SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 6/12/2015
9:32 PM
My Worship Time Focus: The Priests
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference:
Hosea 4:4-14
Message of the
verses: “4 Yet let no one find
fault, and let none offer reproof; For your people are like those who contend
with the priest. 5 So you will stumble by day, And the prophet also will
stumble with you by night; And I will destroy your mother. 6 My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because you have
rejected knowledge, I also will reject you from being My priest. Since you have
forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children. 7 The
more they multiplied, the more they sinned against Me; I will change their
glory into shame. 8 They feed on the sin of My people And direct their desire
toward their iniquity. 9 And it will be, like people, like priest; So I will punish them
for their ways And repay them for their deeds. 10 They will eat, but not have
enough; They will play the harlot, but not increase, Because they have stopped
giving heed to the LORD. 11 Harlotry, wine and new wine take away the
understanding. 12 My people consult
their wooden idol, and their diviner’s wand informs them; For a spirit of
harlotry has led them astray, And they have played the harlot, departing from
their God. 13 They offer sacrifices on the tops of the mountains And burn
incense on the hills, Under oak, poplar and terebinth, Because their shade is
pleasant. Therefore your daughters play the harlot And your brides commit
adultery. 14 I will not punish your daughters when they play the harlot Or your
brides when they commit adultery, For the men themselves go apart with harlots And
offer sacrifices with temple prostitutes; So the people without understanding are ruined.”
Let us look at how the Northern Kingdom got such bad
priests in the first place by looking at 2 Chronicles 11:13-15 “13 Moreover,
the priests and the Levites who were in all Israel stood with him from all
their districts. 14 For
the Levites left their pasture lands and their property and came to Judah and
Jerusalem, for Jeroboam and his sons had excluded them from serving as priests
to the LORD. 15 He
set up priests of his own for the high places, for the satyrs and for the
calves which he had made.” It was
all the fault of Jeroboam the first that Israel go priests that were not the
ones that were approved by the Lord as they came from Aaron’s line. The priests that he chose did not know the
Lord nor did they know His Law so this caused a great deal of trouble as they
were only seeking things for themselves and not concerned for the people whom
they were supposed to be serving. Hosea
tells his readers that it is not the fault of the people, but the fault of the
priests.
Dr. Wiersbe writes “When you obey God’s word, you walk in
the light and don’t stumble (Prov. 3:21-26; 4:14-19), but when you reject the
Word, you walk in the darkness and can’t find your way (Isa. 8:20). Worldly and ignorant spiritual leaders
produce worldly and ignorant people, and this brings destruction to the land. The phrase ‘your mother’ in Hosea 4:5 refers
to the nation of Israel (2:2, 5). As
goes spiritual leadership, so goes the church; as goes the church, so goes
morality; and as goes morality, so goes the nation. God’s people are both salt and light in
society (Matt. 5:13-16); when they are corrupt, society becomes corrupt.”
God was telling the children of Israel that He was
rejecting their false religion and we can see this in the 4th
chapter of the book of John when Jesus tells the Samaritan women “"You
worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from
the Jews (John 4:22).”
We see in this section (verse 12) that these people and
the priests consulted their false idols:
“of my people. They consult a wooden idol and are answered by a stick of wood. A spirit of
prostitution leads them astray; they are unfaithful to their God (Hosea 4:12
NIV).” “12 My people consult their
wooden idol, and their diviner’s wand informs them; For a spirit of harlotry
has led them astray, And they have played the harlot, departing from their God
(Hosea 4:12 NASB).” Dr. Wiersbe’s end
not says “(The Greek word rhabdos
means ‘a rod.’) The priest drew a circle
on the ground and divided it into sections with each section assigned a
meaning. A rod was held in the center
and then allowed to fall, and where it fell revealed the future.” This is kind of a strange way of predicting the
future if you ask me. Before I was a
believer I used another method as when I had a question I would pray over the
Bible and then open it up and put my finger on a random verse expecting to get
an answer from the Lord. This also is
not a good way to get answers about the future or question you may have.
We will look at one more endnote which has to do with the
priest’s daughters becoming shrine prostitutes.
Dr. Wiersbe writes “Hosea 4:14 is a clear statement that God expects
sexual purity and marital faithfulness from both men and women. In Israel, the men often got away with their
sexual sins while the women were punished.
See Genesis 38 and John 8 for tragic examples of an unbiblical one-sided
morality. Where was the man who assisted
the woman in committing adultery? Wasn’t
he also supposed to be punished? See
Leviticus 20:10 and Deuteronomy 22:22.”
6/12/2015 10:03 PM
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