Hosea 8: Do You Know God, or Only His Rituals?

Introduction

"What do you think are the signs of a prosperous society?" That is the question Ricky, one of the pastors at Holy Trinity Doncaster in Melbourne, uses to open his message. The church is continuing its series in the book of Hosea, and today's passage covers chapters 8 to 10. Three chapters, more than five columns of text in a printed Bible. "Unless you want to stay here until nightfall," the pastor says with a smile, he will focus mostly on chapter 8, dipping into chapters 9 and 10 from time to time, since they share the same themes.

According to some theories, a prosperous society rests on four pillars: strong political power (a solid government and laws), military strength, a functioning economy, and an ideological or religious power. In many traditional societies, that power is religion; in modern, secularized societies, it is a form of ideology. All four of these things are good and important. But they can easily become idols, the moment we tell ourselves: "If only we had this, everything would be fine."

That is exactly what Hosea 8 to 10 shows. Israel was called to live with God in a covenant relationship, like a marriage: to trust him alone, and to reflect his character by following his law. Yet Israel put its trust in these four pillars while claiming to know God. The question that runs through the whole message is simple and unsettling: do you know God, or only things about him?

Message Outline

1. The Alarm Trumpet: The Covenant Has Been Broken

The chapter opens with a warning: "Set the trumpet to your lips!" (Hosea 8:1). Sounding the trumpet, Ricky explains, means warning that danger is coming and that an attack is being prepared.
An eagle, or a vulture, hovers over the house of the LORD, that is, over God's people. The vulture appears wherever there is battle and death. It is a picture of the judgment that is coming.
The reason is given in the same verse: the people have broken the covenant and rebelled against the law. The covenant, expressed through the law, is the foundation of the relationship between God and his people. By rebelling against it, Israel rebels against God himself.

2. "We Know You": Knowledge Without Relationship

Faced with the accusation, Israel answers: "My God, we, Israel, know you!" (Hosea 8:2). The people still claim the covenant relationship. They say "our God," and they insist they know him.
On what basis? Probably an inherited knowledge, like the Pharisees in Jesus' day who kept repeating, "We are descendants of Abraham." "But that's not how it works, is it?"
In the Bible, knowing God is not just having the right information about him, nor is it what you heard from your parents or grandparents. "God doesn't want his people to know things about him. He wants them to know him," intimately and relationally, as in a marriage.
What is the proof that Israel knows God? There is none. In verse 3, Israel has rejected what is good. Ricky points out that the Hebrew word translated "rejected" sounds like the word for "prostitution," a wordplay that points back to chapter 1: Israel rejected the good God because it had committed spiritual adultery.
Israel also rejected the word of the prophets. In chapter 9, the prophet is called a fool and snares lie in wait for him (Hosea 9:7-8). The law, the covenant and the prophets are all rejected: how can they claim to know God?
The pastor uses his own marriage as an example: it would be like saying he knows his wife intimately while never reading her messages, not picking up when she calls, and looking at his phone while she talks to him. "I don't do that, by the way."
The question comes back to us: we go to church, we claim to know God. But do we listen to his word? Do we see his goodness, or do we reject it?

3. Kings Without God and a Golden Calf Made by Their Own Hands

Rejecting God shows not only in refusing the law and the prophets, but also in what Israel leans on (Hosea 8:4-6).
First, its own political wisdom: "They have set up kings, but not by me." In the Northern Kingdom at that time, kings followed one another very quickly, rebellion after rebellion, assassination after assassination. Instead of trusting God to appoint its kings, the people relied on their own judgment and their own efforts, "especially evil efforts."
Next, an idol meant to guarantee economic prosperity: the calf of Samaria. A workman made it, "it is no God." The people took their silver and gold to make an idol, so they could worship it in the hope that it would bring them even more prosperity.
"It's almost comical, isn't it? It's absurd." Yet it shows the same thing: Israel relies on itself. It made the idol, so it can control it and ask it for whatever it wants.
Modern idolatry works the same way. We no longer make golden calves, but we produce plenty of other things by our own efforts, and we make them our source of security: money, a career. We work, earn money, save, invest, and build our financial security around all that.
None of this is bad in itself. Retirement savings are not bad in themselves, and neither is investing. "But if we trust in them more than in God, do we truly know God, our provider?"

4. The Danger of Prosperity

In chapter 9, you can feel God's frustration: "I found Israel like grapes in the wilderness" (Hosea 9:10). "Imagine finding grapes in the wilderness!" God loves Israel and pursues it. And Israel pursues Baal, and the prosperity Baal promises, a false promise.
In chapter 10, the more fruit Israel bears, the more it uses that fruit for idolatry (Hosea 10:1). "That's tragic, isn't it?"
The pastor makes an observation: there are countless books and resources to help us deal with suffering. "How often do we talk about dealing with prosperity?" Prosperity can be spiritually dangerous. The more Israel had, the less it trusted God, until it pushed him out of the picture altogether.
This is a serious warning for Christians. It is possible to think: "I'm a Christian, I've been baptized, I go to church, I know the Bible, I take communion. Of course I know God." But does doing all of that necessarily mean you know him, in the intimate, relational sense?
Ricky picks up a conversation from the theological forum the day before: if he went through the ritual of making his wife a coffee every morning, would that necessarily mean he loves her? He could do the same thing every day without loving her.
Jesus warns along the same lines: "Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter into the Kingdom of Heaven" (Matthew 7:21-23). These people claim to know him and believe they have faith in him, and yet he will say to them: "I never knew you." There is no personal relationship, because there is no sincere trust in him.
The pastor clarifies that Christians can have assurance of salvation, "one of God's greatest gifts." If we trust in Jesus, we don't have to doubt that he will take us as his bride when he returns. But that assurance is for those who are his bride, those who live in a relationship of trust with him, as in a marriage.

5. Sowing the Wind, Reaping the Whirlwind

From verse 7 on, God announces his judgments: "They sow the wind, and they will reap the whirlwind" (Hosea 8:7).
Ricky describes a farmer who, instead of sowing seed, sows wind, nothing at all. What harvest can he expect? Nothing. But here he doesn't just reap nothing: he reaps something destructive, a whirlwind. "That is what idolatry does."
Israel worships Baal because Baal is associated with fertility, prosperity and abundant harvests. In judgment, God announces that the harvests will fail and there will be famine. The idol doesn't just disappoint, it destroys.
Chapter 9 develops the image: the threshing floor and the winepress will no longer feed the people, the feasts will look like funerals, and the bread will be mourners' bread (Hosea 9:2-5).
Political power is destroyed as well (Hosea 8:8-10). Israel, which set up kings without God, turned to Assyria for help "like a wild donkey" instead of turning to God. It is now among the nations like an object nobody wants, and God lets it be carried off into oppression.

6. When Religion Becomes an Idol, and the Fortresses Burn

The third pillar, religion (Hosea 8:11-13): Ephraim multiplied altars for sinning, and those altars became occasions for sin. Israel thinks it knows God because it keeps up the outward rites, the offerings and the sacrifices.
The sacrificial system was a good gift from God, meant to let his people live with him and enjoy his forgiveness. Israel turned it into a cold ritual, cut off from any relationship with God, a transaction: "If they bring sacrifices, God will bring them forgiveness."
So God turns the situation around. The sacrifice was there so that God would no longer remember sins; here, he will remember their sins. And they will return to Egypt: not literally, the pastor clarifies, since Egypt is code for slavery and oppression. Israel will pass under Assyria, then Babylon, then Persia. The freedom God had given them through Moses will be taken away.
"I wonder whether this isn't also a dangerous temptation for religious people like us." To think that if we follow the rites, go to church every Sunday, take holy communion and give money, we will be saved. That would mean putting our faith not in the God who saves, but in our own religious efforts.
"Religion is a wonderful gift when it helps us know God relationally. But religion becomes a terrible idol when we use it to avoid trusting God," to control for ourselves the outcome of our salvation.
The last pillar, military strength (Hosea 8:14): Israel forgot the one who made it and built palaces, and Judah multiplied fortified cities. God will send fire on their cities. There is nothing wrong with wanting to defend your people, but they trusted in their own strength and forgot God. In chapter 10, God says it plainly: because you trusted in your own way and in the multitude of your warriors, all your fortresses will be destroyed (Hosea 10:13-14).
The four pillars, political, economic, religious and military, are torn away one by one. None of them can save without God. "It is a frightening truth," and the pastor believes we should be afraid too, if our knowledge of God is only theoretical or ritual.

7. Break Up Your Fallow Ground: The Righteousness Given in Jesus

Is there a solution? Yes. In every passage of judgment, there is always a little mercy and grace, "but that little bit of mercy and grace outweighs everything."
Near the end of chapter 10, God says: "Sow to yourselves in righteousness, reap according to kindness; break up your fallow ground; for it is time to seek Yahweh, until he comes and rains righteousness on you" (Hosea 10:12).
After the image of sowing the wind, God calls his people to sow righteousness: to return to the law of the covenant and reap his faithful love. Instead of relying on their own strength, they must return to the covenant relationship.
To break up fallow ground is to work land that has lain untouched for years and grown hard. Israel's heart has hardened through idolatry. It is time to soften it and remember its first love. If we have put our trust in something other than God, this is what we must do too: repent and seek God with a softened heart.
God's righteousness refers to the way he acts rightly according to his covenant: he will offer his faithful love and his welcome to those who repent. And this promise finds its full fulfillment in Jesus Christ. God came to his people, literally, physically, in person.
In Jesus, God doesn't just do what is right: he gives us his righteousness. Jesus is the only one perfectly righteous, and that righteousness is given to us. "And the whirlwind we deserve, because we trusted in something other than God, Jesus took that whirlwind on himself at the cross. That is the gospel."
God didn't tell his people to be righteous and then leave them to fend for themselves. He opened the way for us to know him relationally and intimately. Jesus says it himself: if you knew me, you would know my Father also (John 14:7).
The knowledge of God and righteousness, everything is given in Jesus. We can only claim to know God if we know Jesus, not just in theory, but by trusting him and obeying his word. "So, do you know God? Truly, intimately, exclusively?"

Key Takeaways

The four pillars of a prosperous society (political power, economy, religion, military strength) are good in themselves, but they become idols as soon as we trust them more than God.
Knowing God is not knowing things about him: it is knowing him intimately, as in a marriage, by listening to his word and trusting him.
Prosperity can be spiritually dangerous: the more Israel had, the less it trusted God.
Rites are a gift when they bring us closer to God, and an idol when they are used to control our salvation without trusting him.
In Jesus, God came in person, gives us his righteousness, and took on himself the whirlwind we deserved.

Personal Application

Which of these four supports do you rely on most right now: your financial situation, your leaders, your religious practice, or your ability to defend yourself?
Is your knowledge of God mostly inherited from your family or your church, or do you live in a personal relationship with him?
How do you react when God speaks to you through his word: do you listen, or do you "look at your phone"?
In seasons when everything is going well, does your trust in God grow or shrink?
What part of your heart has hardened like fallow ground, and what would it mean for you, this week, to seek the LORD with a softened heart?

Verses Cited

Frequently Asked Questions

What does "they sow the wind, and they will reap the whirlwind" mean in Hosea 8?

Ricky pictures a farmer who, instead of sowing seed, sows wind, that is, nothing. He can expect no harvest. But Israel doesn't just reap nothing: it reaps something destructive. The idol it trusted for fertility and prosperity will not merely let it down, it will bring it ruin.

Can you say you know God because you go to church and take communion?

Not necessarily. The preacher points out that Israel said "My God, we know you" while rejecting his law, his covenant and his prophets. Rites are a beautiful gift when they help us know God relationally, but they become an idol when we use them to avoid trusting him and to control the outcome of our own salvation.

What hope does Hosea 10:12 offer to those who have turned away from God?

God calls his people to sow in righteousness, to break up their fallow ground and to seek him until he comes and rains righteousness on them. For Ricky, this promise finds its full fulfillment in Jesus Christ: God came in person, he gives us his righteousness, and the whirlwind we deserved, Jesus took on himself at the cross.