Pride and power struggles are signs that we need a new season of renewal in our lives. The last verse of chapter 8 tells us clearly the problem, “For Israel has forgotten his Maker” and this is why we need renewal.
It’s not that He is not there in our minds; our Bible sits there; we pray our prayers and sing our songs; but we have forgotten Him.
Pride is there; Power-struggles are there and also idolatry.
“With their silver and gold they make idols for themselves to their own destruction. Samaria, throw out your calf-idol! My anger burns against them. How long will they be incapable of purity? They are from Israel! This calf—a metalworker has made it; it is not God. It will be broken in pieces, that calf of Samaria.” (Hosea 8 v 4-6)
It seems one man’s idolatry is stupidity to another. Especially thousands of years previously. Under the leadership of Jeroboam the worship of silver/gold crafted calves was common place. Its origins of course was when in Exodus 32, thinking that their leader, Moses, had forgotten them when he went up Mt. Sini to receive the law of God. With nowhere to be seen the people made a golden calf to worship. They did it because they felt a distancing between God and Moses and themselves.
Today we may not be smelting down our gold jewellery to make idols but there is a temptation to make God fit our expectations and what we think we need when He is nowhere to be seen; we reach out for money and positions of power; anything other than our search for the Living God becomes a calf of worship.
Thinking that these things will make us greater than we are only leads us into further idolatry where there are no depths of sin that a man/woman of God can fall into in the search for fulfilment.
God asks the question: How long will this go on for? He promises that our attempts will come to nothing. He will break them to pieces. Why? Man-made attempts are not God.
There are so many man-attempts that do not look sinful and that we applaud. Our work and what we have achieved whether a Church ministry or becoming the star employee or building the award-winning business; or doing all the above through our children; can become idolatrous if it becomes more important than God.
Renewal will remove the calf-idols of Samaria so that God becomes everything to our lives.
Missions Paul 