Half-baked...
I like
"like" when "like" is likening one thing to another. That
sort of "like" is a simile. Like, do you know what I mean?
Hosea 7 uses four
similes in verses 7-16 to describe how Israel is unfaithful to the Lord. Hosea
uses an oven, a cake, a dove, and a bow to describe Israel's "passion for
evil, their foolishness, and their uselessness." (ref. ESV Study Bible)
My favorite of the
four is Hosea 7:8. There, the Prophet said, "Ephraim mixes himself with
the peoples; Ephraim is a cake not turned." (ESV)
Israel is mixed-up and
half-baked.
George Ellicott wrote
about Israel, saying being a cake not turned was "Referring to the
destructive effect of foreign influences. Ephraim was consumed by the
unhallowed fire of Baal-worship, with all its passion and sensualism—a cake
burnt on one side to a cinder, and on the other left in a condition utterly
unfit for food. So the activity of foreign idolatries and foreign alliances,
and the consequent unfaithfulness to Israel’s God, are the nation’s ruin."
Joseph Benson said,
"By [Israel's] alliances with the heathen, and by imitation of their
manners, he is himself become one of them. He has thrown off all the
distinctions, and forfeited the privileges of the chosen race."
Samuel Horsley said,
"Burnt to a coal at the bottom, raw dough at the top: an apt emblem of a
character full of inconsistencies."
The nation was all
mixed, full of idolatry, worship of false God, inconsistent, making their own
religion counterfeit, their holiness discarded, their uniqueness lost, not fit
for consumption in the worship of God or the service of man.
Lord have mercy... if
this 2750-year-old book of prophecy doesn't speak to much of the Church in
America today, I don't know what does.
We can't fix everyone
or everything, and there is little-to-no-fruit in complaining. Here's the
thing... we can ask ourselves are we mixed-up and half-baked. We can turn again
to the Lord ourselves.
Indeed; Lord, give us
bravery to examine ourselves and turn again to the Lord. May bad alliances with
the world be forsaken and fresh fellowship with You be found, O Lord, our God
and King. In Christ I pray. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment