Idolatrous Adulterers

“For I will be like a lion to Ephraim, and like a young lion to the house of Judah. I, even I, will tear and go away; I will carry off, and no one shall rescue. I will return again to my place, until they acknowledge their guilt and seek my face, and in their distress earnestly seek me. “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.”


(Hosea 5:14–6:3 ESV)

Adultery and Idolatry. These words may seem unrelated expect for their sound, but when we open up the pages of scripture we see that they are almost inseparable. Adultery, in a completely physical sense, is having relations with someone other than your spouse. In a Spiritual sense, I would define adultery as a breach of a covenant relationship. In other words, when you commit yourself to someone in marriage you are making a covenant, one in which you have both agreed upon the condition of forsaking all others. The physical act of adultery would be a breach of that covenant agreement. When it comes to God, we can commit adultery through our idolatry.


Idolatry is the act of worshiping anything other than God. If you are a follower of Jesus Christ then you are in a covenant relationship with Him. One of the conditions of this covenant is to avoid idolatry: “You shall have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:3 ESV). Whenever we have “other gods” we are breaching the covenant agreement, that is, we are committing adultery.


The book of Hosea is a book that is written to a bunch of idolatrous adulterers. One of the most frequent words in this book is the Hebrew word zaœnaœh, it’s a word which can mean sexual immorality, adultery, or prostitution. In the English Standard Version it is translated as whore (or some form of that word) in the book of Hosea. But the question is why does God accuse his people of this over and over in this prophecy? What sin did they commit to warrant such strong language? Idolatry. “The more they were called, the more they went away; they kept sacrificing to the Baals and burning offerings to idols” (Hosea 11:2 ESV).


God’s people had left Him and turned to idols. This spiritual adultery is the reason the book of Hosea was written. God hates idolatry, because when we worship something other than Him we commit adultery. In fact God shows us the horror of this by using the prophet Hosea as an illustration. In the beginning of this book God says this to Hosea, “Go, take to yourself a wife of whoredom and have children of whoredom, for the land commits great whoredom by forsaking the LORD” (Hosea 1:2 ESV). God instructed Hosea to take an unfaithful wife to show the people the depths of their sin.


The problem in our culture is that we believe this has no application to us. After all, most of us don’t have any idols, right? I mean, we don’t bow down to anything made of wood or gold and we don’t worship in the temples of false gods. So since we don’t have any idols the message of Hosea is not a message we need to hear. While we may not have any statues that we bow down to I think many of us still have idols in our lives.


An idol is anything that takes the place of God in your life. Take a moment and evaluate yourself. Is God your greatest desire? Are you more devoted to Him than anything else? Is there anything in your life that you treasure more than God? Still don’t think you have any idols?


We live in a world that is filled with idols. We idolize money. We idolize success. We idolize sex; food, family, entertainment, ourselves, cars, TV, lifestyle, and we could go on and on. The question is not how many idols can we list; the question is what is your idol? I’m guessing that you skipped over that question without giving it much thought so I’m going to ask it again: what is your idol? Take a moment and answer that question. Once you know what your idol(s) is/are you can continue reading.


You may be thinking at this point, “Ok fine, I’ve got some idols in my life, but that’s normal. Hardly anyone truly loves God above all else. Besides I don’t want to be some crazy radical.” The trouble with this kind of thinking is that God will punish those who are not radically devoted to Him. In Hosea 5:14 God speaks of what He is going to do to His people. In essence He says, “I’m going to tear you up like a lion. I’ll take you to the lion’s den and you will be devoured. And there will be no one to rescue you!”


Here is the truth that you and I need to hear: the wrath of God is coming against all idolaters. “But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.” (Revelation 21:8 ESV)


So what on earth do we do? Well if you’ve never accepted Jesus Christ you must do that in order to be saved. There is no other way to have the wrath of God removed from you then by coming to Jesus Christ in faith (see Acts 4:11-12). If you have never accepted Jesus then you need to do so by repenting of idolatry (and all other sins) and by being baptized for the forgiveness of your sins (see Acts 2:38). Save yourself from your idolatry by coming to Jesus!


But what if you are a Christian already? What if you’ve already entered into a covenant relationship with Jesus Christ, yet you’ve committed spiritual adultery? What must we do when we’ve taken idols into our hearts?


The answer lies in verse 15 of chapter 5: “I will return again to my place, until they acknowledge their guilt and seek my face, and in their distress earnestly seek me.” The first thing we must do is acknowledge our guilt before God. Don’t down play your sin. Think of it this way, if you physically committed adultery against your spouse how would you confess that sin? Would you excuse it or minimize it? I hope not. You see, we are without excuse when it comes to our idolatry. Lets admit our guilt and confess our sins.


The next thing this passage teaches us is that we must seek God earnestly. We must confess our sins and we must repent. Repentance is turning from your sin (or your idol) and turning to God. We’ve got to seek God with everything that we have; this is the only way to have true forgiveness.


At this point you might feel pretty torn up. Maybe you are broken over your sin. That’s good. This godly type of sorrow can lead to repentance if we will let it. God told his people that he had torn them and stuck them down but He went on to say that He would heal them and raise them up to life!


The choice is yours will you press on to know the Lord who promises to come to us just like the spring rains? Or will you cling to your worthless idols. Will you repent of your adultery?