Hosea 10 The Risks of it All

The Church’s Mission and the Risk of Growing Cold

Welcome to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsak preaches from his series on the book of Hosea, a study in God's relentless love. Let's listen in.

Well, good morning and welcome to Recast Church. I'm Don Filsak. I'm the lead pastor here, and I'm really glad to be together with you all. I hope you're glad to be here as well. We here at Recast, we are seeking to honor our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ by growing in faith, growing in community, and growing in service.

I say that up here frequently. When we set out 16 years ago to start a church in this area, and actually, April 19th of 2009 is the first time that we met as a church in a basement in the Trestle Creek neighborhood, and so that's coming up on 16 years ago now.

And I'm going to be honest. I mean this with all sincerity. I had no idea if this was going to fly or not. But one thing that we knew for sure way back then was that if it was going to succeed, it was going to be because God was in it, not because we were capable or that we knew what we were doing.

We did not know what we were doing. We didn't even know what we were getting into when we were starting a church. We just kind of saw God in it and thought, well, maybe He would have us do this. We knew that He would be the one who would need to draw hearts together to love one another, to draw people to Him.

And here we are years later continuing to meet, continuing to take in His Word, continuing to love Him by loving each other well.

I love it.

I get an opportunity to have a front row seat to this thing that God has done here in this.

Community.

But I would suggest to you in kind of thinking about the text that we're going to be looking at this morning, growing in faith is not very complicated, but it isn't very easy. It's not complicated, but it isn't very easy.

I think one of the most challenging aspects to growing in faith stems from our tendency to give up for a whole bunch of different reasons. So there's all different kinds of reasons we might give up in the Christian walk and growing in faith.

There are seasons of life when we think we've grown enough and we think we are mature enough that we then begin to think we can coast. That's one risk. Or we can become enticed by the things of this world and for seasons cease to grow because of the world and the way that sin grabs our attention.

I think all of us know what it means to spend at least a season chasing bright, shiny things.

You know what I'm talking about?

How many of you know what I'm talking about? You've spent some time chasing shiny, empty things. Life in a fallen world is hostile to faith. This is not a natural environment in which faith grows. It requires some effort.

An untended garden will grow weeds. Order and ordering life takes energy. At every turn in this world, faith is indeed at risk. I was listening to a podcast on my way into church this morning that reminded me that sin is crouching at the door like a beast crouching at the door waiting for you to open the door to let it in.

So our march through the book of Hosea has us facing a lot of warnings and cautions and I recognize that it's possible by this point in the book of Hosea that some of us might be experiencing what I would call prophetic fatigue.

Hopefully it's just a minor case. Yeah, some of you got it. Just a minor prophetic, minor prophet case. But I think you might get what I mean by that because even my wife and I were talking about it last night and she said, are you tired of Hosea?

And I said, are you tired of Hosea? And I mean, I would think it would be justified for some of you to go like, how long is this.

Book? How long is it?

And further, we can tend to begin to find the message repetitive. More cautions about sin, more indictments of God's people, more warnings of impending invasion and judgment for the people of God, the Old Testament people of God.

And chapter 10 will be no different, and 11, and 12, and 13, and chapter 14, and then we'll be done. But our text takes the form of three risks that we need to be constantly wary of during our journey in this fallen world.

And there is a risk of abundance that leads us to trust in material possessions. There is the closely related risk of trusting in creation and falling over into idolatry, worshiping created things rather than the invisible but very real and worthy creator.

And of course, we are always at risk of sowing our lives to sin in general, planting small seeds of wickedness that we think we can get away with when God in the book of Hosea is promising a harvest. He says, you'll reap what you sow.

And if you sow wickedness, sow the wind, reap the hurricane is a phrase that comes from this very book. So yes, this is another message about the state of our hearts. Yes, this is another reminder that God's people are just as tempted as everyone else to sin.

This is another opportunity, though, to receive caution from the prophet of God. And yet it's also an opportunity to rejoice in the hope and salvation we have through Jesus Christ our Lord, amen? How many of you are glad for that?

You're glad for that. At no point in this series on the book of Hosea have I intended for us to be or are we called to loosen our grip on hope and trust that Jesus and His sacrifice is enough. He is the Savior.

He is the King. He is the Lord and He has promised eternity to all who are His. So what's the risk for us as I launch into a message about three risks this morning? In that old covenant, the risk was a severe and stern discipline that looked like the people being carted off in exile and being conquered by the Assyrians, a pretty harsh.

Judgment.

But for us, the risk is not a lost relationship with Him. He has sealed that in the blood of His Son and by the promise of His Holy Spirit that dwells within us. The risk for us that I want to point out to you this morning is a loss of peace, a loss of usefulness, a loss of confidence, and possibly, possibly, possibly, maybe even the loss of this life.

But there is real risk, even if it's not eternal risk for us, for the one who belongs to Jesus. If you are His, you want to please Him. If you are His, you want—if you're His, you will live in some semblance and sense of inner turmoil if you give in to the siren song of abundance or idolatry or sin, if you give in to those things that the Israelites were given into.

A Christian who is sinking in the muck of this world is a Christian who is becoming increasingly powerless and joyless and quite often racked with doubt about their very salvation. So let's open our Bibles or your scripture journals or your devices to Hosea chapter 10 where we're going to read about these ancient risks that still tempt us even in this modern day where we live here in 2025.

So again, Hosea chapter 10, we're going to read the entirety of this passage and recast this as God's holy word. This is what He desires for us to be hearing here this morning. And I'm confident—by the way, when I say, are we tired of this book, I'm not.

It's God's holy word. It's what He desires, despite the fact that sometimes God's word hits us like wave after wave after wave. And you're like, how many more of these can I handle? Well, right now there's, I think, four more.

So well, there's your answer. Hosea chapter 10, Israel is a luxuriant vine that yields its fruit. The more his fruit increased, the more altars he built. As his country improved, he improved his pillars.

Their heart is false. Now they must bear their guilt. The Lord will break down their altars and destroy their pillars. For now they will say, we have no king, for we do not fear the Lord. And a king, what could he do for us?

They utter mere words with empty oaths. They make covenants. So judgment springs up like poisonous weeds in the furrows of the field. The inhabitants of Samaria tremble for the calf of Beth-Avon. Its people mourn for it, and so do its idolatrous priests, those who rejoiced over it and over its glory, for it has departed from them.

The thing itself shall be carried to Assyria as tribute to the great king. Ephraim shall be put to shame, and Israel shall be ashamed of his idol. Samaria's king shall perish like a twig on the face of the waters.

The high places of Avon, the sin of Israel, shall be destroyed. Thorn and thistle shall grow up on their altars, and they shall say to the mountains, cover us, and to the hills, fall on us. From the days of Gibeah you have sinned, O Israel.

There they have continued. Shall not the war against the unjust overtake them in Gibeah? When I please, I will discipline them, and nations shall be gathered against them when they are bound up for their double iniquity.

Ephraim was a trained calf that loved to thrash. I spared her fair neck, but I will put Ephraim to the yoke. Judah must plow, Jacob must harrow for himself. Sow for yourselves righteousness, reap steadfast love, break up your fallow ground, for it is time to seek the Lord, that He may come, rain righteousness upon you.

You have plowed iniquity. You have reaped injustice. You have eaten the fruit of lies because you have trusted in your own way and in the multitude.

Of your warriors.

Therefore, the tumult of war shall rise among your people, and all your fortresses shall be destroyed. As Shalman destroyed Beth Arbel on the day of battle, mothers were dashed in pieces with.

Their children.

Thus it shall be done to you, O Bethel, because of your great evil. At dawn, the King of Israel shall be utterly cut off.".

Let's pray.

Father, I thank You that You are faithful to warn us. You are faithful to send Your prophets in history, and now in this day to send Your Word that clearly communicates to us the threat and the warnings and the risk of sin that so easily entices and draws us in.

Father, to just image and imagine sin as a beast crouching at the door that desires to come in and wreak havoc. God, I pray that You would allow this to be a passage of conviction, this to be a passage of confession and repentance and dealing with our sin before You.

Father, I pray that You would identify for us where we have fallen short of the things that You desire of us. And we thank You that we have a great high priest who doesn't make sacrifices for us, but became the sacrifice for us.

That our sins are washed away and that they're cleansed, and yet we are still in this process of sanctification, still drawn in time and time again to sin. And I pray that You would be helping us to keep short accounts with that and continue to grow and to continue to learn from past mistakes.

Father, I pray that You would be sanctifying Your people through Your Word that identifies for us how risky it is, these things that we think we're just playing with, will actually toy with us. So Father, I pray that You would guide us, direct us, help us to walk with You, even as we have an opportunity to sing songs now and worship to You, that You would lighten our hearts in gladness.

We just read a really difficult passage in terms of judgment, but we recognize that Christ has taken judgment for us. And so Father, I pray that You would help us to be those who rejoice in gladness and being set free from the consequences of our sin while still shunning it and aiding it when we see it crop up in our lives.

And Father, I pray that You would receive these songs as worship before You this morning.

In Jesus' name.

All right, yeah, go ahead and be seated. And thanks to the band for leading us. I don't know if the worship sometimes hits you like it does me. I hope it does. But sometimes, you know, songs can be repetitive.

And we sang it as well a few times, and that phrase. But I just want to point out that like at the beginning, it was a little bit of a question mark in my mind the first few times I said it. And as I sang it, it became more true.

So I hope that that's true for you, that there are times when that repetition serves to almost kind of lean into some things that are maybe difficult in your life that you actually recognize like, oh, it is well.

It is well with my soul. So I really appreciate their ministry to us. I encourage you to get comfortable and keep your Bibles open to Hosea chapter 10 so that we can see and follow along in this passage, and it serves you to have that available on your lap as I'm going to reference it multiple times throughout this message.

The Risk of Abundance and False Worship

The life of faith is full of risks. I think we all know that. And don't get me wrong. When we are brought into the new covenant that God made through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, the Lamb of God, come slain before the foundations of the world for our sins, when we come to him, we are given all that we need for life and godliness.

We have everything available to us in Christ and through his Spirit. We are given hope. We are given forgiveness. We are given peace. We are given a new purpose. We are given the greatest cause for joy and rejoicing that could ever be.

But in God's big plan, he has seen fit to utilize growth over time to draw us closer to him. When we're saved, we are not immediately glorified. We are entered into a process of sanctification by which we grow day by day closer to him.

We have some setbacks and some victories in our lives. And how many of you know what I'm talking about? There's some ups and some downs. And hopefully the trajectory of your life spiritually since you came to faith in Christ has been one of growth, albeit maybe slow.

And maybe right now you're not quite sure where that is. But life with Christ is more like a journey and less like an arrival is what I'm saying. We are called to grow in our relationship all throughout our lives.

And no one is given a pass to go, you're old enough now. You're mature enough now. You're spiritual enough now. You don't have any area to grow. That's not true for any of us. And yet much like the story of Pilgrim's Progress written by John Bunyan, one of the Puritans, our life with Christ goes through adventures of ups and downs and twists and turns and many risks and many challenges along the way.

Now our text shows three risks that Israel faced in their relationship with God in that ancient context. But these three risks are still with us today. Our outline this morning is just simply to follow those three risks as we see them revealed in this text.

The first is the risk of abundance, verses 1 through 4. The second is the risk of idolatry, verses 5 through 10. And the third is the risk of sin. And yeah, that sounds generic, but you'll see why. Iniquity or sin in verses 11 through 15.

So these three movements have some overlap and are obviously closely related. And I mean, certainly idolatry is sin and abundance is not sin, but abundance leads often to idolatry and things like that, so we can kind of see how they're maybe interrelated.

But I'm going to walk us through this outline. And in the book of Hosea, we see the multifaceted way that evil has captured the human heart. That's one thing that Hosea is doing a good job of, is taking the same concept of sin and brokenness and temptation and looking at it from a bunch of different angles, a bunch of different ways that the people of Israel were falling into sin.

And some of those categories are pretty similar, but he keeps talking about it from a different perspective in each chapter. We're getting more and more of a vision of what it's like to fall and break.

In other words, there are many ways to fall and break, and Hosea was called to speak openly about those ways, to expose them, to warn us, to show us the end result of how that went for God's old covenant people who ignored the warnings, ignored the warnings of risk to their own detriment and their own shame.

And so the first four verses contain the first risk, the risk of abundance, verses 1 through 4, the risk of abundance. Now, right out of the gate, we get an agricultural illustration in verse 1. Israel is a luxuriant vine that yields its fruit.

The more its fruit increased, the more altars he built. You see, they were well off in the land that God had given them, a land flowing with milk and honey, and that gave them a lot of resources, that gave them a lot of riches.

As Israel increased and improved, it says the people poured more time into building more altars and improved their shrines. And you might go like, what's wrong with that, right? At face value, they're multiplying worship, right?

That's good, but we need a little bit of a historical context to understand how this is sin, and it's absolute sin. By building more altars and by improving the pillars, which would be the pagan shrines, Asherah was worshiped at a pillar, the pagan goddess Asherah.

It's very well documented that there were these Asherah poles all over the place, these pillars on high mountains and high top hills all around the area. And what's happening here historically, to understand the context of why this is sin, what are they doing wrong here?

You see, God is blessing them with resources, and they're taking those resources and disobeying Him with their abundance. He told them to worship Him at the temple in Jerusalem, full stop, one altar, go there, take your sacrifices there, worship me there.

That's it.

The northern tribes of Israel, though, historically, as of the writing of Hosea, have broken off from the southern two tribes, and they have an adversarial relationship. Now, Jerusalem and the temple is in the southern part, those two tribes down there, and there's a rift between them and the ten northern tribes to the point where they actually battle each.

Other at times.

They actually go to war, brother against brother there. And so the king of the northern ten tribes said, this can't happen, we can't keep sending our people down to Jerusalem to worship. So he set up other places to worship right away, King Jeroboam I, and he started with just two places.

He commissioned the king, Jeroboam, commissioned the forging of two golden calves, and he set them up, one in the city of Dan and the other in the city of Bethel. And this was for the northern tribes to worship.

Go to these places and worship, says the king of the northern tribes. Now, he's still encouraging them to worship Yahweh, their God, there in those places, but he set up the calves as a compromise, mimicking the worship of the pagan nations around them.

Well, you gotta have some visual thing there. That was their mindset, and so, obviously sinful mindset. And so from there, pagan worship grew exponentially. As God blessed them financially, they were like, hey, let's set up more places.

So nearly every hilltop had a shrine, an altar, or a place to participate in wicked acts of worship, even branching out into worshiping other gods and goddesses. So in their abundance, in their abundance and through their abundance, they are fueled and empowered and financed in their forsaking of God.

Now, I want to be clear at the outset that there is not a causal relationship between wealth and sin. Let me say that again. There's not a causal relationship between wealth and sin. In other words, Scripture never says, don't get wealthy, don't get money, or you will.

Sin.

It doesn't say that. It doesn't warn against making a certain amount of money and be careful, once you get enough money, once you get a certain amount, then you're sinning. Abraham was wealthy, Jacob was wealthy, David was filthy rich, Solomon even more so, Joseph of Arimathea in the New Testament was wealthy, and even Jesus Himself.

And hear me carefully because this is controversial what I'm going to say, but Jesus Himself had a family trade and a business, and that placed Him in a better place than most in His culture. The fact that Daddy had a trade, Daddy had an income, Daddy didn't just…they were not subsistence farmers.

He wasn't born into a subsistence farming situation despite the fact that most people in His age ate only what they grew. He was actually…. His son.

That's a pretty big deal.

But there is a risk. Scripture is clear about this. You're going, Don, wait a minute. I thought there was all kinds of warnings about abundance and wealth. There is, this passage being one of them. There is a risk that comes with abundance.

There's risk in it, and Scripture does indeed warn against the love and service of money. When money becomes your master, you're in trouble. Scripture is clear about that. And Jesus even says we cannot serve both God and money.

You've got to choose. Everybody's going to choose. You have to pick one. God or wealth, which will you serve? Again, no problem having wealth, just don't make it your God. Don't worship it. Don't make it your all and all.

We who are counted among the most wealthy people to ever live on planet Earth must, must, must heed this warning. We must acknowledge the deep risk that's all around us, that we live and breathe in this place of risk regarding worshiping, stuff, abundance, money, services, all kinds of things at our fingertips.

If we're going to continue to walk with God and continue to grow up in Him, we need to be attentive to the risks that are around us, and abundance is certainly one of them. See, abundance gives us time and energy and resources to forsake our God.

That's just true.

We can buy stuff that gets in the way of our worship of Him. We can afford boats that tempt us on warm summer Sunday mornings, right? We can afford travel sports that just might communicate to our kids, might communicate to our kids values that we didn't intend to communicate to them.

Are you seeing what I'm saying? We can buy, we can buy devices and games and streaming services and even more illicit things with our money that draw us away from a pure and simple worship of our great and worthy God.

Do you see it?

Do you relate to it?

Now, the ability to buy things has never been the problem. Wealth merely exposes the values that we already harbor in our hearts. Look at verse 2.

Look at verse 2.

Their heart is false. Our hearts are so incredibly prone to self-deception, and many of us may have been offended by the list of things that I mentioned already above and are already in our hearts making excuses for ourselves.

Not my family. My family doesn't struggle with that. Well, yeah, we have all of this stuff, but it doesn't get in the way of my worship. Well, I want to encourage us all towards a real genuine deep and honest assessment of what we might be communicating and what might be getting in the way.

When it comes to the heart, the very core and center of our beings, we are either His or we are not His, and that is true of everybody in this room. You're either His or you're not. I can't see that. But note that what they have done is a wrong action.

Multiplied altars and put up pillars for the worship of Asherah and increased and built up those pagan shrines, but their indictment comes about due to their hearts. Our relationship to God in our heart is the first and foremost step of reconciliation with Him and is the first and foremost step in our judgment as well.

What we do does matter, but first, the issue is the heart. True worship from a loving heart is what God desires of His people most. For the people of Israel, they are literally trying to look like they are worshiping while their hearts are not into it.

And church, I've said this many times, and I think Hosea is just beating us over the head with this, you will never trick God by pretending that you love Him. You will never trick God by pretending that you love Him.

And so at the end of verse 2, the Lord will remove their empty and false religion Himself. He says, I'll take care of it for you. What we need to remove from our lives will be removed from our lives. It will be.

But if God has to break in and remove it, that's going to get uncomfortable. That's going to get uncomfortable. Better that for the love of the one who died for you, better out of a heart given to Him that you remove the offending idols before He must send you into exile or take you out to do so.

You know what I'm saying?

Better that you do it now out of love for Him. And there's another problem that comes with abundance. You know, so you see it in verse 3, who needs a king to lead and who even needs the Lord when we have plenty of food and the wine is flowing?

When everything is met by our income and we're in control and we can work a side job and we can get more money and we can do all of this stuff and who needs God in this? There is no fear of the Lord before these people's eyes.

That's what's going on in verse 3. God is rejected by His people and they have no fear of Him. And I like what Douglas Stewart says about this because the word fear comes up regarding our relationship, God's people's relationship with the Lord multiple times and I like Douglas Stewart said this in his commentary about the word, probably the word fear, probably one of the best things I've heard applied to and defining the word fear for us in terms of what does that look like in our relationship with God.

This is what Douglas Stewart said in his commentary on this very passage this week. He said that, quote, fear in covenantal terms is roughly equal to obedience. Fear in covenantal terms is roughly equal to obedience.

So that when God is saying, you don't fear me, He's saying, you're not doing what I said. Much like a father might say to his kids, you're going crazy. You don't fear me. There's nothing that I can do to get through to you because there's no fear in their eyes.

There's no respect. There's no obedience. And unfortunately, when we're at a good place financially and all our needs are provided for, we are tempted to set God on a shelf to take Him out when maybe things are more meager and not going so well for us.

And that only demonstrates what is often true in the human heart. Many of us, I would say all of us at some point are tempted to only worship God when we are in need. We are conniving manipulators in our heart, are we not?

Israel is showing us what is common. They are only being used as an example for what is true in our hearts today. It's common to all of our hearts. Without His Spirit's transforming work, we will all seek and devolve into manipulators of God to try to get what we want out of Him.

Right?

Vending machine. Theology. Put the right thing in, get the right thing out, and move on our way. The emptiness of their worship is shown by the emptiness of their words. They say oaths to God, but they don't keep them.

They are all talking, no action, says Hosea. And so in the place of their abundance, God promises to let the punishment fit the crime.

Here.

He's creative and He lets the punishment fit the crime. They who have only come to Him for abundant crops will go to their fields and only find poisonous weeds, says Hosea. And I think it's good for us to pause here at the end of our first point and consider how patient God was with these people.

We have a tendency to look at Hosea as just his judgment, his wrath, his anger, his judgment, his indictments, his sentencing, all of that. But man, oh man, he was centuries in the process by the time that we talk about Hosea.

By the time that we hear from Hosea, centuries and centuries of building those high top shrines, those hilltop shrines, those places to worship all of these pagan gods. He put up with a lot of immorality and idolatry.

But note that what's really getting to him in the book of Hosea, what's really getting to the heart of God in regard to this idolatry is their faithlessness in relationship. If you're in relationship with God by which He has made covenant with you and you have responded to that covenant by faith and trust in His Son, I'm talking about the new covenant, the one sealed in His blood, the one by which He has purchased real people, you and me.

If you're in that kind of relationship, God is forgiving and merciful and imminently gracious.

Amen?

Have you experienced Him that way? Remaining in relationship with Him, continuing in His love, continuing trusting in Him. In relationship, God will forgive, be merciful and gracious. A heart filled with genuine love for the Lord is a heart that He is glad to work with.

But a disingenuous heart pretending to worship Him is a heart headed for terrifying judgment. And so a real question in application to this first point, are you faking it or do you love Him but stumble from time to time?

We're not talking about perfection here.

Now, we can't talk about perfection here unless we're talking about our Lord and Savior Jesus.

Christ who fulfilled the law for us.

Amen?

But are you faking it?

Are you pretending and living a pretend life? Our first application this morning is to consider our relationship to abundance and God. Is He legitimately the priority in your life? Not, not, and I like to say this because often we go like, is He number one?

And I would suggest to you that He needs to be a part of all your list. It is not sufficient to say, God is number one. I gave Him the first of my time. Now I get to go do whatever I want. All of it for Him.

All of it for Him. It's not like God, then my wife, then my family, then my church, then my…. It's God in my family, in my husbanding, in my fathering, in my pastoring, in my driving. That one comes up a lot for me.

You guys get what I'm saying? He's not one thing on a list of things.

He's the list.

He's the paper upon which you write. He's the ink upon which you put the things down in. Are you getting what I'm saying? All of it for Him. Is He your priority in all things? Have you allowed a self-reliance or even stuff you own to get between you and God?

This is a genuine question. Are you using His blessings to enhance your altars? Are you using His resources to build shrines to yourself, shrines to your hobby, shrines to your own entertainment? I can't tell you where that line is for you.

That's not my responsibility to tell you where the line is. If you want to talk about it, we can talk about it. But I'm just going to help you think it through. But I'm confident that God can tell you.

I'm confident that God can press in your heart right now with conviction those areas where you are loving things or stuff, sports teams, whatever it might be, more than Him. If you have doubts about this or feel any conviction on this, pray and ask Him to show you what He desires to change in your heart and in your behavior and in your priorities today.

And I'm confident He will. I'm confident He will.

But ask Him.

Maybe you don't want to ask Him. Then ask Him. But abundance comes with risks. But there's a follow-up risk that goes more to the point, related but more direct. And that's the risk of idolatry, verses 5 through 10.

The Risk of Idolatry and the Shame of Bethel

As I mentioned earlier, Israel had set up a golden calf in Bethel, the city whose name means house of God. And I don't know whatever happened to the place in Dan. It's not really mentioned much by the prophets.

But the place, the golden calf set up in Bethel seemed to take root and they seemed to go there and worship. And so it's addressed a lot. Hosea and some of the other prophets like to riff on the name Bethel.

Bethel meaning house of God is the name of that. Beth-Avon meaning house of evil. And they liked to call it, the prophets like to have a little bit of snark and a little sarcasm. And instead of calling it Bethel, the house of God, they said, no, you've turned it into a house of wickedness.

And so he calls it Beth-Avon, you'll see. Avon used twice in this passage. The word wickedness is what that word means. And there's no city, there's no city of Beth-Avon anywhere. And it's unlikely that anybody would name it anyways.

Who's gonna name their city? The city of wickedness. I guess there is a Hell, Michigan, I don't know. But I guess, you know, people name things weird stuff.

That's true.

But those who wouldn't fear the Almighty, he says, those who wouldn't fear me, remember, he already said that. You don't fear the Lord, verse three. They came and trembled. The word that's there for like a fervency in worship.

They came and trembled in fervent worship before the golden calf, fearing the pagan deities more than they feared the Almighty God. Do you see how foolish we can be? Afraid that the stock market's gonna crash.

But not afraid for your soul. Not afraid in an obedience toward the Lord himself. But as soon as the calf is mentioned, it's being carted off. It gets a little, very, very short show here. Verse five, the inhabitants of Samaria tremble for the calf of Beth-Avon.

Its people mourn for it, and so do its idolatrous priests, those who rejoice over it and over its gourd. By the end of the verse, here we go, for it has departed from them. The beginning of the very next verse, the thing itself, the very idol itself shall be carried off to Assyria.