Like talking to a piece of wood

Hosea 4: 12 says, "My people ask counsel at their stocks, and their staff declareth unto them: for the spirit of whoredoms hath caused them to err, and they have gone a whoring from under their God."

“The way they reject His Word is they go looking for wisdom and truth somewhere else,” explains Jordan. “They take counsel at their stocks. Now, that’s not stocks you buy down at E.F. Hutton or the stock market on Wall Street. It’s not like Paul being in the stocks in the Philippian jail (Acts 16).

“It’s talking about the idols. There are a bunch of passages back in Isaiah that talk about this stuff. You’ve got a staff, these divining rods, and that thing’s talking to you. Now, is it really talking to you? No. But they think it is. They’re getting their wisdom from it. That’s what idolatry leads you to.

“In demon or devil worship . . . You take voodooism, for instance. One of the major components in it is drug use. Hallucinogenic drugs. You watch these tribal dances, or Native American dances in pagan countries; you see the activity and all the wild things they’re doing. Those things are chemically induced by drugs, alcohol and that kind of thing.

“They cause you to see things and people think, ‘Ooh, the demons are talking to us!’ So they’re taking the information they’re getting from their idols--dead pieces of wood, divining rods, the sticks--and believing that extra-biblical revelation instead of believing what God’s Word said.

“When you make an idol, what are you doing?  Well, here’s the psychology of it in Isaiah 44:

[11] Behold, all his fellows shall be ashamed: and the workmen, they are of men: let them all be gathered together, let them stand up; yet they shall fear, and they shall be ashamed together.
[12] The smith with the tongs both worketh in the coals, and fashioneth it with hammers, and worketh it with the strength of his arms: yea, he is hungry, and his strength faileth: he drinketh no water, and is faint.
[13] The carpenter stretcheth out his rule; he marketh it out with a line; he fitteth it with planes, and he marketh it out with the compass, and maketh it after the figure of a man, according to the beauty of a man; that it may remain in the house.
[14] He heweth him down cedars, and taketh the cypress and the oak, which he strengtheneth for himself among the trees of the forest: he planteth an ash, and the rain doth nourish it.
[15] Then shall it be for a man to burn: for he will take thereof, and warm himself; yea, he kindleth it, and baketh bread; yea, he maketh a god, and worshippeth it; he maketh it a graven image, and falleth down thereto.
[16] He burneth part thereof in the fire; with part thereof he eateth flesh; he roasteth roast, and is satisfied: yea, he warmeth himself, and saith, Aha, I am warm, I have seen the fire:
[17] And the residue thereof he maketh a god, even his graven image: he falleth down unto it, and worshippeth it, and prayeth unto it, and saith, Deliver me; for thou art my god.

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“I read that and I say, ‘What kind of a numbskull can that guy be?!’ We call them blockheads. Psalm says, ‘You make idols and you’re like unto them.' What’s the idol? It’s an old piece of wood.

Verses 18-19: They have not known nor understood: for he hath shut their eyes, that they cannot see; and their hearts, that they cannot understand.
[19] And none considereth in his heart, neither is there knowledge nor understanding to say, I have burned part of it in the fire; yea, also I have baked bread upon the coals thereof; I have roasted flesh, and eaten it: and shall I make the residue thereof an abomination? shall I fall down to the stock of a tree?

“Isaiah says the guy goes out there in the woods and cuts down a tree, comes in and he carves out of it an idol. He sits the idol over there and he takes all the residue of what he carved up and makes a fire out of it and he warms himself out of that same piece of tree. He burns up some of it, it goes to ashes, and then he takes the other part and he bows down and says, ‘Thou art my God, deliver me.’

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“There’s another passage earlier where Isaiah says, 'You make an image and you pray to it, and you ask it, and then you have to move it to clean under it! I mean, what’s it going to do for you if it can’t even get out of the way of the vacuum cleaner?!!' You see the proof of the pudding in a god is, can he be God? And they can’t.

“But what do the heathen do? They don’t understand and you see in verse 19, ‘And none considereth in his heart.’ It’s in their HEART they set themselves on something. In their heart, they don’t want God; they want the lie and that’s what they’ve chosen.

“Isaiah 8 says, [18] Behold, I and the children whom the LORD hath given me are for signs and for wonders in Israel from the LORD of hosts, which dwelleth in mount Zion.
[19] And when they shall say unto you, Seek unto them that have familiar spirits, and unto wizards that peep, and that mutter: should not a people seek unto their God? for the living to the dead?
[20] To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.
[21] And they shall pass through it, hardly bestead and hungry: and it shall come to pass, that when they shall be hungry, they shall fret themselves, and curse their king and their God, and look upward.
[22] And they shall look unto the earth; and behold trouble and darkness, dimness of anguish; and they shall be driven to darkness.

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“Familiar spirits. Wizards. These people with familiar spirits and wizards are communicating with the spirit world. What are their ‘idols’ doing? They’re talking. They’re peeping and muttering. Now, I don’t know what that sounds like, but if you’ve ever been in a tongues meeting, you’ve heard it.

“My point here is, they’re going to people, worshipping idols, and they think those idols are talking to them. They’re getting their revelation . . . where’s this stuff coming from? They’ve rejected God’s Word and they’re looking for God to speak to them through something other than His Word.

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I Corinthians 12 says, [1] Now concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, I would not have you ignorant.

[2] Ye know that ye were Gentiles, carried away unto these dumb idols, even as ye were led.

“You ever heard anybody say, ‘You know, the Lord led me to do this.’ And ‘the Lord led me to do that.’ Or, ‘God is leading our church.’

"There’s not a verse in Paul’s epistles telling you to talk like that, but there’s a verse where people were talking like that.

“Paul’s saying, ‘You know from when you were unsaved what it was to be carried away into that, thinking somebody’s talking, peeping and muttering (tongue-talking) in something you don’t understand.’

“Verse 3 says, ‘Wherefore I give you to understand, that no man speaking by the Spirit of God calleth Jesus accursed: and that no man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost.' When Paul talks about speaking there, he’s talking about speaking in tongues.

 “Psalm 115:4 says, ‘Their idols are silver and gold, the work of men's hands.’ These guys, their mouth didn’t move, but they thought they talked. ‘Neither speak they through their throat.’ They thought they were! Sort of like ventriloquists. That’s the deception the Gentiles (the heathen) lived under, and that’s the deception that had taken over the nation Israel. That’s what idolatry was all about.

Psalm 135:15-17: The idols of the heathen are silver and gold, the work of men's hands.
[16] They have mouths, but they speak not; eyes have they, but they see not;
[17] They have ears, but they hear not; neither is there any breath in their mouths. These things are elegant in appearance.

Habakkuk 2:18 says, ‘What profiteth the graven image that the maker thereof hath graven it; the molten image, and a teacher of lies, that the maker of his work trusteth therein, to make dumb idols?’

“They literally say to the wooden idol, ‘Awake! Teach us!’ and that’s what Hosea’s talking about. They’ve abandoned God’s truth and gone to get truth from some other source, and when you go somewhere else to get truth, it’s like talking to a piece of wood. There’s no truth there for the spirit of whoredoms have caused them to err.

“If you ever wanted a double 13, Proverbs 13:13 says, ‘Whoso despiseth the word shall be destroyed: but he that feareth the commandment shall be rewarded.’ ”