Surface Repentance

Last time in Hosea, we saw that even though God withdrew Himself because of the evilness of the Israelites’ hearts, He was not willing nor wanting to abandon them totally.

Today, we’ll be taking a look at something which is quite common among God’s people, even today. We might call it Surface Repentance. This is when people who are called by God’s Name, appear to repent and turn away somewhat from the evil that was being practiced. However, there is really no commitment to a complete turnaround. I feel like this is the type of repentance that is hardest to understand as to why people do this. Here, in this section today, we’ll see that even God appears to have difficulty with this.

We might think of this as like a child who promises not to repeat something naughty, but they go back and do the same thing at the first temptation they encounter. Parents scratch their bewildered heads, wondering how to understand and deal with this.

It seems that the Bible is quite clear as to what repentance should look like and entail; not only for Hosea’s time with Israel, but even in our day and age with the church.

A person who loves the Lord should avoid surface repentance.

A Shallow Spirituality - 6:1-11

Verse 1 seems to almost offer us some hope that Israel might be actually making a transition towards returning to the Lord.

Hosea 6:1 NASB95

“Come, let us return to the Lord. For He has torn us, but He will heal us; He has wounded us, but He will bandage us.

However, look carefully at verse 4 which gives the more complete picture.

Hosea 6:4 NASB95

What shall I do with you, O Ephraim? What shall I do with you, O Judah? For your loyalty is like a morning cloud And like the dew which goes away early.

God sees things for what they actually are. The morning mist always disappears when the heat of the sun comes. It seems that regardless of what God did for them, no matter how many times He came to their rescue, Israel just wouldn’t seem to follow God as they should. Oh, sure, every now and then they got teary-eyed and repentant, but that soon disappeared.

In verse 4, you also seem to get the impression that God is experiencing difficulty and outright exasperation, as He tries to deal with people who seem to want nothing to do with Him. But it seems that this is not necessarily only because of their sin. It actually seems to be a result of their supposed goodness. Yet, God reveals what their goodness is actually like—the morning cloud or mist and dew. Both are expressions of beauty and loveliness. Yet, both also go away quickly. When heat comes their way, they are gone; there is nothing permanent about them.

G. Campbell Morgan has stated: People who have no inner substance need the life of God infused into them. Israel knew what they should be doing. Israel was outwardly following the sacrificial system, but this was meaningless, according to verse 6.

Hosea 6:6 NASB95

For I delight in loyalty rather than sacrifice, And in the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.

God wants His people not just following the ritual and routine. He wants His people to recognize Who He is.

It is similar to the idea of Christians singing I Surrender All on Sunday, knowing full well that they will dedicate the rest of the week to fulfilling their own self-centered interests. God makes clear that when offerings are given to God, it must be done with a heart full of love for God. It cannot be done simply out of obligation and routine. It must come from a heart that acknowledges and recognizes God.

Again, it seems that God’s difficulty described here is not caused by gross sins, or even the complete pagan corruption. Those are merely outward issues. God can work with those things. What we see is the difficulty of reaching a person’s heart when humanity thinks that it has enough goodness, even though it is only like the morning dew.

It is as if God is saying that He knows they will come back. It will be just like they have come back so many times before. The sad reality is that their coming back has really meant nothing since there was no lasting change. A return back to God has to be more than emotion. It needs to be carried along by certain attitudes and activities of obedience and a heart full of genuine love for our Lord.

We can certainly understand the need to come back to God, but unless we turn completely away from where we’re going and turn completely to God, living according to His Word and commandments because of His love for us and our love and thankfulness to Him, we will be like the early morning dew.

My friends, when we hear the the Word of God proclaimed, does it really make a difference in how we live out our lives during the week? Does it change how we relate to each other? Are our hearts drawn closer to Jesus? If not, then we, too, are like the early dew or the morning mist.

A Living Lie - 7:1-7

Within this chapter, we see some horrible things taking place. There is continual, unconfessed sins. Without a full and complete judgment for sin, the holiness of God will continue to uncover sin. In verses 1-3, we see that the whole nation was living a lie.

Hosea 7:1–3 NASB95

When I would heal Israel, The iniquity of Ephraim is uncovered, And the evil deeds of Samaria, For they deal falsely; The thief enters in, Bandits raid outside, And they do not consider in their hearts That I remember all their wickedness. Now their deeds are all around them; They are before My face. With their wickedness they make the king glad, And the princes with their lies.

Israel was not considering the fact that God remembered their wickedness. Israel was not understanding that though God might not strike a person down at the precise moment of sin, there was going to be a judgment for sin. They may have even been using the excuse we so often hear today—Everybody’s doing it. My friends, standards of right and wrong are to be judged not by what is acceptable practice in our society and culture, but only by God’s standards.

In verse 4 of chapter 7, we see a very strange description.

Hosea 7:4 NASB95

They are all adulterers, Like an oven heated by the baker Who ceases to stir up the fire From the kneading of the dough until it is leavened.

God is talking about sexual immorality; about people burning and lusting after each other; basically out of control. This is so intense, that Hosea states that . . . the baker who ceases to stir up the fire . . . In other words, the fire rages on without any outside help.

Even today, this is the type of description of the type of world we occupy. Not even Christian as free from these temptations. We must be careful to not flirt or play with temptation. As soon as we do, we begin to fall, just as the Israelites.

A Double-Faced Dedication - 7:8-16

In verse 8, we see a very real picture of a contradiction in lifestyle.

Hosea 7:8 NASB95

Ephraim mixes himself with the nations; Ephraim has become a cake not turned.

The picture shown by this verse is the flat bread or cake that is cooked on the hot coals. The coals are red hot so that when they slap the dough into the pan, it sizzles and cooks quickly. Then the baker turns it over and cooks the other side. If not done right, you could have one side burned to a crisp and the other side ending up all mushy.

God seems to be pointing out that Israel doesn’t fully understand the two sides of being God’s people. Just like Israel, we are to cling to what the Word of God teaches, as well as putting it into practice in our daily lives. The problem for the Israelites was that they were practicing idolatry and at the same time going through the motions of worship of Jehovah God.

Now, on the other side, there is no application of the principles of God. One might say that the Israelites religion and relationship with God was truly half-baked. They were deeply into the theology and talk of the ways of God. Yet, when it came down to putting it into everyday practice, they were unwilling. Unfortunately, just like many today, going to church might be great, but to actually apply Christ to our everyday lives, is unthinkable.

My friends, God’s desire is to heal and to restore. However, He was constantly being frustrated by the people willfully and intentionally ignoring Him. They were so willfully ignorant of God that is was compared to someone not noticing their gray hairs.

Hosea 7:9 NASB95

Strangers devour his strength, Yet he does not know it; Gray hairs also are sprinkled on him, Yet he does not know it.

Even though sin is obvious so that others would notice, unless Israel would take time to analyze and evaluate themselves, it went on unnoticed.

We need to recognize that this can happen so quickly to any one of us. We may be going to church every Sunday, saying our prayers at mealtime and at night in our homes, giving our offerings and tithes, while at the same time be suffering from spiritual degeneracy and moral impurity.

If we are unconscious of spiritual failure when it happens, it is because we have lost a sense of true biblical standards. The gray hair is there, as it were, as a warning for us to heed. When sin is not dealt with, judgment for sin will still occur. The gray hair is not the actual problem; the problem lies in not recognizing it. When there is spiritual and moral failure, that is truly a tragedy. But it is a much worse tragedy when it is ignored.

Hosea 7:11 NASB95

So Ephraim has become like a silly dove, without sense; They call to Egypt, they go to Assyria.

First, Israel looked for help from Egypt. Then they flutter over to Assyria. They are reacting out of pure panic sensing defeat and destruction, but not once thinking about God. There is no true sense of direction.

Hosea 7:16 NASB95

They turn, but not upward, They are like a deceitful bow; Their princes will fall by the sword Because of the insolence of their tongue. This will be their derision in the land of Egypt.

No matter how you pull the arrow or how well you aim, if the bow is twisted, the arrow is going to go off the side and miss the mark.

The cure for all of this was to turn to the only One Who could save. The same is true for us. We cannot merely hope for God to deal with the symptoms and leave the disease. God will not simply dye our hair a different color. However, if we turn to Him, He can cause the gray hairs to disappear. He can do this by taking away the destructive forces of our strength which produce moral failure.

Summary

Hosea 7:10–11 NASB95

Though the pride of Israel testifies against him, Yet they have not returned to the Lord their God, Nor have they sought Him, for all this. So Ephraim has become like a silly dove, without sense; They call to Egypt, they go to Assyria.

As these last two verses reveal, no matter how hard the Lord tried to discipline and strengthen Israel for her battle against wickedness, she chose to continually reject Him by joining the side of evil.

Just like Israel, we must recognize that without the Lord as our strength, as well as our choosing to serve Him wholeheartedly, we will fall victim and be captured by evil.

The unusual response to this difficulty is that the answer is available in God, but requires humanity to respond. Remember the first verse in chapter 6: Come, let us return to the Lord. You see, we have to seek after Him. If we are serious about this, then we can further see that He will heal . . . He will bandage us . . . He will restore us.

Could God be saying to any of us here or watching online that the trouble with our goodness is that it is like the morning mist, like the early dew?

Let’s say an emphatic NO to what the world has to offer that would take us away from seeking God. Let’s be a people who are willing to turn completely to God. Let’s continue to seek His face wholeheartedly. I want to encourage each one of us to give ourselves 100% to God and serve Him. Don’t settle for surface repentance.