What they call 'progressive thinking'

Hosea 8:8 says, “Israel is swallowed up: now shall they be among the Gentiles as a vessel wherein is no pleasure.”

Jordan explains, “That’s a great figure of speech there. Israel is not supposed to be swallowed up by the nations; they’re supposed be out there among the nations. They’re to be the head of the nations, leading them; they’re not to be assimilated into them.

“By the way, you remember what the great fish did to Jonah? This a verse that will help you understand the symbolism of what happens to Jonah when the fish swallows him and he’s cast out among the nations. Jonah is a picture of the nation Israel who refused to do their job in being God’s witness before the nations.

“Israel has gone to Assyria (the Antichrist's native country) rather than turning to the Lord. They turn to the king of the Gentiles to get protection.

“Verse 9 says, ‘For they are gone up to Assyria, a wild ass alone by himself: Ephraim hath hired lovers.’ When you read that, you’re not sure if he’s talking about the Assyrian or if he's talking about Israel gone to Assyria as a wild ass.

“Either way you do it, in the Bible, the ass, or the donkey, is a picture of the rebellious nature of fallen man. You’re just that stubborn and brute: ‘I’m going to do it my way no matter what!’

“Just as Israel was designed by God, created by God, to be His representative nation in the earth, they turn into a representative of what it is to be in total rebellion against God. They turn into exactly the opposite of what they were supposed to be.

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“Job 11:12 says, ‘For vain man would be wise, though man be born like a wild ass's colt.’

“Notice in the passage, Zophar asks, [7] Canst thou by searching find out God? canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection?
[8] It is as high as heaven; what canst thou do? deeper than hell; what canst thou know?
[9] The measure thereof is longer than the earth, and broader than the sea.

“Those four measures—the height, the depth, the length and the breadth; he says you can’t know God. That’s the first book in the Bible and they acknowledge that on your own, seeking and finding God is too big a job.

“The fascinating thing about that passage is how it matches up with Ephesians 3:18, because when you come to Paul and he talks about the Father having made known the mystery of His will, God the Father reveals His thinking to us, and Paul uses those four terms to describe what we now know based upon the revelation of the Father’s will to us.

“We now know all the things that humanly speaking you couldn’t know (in time past). So in the beginning of the Bible, it says you can’t know it, and when you come to Paul, with the final revelation of information, he says, ‘Now you got it.' You get what humanly speaking you could never get.

“Verse 10 says, ‘If he cut off, and shut up, or gather together, then who can hinder him?’ You can’t know God, and you can’t stop God from doing what He wants to do. I’ve always appreciated that; ‘He knoweth vain men.’

“You know, the first book in the Bible tells you God knows dudes like you; there ain’t nothing you’re going to do that’s going to surprise Him. He knows how empty we are.

“What he says in verse 12, I mean, that’s not even a wild ass! That’s the baby of a wild ass! He’s saying, ‘You’re double wild!’

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“You remember in Matthew 21 and John 12 and so forth how Jesus enters Jerusalem just a few days before He dies; He comes down off that mountain. Zachariah 9:9 says the Lord Jesus Christ came riding in on, not just the donkey, but the baby of the ass. Now that’s a strange situation. And that’s a picture of the Jesus Christ being able to TAME the rebellious nature of man. That’s a picture of the condition Israel was in.

“That was a picture of Israel that started back here in Hosea 8:8 when he goes out on a wild ass alone, trusting his own wisdom instead of God’s.

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“Exodus 13:13 says, ‘And every firstling of an ass thou shalt redeem with a lamb; and if thou wilt not redeem it, then thou shalt break his neck: and all the firstborn of man among thy children shalt thou redeem.’

“Now if you’ve got 13:13, what does that tell you? Well, you probably ought to pay attention to it because the great majority of chapter 13, verse 13s in the Bible have a very negative lesson associated with them.

“The only animal God made provisions for them to redeem is that one right there. You notice that you redeem two things—the ass’ colt and man. The connection between the two is pretty obvious in Scripture.

“One represents stubborn rebellion and the other is man. What a rebellious creation needs is a lamb to redeem it. What sinful man needs is the blood of a lamb to redeem, and if you don’t redeem it, what do you do? You break its neck. There’s Genesis 3:15 and the Curse.

“Isaiah 1 says, ‘Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth: for the LORD hath spoken, I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me. 3] The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib: but Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider.
[4] Ah sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children that are corrupters: they have forsaken the LORD, they have provoked the Holy One of Israel unto anger, they are gone away backward.’

“Isaiah is going to do that over and over. He says, ‘I got something to say about Israel that everybody in the heaven and the earth needs to listen to.’ In one place he’ll say, ‘O earth, earth, earth, here the word of the Lord.’

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“You should never say there aren’t messages in Israel’s program to the Gentiles. Sometime He’ll speak directly to them. He sent Jonah to them. He sent Nahum and Obadiah right to them with messages of God’s judgment. But it’s all connected with Israel’s program going out.

“In other words, they’re dumber than a bunch of animals. A sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children that are corrupters.

"You see what’s happening in Israel? They’re sinful, they’re burdened down with iniquity; they are a seed of evildoers and their children are corrupters. They’re not just corrupt; they’re out corrupting other people.

“By that verse, write down Romans 1:32, and see the depths of where Israel has sunk. They’ve become in exactly the same condition the Gentiles are in. If you wanted one verse in the whole Bible to describe the depths to which sin can take a person, I believe this is the verse.

“I used to do a teaching on the verse in Revelation 2 where it talks about the depths of Satan. And then the other teaching would be on the depths of sin and this was the text.

“He talks about in verse 29 them being filled with all unrighteousness, then he lists 23 different things that they are FILLED with; the kind of things that come when you exchange the truth of God for the lie.

“Then he describes the people in verse 32: ‘Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.’

“They’re not just a bunch of sadists, saying, ‘We’re going to do it, and you can do just what you want to!’ They become a bunch of masochists, having pleasure in people doing what they’re going to do, knowing they're going to get what they got for doing it! That’s how sin goes down, down, down, down.

“That’s why when you see things in our culture where they are, they don’t get where they are today without a LONG process of evil thinking. Because when you start out, as Isaiah 5 says, ‘Calling evil good and good evil,’ this is where you wind up.

“The world calls it sophistication; the world calls it progressive thinking. The Bible says you’re a fool. Israel had become that foolish nation.

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“Hosea 8:10 says, ‘Yea, though they have hired among the nations, now will I gather them, and they shall sorrow a little for the burden of the king of princes.’

“That’s an interesting title; the king of princes. That’s not the ‘king of kings.’ Princes are littler guys than kings. They’re going to try to make the Assyrian, the Antichrist, Satan’s man, God’s man.

“There’s a point in the career of the Antichrist where literally what Israel tries to do with the Antichrist is give him the name ‘Jehovah.’

“He says that for what they’re doing, to do that, they’re going to sorrow. Verse 11 says, ‘Because Ephraim hath made many altars to sin, altars shall be unto him to sin.’

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“When you’re reading the Minor Prophets, you have to be very cognizant of the fact a lot of these guys are downright sarcastic. These guys, especially the little guys, can be quite sarcastic. One of the most sarcastic things you’ll read is Amos 4:

“He says, ‘Come to Bethel, and transgress; at Gilgal multiply transgression; and bring your sacrifices every morning, and your tithes after three years:
[5] And offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving with leaven, and proclaim and publish the free offerings: for this liketh you, O ye children of Israel, saith the Lord GOD.’

“You think God would tell somebody, ‘Come on over here and sin’?! He’s mocking them.

“You remember what Bethel was? I Kings 12. They set up alternate temples. Bethel is the house of God. That’s where Jacob slept on the pillow and saw the gate of God. He said, ‘This is the gate of heaven,’ and he called it Beth-el. House of Elohim. They turned it into a den of iniquity.

“I love that thing with Elijah on Mount Carmel. He’s got the prophets of Baal, all the guys dressed up in their long robes with the collars backward and their icons, and he said, ‘C’mon, sacrifice to your God! See if he’ll answer!’ They get nothing. They start cutting, and they’re praying until noon and Elijah, standing over there, says, ‘Hey, he must be asleep! Talk a little louder! Maybe he’s off on a journey!’

"The same verse in the Living Bible put out by Tyndale years ago, actually says, ‘Maybe he’s off in the bathroom’!

“I used to show that verse to people who thought, ‘Ooh, we’ve got this beautiful Living Bible.’ I remember my aunt, she’d just got the bible and she was so proud of that thing, she showed it to me, and I said, ‘Can I show you two verses?’

“I showed her that verse and she kind of clouded up. Then I showed the verse in Samuel about where Saul calls David an S.O.B. and she, splat, closed that thing. That was a little too liberal for her.

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“God says in Hosea 8:12, ‘I have written to him the great things of my law but they were counted as a strange thing.’ ‘I wrote my law, I gave him my word, I wrote it.’ He doesn’t even say Moses wrote it. He says, ‘I wrote it,’ because God through Moses wrote it.

“Imagine having God write you a book. You see they thought He did; He thought He did. We’re people of a book, folks. And God wrote the Book.

“ ‘And they were counted a strange thing.’ You know when he talks in Nehemiah about marrying ‘outlandish women’? That’s not some lady with a big fancy hairdo and funny-looking clothes. Outlandish means they lived outside the land. They weren’t Israelites.

“You remember when He said you and I were strangers? We’re outside? When He says they were counted as a strange thing, He said, ‘I wrote my word to them. I gave them my word, wrote it, preserved it for them, and they looked at it like it was a thing that was outlandish, outside, unconnected to them.’

“It was a thing that they didn’t have any concern for. It was a thing they didn’t want to have any part with. They were disconnected from it. They would’ve said, ‘Let’s don’t read it in our schools. Let’s have a separation.’ But God said, ‘You’re my people; I gave it to you.’

“Verse 14 is one of the scariest verses you’ll read in this connection: ‘For Israel hath forgotten his Maker, and buildeth temples.’ Moses said that’s what would happen. Here they are! It’s not saying they went off and became atheists. He’s saying what they did is they went off and became religious. They lost God in the building program.

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“One the greatest Achilles Heel of evangelical fundamentalism in the last century, and by that I mean the last 100 years or so, has been doing what that verse says. Because when you start making the buildings and the systems and the machinery the issue, it’s because you’ve forgotten what God wrote in the Book and you’ve made the system the issue.

“Let me show you the verse in II Corinthians just so you know this didn’t just happen in Israel’s day. II Corinthians 11: 18-19 says, Seeing that many glory after the flesh, I will glory also.
[19] For ye suffer fools gladly, seeing ye yourselves are wise.
[20] For ye suffer, if a man bring you into bondage, if a man devour you, if a man take of you, if a man exalt himself, if a man smite you on the face.

“Paul was talking to some people who knew about being in the clutches of religious tyranny. You know what you’ll learn about religion? People enjoy the bondage of religion. It’s weird. But they think, ‘If I do this, God’s going to be happy with me, and I’m happy to be able to do this to make God happy.’ Your flesh loves to work and religion is designed to satisfy the lust of your flesh (Gal. 6: 12-13).

“You ought to think about that passage some time on what it would take to do all of those things. The one that really gets me is that last one: ‘if a man smite you on the face.’

“What part of your anatomy is connected with your identification? Now, you have some strange and uniquely designed parts in your body. I had a friend years ago who liked to watch people’s feet and I never thought much about it until he started doing it. You know, people’s feet are really weird-looking.

“When they smite you in the face, it represents who you are. All this stuff happens only when you don’t realize your real identity in Christ, and the only way to get someone free of all that bondage is for them to see who they really are.

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“Jeremiah 7:3 says, ‘Thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, Amend your ways and your doings, and I will cause you to dwell in this place.’

“Notice what the liars are saying: ‘Here’s God’s temple, Here’s God’s temple, Here’s God’s temple.’ What are they doing? They’re multiplying temples. ‘Got one in Dan, got one down in Bethel, one over here.’ They’re just building temples everywhere.

“But look at II Chronicles 7:12. When Solomon is dedicating the temple in Jerusalem it says, ‘And the LORD appeared to Solomon by night, and said unto him, I have heard thy prayer, and have chosen this place to myself for an house of sacrifice.’

“Look at 6:6: ‘But I have chosen Jerusalem, that my name might be there; and have chosen David to be over my people Israel.’ They were to go to Jerusalem to worship in one temple, and when Hosea talks about them forsaking God and building temples, what he’s saying is they’re just erecting all this false religious system; total apostasy in Israel and it’s spread everywhere.”