says I’m going to have it so the prophet gives you wrong
advice, and you’re going to fall at night, and the prophet will fall with
you. Don’t come to Me and ask Me about
divine guidance, God says, when there’s idolatry in your heart. The issue with a person in compound carnality
is not divine guidance, on a job, on a mate, on something else. This person has no right to divine guidance
at that point; he has to get back in fellowship and get straightened out before
divine guidance once again becomes an issue.
So here, even if he goes to the prophets, the prophets shall fall, God
will cause the prophet to give false advice.
“…and I will destroy thy mother” means I will destroy the entire
northern kingdom, the “mother” is the nation.”
Now in Hosea 4:6 we get into our first area of idolatry and we’ll
probably spend most of the time in verse 6 understanding a critical phrase and
until we understand this phrase we’ll lose the point of all these repetitious
attacks on the nation. This is why I
prefer to take our time going through Hosea 4 and get straight on idolatry, then
having done that we can go pick it up and just review in chapter 5, review it
in chapter 6, and all these other chapters will come easier and they’ll just be
review for you with specific applications, but we’re going to pause and go
slowly through chapter 4 to grasp what is idolatry; what is it about compound
carnality that is called idolatry?
The first part we have to deal with is given right here in Hosea 4:6 and
this is typical of Hosea, “My people are destroyed,” “My people have been
destroyed,” perfect tense, the action is finished, “My people have been
destroyed for lack of knowledge; because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will
also reject thee, that thou shalt be no priest to me; seeing thou hast
forgotten the Torah [Law] of thy God, I will also forget your children.” Now if you look just at the first part of
verse 6, it sounds like “My people are destroyed for lack of Bible teaching;”
that’s what it sounds like, but if
that is the interpretation, how do you explain the next part of the verse, the
middle part. If knowledge here is equated
with just doctrine, then you’ve got the problem in the last part that says
they’ve rejected doctrine. So it’s not
lack of doctrine if they’re rejected the doctrine. So what is it? This is what we’ve got to clear up. What does the Bible say about knowledge? And this will clear up a lot of these
questions about the people at Lubbock Church get spiritually fat, they’ve got
too much knowledge over there and so on.
You can’t have too much knowledge of the correct kind.
Now let’s look at what knowledge is in the Bible. I’m going to try to explain this under
certain propositions; we’ll go through certain verses of Scripture because all
of this is collapsed in verse 6; Hosea summons the whole Biblical concept of
knowledge and he’s working with it right here so what we’ve got to do is
explore backwards and forwards in the Bible and get down what knowledge it is
that he’s talking about. It’s not just
Bible doctrine that he’s talking about here.
Let’s go back to Genesis 2, the first research that man did, the first
case that we have, creation and what Adam did shortly thereafter to gain
knowledge. Our first picture in the
doctrine of knowledge comes from Genesis 2:18-23. This is the model for all subsequent
knowledge that man picks up. Verse 18,
“And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will
make him an help suited for him. [19] And out of the ground the LORD God
formed,” had formed, pluperfect. So
there’s no contradiction between Genesis 2 and Genesis 1, somehow some professors
think that only in the 20th century did somebody with insight read
chapter 1 and chapter 2 and suddenly discover there was a contradiction. People have been reaching chapters 1 and 2
for many centuries; in fact they read it even before Christ. And when Moses wrote this he knew exactly
what he was writing about and Moses wasn’t a jerk that deliberately put in a
contradiction when he himself, in Deuteronomy 13 and 18 said if there is a
contradiction don’t believe it. If Moses
gave the test in Deuteronomy what’s he putting contradictions in his own
writings for; it’s ridiculous.
“And out of the ground the LORD God had formed every beast of the field,
and every fowl of the air; and had brought them unto Adam,” this is just a
circumstantial clause summing up what has happened up to date, “to see what
Adam would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that
was the name thereof.” Now there are
several things to notice about this.
We’re still on the first point on the doctrine of knowledge. Adam has a reason for knowing; he is supposed
to find something, namely his right woman.
He has a purpose in knowing; and knowing the creation is not just
sitting there abstractly and learning about all the animals. He doesn’t care how many hair follicles there
are on the left hind foot of the deer, that is not Adam’s problem. Adam’s
problem is to know creation, that he might live in it as unto the Lord. And so
it’s his progress in learning, in acquiring knowledge that is to make him a
better ruler.
So out of the ground He brings these things, Adam is going to name them.
As Adam names them he knows them, for giving a name doesn’t mean tacking labels
on; giving a name means you understand it.
So this is a synonym for knowledge.
So “Adam gave name to all the cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to
every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help suited for
him.” So Adam has conducted a zoological
research project. He has learned about
the nature of reality around him, and then God gives him his woman.
In Genesis 2:22, “And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man,
made he a woman,” this shows you that the woman’s body chemistry is derivative
of the male’s body chemistry and those of you who have chemistry know the
female hormone is a chemical derivative of the male. And this fits perfectly with this supposed
fairy story in Genesis 2. Obviously
Moses had not had organic chemistry yet.
“…and brought her unto the man. [23] And Adam said, This is now bone of
my bones, and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman,” the first song was
a long song the first man sang to his wife.
Now when Adam sings his song in verse 23 we have what, at least part of
what knowledge means in the Bible.
Knowledge in the Bible is never impersonal, abstract and divorced;
knowledge in the Bible always involves the whole person; it involves the mind
and the emotion. Adam’s emotions are
working here, aren’t they? He’s excited
about his right woman, she’s “bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh,” he says,
and as a result of his knowledge he responds emotionally.
So knowledge biblically is not abstract; it involves the whole
person. That’s the first thing you want
to remember. We’ve been raised in the
west and our concept of knowledge is something, 2+2=4 and it’s very abstract
and we read scientific journals and try to write scientific papers as
impersonally and unemotionally as we can, as though the knowledge means
nothing. I think technical papers ought
to be written emotionally; I think scientific papers ought to be written that
way because knowledge involves the whole man, even the whole man in his
laboratory and you’re putting on a big façade to present a scientific paper or
technical writing as though you’re personally disconnected. It’s your work, you’re not personally
disconnected from it, you’re happy with it, you’re pleased with it so your
paper ought to show it.
So the first thing about knowledge is that it involves the whole person. The second thing about knowledge is a little
harder to grasp and this goes back to the doctrine of revelation. We must go to Romans 1:18. the first point is that knowledge biblically
means the whole person is involved. We
get this because of Adam; Adam just doesn’t sit there and calmly tick off like
a man in a white robe in a laboratory, ah yes, there’s Eve, she has the right
chemistry; he doesn’t approach it that way, he says look at my chemistry, it’s
responding. Knowledge involves personal
response.
In Romans 1 we have another part of the Biblical doctrine of knowledge.
In Romans 1:18ff we have the answer to what about those who haven’t heard. “For the wrath of God is being revealed” that
means in present time, not just in the gospel, in all of history the wrath of
God is continually revealed, “from heaven against all ungodliness and
unrighteousness of men, who are,” present tense, “holding the truth in
unrighteousness.” “The truth” can’t be
the gospel, he’s not talking about the gospel.
He is talking about truth of the hotten tots, the person who hasn’t
heard it. He is talking about something
other than what you’re reading in the Bible, “who are holding down that truth
in unrighteousness. [19] Because that
which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God has shown it unto them.
[20] For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world” we should
say “since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by
means of the things that are made….” So,
the second point of Biblical doctrine of knowledge is that all knowledge is
personal revelation. Now there are
astounding consequences from this and I’m just going to try to briefly amplify
some of the astounding consequences of this.
This is a totally, totally, totally different concept of knowledge than
what you’re going to get in any educational program today. Even in many of the areas of learning
theories where they’re involving people and discovering that yes, knowledge
does involve the whole person, even those areas have not come close… not come
close at all to seeing this second point in knowledge. And this is very, very critical, particular
to those of you who are teaching school.
In fact, when you get through this second point you’re going to see some
kind of praying that you can do for your students that maybe you haven’t done
before.
All knowledge is revelatory of God, that’s the Biblical position. ALL knowledge, even 2+2=4 is a
revelation. It’s all revelation of
God. Now the revelation divides into two
parts, special revelation and general revelation. Special revelation is God
revealing Himself and His plans to man in the Scripture. That’s special revelation. God reveals Himself and His plans to man in
the Scripture. God will speak to man
through the Scripture and He tells us about Himself; He tells us why He does
some things, not all things that He does does He tell us about, but some things
He tells us about. He tells you reasons
for suffering, He tells you a little bit about the mechanics of salvation, He
tells us about the blood atonement, He tells us what history is going to happen
before it happens; He gives Daniel the plan of history. All of this is God’s person and His plans
being revealed through Scripture. That’s
special revelation.
General revelation is God revealing Himself and His plans in creation,
not in the Scripture. This is all
revelation outside of the Scripture. God
reveals Himself and His plan to men outside the Scripture. Let’s explore this further; I’ll draw a
little chart and try to use this chart to explain why you can’t be a teacher
teaching a pupil anything without being involved in the revelatory
process. Let’s draw a triangle, at the
apex of the triangle we’ll put God, the left lower point we will put man, right
lower point we will put nature. Now
we’ll tie this together and relate it for you.
Special revelation, God communicates with man in the Scripture, it’s
direct, it goes directly from God to man. That’s special revelation. God knows man, man knows God, though not in
the same way, God knows us perfectly, we don’t know Him perfectly, but there’s
an interchange, there’s a personal relationship between God and man established
by special revelation. God speaks on
Mount Sinai and Moses and the people back off, they respond to the revelation;
they say something back to God and God says something to them, there’s a
revelation going on, God reveals His character to men.
Now God has also made nature and God knows nature; God knows nature
directly. Now there are parts of this
triangle that are going to be involved here so it’s important that you attach
the words to the right side of the triangle.
In the triangle between God and man, man knows God, God knows nature;
all this is direct revelation, special revelation, you get it in your
Bible. God knows nature directly and
comprehensibly because He is the One who made nature. Therefore He has perfect knowledge. The coming down, God’s omniscience, here’s
His attribute of omniscience; God is omniscient and therefore He knows man
perfectly and He knows nature perfectly, but man can also know nature and this
is the problem. Nature is God’s
handiwork and since the Bible insists that God is the creator, when I know
someone’s handiwork I know the artist of the handiwork. And so man begins to know God but it is
indirect on the general revelation basis.
On the general revelation man is limited, he’s limited because he can
only know something, he just sees the handiwork left by God, or being made by
God in front of his face. He’s like you
looking at a work of art, you can tell by some art whether the guy was crazy or
not; you can tell whether he was skillful in his art work or not by the way
it’s done. You can do the same thing in
music, you can do the same thing in literature. You know something about the one who made it
from looking at his handiwork.
All right, so man knows something about God through nature but this is
an indirect loop, it’s not the direct loop of special revelation. Now men, all men, need both loops to work. God gave special revelation to Adam before
the fall, he gave general revelation to Adam.
You need both of these. Now if
that is the case, let’s look at what happens.
We’ll draw the triangle again and I’ll show you another relationship
using the same triangle: God, man, nature.
From man’s perspective there are two ways of knowing. Now we have general revelation and special
revelation, true, but we have two other categories and here is where all the
difficulty and the human viewpoint and the divine viewpoint get all fouled up
in the picture.
Man asks two questions, always two questions as being asked in
knowing. He is asking the ultimate cause
of nature, we’ll run a line down vertically from God and we’ll call this the
artist of nature. Man is always asking
who is the artist behind the artwork; that is always involved in man’s knowing.
Why is it involved? Because we’re made
in God’s image, He’s programmed us to learn that way. So no matter who we are, atheist, agnostic,
theist, non-Christian, whoever you are, you have to in your knowing process,
somewhere in your soul you’re asking who’s the artist behind the artwork. That’s one part of knowing. But you’re also asking what about the
artwork.
So we have two questions, the artist and his artwork. Now here’s the dilemma; the question of
knowing the artwork presupposes that you’ve already asked the question that
there is an artist. You can’t know the
artwork until at least you ask the right question which is who is the artist
behind it. When I say to you, hey, I can hold up this piece of literature and
looking at this piece of literature you can tell something about the author;
all of this discussion has presupposed that you from the very start have
secretly entertained the idea that indeed it is the product of an artist. So
this kind of knowledge we’ll call category two, knowledge of artwork; category
one knowledge of the artist. In school
and in universities and in most contemporary discussions they always try to
teach you knowledge with category two without dealing with category one. But they are dealing with category one and
here’s where you get faked out every time.
In dealing with category two, i.e. knowledge of art work, they have
already slanted the question so they’ve already asked category and finished off
that category. You cannot get to
category two knowledge if you haven’t finished with category one
knowledge. When Adam named the animals
he was finished with category one knowledge, he knew God had created, he knew
those animals were created by God, he knew what to do because God told
him.
Which came first, category one or category two knowledge? Category one, God spoke to Adam for special
revelation, then after special revelation then Adam went out into nature around
him and he learned. So from that
archetype of all knowledge we know that category one knowledge of the artist
precedes category two, knowledge of his artwork. Now the schools will always insist that you
can be neutral in category one and completely objective in category two. Therefore the school system never properly
deals with category one because that’s a (quote) “religious issue.” But they always presuppose you can go zipping
into category type two type knowledge and deal with all this beautiful artwork
and never, never raise the question who made it. That’s foolish. Do you walk into a museum and never raise the
question who made the painting; do you listen to music and never raise the
question, who was the composer, never think there was a composer. Don’t kid yourself, nobody learns that way
and even the educator that’s telling you this, he didn’t learn that way
either. Everybody has given an answer in
the first category before they even started in the second category.
So the second point of knowledge is that knowledge is always personal
revelation of God, whether it’s category one or category two, it is always
personal revelation of God. God is
always involved in the knowledge, there is no area detached from Him. You cannot learn 2+2=4 without raising the
question, who is the artist that made the universe such that 2+2 is indeed
4. That has already gone through your
soul by the time you got into mathematics.
You’ve already had to answer that one way or the other.
Now we’ll get into the effect the fall has on this in a moment, right
now just see that there are these two ways; all knowledge is revelatory of
God’s being according to the Bible. There is no such thing as detached
knowledge, therefore this diagram shows you there is no such thing as neutrality,
even in mathematics. In mathematics you
are treating structures, logical structures and you in your heart have already
decided the author of those structures.
So don’t kid yourself, there is no neutral area of knowledge anywhere… ANYWHERE,
NONE! All knowledge is personal
revelation and you’ve got to respond to it, that’s going to explain why Hosea
says what he says in that verse when we get back to it.
The first point of the doctrine of knowledge was that knowledge in the
Bible involves the whole man, Adam responds with his emotions to what he
learns, there’s this modern pretend game that you can write scientific papers
as though you’re a computer, with no emotion.
Nonsense! The second point of the
Biblical doctrine of knowledge is that all knowledge is revelatory of God,
directly by special revelation or indirectly by general revelation.
Now the third point; turn to Genesis 3:1 and the point of the fall. This
is one of the most important points that we will be studying in the book of
Hosea; tonight we are not dealing with as such, we’re just dealing with a part
of the overall doctrine of idolatry, the doctrine of knowledge. In Genesis 3 the serpent comes up to Eve, and
he says unto the woman, “Yea, has God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of
the garden? [2] And the woman said unto the serpent” and you know the
text. And the serpent in verse 4 finally
comes to the point where he challenges God and denies God’s propositional
revelation. Then in verse 6 the woman
decides.
Now at this point we’re introduced to a most strange thing. Knowledge in the Bible, and I’m going to say
this carefully so as not to confuse you, we’ve said time and time again that
faith involves knowing something, you can’t believe without knowing, that’s
true. But it’s one of these circular
things, faith and knowledge, and this is the other side of the circle; the
other side of the circle is that you can’t acquire knowledge until you trust
what is being given you and what is being said to you. You have got to trust
before you can know; you have got to trust the artist, you’ve got to trust that
the artist means to convey something when you study his artwork. You’ve got to abandon yourself in this sense
to the artist. And there are only two
ways of doing this; Satan’s way and God’s way.
And Satan has made his appeal to Eve—Eve, you can’t trust the
artist. That artwork you see all around
Eden, that really isn’t for your good; the moral character of the artist is at
fault Eve, trust me, I will give you the true interpretation of the artwork,
the artist is not trustable. So knowing involves an inherent trust in the
artist. And we’re built to have to
trust, we must trust in order to know.
There’s an act of trusting the artist behind his artwork; we have to
trust. And Eve, in verse 6, decides that
she is going to distrust God; there’s her sin. Satan has challenged God’s
character and Eve says now I will no longer trust God and she brings back her
trust. Here’s Eve, she’s looking out at
nature, and Satan says Eve, that’s all God’s artwork, he’s not denying,
incidentally, God’s existence, please notice; Satan’s attack is not to disprove
God’s existence, Satan’s attack is simply to cloud our trust in the God who
exists, that’s all.
And so he says Eve, God in nature all around here, He doesn’t have your
good welfare in mind, He’s really a bad God Eve, don’t trust him. And so Eve’s first sin is turning away from
God and trusting, and she can’t learn from this point, this condemns the whole
learning process. You’ve got to be able
to trust the artist. Eve, when she does this she has put all her weight in
God’s moral character that God is going to bless her, that the whole knowing
process is for her blessing, and that knowing that that forbidden fruit is her
blessing because it keeps her from getting cursed, and Satan says oh no, no,
no; no, no, you’ve got it all wrong, don’t trust God the artist to give you the
interpretation, don’t trust His character, the artwork has a hidden flaw in it
Eve. So he pulls Eve away.
Now where does the woman, at the split second she pulls away her trust
in God, where must she place her trust?
In herself, and so there is born autonomy; there is born the woman who
says I will decide whether or not
God is trustworthy; I will not commit myself to God because I am suspicious of
Him and I will contract myself down, and now I’m no longer going to depend upon
Him, I’ll depend only on where I stand. And here’s the autonomous spirit of the
rebellious creature, I decide
whether or not I will trust God, I
decide whether or not what God tells me is true, I won’t accept it on God’s
authority, I will decide that for myself.
And so we have intellectual autonomy.
In Hebrews 11 the same theme is pulled out, same truth centuries and
centuries later. Maybe I can illustrate
this point in the following way. Parents
know this from their experiences with children.
You’re child comes up to you and says momma, my tummy hurts; you check
him and objectively there’s no fever, objectively there’s no other symptoms,
but he keeps insisting, mom, my tummy hurts.
Now at that point you have to decide to trust the report of a child,
that he does in fact know what he’s saying.
That kind of knowledge is unverifiable in the real sense of the word;
strange but if you think about it there’s no real way of verifying a report
that comes out of the soul; the child just says momma, my tummy hurts. And you have to say either he’s faking it or
he really means it, but you see, that’s a judgment of the child’s character. When somebody announces a thought of his
heart you have to respond by judging their character. You’re trapped, you can’t be neutral. And when a child reports that to his mother
the simple act of the mother saying, yes indeed my child’s tummy does hurt she
is testing her faith on the character of the child as a genuine reporter. But she hasn’t verified it, she hasn’t tested
it and there’s no real way she can; at that particular point she’s totally
dependent on the moral character of the child, that the child is not misleading
her. So it’s the same thing on an
infinite scale, when God says things are the way He is, we can’t really check
all those things, we can check some things but we can’t check the big things and
the big things hinge completely on the fact that like the child that says to
his mother, momma, my tummy hurts, when God says Eve, it’s this way, and Eve
can’t go inside God’s soul to find out whether or not it really is that way,
but she must cast herself on God’s character.
So in Hebrews 11:3 the thought again comes up. “Through faith we understand that the ages
were framed by the word of God,” in other words, “through faith” means we
believe what God says, that He has a design to history. We can’t test whether God has a design to
history because we never know for sure whether it’s going to collapse 24 hours
from now. There’s no amount of empirical
evidence we can use to test this thing.
Here we are thrown back to the fact that when God comes up and He
announces, I do in fact have a plan for you, you have to say like the mother
whose child says my tummy hurts, you have to say oh, he’s faking it, or he
means what he says. But that’s a choice
you are forced to make when someone announces personal knowledge to you. And this is what it means, so “Through faith we understand” that God has
a plan for history. Faith in what? Faith in God’s character. That’s why it says in Hebrews 11:6, “But
without faith it is impossible to please Him; for he that comes to God must
believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek
Him.” That’s the pre… and I’m not going
to call it a presupposition, I’m going to distinguish it from what we’ve been
saying and tie it in a little bit tighter than we have.
The third point of knowledge is that knowledge depends upon a
predisposition of trust; we’ll call it a predisposition of trust. Now there are only two options presented to
us in history; the predisposition of Satan or the predisposition of God. Here’s the creation order, here’s nature,
here’s Eve’s volition; here’s Eve’s mind, here’s Eve’s emotions. From the time of her creation Eve could look
out and see nature. Eve had been informed by God, the Holy Spirit. Eve had been created with a predisposition to
trust in God, a predisposition that God did know what He was saying in fact, in
other words, if God had said my tummy hurts, Eve would have yes it does because
you told me. Eve had that and she had
that creation quality about her, that made her a very beautiful woman. And then Satan came and Satan says no, when
God says my tummy hurts He’s faking it.
And so ripped between God and Eve now stands Satan and Satan casts the
predisposition into her heart to doubt.
To doubt is not just an innocent act, it’s to impugn God’s moral character. God has said something and to doubt it
automatically, inherently, impugns His character, that He indeed doesn’t know
what he is saying.
And so as a result of the predisposition, going on negative volition,
choosing a predisposition to doubt God’s character has profound reactions on
both mind and emotions. And now the mind
generates human viewpoint presuppositions, the presuppositions are the product
of the mind or the mind under it has a foundation of a predisposition to doubt
God. And when the heart is predisposed
to doubt God, the presuppositions of the mind are apostate, and you will see
shortly idolatrous. And this is why in
order to generate knowledge you have to have an inherent trust that God does know
what He’s talking about. This is why in
Hosea you’re going to watch two things; negative volition, positive
volition. Those on negative volition
will have a predisposition to doubt that God really knows what He’s talking
about when He reports to us Revelation; those people will shrink in their
knowledge, their knowledge will contract; the field of perception contracts.
You’ve seen this, you’ve seen it in your experience about people who
have been turned off in a personal relationship, you’ve talked to people, maybe
couples who have been fighting for years and they’ve hardened their hearts to
one another that they can’t see good in the other person, even when it’s
obvious to somebody that’s been invited over to their house for dinner, and
it’s obvious as you walk away, that man loves that woman or that woman loves
that man, I saw it in overt activity; I saw it, but they didn’t. They have hardened to their hearts to the
point where their perceptions contracts and contracts and they literally become
incapable of perceiving love out of the other person. Their field of perception contracts. It’s just like atrophy, if you don’t use your
muscles they atrophy; it you don’t use your mind to know creation after God’s
order your mind atrophies and you lose your ability to perceive,
literally.
This is why the book of Proverbs, remember we went into the man who was
foolish and we said look at that person, eventually he gets so bent out of
shape that he does the most stupid idiotic things, you say that person doesn’t
have common sense, he doesn’t know enough to come in out of the rain. All right, how he got that way—his field of
perception is contracted and contracted and he literally is blind, blind in the
physical realm as well as in the spiritual realm. You cut off your ability to even see the truth
when you don’t respond to the truth.
That’s the horrifying and judgmental thing; God has built a
self-destruct mechanism into our soul and if we don’t use our souls the way
they are designed to be used we destroy ourselves. On the contrary a person with
positive volition is constantly expanding their field of knowledge, constantly
expanding things, they see things in creation the other person doesn’t
see. They can see beauty where no one
else can see beauty and it’s not just in the hypnosis kind of thing, they
actually see that it’s there; they have insight.
The third point in our doctrine of knowledge is that knowledge depends
on a predisposition of a trust in God; this, by the way, shows you that all men
are in contact with God, there’s no such thing as somebody being neutral.
There are a series of passages in the prophets, and this will be the
fourth point of the doctrine of knowledge; the human viewpoint starts with
autonomy and ends in idolatry. It
starts, human viewpoint starts with autonomy and ends in idolatry. That’s what Hosea is going to be dealing with
over and over again, idolatry, but you can’t even get to idolatry until you
first understand autonomy, and the disastrous effects that autonomy has on our
souls. Autonomy is negative volition
toward God’s character so that when we look out upon nature, we deliberately
misinterpret it. It affects our minds,
it affects our emotions; those areas of our soul are deeply influenced. This is the doctrine of total depravity said
in other words. Man’s mind, once he is
predisposed to doubt God’s character is incapable of generating true
presuppositions. He’s cut himself off at
this point and as a result, since we have within our souls God-consciousness,
men have to replace the void of trust.
If they’ve chosen to distrust God then they’ve got to choose to trust
something else. What is it that they
choose? The autonomy means they’re the
ones that basically they’re going to start with themselves, but they’ve got to
work, I can’t just start with myself, I’ve got to do something with myself;
I’ve got to trust in something other than God. To use an every day illustration
of this, people who don’t trust in God are prone to go to horoscopes. Now what in fact are they trusting? They’re trusting Chance, they’re trusting in
“the order of things,” (quote) written in capital letters, the order of things
that are revealed in the stars and the constellations, and it’s the order of
things from whom and through whom and to whom are all things. It’s that cosmic order, now before I sell my
stocks and my bonds or before I make this business transaction, before I marry
this person I must consult my horoscope because I’m placing my trust in
something outside of myself. Man knows
that he can’t stay autonomous; he starts in autonomy but he always winds up in
idolatry because he’s got to trust something other than the God of the
Bible.
Now let’s see how and why he does this, the reference is Ecclesiastes
3:11, which teaches that God has placed a sense of eternity in every man’s
heart and that sense has to be filled with something. Now let’s look at
what the prophets say about idolatry.
Now we’re prepared to see what Hosea and his colleagues said and we’ll
end by turning to these passages and then we’ll go back to Hosea.
Turn to Isaiah 2; scholars have pointed out a strange thing about the
Old Testament. Although from archeology
we know a lot about the gods of the contemporary cultures, we know about their
myths, we know who copulated with who to produce who, we know all this from
archeological material but the strange thing is that when the prophets go to
attack idolatry, never in all of God’s Word do they ever deal with these
myths. It’s most interesting. The question has been raised, hey, what’s
going on in the Old Testament. Are these
people that write the Old Testament stupid, don’t they know what’s going on in
Canaan, don’t they know what’s going on in Assyria, don’t they know the
complexities of all the myths? Why don’t
they conduct a polemic at a point by point refutation of these idols. Instead nowhere… nowhere in the prophetic
books is there a point by point refutation of these apostate religious
systems. Instead this is the theme that
you see.
Isaiah 2:7, “Their land also is full of silver and gold, neither is
there any end of their treasures; their land is also full of horses, neither is
there any end of their chariots; [8] Their land also is full of idols,” and
then in apposition, “they worship the work of their own hands, that which their
own fingers have made. [9] And the mean man bows down, and the great man
humbles himself; therefore, forgive them not.” In Isaiah 2:20, “In that day a
man shall cast his idols of silver, and his idols of gold, which they made each
one for himself to worship, to the moles and to the bats.”
Hosea 8:6, notice again there’s no direct interaction with the apostate
religion; strange oblique attack upon it.
“For from Israel was it also; the workman made it; therefore, it is not
God.” Hosea 14:3, “Asshur [Assyria]
shall not,” this is later when they are redeemed and sanctified and purified
from their idolatry, “Asshur shall not save us; we will not ride upon horses,
neither will we say any more to the work of our hands, Ye are our gods….”
So what’s the Biblical view of idolatry?
Why don’t the prophets deal point by point with all the apostates? They don’t have to, they go direct to the
heart of the matter. The idols are the
works of man’s hands, different artists, and that’s the only Biblical polemic
against idolatry you ever find in the Bible.
Search it from one end to the other and there’s not a point by point
refutation, it is simply saying it is the work of man, it’s not God; it’s the
work of man, that’s all, it’s man construction that he himself has done.
Now what we have, then in human viewpoint is when man becomes autonomous
he selects his idols and more than that, he’s made them. It may be brought up into the 20th
century, let’s visualize when Jesus Christ comes, the rapture has come and it
sets off the tribulation and so on, visualize the situation. Here are the great thinkers of our age who
stand before Jesus Christ, who stand up to that moment convinced with all of
their hearts that it was Chance that brought the universe into existence. Convinced that it was really existing out
there, it was Chance, we wrote textbooks about it, we told people about it, we
did experiments about it, we know there is a quality called “Chance” from which
all things came to pass. And suddenly in
that day of judgment, when God illuminates their mind to the truth with that
part of hell, in hell people do know the truth, that’s what makes hell hell,
and He rips off the blinders so suddenly they see there wasn’t any Chance
there; evolution never existed, the whole thing was a product of man’s hand,
the whole system was one big illusion that we created. Why?
Because we have to trust in something.
We laugh at the ancient man, oh he had to trust in those wooden things
that he made with his hands, stupid people, bowing down to a statue, they had
to chain it down Isaiah says, so it wouldn’t topple over while they were
talking to it. And Isaiah uses the
ridicule against this.
But what do we do in the 20th century? We make it with out mind, and what is made in
man’s mind is not God, because man made it, and Chance and all these other
Forces that supposedly exist in and of themselves are going to be found one day
to be a complete delusion. The horror of
this is it shows you how completely screwed up man can be; how completely wrong
you can be. Imagine the shock when it is
discovered that the world indeed is only several thousand years old. Well we know that it isn’t, and yet suddenly
it is discovered that that indeed is all that it is. How could this be, how could thousands and
thousands of people, intellectual establishment after intellectual
establishment, they can’t all be wrong… yes they can. Darkness, blindness, autonomy and idolatry
permeate everything. That’s the message
of Hosea and that’s what we’ll be looking at in classes to come to pick out
more of this idolatry as it touches and impugns and destroys out soul.