Some of you are bound to be offended at the title of this sermon. If you are familiar with the slang of a couple of generations ago, this was the ‘40s and ‘50s description of a person who had cast moral considerations aside and wanted to have a hot and heavy affair. It usually denigrated women as being “round-heeled” and “easy,” but I’ve heard it used about men, as well. Think about it. It’s a very vivid way of saying that the person is burning to get into something.
It also probably won’t surprise you that I was reminded of this derogatory phrase by a recurring image in today’s text from Hosea 7. Let’s read it together. I’ll share my translation of the text with you.
v. 1 (continued from 6:11) Just as I would heal Israel but Ephraim’s iniquities are revealed and [as well as] Samaria’s transgressions BECAUSE they have made a deception (an idol?) and a thief has come, a band of robbers raids in the street.
v. 2 And they do not speak to their inner man (or heart, ie. They don’t speak with integrity) (yet) all of their transgressions, I remember. Now, all of their deeds (implied misdeeds) surround them, they are before my face.
v. 3 In their rebellion, they caused the king to rejoice and in their deception, the princes.
v. 4 All of them are adulterers, like an oven they burn;
like a baker who forgets to knead the dough before it is leavened.
v. 5 On the day of their king, they weaken him, the princes are warm with wine
(and the king) he stretches out his hand to the scoffers (mockers)
v. 6 BECAUSE they approached him with their hearts like an oven,
their ambush all the night long
(while) their baker slept (until) morning,
it burned like a flaming fire.
v. 7 All of them burn like an oven and they devour their authorities,
all of their kings fall down (yet) none of them cry out to me.
v. 8 Ephraim is among the peoples. He mixes himself. Ephraim is a cake that hasn’t been turned.
v. 9 Foreigners have devoured his strength, but he doesn’t know it—even gray hair is sprinkled on him, but he doesn’t know it.
v. 10 And the pride of Israel testifies before his face (in his presence) and they have not returned to Yahweh their God and they do not seek him in all of this.
Let’s pray that God will help us understand where we fit into this ancient text. [Holy Father, we come to you because we need Your guidance. We confess that we cannot know for sure who the “baker” is in this text. But we sense, uncomfortably, that it might be us whenever we ignore the dangers around us and fail to speak Your word. Open Your scripture to us, Lord, and help us to be changed by it. We request this humbly in the name of Jesus, Amen.]
At the end of Hosea 6 (verse 11), God states through His prophet that He planned to restore the fortunes of Judah. However, verse 1 of this chapter tells us that while God would like to do the same for the northern kingdom (Israel/Ephraim), He cannot because they are not only full of iniquities (twisted sins—perversions and wandering from the right) and rebellions (deliberate breaking of the law), but they have created their own false faith (deception or idol) in an attempt at a “religious” cover-up. Instead of “turning around,” “repenting,” or coming back to God as they were challenged in Hosea 6, Israel has introduced false religious ritual that essentially tells God, “Don’t worry about us. We’re good. We can take care of ourselves.” And, as we see in this verse, they aren’t good and can’t take care of themselves. Lawlessness has broken out in their streets. They thought they were safe, but armed robbery was occurring everywhere.
Verse 2 tells us that the mysterious “they” don’t speak to the “inner man” or “heart.” This mysterious “they” isn’t speaking to humankind’s motivations, objectives, and goal-setting. “They” aren’t speaking to the volition of God’s people. What’s worse is that this mysterious “they” have involved the opinion-leaders and agenda-setters among God’s people in their false faith. They’ve seduced their kings and princes in verse 3, but in verse 5 they weaken or poison the king and get the princes (or leaders) drunk.
Verse 4 tells us that they are adulterers and here is where we get the sermon title. While it doesn’t specifically say, “Hot to trot,” it does say that “they” burn like an oven. Then, it says that “they” are like a baker who doesn’t knead the bread dough properly before it rises. And all of this leads us to ask, who are these people and who is the baker?
It seems clear that the “baker” is a metaphor for the mysterious “they.” This is a careless baker who ruins the product for more than one reason. He doesn’t knead the dough, he falls asleep with the oven fire burning hot, he lets the oven burn up (devour) the bread, and he doesn’t turn the bread when he needs to do so. So, who is this baker?
As usual, I believe our interpretive hints can be found in the text itself. Look at the verses immediately preceding the metaphors. In verse 3, they made the king to rejoice in their evil and gave the princes a false sense of security in their deception. Who could do this? I suggest that this refers to prophets and priests, people who were supposed to speak God’s truth, but just “went along.” As “adulterers,” we already know that Hosea means this both literally (because sacred prostitution and sexual immorality were integral parts of the worship of Baal) and figuratively (because following anything other than God is spiritual adultery), but what about this oven idea?
The tannur (oven) did need to be hot in order to bake the bread, but if there was too much heat when the dough was supposed to be rising, it would kill the yeast and stop the process. I get it. Wailam, my wife, laughed at me when I made a cake and forgot to put any baking powder in it. It ended up like a big doughy cookie. It wasn’t cake. But, since it was sweet, we still put some whipped cream on it and ate it. That doesn’t work with doughy bread.
These false prophets and compromised priests weren’t telling people not to worship. The fire of worship was still stoked, but they hadn’t put the right kind of moral leaven in the dough. The dough wasn’t ready for the fire. They weren’t teaching the people what they needed to know.
Well, the business of “churchianity” isn’t too bad, today, either. But if we get people pumped up and excited about worshipping without equipping them to have a daily relationship with God and helping them to make proper moral choices on the basis of that relationship, we’re very much like the baker who lights the fire before the dough has a chance to rise. The leaven has to be mixed in and have a chance to rise before proper bread can be made. It’s hard work to knead the bread and it isn’t glamorous work like when you smell that wonderful baking bread, but it has to be done. And a lot of the teaching and admonition that needs to go on in churches and homes today won’t be glamorous work or easy work. It isn’t going to be as fun as preaching before a big crowd or serving on an excited praise team.
These false prophets saw their political leaders making mistakes and they didn’t correct them. Their leaders were making destructive alliances with nations to stand against Assyria, even when there was no chance to stand against Assyria. Their leaders were withholding tribute from Assyria as though in denial that the Assyrians would ever demand their gold. Fat chance! Yet, “they” made the king rejoice in this irresponsible behavior and kept the princes under the delusion that everything was going to be okay.
And I wonder how many of us today are guilty of laughing and joking with people who are making destructive decisions—winking at sexual sin, refusing to look at evidence of spousal abuse, never speaking against substance abuse, and watching with curiosity rather than offering help when those around us are making a series of bad decisions. I do it. I suspect that most of you do it. And that puts us squarely in the role of the “baker” in our text.
In fact, that sounds a lot like verse 5. Here, the mysterious “they” weaken the king on his day, fill the leadership with wine, and welcome the mockers or scoffers. When we fail to be the salt of the earth or the proper leaven in the dough that we are called to be, when we fail to share God’s truth, we are forces against those in authority and those around us. We are destructive rather than redemptive. We are, essentially, very poor bakers.
So, notice what happens in the next two verses (vv. 6-7). Their hearts are like a tannur oven and they devour like an oven that’s too hot. This time, it sounds a lot like “they” are conspirators who are trying to kill a king. Perhaps, it’s a reference to how Menahem came to power. We don’t have the details of that succession, but I Kings 16:8-14 tells about getting the entire royal court drunk in order to assassinate a king. Even though this happened about 100 years before our text, it’s a pretty good stratagem for getting such things done.
And again, we see that the “baker” is incompetent. While the country is facing the danger of a revolutionary coup-de-etat, the baker is asleep. The fire in the conspiratorial oven burns high and devours everything, but the baker is fast asleep and doesn’t notice. What an indictment!
Yet, isn’t this exactly what is happening with God’s people in our society today? The conspiracy of diversity at any cost and tolerance at any price is burning at a high temperature. If we speak of sin, we are considered “intolerant,” so we don’t say anything. If we speak of Jesus, we are considered “narrow” because we don’t leave room for the “divine spark” in other religions. If we speak of morality and social obligation, we are considered ignorant and naïve because “everyone knows” that all behavior is “relative.”
The oven of the secular conspiracy is burning up our distinctiveness, our sense of commitment, and our desire to be faithful to our God. Faithfulness has become a secondary consideration for us while our desire to be accepted, liked, and respected is more important. So, we are unaware of the dangers confronting those around us and those in authority because we’re so busy staying “undercover” as believers. Isn’t it interesting that verse 5 in the Hebrew starts with the word “DAY” and seems to suggest that on the DAY of infamy when the assassination took place, the baker was sleeping ALL NIGHT LONG. It only takes a little time for bad things to happen, but when we are no longer alert as God’s watchmen, we have a tendency to be insensitive to all the dangers around us.
I can’t help but be reminded of a frightening experience we had when my eldest son was working the late shift at a bakery. He came home dead tired one night and I was already asleep. He was hungry, put on a pan of ramen (noodles), put his earphones on to listen to some tunes, and fell asleep with his clothes on him and the pan on the fire. I awakened to smell smoke and went rushing into the kitchen to discover a pan where the soup had evaporated completely, the noodles were burnt into ashes, and the pan was literally melting on the burners. We were so close to a major conflagration. If we had stayed asleep, we could have been burned alive.
That was a physical danger. But there are plenty of spiritual and physical dangers that threaten those around us. The question is, are we preparing those around us for the days of infamy when they are likely to be betrayed or endangered, or are we sleeping comfortably through the night, oblivious to the flames of sin and its consequences?
Of course, the last line of verse 7 is where this passage ties in closely with the message in Hosea 6. In Chapter 6, Hosea extends God’s offer to receive those who return to Him. Yet here, in Chapter 7, the people and their co-conspirators have burned up their leaders like bread burning in an oven, and those leaders don’t even know to call to God for help. They have been improperly kneaded, unprepared for the oven of life’s difficulties and society’s persecution.
Most scholars break the passage after verse 7, but I think the next few verses fit neatly with the verses we’ve just considered. Now, we’re told in verse 8 that the northern kingdom has become indistinct from the peoples in other kingdoms. The citizens of the northern kingdom aren’t living any differently than the pagan people around them. As a result, they are described as a cake that hasn’t been turned, burned on one side while being gooey and uncooked on the other. Instead of being the cake or loaf that God intended for this people to be, they were damaged and disappointing.
I always picture my first effort at cooking pancakes when I read this verse. My Dad was the best at cooking pancakes that I’ve ever known. My brothers and I still look forward to visiting my folks so that Dad will make pancakes for breakfast. Well, Dad tried to teach me the secret of cooking pancakes, but I would invariably get in a hurry and heat the grill too hot or not turn the pancakes over when those bubbles started appearing. They would be burnt on the outside and uncooked batter on the inside. Not even butter and syrup could save them.
But you see, when God’s people aren’t distinct from all those around us, where we’re the same as everyone else, we find ourselves a lot like Johnny’s pancakes—inedible. But just in case we haven’t gotten the message, check out where verse 9 takes us. In verse 9, these same pagans round about Israel have devoured Israel’s strength. But the tragedy is that this nation which once belonged to God has lost its strength and doesn’t even realize it. Doesn’t this verse remind you of Samson? Samson’s hair is cut off and Delilah cries out that his enemies were ambushing him. Samson moves to throw them off like he always has and we read the horrible line that he didn’t even realize that the Spirit had left him.
It’s sort of like the fable that evangelist D. L. Moody used to tell. It seems there were two eagles. One of the eagles won every race and the other eagle was jealous. One day, the jealous eagle overheard a hunter say, “I’d bring down that eagle if I had decent fletching on my arrows.” The eagle eagerly pulled out some of his own feathers and dropped them in front of the hunter. The hunter saw what had happened and smiled. He quickly fitted the feathers into his arrows, took aim at the faster eagle, and moaned, “Oh, that eagle is so fast that I’ll need more fletched arrows to bring that one down.” Hearing this, the jealous eagle pulled out some more feathers, so many more that he could no longer fly. This time, the hunter notched his arrow, turned around, and killed the jealous eagle instead of the fast one. (from Moody’s Anecdotes, pp. 44-45)
In Moody’s fable, it was the eagle’s jealousy that brought him down, but the tragedy is that the eagle brought disaster on himself because he was oblivious to his danger. This is what has happened to Ephraim (Israel). Like an athlete who doesn’t know when it’s time to retire and seems to have made a parody of his own persona without realizing it, God’s people are ineffective without realizing it. When we lose our sense of God’s presence, God’s purpose, and God’s power, we lose our ability to truly serve God.
But the worst part of this prophetic word against Israel was the fact that they were not only unrepentant toward God, not responding to God’s special invitation by “turning back” to Him, but the fact that they were proud to be in rebellion against God. And isn’t that the way so many people are today? They don’t want to call to God for help because they will appear to be against science, to be intolerant, or to be ignorant. They don’t want to call to God for help because they don’t want to be beholden to him.
Sadly, I’m afraid they’ll keep that attitude as long as we, God’s people, are sloppy bakers.
