Hosea 6-7 The Danger of Empty Religion

You're listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filcik preaches from his series on the book of Hosea, A Study in God's Relentless Love.

Let's listen in. Good morning and welcome to Recast Church.

I'm Don Filcik. I'm the lead pastor here. And we're a community gathered together in the name of our

Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. That's why we're here together. And we've joined together to grow in faith, grow in community, grow in service.

And we do a lot of religious things. Our goal is to practice a relationship with God through Jesus Christ in the power of his indwelling

Holy Spirit. And so that's why we exist. The purpose of Recast Church is to worship him and find more worshipers for his name, both of those being relational in nature, a relationship with God and a relationship with others.

So in our text, we're going to see this morning, we're going to be diving into a longer text, but we're going to see the danger of empty religion.

And our text will highlight empty religion as defined as outward actions of worship that do not flow from a heart of love for God.

I think we all recognize that we can do religious things without much thought about God at all, without much genuine love for him or with our hearts growing cold.

We can attend church, we can give money, we can volunteer time, we can say some prayers, we can read our

Bibles, we can work at summer sports camp, and do all of that without a thought about God, without him being the focus.

All kinds of things can motivate religious people. But there are two motivations that stand out in this text that I'm going to read here in a moment this morning that we're going to walk through, and they're hallmarks of a life that's pleasing to God, of what

I would call true heart religion. He desires steadfast love, and he desires our pursuit of the knowledge of him.

He wants to be known, and he wants to be loved. He wants us to know him in truth, and he wants us to love him in truth.

Our text is going to take us on a tour of sorts through the empty religion of an ancient people, the

Israelites. And we're reading about that ancient people because they serve as a cautionary tale for us to consider here where we live today.

Empty religion is a temptation, I believe, to all peoples. All of us will be tempted to gravitate toward doing religious things with no heart engagement at all, without any love, without pursuing the knowledge of God in it.

And this is in part, I'm going to just be direct, I think it's in part because we tend and trend toward laziness.

If we're honest with ourselves, we're looking for the path of least resistance, the easiest way to get ahead.

And I mean, how many of you would just raise your hand and agree with me that you've identified over the course of your lifetime that relationships take time?

Relationships take effort, right? They take time, they take effort, they take nuance, they take struggle.

Checklists, the last time I checked and all the checklists that I've ever made, they don't talk back. They don't talk back.

They don't disagree with me. Checklists are neat and tidy. If I live with God in a way of checklists,

I can lay my head on my pillow at the end of the day with a fairly reasonable assessment of how I did. I can finish the day looking at a list of checked off boxes saying, look at what

I have done for my God. Do you know what I'm talking about? But being in relationship with God means some nights

I lay my head on my pillow in confusion. Did I do okay today,

Father? Are we good? I feel like I could have done better, but thank you for your grace.

Forgive me for failing at this point. Forgive me for faltering at this point. I'm looking forward to a new day with you tomorrow.

Is that a different ending to the day? Is that sometimes confusing? Do you ever wonder, have

I had a good day with God? And sometimes your assessment is accurate to say, I haven't had a good day with God.

So I want us to open our Bibles or your scripture journals or your devices to Hosea chapter 6. We're going to actually read two chapters.

You'll notice that it's a little bit of a longer reading, a larger text, but it's what God has for us this morning.

Hosea 6 and 7 are really, they go together. You'll notice in the English standard version, they don't even put a paragraph break between the two.

They really kind of belong together. But recast, this is God's holy word. I want to remind you that this is maybe the most important and valuable thing that we do together is taking in his word.

That's why I have no problem reading larger chunks like this. Hosea 6. Come, let us return to the

Lord, for he has torn us that he may heal us. He has struck us down and he will bind us up.

After two days he will revive us. On the third day he will raise us up that we may live before him.

Let us know, let us press on to know the Lord. His going out is sure as the dawn.

He will come to us as the showers, as the spring rains that water the earth. What shall

I do with you, O Ephraim? What shall I do with you, O Judah? Your love is like a morning dew, like the dew, like a morning cloud, like the dew that goes early away.

Therefore I have hewn them by the prophets, I have slain them by the words of my mouth, and my judgment goes forth as the light.

For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.

But like Adam they transgressed the covenant, therefore they dealt faithlessly with me. Gilead is a city of evildoers, tracked with blood, as robbers lie in wait for a man.

So the priests band together, they murder on the way to Shechem, they commit villainy. In the house of Israel I have seen a horrible thing.

Ephraim's whoredom is there, Israel is defiled. For you also, O Judah, a harvest is appointed when

I restore the fortunes of my people. When I would heal Israel, the iniquity of Ephraim is revealed, and the evil deeds of Samaria, for they deal falsely.

The thief breaks in and the bandits raid outside, but they do not consider that I remember all their evil.

Now their deeds surround them, they are before my face. But by their evil they make the king glad, and the princes by their treachery.

They are all adulterers, they are like a heated oven whose baker ceases to stir the fire from the kneading of the dough until it is leavened.

On the day of our king the princes became sick with the heat of wine, he stretched out his hand with mockers.

For with hearts like an oven they approach their intrigue. All night their anger smolders, and in the morning it blazes like a flame of fire.

All of them are as hot as an oven, and they devour their rulers. All their kings have fallen, and none of them calls upon me.

Ephraim mixes himself with the people. Ephraim is a cake not turned. Strangers devour his strength, and he knows it not.

Gray hairs are sprinkled upon him, and he knows it not. The pride of Israel testifies to his face, yet they do not return to the

Lord their God, nor seek him for all this. Ephraim is like a dove silly and without sense, calling to Egypt, going to Assyria.

As they go I will spread over them my net. I will bring them down like the birds of the heavens. I will discipline them according to the report made to their congregation.

Woe to them, for they have strayed from me. Destruction to them, for they have rebelled against me. I would redeem them, but they speak lies against me.

They do not cry to me from the heart, but they wail upon their beds for grain and wine.

They gash themselves. They rebel against me. Although I trained and strengthened their arms, yet they devise evil against me.

They returned, but not upward. They are like a treacherous bow.

Their princes shall fall by the sword because of the insolence of their tongue. This shall be their derision in the land of Egypt."

Let's pray as the band comes to lead us in singing this morning. Father, we encounter in this passage a reminder of what you desire of us, your people, that you desire our hearts more than our empty actions and deeds.

You're not impressed. You are not looking for just robotic obedience, but you desire our love, and it is good for us to come into the knowledge of you and into a life of consistent pursuit of the knowledge of you.

Father, I pray that you would meet us in this place with a correction for our hearts where we have given ourselves over to the emptiness of religious duties and religious responsibilities and religious actions.

Father, I pray that you would be transforming us internally and making us more and more in the image of your

Son, Jesus Christ. We thank you for salvation and rescue that we have in Him, and I pray that even now as we have an opportunity to sing songs that you would impress in our hearts the great glory and beauty of the salvation that we have in your

Son. That we would be moved and we would be transformed in our hearts. That we would not be given over to just the the emptiness of a mind that isn't thoughtful of you, but we would think of you, meditate on you, your glory, your forgiveness, your love expressed to us at the cross.

That we could sing these songs with hearts that are on fire with love and passion and joy and gladness for the hope that you have given us in Jesus Christ, your

Son, and it's in His name that I pray. Amen. All right, yeah, go ahead and be seated and get comfortable.

Reopen your Bibles or your devices, your scripture journals to Hosea chapter 6. We're going to be going through those two chapters, Hosea 6 and 7, and I want to start off with a couple of kind of like definitions.

I want to explain that false religion is the worship of false gods and goddesses, and that has been around for a long time and continues even to this day, and it's dangerous, but it's not as hard to identify as what

I'm going to be talking about this morning, and that is empty religion. I'm making a distinction between these two, and yet I want to be clear that I believe that the nation of Israel, as of the writing of Hosea, were involved in both.

They are both involved in pagan false worship, but I also believe that they were involved in empty religion, and I see

God addressing in our text some specific results of an empty religion that is devoid of the knowledge of God and lacks the motivating principle of genuine love for God.

So, we can do all of the forms and do all of the outward things that God requires of us with no heart, with no love for Him.

Empty religion is cultural religion. Empty religion is going to church because the culture says, well, that's valuable.

Empty religion is going to church without any love for God. Empty religion is grudgingly giving money to the church or organizations.

Empty religion is volunteering in recast kids without offering that service up out of gratitude and love to God.

Empty religion seeks to put God in our debt by doing things for Him.

Does this sound familiar? Does this sound like something that you're aware of as a possibility in your own heart and life, as a reality and a temptation?

And God is not a fan. We're going to see in this passage that God is not a fan of empty religion. Our outline this morning is six points surrounding the subject of empty religion, really cautions against empty religion.

The first is going to start in a good spot, a call to relationship, verses 1 through 3. The second movement is the nature of empty religion, verses 4 through 7.

And then the leaders of empty religion, the power of empty religion, the compromise of empty religion, and the selfishness of empty religion.

So here in our first caution about the danger of empty religion comes a positive thing to begin with.

And it's good when we can start with the good news or the call here.

A call to relationship is verses 1 through 3. And this does have something vital to do with empty religion.

But here we see, the Lord in His discipline will tear and rend Israel. He tears but with the intention of healing.

He strikes down but He will build back up. You see, God's redemptive plan is restorative.

It's restoration with a people who will love Him. That's the end goal of human history, a restoration of relationship with God, with people who love

Him, are healed by Him, and are reconciled to Him. It's quite likely that many of us in the room have a confusing relationship regarding God's discipline, or even more to the point,

His wrath. How can He tear so that He can heal? We talked a lot about that last week.

Why would He strike us down only to build us back up? That really kind of is valuable for you to go back and listen to last week's message.

It's available online on the podcast or whatever. If that's a real confusing point to you, I don't have the time with all that we're going to talk about today to get into that.

But here's the, in a nutshell version of it, we are sinful. God in His holiness must judge sin.

God desires a restored relationship with His people, but His people have gone down the road of sinful betrayal against Him.

God is the Creator. God is the one we have sinned against. God is holy and just in His wrath toward sin.

God disciplines His people who wander away from Him. God restores any and all who return to Him in steadfast love and seek to know

Him. Amen? Amen? This is key. This is fundamental. This is the gospel. And in verse 2, we see a time stamp on the restoration of God.

He here is saying, I want to restore my people, even though in your sin I have broken you.

My desire is revival and restoration. And after two days, He says, I will revive my people and He will raise

His people up on the third day so that we may live in His presence. In the immediate context, this meant something to them.

I know that the idea of being raised on the third day automatically maybe in your mind makes you jump to something in the future, but it did mean something in their context.

This is hope that God will not leave His people to ultimate destruction. That's what they would have understood as they were reading

Hosea, not knowing the resurrection, not knowing Jesus' death for them, that God will not leave

His people in ultimate destruction, but He will heal. He will rescue. He will raise up His people.

Like Job saying in the book of Job, even though He slay me, I will still trust in Him.

This was identified in the early church fathers, by the way. This very passage in Hosea is an Old Testament reference to the resurrection.

In hindsight, we can see it. And the raised on the third day is clearly a prophetic nod to Jesus being raised on the third day, about 750 years after Hosea penned these words.

But God is a God who will not and doesn't leave His redeemed people to destruction.

Our hope for resurrection is based on God's gracious promise to restore His people and His purging discipline in the face of His people, really in the life of His people,

His purging discipline that we may even experience in this life, is to prepare us to live in His presence in holiness.

I cannot live before Him. You cannot live before Him in the state in which your heart exists now.

We all need revival, but not merely revival, that is a life change that is in love with Him that continues to grow in Him, but we all need resurrection.

I need this incursed state to give way to a glorious change that He will enact on that glorious day of resurrection, and He will do it for you as well if you are

His. Amen? And in verse 3, we see the explicit call into relationship with God.

Here's the call to relationship as opposed to just religion. Let us know, says verse 3, and then for double emphasis, let us know, let us press on to know the

Lord Yahweh our God. There is effort in this pressing on.

Church, this is a call directly to those who are His people, press on, church, be diligent in knowing and then loving the

Lord. It is a privilege to know the Lord. He has stooped so low as to speak with us.

He has given us His written record of His ways and works in human history so that we can see

Him in relationship to us. The scriptures exist to offer us the knowledge of God oriented to various human contexts and different movements, different people, kings, shepherds, all different kinds of people that He interacted with so that we can know

Him in ways that we can relate to. Real people, God relating in relationship with real people so that we can be called into relationship with Him as well.

God is, in this text here, it's declared of Him that He is more faithful than the morning dawn. You want to know this

God? He is faithful, more faithful than the spring rains, hopefully coming soon to, you know, a field near you, about to blanket

Michigan and bring us the spring flowers, right? We're here at the start of March and here it comes.

And so the call here, He's faithful, He's faithful, He's faithful.

Have you tasted that? Have you experienced His faithfulness? Come return to the Lord. Press on church to know your

God. So why not today give up your idols and trust

Him today? He who gives healing. He who can bind up our wounds. He who promises to raise

His people up. He who is more faithful than the dawn. Stop ignoring Him. Stop forgetting

Him in the busyness of your empty religion and draw near to Him in relationship today. The second caution against empty religion serves to identify the nature of empty religion in verses four through seven.

The central problem of an empty religion is not about our actions, not primarily about doing the wrong things.

As a matter of fact, most people practicing an empty religion are doing really good things. Though empty religion does eventually lead to false practice and it will eventually lead to wickedness, but the problem all begins in the heart.

It's not primarily a issue of doing the wrong things. Look at verse four. God uses the example of an exasperated parent, but what have

His people done to make Him say, what am I going to do with you? How many of you ever heard a parent say that phrase?

Raise your hand. Have you ever heard your own lips say that phrase? Some of us in the room, probably all of us have heard it at some point and maybe many of us in the room have actually heard it on our own lips about to a stubborn child, what am

I going to do with you? What am I going to do with you? But God's exasperation is due to the lovelessness of His people.

The love of Judah is likened to a morning cloud or dew in the morning that goes away quickly.

The image is a thin and easily distracted commitment to their God. Their love is weak.

Their love passes quickly. It's just there for a moment and then the next thing you know they're forgetting Him altogether.

It's an absence of love for God that is truly at the heart of empty religion. A lack of faithfulness to God that is at the heart of empty religion.

Why would we give up our time and energy and money and resources begrudgingly? Because we lack love for God.

How do we get to the place where we think we will manipulate God by doing things for Him? We begin to see

God like a boss and less like a loving friend. And that leads to the second thing that is close to the heart of empty religion as we're still kind of on this on this point of understanding the nature of it.

Also at the core of empty religion we find a lack of the knowledge of God. Where there is not steadfast love for God and where there is little knowledge of God, we will most likely find empty religion in that place.

Because verse 6 identifies what God desires from His people. He wants our hearts and minds. And when

He has a heart and a mind, He has the will and the actions as well.

Because the will and the actions follow the heart and mind. And if He has our hearts and our minds, then

He will have our love. And I would suggest that we cannot love one we don't truly know.

That's why knowledge and steadfast love come together here in verse 6. In true religion, we see heart and mind, knowledge and love together.

But they're absent from empty religion. And this steadfast love and knowledge of God is to be qualified by the adverb faithfully.

Love in what way? Pursue knowledge in what way? Faithfully. According to verse 7, God is looking for us to faithfully love

Him. Keep it up. And faithfully know Him. Keep getting to know Him. This is like the word press on to know the

Lord in verse 3. Much like a relationship where a husband says to his wife, I told you on our wedding day

I love you. That should be enough. No, keep doing it. Keep loving her.

Right? It's that faithful aspect that's keep pursuing Him. Keep seeking to know

Him. Keep the fire stoked in your heart. We are being called to continually know

Him better so that we continually love Him more. We are called to a lifelong pursuit of the knowledge of God that leads us to the love of God and then leads us to then serve

Him. So often we get this backwards in our lives. We serve Him and serve Him and serve

Him with no love and no knowledge. The people have fallen into empty, loveless ignorance and so God sent the prophets,

He says in the text, with cutting words and illuminating judgments. Like Adam, they have broken the covenant with God.

They have acted in infidelity, faithlessness. And I just want to point out that one of the pictures that I'm getting as I'm studying the book of Hosea and kind of pass this along to you is that this is not reflecting on primarily an angry

God. God is not responding basically angry here. He is basically jilted.

He is basically heartbroken. He is basically betrayed by his own people through the book of Hosea.

Have you seen it? Have you seen it developing? The entire theme of a man whose wife is cheating on him and he knows it and she knows it and she's doing it brashly before him?

Like this is the image of God. Jilted, heartbroken, betrayed.

The heart of empty religion is a heart that has stopped seeking to even know Him, stopped seeking to love God, and is engaged in infidelity toward Him.

The next caution about empty religion identifies the third thing here, the leaders of empty religion, and this is in verse 8 of chapter 6 and goes over to verse 3 of chapter 7.

We're kind of bridging that chapter divide there in this point but the chapter divide actually happens to be right in the middle of a

Hebrew sentence. So that guy was just kind of like cutting corners at this point in the

Middle Ages when he was dividing these chapters. But where empty religion reigns, leaders run away with the people, okay?

So that happens when your heart is not engaged, you're not seeking to know God, you're not seeking to love

Him, you are ripe for the picking. It's quite likely that the next dozen or so verses in Hosea are reflecting on specific historical situations that happened in Israelite history.

The footprints of blood can be traced back to the territory of Gilead, the text tells us.

In verse 8, Gilead is a city of evildoers tracked with blood. What in the world is going on there?

Why the mention of Gilead? Well, it's kind of interesting because I think there's an actual historical account that is being emphasized here that Hosea is quite likely predicting that comes to fruition in 2

Kings 15 -25. Now, the names are unfortunately close, so it's very easy to get them confused.

But we are told about the downfall of a king named Pekahiah. Now, his military commander's name is

Pekah, so those are confusing. Pekahiah is the king and his military commander is

Pekah, and we read this in 2 Kings 15 -25. And Pekah, the son of Remaliah, that's the military commander, his captain, the captain of King Pekahiah, conspired against him with 50 men of the people of Gilead and struck him down in Samaria.

This is a military coup that results in assassination of the current king. Pekah, the military commander, assassinating his king,

Pekahiah, with 50 men of Gilead. This was a bloody conspiracy against King Pekahiah, likely a little after the writing of Hosea, and this is the trail of bloody footprints leading back to Gilead.

Empty religion opens up, what is this all about? Empty religion opens up a power gap. When the knowledge of God has gone away, and the love of God has waned in a people, there are tons of people who are ready to spoon -feed you.

You are ripe for the picking, and in that absence of a love for God, and in the absence of a knowledge of God, many will rise up and feed you conspiracy, and intrigue, and trivia that serves their ends and their purposes, and that's happening.

That's happening with you. I'm interacting with some of you. I'm seeing it on Facebook. I'm observing it, and it is not like we can sit back and kind of go like, oh,

I bet there's somebody out there that this is a good message for. This is talking to us. This is talking to where we're at, church.

There are plenty of people who are sending me podcasts, sending Trent podcasts, going, but what about this?

And I'm like, whoa, wait a minute. Is this grabbing us, church? Are we at a place where we're ripe for all kinds of people to come in as spiritual authorities in our lives, and teach what is contrary to God's word?

We need to be aware of the way that, if we're dissatisfied with religion, we're dissatisfied with the truth, we're dissatisfied with Christ.

I mean, there is plenty of stuff out there that's more entertaining than this, right? Do you know what

I'm talking about? Oh, that's scary, and I'm getting a little ahead of myself here. The priests, think about this.

The priests who are supposed to be serving the people and mediating between them and Almighty God have become a band of highway robbers, according to verse 9.

They engage in villainy and murder on the way to Shechem. Even the priests engage in the coups and the assassinations of the kings during this era.

God looks down, and He sees it all, and He says, this is horrible. Look at verse 10.

In the house of Israel, I have seen a horrible thing. Ephraim's whoredom is there. Israel is defiled.

Where empty religion takes root, people look for something to love, something to live for, something that they can control in their everyday mundane lives.

And the people of Israel turn to whoredom and defilement. They turn to pagan gods. They turn to pagan rituals, and they did horrible things before the face of God.

And while there's a glimmer of hope for the harvest of restoration planted in the middle of verse 11 for Judah, which is the southern nation,

Israel, the northern nation, is too far gone. The people have become ensnared in the lives of iniquity and evil deeds.

A spirit of whoredom has taken them over, according to the last couple chapters. And so far, they are so far and so deep into wickedness that when

God thinks, maybe I should just heal them. Maybe I could fix this. Maybe I should just forgive.

It says their wicked deeds rise up before Him. Their banditry, their violence, their evil deeds keep

Him from giving them a second chance, like He will indeed give to Judah. The southern kingdom of Judah is going to last 150 years longer than the northern kingdom, because God sees some glimmers of maybe some repentance there.

But they turn very wicked as well. And while God is beholding the horrible deeds of His people, they are so far out of relationship with Him that they don't even think about it.

In verse 2 of chapter 7, we see that they don't stop for a second and think, maybe we ought not to do this wicked thing that we're about to do, because God is over us.

Their sin surrounds them like a wall. Their sins are ever before His face, while they follow their leaders to the neglect of their

Almighty God. And this is brought back to the leadership in verse 3. The evil and treachery of the priests and the people give gladness to the king and gladness to the princes.

How? Well, new kings, here's what's going on, new kings are often pleased by whatever violence or deception or wicked plots were required to get them to the throne.

Can you imagine that historically? Wicked kings are always glad for whatever it took to get them in power.

The political turmoil in the coming years for Israel is a clear fulfillment of these very direct prophecies from Hosea about political intrigue.

So why all this section about ancient Israelite politics? Some of you are interested, most of you are not.

Is this just a history lesson? And I say, absolutely not, no way. Nothing is existing in the pages of Scripture just merely to teach us history so that we can win at trivia or something like that.

This shines a light on the way that our hunger for control puts us on a pathway of danger.

We are at any moment running the risk of compromise for power, compromise for wealth, compromise for fame, and these are all real temptations for us, church, in every generation.

An empty religion is a real pathway to deep cultural compromise where the church is just a social club, where the church becomes just a thing that our culture does on Sunday mornings.

In that context, the church is drained of her power, drained of her appeal, and drained of any real substance.

And church, I'm suggesting to you that we are in part living in a time of rebuilding from that status.

The church drained of her power, drained of her appeal, and drained of her substance.

And I think that's been going on for a couple of decades now, and it's time to rebuild. It is time for revival.

I believe we're living in a time of rebuilding. We need a revival of the knowledge of the

Lord that leads to a steadfast love, a burning in our hearts, and a burning in our souls for Him.

I've not really considered this, so we've been going for over 15 years now. We're really coming up on 16 years of our church history, and I think that there might be a shift coming.

And I'm saying this as a might be a shift coming, but I think it might be time for us to activate the lowercase e in recast.

I don't know how many of you guys know this. The e has been just laying there as a little lowercase for a while. It's been kind of dormant.

It's been sitting there waiting for the right moment to spring forth with a core value, and I think we might be getting there.

Trent and I have been talking about it. We haven't necessarily, this is not even to the elders. Some of the elders are like, what's Don about to say?

We'll talk about it, and we'll work through it, and we'll figure out if it's the right move for us. But I actually think that the e might be coming up to education.

I think it's time. I think it might be time. Education comes to my mind. Our minds need to be filled with the knowledge of the

Lord, and we might need to rethink some of the ways we pursue the knowledge of the Lord together here. As I'm beginning to pull on these strings and hear where you're going for your sources, where are you going to get your information, what intrigues are grabbing your minds and hearts, what conspiracies are abiding in this church,

I think we need some education. Education and knowledge of God. I'm grateful for Trent being on board to help me to rethink some of these things with a fresh set of eyes, and I'm looking forward to what

God might be doing in us and through us in the coming months and years. The fourth caution here highlights the power of empty religion.

It has power. This ties in a little bit. This ties in a little bit with that the leaders, they kind of go together.

This section continues that political discussion and even dives into it more specifically.

The gap that empty religion creates is a vacuum that will be filled by something.

Again, kind of like that same as the last point, our hearts will be moved by something. Your heart is moved by something.

We will get passionate about something. It might be essential oils. It might be video games. It might be fishing. It might be family, but we will get animated when we talk about something.

Have you ever found that for your co -worker? And that thing that all of a sudden, oops, I stumbled into that, and now they won't stop talking about that.

You guys know what I'm talking about. And that isn't wrong. That's how we're designed.

I'm not at all saying that any of those things are wrong in and of themselves, but the religious leaders of Israel, including the priests, it says are like a heated oven.

They are passionate about something. Something has the fire burning and simmering under them all day and all night.

And it's an interesting thing. For them, it was politics.

Who would do that? Who in the world would get fired up about politics? Are you kidding me?

Here in this ancient text, you're telling me, oh, of course, in ancient culture, of course, they were fired up about politics back then.

That's, I'm serious. That's what they were, that's what they're getting worked up about. This is what has them fired up like an oven.

There's a Hebrew pun, by the way, and you might, you might read that word adulterer at the start and immediately assume that it's their adultery that has them inflamed, but not by the end because the end result of this flame is the consumption and the burning of their kings.

Like, their kings falter and fail because of this passion that's in them. That's why I'm saying it's about politics.

There's a Hebrew pun in verse four where the word for adulterer sounds just almost identical to the word baker.

You just have to pronounce it a little different. But the point of verse four is that the religious leaders have found their passion.

And without passion for God, something else will grab your heart. If it's not God, then something will take that spot.

Something will be on the throne. Something will be central to you. Something will get your attention and in your mind and begin to consume you.

They are seeking the perfect king. They have given their hearts to something else, and that is the meaning of adulterer here.

And they are like a fire that doesn't need to be stoked by the baker while the dough is rising. No, but they're carrying enough heat to not need to be constantly tended in the baking process.

In verse five, we see the leaders of empty religion making fools of themselves, even being open to joining forces with those who are mockers of God.

They are concerned for their own power and their own authority. Empty religion, devoid of relationship with the

Almighty, has no Almighty. You don't have anything that is stable, nothing that is a sure footing.

It seeks to preserve its own authority. False religion and empty religion seek to preserve their own authority.

And wicked plots make for strange bedfellows. The religious leaders would join forces with those who outright reject

God because they have other causes in common. This would be a good moment to talk about who we join forces with.

I'm going to be an equal opportunity offender this morning. I would caution you about a man named

Jordan Peterson. I would caution you about a man named Joe Rogan or Ben Shapiro or Matt Walsh or other podcasters who may have a common ground with you while not sharing a common faith with you.

It isn't a sin to listen to them. As a matter of fact, I think they have some, there's some good and some bad.

I'm not giving you a list. I blogged about that this week. I'm not giving you a list of things to not, guys to not listen to, people not to pay attention.

My list, the people that I won't listen to isn't even on there. But it's a sin to let them influence you more than God's holy word.

It is a sin to allow them to influence you more than God's holy word.

Now, I'm going to make a statement, and I said it a little bit earlier, and it ought to ruffle you a little bit.

And I'm going to say, are they more entertaining? You don't want to answer that one out loud, do you?

Are they more entertaining than God's word? Even that thought ought to be a challenge to us regarding our passion for God and His holy word.

When we find God boring, but we find worldly pursuits invigorating, that might be a sign that we need to be stoking the fire of the knowledge of God and a more passionate pursuit of Him.

But in the hearts of those engaged in empty religion, we see a building heat in verse 6.

They approach their plots and schemes with sleepless nights, following the rabbit trail, clicking all the links and listening to all the podcasts.

They connect the dots, figuring out which king needs to be dispatched and who needs to be installed. And man, they got a network, and they got their secret handshakes and their signals, and they are working a plot.

They are working a scheme with fire building in them.

Overnight, it smolders, and in the morning, it blazes forth like a fire. And suddenly, hot as an oven, they devour their rulers and their kings fall.

This is the politics of the era, the politics of the time. This is a crazy history. Only one out of six kings between the writing of Hosea and the very end of the...when

they are carted off to Assyria, Assyria invades, they're destroyed. Only one out of six kings will not die by assassination.

He was a really bad king, by the way. The guy named Manahem there, he's the one they didn't kill.

The rest of them they dispatched by coups, hostile takeovers, and assassinations.

The politics of this era was more divided than America in 2020. That's saying a lot.

More divided. I want you to just imagine in your mind a scenario in which you're living in a time and an era of American history where six out of the past seven presidents have been assassinated.

Can you imagine what it would be like to live in that context? Can you imagine what it would be like to live in that place?

This is intense. This is an intense time in the history of God's people.

The priests had had a lot of time on their hands. Leading the people in the pursuit of God was not how they were spending their time, so they needed something to do.

So why not stir up the intrigues, the conspiracies, the plots, and the assassinations?

But seriously, the end of verse six is astonishing and is there for our blessing and our benefit because it highlights where power can be found in true religion.

Empty religion will be casting about to try to find power, but look with me at verse seven of chapter seven. All of them are as hot as an oven and they devour their rulers.

All their kings have fallen and none of them calls upon me.

All of this political upheaval, all this division, all this plotting and scheming for power, and nobody is calling on God?

Nobody is calling on God. Church, I'm going to ask you a question. I don't get into politics very often, but I want to ask you, what are we as a church to our government?

What are we as a church in relationship to our government? Usurpers? Insurrectionists?

Or prayers? Or prayers? Those who seek the

Lord on behalf of our nation, does that describe us? Are we all about our power as a quote -unquote voting block or do we conceive ourselves as a praying block?

We have power, amazing unfettered power in communication with the

Almighty God. Do you avail yourself of it? That is where true power is found, calling upon our

God. The fifth caution identifies the compromise of empty religion.

Verses 8 through 13. Empty religion will gladly adopt and mix in and syncretize social thoughts about God.

Ephraim, it says, has mixed himself with the pagan nations around him and the metaphor is that he is like a pancake that isn't turned.

Put a pancake on the hot griddle, walk away, what do you get? Burned on one side, undone on the other.

Ephraim hasn't turned to the Lord but has chosen to remain in compromise with the religious practices of the nation around him and he is getting burned.

And so, in this compromise, strangers devour his strength and mold grows on him.

The gray hair sprinkled on him are likely the gray hairs on bread, not the gray hairs on his head. Gray hair on the head is a consistently positive metaphor in scripture.

Gray hair is never mentioned as a negative. I don't believe that all of a sudden in one single passage it's a negative where everywhere else it's a positive.

No, this is gray hair. Gray hair is fine when it's found on a head. Gray hair is not fine when it's found on your bread.

Okay, right? You guys get what I'm saying there? And the entire metaphor throughout this is baking? I see it as bread.

They continue in pride while refusing to turn back to the Lord to seek him. Empty religion is often disconnected enough to even diagnose when things are wrong.

The people of Israel during this time are disconnected enough from God that they're unaware of just how silly and foolish they're being.

They're looking for solutions to circumstances, seeking to control their lives, and seeking to fix it all in their own strength.

And so, they compromise with the nations like a senseless dove calling out to Egypt and flitting to Assyria. Now, the image here,

I could just think of it, go ahead and keep the dove in the image, but let's just say, imagine a scenario where a dove in wanting to be king dove flits to a cat for protection.

Goes over to the cat and is like, hey, you on my side? How's that going to end for the dove?

Okay, anybody have a cat here? Anybody a cat person? Then you really know how that's going to go. But this is exactly what

Israel did. They ran to Assyria for protection. And Assyria is the one who's going to end up destroying them, killing their women and their children, and carting them off.

They sought help from Assyria who's going to conquer them. And God will judge them. God will judge

Israel. He will condemn them with their own public words. What the leadership has said before the congregation will be enough to warrant their own discipline.

Empty religion will eventually testify falsely about God, even publicly. And I would risk a guess that everyone you've ever heard or known who has deconstructed, are you guys familiar with the word deconstructed?

A lot of us. Anybody that you know or have heard who's deconstructed in their faith had an empty religion.

They went through religious motions. Of course, they looked very spiritual to you. Of course, there was an external thing that you kind of go like,

I can't believe that that person stepped out. But without a love or a heart for God, I look back at the man who officiated

Linda and I's wedding, and it's only after he deconstructed that I can look back and see an infatuation with laws and rules.

He was infatuated with the laws of the Old Testament. There was legalism coupled to some deep and hidden addictions in his life that eventually pushed him over the edge.

And I am not his judge, but I do know that his love of God was cold long before he walked away from it and called himself an atheist.

And this is crazy how deconstruction is paralleled in verse 13. In verse 13, woe to them.

They have strayed away from me. They have rebelled against God, and God still has a tender heart toward them, but they would only speak lies against him.

Church, where else can we turn for the hope of salvation? Either we run to our

God for rescue, or we rebel against him to our destruction. He would redeem anyone who would run back to him.

The final caution is the selfishness of empty religion, verses 14 through 16.

Verse 14 is so key to understanding the problem of empty religion. Many refuse to cry out to him from the heart.

Look at this. They do not cry out to me from the heart, but they do wail upon their beds for grain and wine. They gash themselves.

They rebel against me. You see, many refuse to cry out to him.

Here's the operating phrase, from the heart. In verse 14, they do wail.

They are up all night worried and concerned. They have anxiety, but their anxiety is not for love and relationship with God.

Their anxiety is for grain and wine. Their concerns are selfish.

They want, they want, they want, and they are not satisfied. But they will not cry out to God from the heart.

Recast, here is the start of the solution. If God is identifying to you that you are dabbling on the edge of empty religion today, you look in your own heart and you go,

I just don't feel anything anymore. I've got very little passion for him. Let me encourage you, maybe even this afternoon, to go get alone.

Maybe you need to go for a walk in the woods. Maybe you need to get face down and smell your carpet and cry out to God from your heart.

Are you angry? Let him know. Are you scared? Let him know. Are you tired? Let him know.

Are you feeling hopeless, helpless at the end of your rope? Let him know. This is what it means to remain in the steadfast love of the

Lord is to keep going to him. Keep going to him. Keep going to him. In all of the seasons of life, we keep running to him as our only hope and our only help.

The Israelites forgot their God by turning to plan B and C and D and E.

They have stopped talking to God about their grain and wine, and they have turned aside to other gods and goddesses.

They gash themselves, it says, like the pagans trying to get the attention of their side gods. And in their selfishness, they use his gifts against him in verse 15.

In verse 15, God takes credit for their strength. He says, I have strengthened your arms.

I'm the one who's worked you out. He has trained them. And so then think about this irony. I've trained you, and you've used your strength against me,

God is saying. God has given them strength and energy by which...has given the strength and energy by which anyone has ever opposed him.

God gave every breath that Charles Darwin ever breathed, and Darwin converted those breaths into opposition against the

Almighty. God gave Hitler power, and Hitler used it against God. And in the end, his people return.

Oh goody, right? Does that sound good? His people return, but not upward. Not upward.

They return like a dog returns to its vomit. Ever spiraling downward, returning and downward further and returning and downward further and returning and downward further and returning, they are likened to a dangerous weapon, like a gun with a broken action.

They will explode and hurt the one trying to wield them, and they will be made to be a laughing stock.

To the very nation they were set free from in the exodus. Think that through. Egypt. That's how it ends.

They shall return, but not upward. They are like a treacherous bow. Their princes shall fall by the sword because of the insolence of their tongue.

This shall be their derision in the land of Egypt. Who were they set free from?

Egypt. Who's going to be laughing at them in the end? Egypt. This is a long passage, but it's good for us to take it on as a caution against empty religion.

We're going to come to an activity here in just a moment during this next song that could easily turn into empty religion if we're not careful.

We come to take the cracker to remember the body of Christ broken for us, and we take up the cup of juice to remember his blood that was shed for us.

And doing this well, participating well in this doesn't mean that you always get a chill up your spine or a tear in your eye, but it does mean that you take it in a way that is remembering, that is reflecting, that is considering his sacrifice for us.

The passion of the Christian life ought to be the passion of our Lord, his death, his burial, his resurrection, his substitutionary atonement for us.

And this activity that we do together is meant to be reigniting for our hearts. If you belong to Jesus, and he is your

Savior and King, and you're working through relationship here in a healthy way, then come to the tables during this next song to remember.

And then let's go out from here mindful of the dangers of empty religion. I'm going to ask you up there to leave these next slides, this next slide, or this slide up there for a while on into this song, and then kind of when everybody's taken communion, you can put it back to the words of the song.

But I just want to remind us all some applications, some things that we can take away from this. Press on to know the

Lord. This might need to take some specifics of engaging in a community group, of getting involved in one of the studies that we offer here, of just maybe setting your alarm to get up on a regular basis and read

God's word and study it. The second is take assessment of what has your heart. What's really your passion?

What's really grasping? And what's really pulling at you? Identify any areas of compromise. By the way, this identification of what has your heart is a nuanced thing because it's okay to have some passions and some loves and some things as long as they're subservient to God, as long as they're second place, as long as they're second fiddle to him.

So it's okay for you to have some things that you enjoy. It's okay to even like dive into those conspiracies as long as it's entertaining and fun and not really like something that is owning you, not something that you're letting influence or flavor the way that you view scripture.

I enjoy, I mean, I watched a documentary on flat earth and it was crazy. And maybe somebody here's flat earth and now you need to talk to me.

I don't know, but we'll talk. We'll talk. But take assessment of what has your heart and then identify areas of compromise.

And I'm talking about gray area compromises of like, well, somebody told me that homeschooling is bad.

Somebody told me public schooling is bad. I'm talking about areas of compromise where you've allowed sin in, where you've allowed corrupting thoughts and vileness and wickedness to be incorporated in your life.

And it might be time to confess that and help get that out. And then the last thing is keep crying out to God from your heart.

And maybe it's a start crying out to God from your heart. Maybe you haven't done that. Keep crying. Maybe some of us need to go for a walk in the woods and just talk to God and really, really pour our hearts out to Him.

Maybe it's some of us need to close the bedroom door and get face down on the carpet. And maybe there needs to be some legitimate crying out to the

Lord. If you have never had a season, you've never had a moment face down in the carpet crying like with some snot bubbles and some like,

I have not been what you've wanted me to be and I love you and I want to please you and I want you to be number one in my life.

And you haven't been. And I need that. I need that recentering today.

Oh, I don't think there's anything more powerful that could happen to our church than for us to go have that kind of talk with God.

I want you to be number one. And I haven't placed you there. And other loves have crept in.

And I've allowed gaps in my love for you to be exposed and for other things to creep in and take supremacy in my life.

And I don't want that. I want you. There might be a set jaw.

I don't know your relationship. I don't know where you've been. I don't know your anger and your rage toward Him for what

He's done in your life. That's okay. He can handle those both. He can handle tears of joy.

He can handle your jaw set in anger against Him. He can handle your frustration with what happened to you when you were 10 years old.

He can handle it all. But go to Him or go to your therapist.

I'm sorry. That's what our culture does now. We don't have these conversations with God. We have them with our counselor.

Are you kidding me? We have the divine holy counselor available to us. Go to Him.

Let's pray. Father, I love you.

And yet I don't love you like I ought. Would you meet us?

Would you convict us? Would you show us where we need to be today on our faces before you?

Would you allow revival to settle on your people? Oh, it just feels in my heart like America is ripe for revival.

But we need the knowledge of you. And we need a steadfast love for you that can only come from your spirit.

Would you help us to turn our attention to you? Even as we have an opportunity to come to these tables,

Father, to remember and reflect on the great act of your love toward us that sets us on this journey toward you.

Your love expressed in the sacrifice of your Son. Let this be a meaningful time of reflecting and remembering the great love you have given to us in Jesus Christ.

We thank you for Him. We thank you for the love of our Lord, taking that penalty for us.