Hosea 7

CHAPTER 7THEME: Israel turns to Egypt and AssyriaChapters 7-12 deal with the fact that Israel could escape judgment by turning to God who loves her. God is dealing with Israel in a harsh way; yet in tenderness He is attempting to call the people back to Himself before judgment comes. Israel turns to Egypt and Assyria instead of turning to God.

Hosea 7:1

ISRAEL TURNS TO EGYPT AND ASSYRIASamaria was the capital of the northern kingdomthat is, Omri made it the capital, and then Ahab and Jezebel built a palace there. On our recent trips to Israel I insisted that Samaria be included in the tour. I wanted the folk to go to that hill of Samaria and see the fulfillment of prophecy. The judgment of God is on what is probably one of the most beautiful spots in the world. It would be a lovely spot for a palace, or for that matter, for a home. From the top of the hill there is a view of the entire area. To the west is the Mediterranean Sea, to the east the Jordan Valley, to the north Mount Hermon and Megiddo, to the south the city of Jerusalem. It is a choice spot with nothing to obstruct the view in any direction. But today it is a desolate waste. Indeed the judgment of God is upon it. What was happening in Israel during Hosea’s day was that the sin which had been covered was being uncovered. That which they had been doing secretly they were now doing openly. There was no shame, no conviction, no conscience relative to their sin. The Lord would forgive their iniquity if they would repent and turn to Him. Instead, they persisted in their wickedness and went farther and farther into it. It is one thing to sin in secretthat is bad enoughbut it is even worse to bring your sin out in the open and flaunt it before the world. To do that is to sink to the very bottom. This is the reason that I believe Hosea has a message for my own nation as well as all other nations. Since the people of Israel were God’s chosen people, and yet God sent them into captivity when they persisted in sinning against Him, does it seem likely that any other nation could get by with the same type of sin? For example, when I was growing up in Nashville, Tennessee, the few homosexuals who lived there kept their homosexuality under cover. They operated rather secretly and concealed their sin. However, now across the country they are very open about their perversion and are demanding acceptance and protection of their activity. The fact is being uncovered that there are not only call girls but call boys and that homosexuals are numbered in the thousands. What was formerly done in secret is now brought out into the open, and this is characteristic of other sins as well. Someone said to me just recently, “Dr. McGee, in our day people sinned just as they do today.” “Yes, they did,” I agreed. “Before I was saved, I was with that crowd, and I know.” “Well, then, what’s the difference?” “I’ll tell you the difference. In my day we kept it under the cover. There was still some shame connected with sin. Today sin is brought out in the open and is flaunted before the world.” It is called a new morality, and actually a sort of halo is put around sin today. The sinner is commended for doing something new and daring and courageous. The other day I heard a girl complimented as being honest and courageous because she was living with a man to whom she was not married and had an illegitimate child.

Well, I am a square, I know (as someone said, being a square keeps me from going around in circles), but we must face the fact that God’s Word has not changed. The openness of sin is not a mark of advancement, but it indicates that we are losing the civilization which formerly carried some semblance of Christian culture.

Hosea 7:2

God is saying, “I knew about their sins before, but now they have taken a further step away from Me and are doing their sinning out in the open.” In other words, they have now reached the lowest depths of immorality.

Hosea 7:3

The king and the princes applauded this sort of behavior. In our day it is tragic when the leadership in any fieldeducation, science, politics, or the churchgive themselves over to foul and blasphemous language, as they are now doing. That is something else that is out in the open. A foulmouthed leader is applauded as being a he-man. Well, it also indicates that he has a very poor vocabulary and is not able to express himself. Unfortunately, this verse is applicable to our nation, and history tells us that it has been applicable to great nations in the past that have now passed off the stage of human events and lie in rubble, covered by the dust of the centuries.

Hosea 7:4

This figure of speech is tremendous. The baker had his oven ready but didn’t bring up the heat until the dough was kneaded and ready to bake. Here God is not talking about spiritual adultery but about gross immorality. They had formerly kept their sin under cover, but now they are like an open oven, hot with passion. In our day I get the impression that men are trying to prove that they are virile and women are trying to prove that they are sexually alert. In modern America there is a tremendous open obsession with sex.

Hosea 7:5

The king has become an alcoholic, and he is making a fool of himself. We have mentioned this before, but it is so important that we will keep repeating it. What was it that brought down the northern kingdom? It was idolatry, a turning away from God. That will always manifest itself in gross immorality. Wine and women, the bottle and the brothel, sauce and sex are the things that occupied the attention of the northern kingdom. Now if you think I am a square or unfair or a bigot, will you let me ask you a fair question? As you look about you today, what is the chief occupation of men and women in all walks of life? Isn’t it an occupation with liquor and with sex? Haven’t these two become the prominent things in this civilization of ours? Isn’t it true that it is being brought out in the open today as never before in our country? When these sins were brought out in the open in Israel, God said that He would have to move and judge them.

Hosea 7:6

Everything is done to stir up the passions of men and women. In our day we hear this so-called sophisticated argument about pornography: “We are adults and should have the right to choose what we want to see and what we want to hear.” Well, there isn’t much freedom to choose what we want to see and what we want to hear when we are bombarded with filth everywhere we turn. I don’t have the liberty to choose what is presented on television or the radio or the advertising media. I think there are a great many people who would like to see better things and hear better things than are presented to us today, but that freedom is denied us in order that the other crowd can have their freedom to give themselves over to sin.

Hosea 7:7

“All their kings are fallen.” The northern kingdom did not have one good king. If you were to look back in the historical books and go through the list of the kings of Israel and Judah, you would note that Judah had a few good kingsin fact, five kings of Judah led in revivalsbut the northern kingdom didn’t have a good king in the lot. Every king was as wicked as he could be. Ahab and Jezebel reached the bottom of the list, but some of the others would run them a close second. Many of the kings in the northern kingdom were assassinated. They made nine different changes of dynasty in their short history. The kings in the northern kingdom started off with Jeroboam, but you don’t get very far into the story until someone gets in and murders his line. Another line of kings starts out, and it doesn’t go very far until someone else is murdered. Several of the kings had a short reign, and their sons didn’t even make it to the throne. That was a judgment of God upon them. You see, God had chosen and promised to bless the line of David; He made no such promise to the kings of the divided kingdom in the north.

Hosea 7:8

“Ephraim, he hath mixed himself among the people.” God never goes in for mixtures. Have you noted that? He seems to want His children to stay in their own crowd. “Ephraim is a cake not turned.” Here we go again with another good, homely illustration, and Hosea has many of them. What does he mean? In that day they cooked on the top of a stove and made little cakes like our pancakes. They still make those kind of cakes there today. Now you know that a pancake that is not turned can be burned on the one side and raw on the other. That is the picture of Ephraim. The nation was hot on one side but raw on the other side. They blew hot and cold toward God. There is a whimsical little story told of a man who had been wandering through the woods and came up to a cottage. The man who lived in the cottage invited him into his home. As the man came in out of the cold, he began to blow on his hands. “Why do you blow on your hands?” asked the host. “To make them warm,” answered the wanderer. Then the host offered the visitor a bowl of hot soup. The man began to blow on the soup. “Why do you blow on the soup?” asked the host. “To make it cool,” answered the guest.

So the host jumped up and ran out of his own house, saying, “I don’t like anybody who can blow hot and cold!” Well, my friend, that is the way a great many people are as far as Christianity is concerned. With one crowd they blow hot and with another crowd they blow cold. They are like Ephraima cake (a pancake) not turned.

Hosea 7:9

This is another interesting illustration. If you have ever been dove hunting, you know that if a dove has a nest with eggs or little ones in it she will act as if she has a broken wing and actually let you get very close to her. She tries to lure you away from her nest. Actually, that is not a very smart move on the part of the dove for two reasons. When a dove lets you get that close to her, you know there is a nest nearby. Secondly, she endangers her own life. Now here was Ephraim. She refused to run to God for help. So first she ran down to Egypt for help. When Egypt wouldn’t give her the help she wanted, she went up to Assyria and asked for help. She went back and forth like a silly dove. What a picture!

Hosea 7:12

I can remember as a boy that we would get a big box, prop up one end, and put corn under it. We would have the corn lead right under the box. We would hide in the barn, and the doves would come to eat the corn. They would follow the corn right under the box. Then we would pull a string, and the box would come down on them. Silly doves. That is what God says here. He will spread His net upon them. They will be caught.

Hosea 7:13

God had a redemption for them, and yet these people were continuing to turn from the living and true God.

Hosea 7:14

They didn’t realize that the famine they were having was a judgment of God upon them. They were crying about having no food.

Hosea 7:15

“They are like a deceitful bow.” You put an arrow in it to shoot at something and the string breaks. It is a deceitful bowyou can’t depend upon it. “This shall be their derision in the land of Egypt.” He is saying that Egypt will begin to mock them and ridicule them for the way they are acting. You can see that this is a very severe section of the Word of God. Hosea was not the most popular prophet in his day. He wouldn’t be a popular prophet today, either. However, he still has a message for us, and we do well to listen.