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Chapter 4 of Hosea begins with: "Hear the word of the Lord, ye children of Israel..." and those words introduce the rest of the book. We have already discussed the story of Hosea and his marriage to Gomer and how that his story revealed God's feelings toward His unfaithful people. That's what the first three chapters of Hosea are about. But beginning in the fourth chapter, we have a condensed account of the prophet's messages from almost 70 years of preaching. What we have recorded, then, is the best and the most prominent and the most thought provoking and the most anointed sermons that Hosea ever preached. We have the "best of the best" of Hosea's ministry and for the remainder of this sermon series we will take the most prominent lesson and point from each chapter and preach a message on it. That's how deep the Word of the Lord that came from Hosea is: you can preach an entire message on just phrases of the book!

We read as our text the prominent points of God's message in chapter 4. In this chapter, God is outlining why He has a problem with the people of Israel. We find that their biggest problem is idolatry. And their idolatry has come from a lack of knowledge of the truth. He says:

Their lack of knowledge has not come because the truth was not available. The people of Israel were being destroyed for their lack of knowledge because they had rejected learning the truth. Understand what God is saying here: their lack of understanding didn't come from not having anyone to teach them, or because they didn't have the Word of God. They had both the Word and the prophet and the priests. Their lack of knowledge came from their unwillingness to study and learn and to be taught. And their lack of understanding was destroying them.

We could say the same for this town in which we live today: many lives are being destroyed by sin because of a lack of knowledge of the truth. Many are being baptized wrong. Many are choosing to live sinful lifestyles that are destroying everything good in their lives and yet they stay in their lifestyle because of a lack of knowledge of God's Word in it's full revelation. And yet, there is Bible Studies here that endeavor to preach the truth. We do our best to preach the truth to this town by making services and studies that take the entire council of God's Word and making it easier to understand. So the same thing that God is saying about Israel could be said about Castroville: they are being destroyed for their lack of knowledge, but their lack of knowledge has come from their rejection of learning the truth! To those of you who are here tonight: always keep a love for the truth, even if it makes you uncomfortable; even if it causes you to have to change. Because Jesus said it is the truth that will set you free! And we need to pray that God will send those people that are hungry for the Apostolic truth of God's Word to us so that they may gain the knowledge which will save them!

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Let's focus again on our text and try to understand what God is telling us through this passage:

They key phrase which we want to study is verse 17: "Ephraim is joined to idols: let him alone." There are three things that we must address: 1.) To whom is the prophet speaking? 2.) What does it mean to be "joined to idols?" and 3.) what does it mean to "let him alone?" In answering these three points, we will learn a valuable application of truth to us today.

Hosea prophesied to Israel at a time when they were divided into two kingdoms, the north and the south by civil war. The northern 10 tribes went by the name Israel or by the name of the most prominent tribe "Ephraim" and the southern 2 tribes went by the name of it's most prominent tribe "Judah." Therefore when the prophet says "Israel" or "Ephraim" he is referring to the northern tribes. And when he says "Judah" he is referring to the southern tribes. At this time, Judah was being more faithful to God than the northern tribes of Israel. Because of this the northern tribes of Israel would end up being destroyed hundreds of years before Judah was taken captivity by the Babylonians. And so, at this time of prophecy at least, Judah is faithful to God while Ephraim, or Israel, has fallen into idolatry. Gilgal and Bethel were the towns in which the northern tribes had set up their idols, and so verse 15 is a shout of warning across the border to Judah in the south. "Israel has been unfaithful, but Judah, don't you join her!" "Don't come to the place of idol worship at Gilgal." And then, instead of saying "Bethel" which means 'house of God' the prophet calls it "Beth-aven" which means "house of vanity" or the "house of pride." Idolatry at it's root always stems from pride in something other than God. So the prophet is prophesying to "Judah" to not join Ephraim in their idol worship. He is speaking a warning to the faithful people of God: Ephraim is joined to idols: let her alone! God was telling the southern tribes of Judah not to enter into any alliance, whether it be military, or political, or financial, with Ephraim, because God is going to judge her, and when the judgment of God comes, "Judah," you don't want to be associated with the ones who have joined themselves unto idols! At the same time Hosea was prophesying in the north, the prophet Isaiah was saying the same thing in the south and so God used Hosea to reconfirm the warnings against idolatry given by Isaiah to the southern tribes!

There is a tremendous lesson to learn here about worship. "Judah" means "praise." That God would warn "Judah" about joining Ephraim in idolatry means that Ephraim was somehow trying to coerce them to join them. Isn't it interesting today that even religions that are steeped in idolatry are now seeking "true praise" of God?! You can go to Catholic churches now where they will clap their hands and even speak in tongues. They want the blessings and presence of God that comes with "Judah," with praise, and yet they don't really want the truth. They want to feel good in their idolatry and so they welcome "Judah" into their religion, but if their religion is based upon idolatry, then God has a warning: Judah, stay away from those who have joined themselves to idols! God will judge a movement on what they teach and on their understanding of what they worship, and we who are the "Judah," those who have learned to worship Him in Spirit and in truth must not join ourselves to such idolatry if we do not want the judgment of God in our lives!

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What is idolatry? What is it really? Much of the Bible is written warning against and speaking against idolatry, but do we really understand it? Almost every religion that did not worship the one, true, God of Israel was based upon idolatry. I know that most of you are thinking "well, we know what idolatry is" but yet I'm not so sure that we can easily identify it in America today. Sometimes we like to think of America as a "Christian" country, and that is true to a point, but in actuality there is no "Christian" country. America is steeped with idolatry. For the Bible to be relevant, then idolatry must still be all around us. Let's put aside our concept of idolatry and talk about what God considers idolatry.

First, idolatry is religious. A person who is an idolater in God's eyes is not someone who is not religious, but who is actively practicing religion just in a wrong way. An athiest cannot really be an idolater, even though he might make himself a god and therefore slip into such a state. An idolater must feel that he is doing his religious duty sincerely. When Paul took Mars Hill in Athens to address the town leaders after having seen all of the idols set up around the city, Paul said "I perceive that ye are very religious" (Acts 17:22 NKJV). Idolatry is religion that is not quite based on truth.

What are idols? Going back to our text, we find that the word in the Hebrew simply means "images." It's root word means "something carved or formed." So idolatry is the worship of an image, that is supposed to represent God, and yet is not God Himself. Let me say that again and realize that this is the point of this entire sermon: idolatry is the worship of things that claim to be the image of God that are not truly God in substance, but are rather just a representation of God. Get that ingrained in your head, as we will come back to that.

With the Biblical definition of idolatry in mind, let's go back to the formation of the idol worship of the northern kingdoms of Israel. Back when Solomon was king, he kept the people happy by dazzling them with great shows of wealth and power all the while raising taxes and bleeding the people dry to pay for his extravagant lifestyle. When Solomon died, his son Rehoboam took his place. A man named Jeroboam stood and spoke to the king on the behalf of the people who were floundering under the heavy taxation and demands of Solomon. They wanted to know if Rehoboam was going to lower the demands and taxes. Rehoboam did not follow the advice of his older advisors and instead took the counsel of some of his younger friends and said "If my father chastised you with whips, I will chastise you with scorpions!" At this, the kingdom divided with the northern ten tribes splitting apart from the southern two tribes and taking Jeroboam as their king.

The problem of King Jeroboam of the northern tribes of Israel was this: he wanted to continue to worship the one, true living God of Israel, but the temple and the place of worship were in Jerusalem which was located in the southern tribes of Judah. Jeroboam was afraid that if the people of the northern tribes traveled to Jerusalem to worship that they would be affected politically by the voices there, so Jeroboam decided to set up his own two places of worship, one at Gilgal and the other at Bethel. At each place, he placed a golden calve to represent God. But Jeroboam did not call Ephraim to worship the calves, but to worship the true God as represented by the calves. After all, in Jerusalem, they were offering calves to God, so this golden calf was a representation of the true God. In worshiping the calves, Jeroboam said, you were just worshipping God because we're going to let the images represent God. If you had accused Jeroboam of idolatry, he would have denied it because in his mind he was still worshiping the one, true living God! The problem was, of course, that despite their good intentions, God is not a golden calf, and so by worshipping a representation of God, or an image of God that was yet different from God, they were committing idolatry!

At the same time, Isaiah in the southern kingdom spoke out against what Jeroboam was doing:

The problem was "to whom will ye liken God?" It is impossible to produce a man-made image that adequately represents God. That is why the second of the ten commandments is so important, even today:

God does not want us to make an image that represents Him. He doesn't want a statue, a saint, or anything, because any representation of God that we worship that we have created, will be a misrepresentation of God! Is not the logic of Ephraim and Jeroboam, the logic of many religions today? "We have statues and such that you pray to because these are visible images of the true God." And so people bow themselves to statues of Jesus and to saints and to Mary and to Buddha and to trees and nature and the list goes on and on. What is it? It is idolatry! And God hates it and God will judge it!

And notice that Ephraim fell into idolatry when they separated themselves from "Judah." Judah means "praise." If any religious movement, no matter how sincere and how truthful, separates itself from outwardly praising and inwardly worshipping God, then they are on their way to idolatry! You'd better never lose your praise, because it is "Judah" that will keep you from idolatry! It is praise and that will keep the Holy Spirit, our protector and daily guide, active in your life! When Lucifer stopped praising God as he was created, that's when pride was found in his heart. The stopping of praise always brings pride and pride brings idolatry! If Satan can get you to stop praising God, then he doesn't need any demonic help to cause you to be lost, because your pride will set you up for the judgment of God! God will not bless pride! I must stay with "Judah;" I must continue praising God!

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Before we get to our main point, notice that Hosea said "Ephraim is joined to idols." The word "joined" there literally means "to be under the spell of," or "to be fascinated and loyal to in a spiritual sense." Ephraim was sincere but sincerely wrong. They defended their errant religious beliefs with sincere zeal and yet because they were worshipping an image of God that was not in itself God, they were committing idolatry! No matter how many religious phrases that they used. No matter how much they danced at Gilgal. No matter how much they maintained that they were only letting the calf represent the true God whom they worshipped. No matter how they tried to justify it: they were still in idolatry. And thus, were going against God. They could make their religion sound impressive and even right, but at it's root, at it's core, they were worshipping an image of God that was a misrepresentation of God and thus they were violating the second commandment. And thus, God would deal with them in judgment. God eventually allowed the Assyrians to come and drag them off and the ten tribes were never heard of again! I want you to realize that God is serious about this idolatry stuff. He says that it is an "abomination" to Him. In other words, it is something that He genuinely hates and abhors. It is something that will one day lead to judgment. Perhaps I'm belaboring the point, but learn the lesson well: it doesn't matter how impressive or religious it sounds, it doesn't matter how big the congregation is or how many people teach the doctrine, it doesn't matter how big the cathedrals are or how much political power that a religious movement is, if it worships an image of God rather than the true revelation of God, Himself, then it is idolatry and it's end will be the judgment rather than the blessing of God! And hear the commandment of God through Hosea: Ephraim is joined to idols: let him alone!

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Now to the point of my message: I'm not here warning you about the dangers of Catholicism and Buddism and Hinduism, and such. Their gross idolatry makes it easy to see for anyone who is willing to just read the Bible that they are violating not only the second commandments by worshipping and setting up images of God, but many other points of scripture as well. Despite all of their false doctrines and errant teachings, their idolatry is not the greatest danger to the Apostolic church today.

The greatest danger to Apostolic Christians today, is found in a much subtler idolatry that has a grip on America. To understand it, we must go to our other text in Colossian chapter 1:

This entire book is about the identity of Jesus Christ. The church in Colosse was right in the middle of the Grecian culture which was extremely idolatrous, and so they wanted to bring some of those ideas into the Apostolic church. More to the point, they wanted to say that Jesus Christ was not God. But Paul set them straight in verse 15 when he said, the Son, Jesus Christ "is the image of the invisible God!" He goes on to state that Jesus Christ is over all things and all powers, and that "in him all the fulness of the Father dwells."

I want you to focus on the phrase that He is the "image" of the invisible God. Jesus Christ is the "image" of the invisible God to mankind. God knows that mankind needs a visible, tangible image of God in their minds and that is why He came in flesh. But let's think about what exactly the scriptures are saying here and go back to what we've already learned from the words of Hosea: Idolatry is the worship of an image, that is supposed to represent God, and yet is not God Himself. Idolatry is the worship of things that claim to be the image of God that are not truly God in substance, but are rather just a representation of God. And yet the Bible says that the Son, Jesus Christ was the IMAGE of the invisible God. And in the Bible we find people worshipping Jesus Christ and in fact, we are commanded to praise Him and Him alone!

What that means is that Jesus Christ must be God and not another. When you see the Son, Jesus Christ, if worshipping Him is to worship God, then He must be the same substance of God, He must be God in every way. Because if the Son was of a different substance than the Father, or not completely God and was just a representation of God, then to worship Him would be idolatry!

Most people today believe in a "Trinitarian" view of God which says that God is one God yet divided somehow into three distinct persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. They say that they are of "similar essence" but yet different persons. If that view of God is true, and the Son is the "image of God" then to worship Jesus is idolatry, because you are worshipping a representation of God that is incomplete and that is not actually God. It's very subtle, but trinitarianism is actually idolatry in disguise. They may pray in "Jesus name" but they are praying to someone who in their mind is distinctly different somehow from the Father. But He is the image of the invisible God, so to pray to an image of God that is not completely and totally God, is idolatry!

But what do the scriptures say? Never that God is three. Never that God is three persons. It uses many titles for the one, true God, but over a thousand times declares that our God is ONE Lord! And not only that, but the scriptures teach that the Son, that was born of woman, whom we know as Jesus Christ was the "image of the invisible God." But it is not idolatry to worship Him, because it pleased God for all the fullness of the Father to dwell in Him! Colossians 2:8-9 goes on to say:

In Christ "dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily." Not "used to dwell." Not "for a limited time dwelled." But "dwelleth." In other words it still dwells in Him today! Jesus was not some second person of a trinity coming to earth, but rather the one, true God of glory become flesh to live and die among us. He is the image of the invisible God! He is God manifest or made visible in the flesh (1 Timothy 3:16)! He is Spirit being born of woman. That's why He could say "when you have seen me, you have seen the Father." That's why Isaiah could declare:

The Son is the Mighty God in Christ! He is the invisible Spirit of God becoming flesh to shed blood for the redemption of mankind. God is one! He has taken many roles and many titles but He is one, and His name is Jesus! Jesus is the one God of the Old Testament come in flesh, and the fullness of everything that God is, still dwells within that glorified, resurrected body! When we worship Jesus, we are not committing idolatry, because He is not a misrepresentation of God. He is not just something bearing the image of God and yet not really being God: He is God! For in Him dwelleth all of the fulness of the Godhead bodily!

That's why when you and I get to heaven, and we bow before the one throne there and worship and thank Jesus Christ who sits upon that throne for saving us, it will not be idolatry! Because Jesus Christ is Almighty God in every way shape and fashion!

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I close with this:

Modern day Trinitarians say that it doesn't really matter what you believe as long as you believe. They'll say "it's just a matter of semantics." But it does matter! Because if you believe Trinitarian doctrine, you are believing the invention of men in the 300s and the 400s when they tried to combine Greek idolatry with Christianity. And the Trinitarian doctrine states that there are three persons in the Godhead, alike, but distinctively different somehow. If that is true, and the Son is the image of the invisible God, then to worship Jesus is idolatry because you would be worshipping a representation of God that is not all of God! Therefore trinitarianism is very subtle idolatry. They can make it sound religious and point to the masses that believe it, but when you come down to the root of it, it's idolatry because it is the worship of an image of God that is a misrepresentation of God. One day, God will judge it as idolatry!

So, Judah, you people of praise, hear the command and warnings of God: Ephraim, the religious people around you, are joined to idols: let him alone. Realize there is a difference. Don't worship at Gilgal. Don't be confused that there is no difference. Don't believe their lies and religious reasoning. We must love them, and try to win them, and befriend them, and pray for their souls, but don't ever forget that they are at their roots idolaters. This Oneness thing is more than just semantics and differences in wording. Don't lose your revelation of Jesus Christ! He is the head of every principality and power and that includes whatever gods or notions of god that man can create. Exalt Jesus. Put Him first in your life and in your mind. He is the only, true living God. Worship Him only! He is the only image in which God could say "it pleased me for my fullness to dwell therein!" He is therefore the only image of God that should be worshiped. Don't make statues of Him, because He is in the heavens, but He is also in Spirit as close as the mention of His name. Let the idolatry alone. Put your faith and trust in Jesus Christ only. He is the God of the universe!