The Leadership Void.

Yet let no one contend, and let none accuse, for with you is my contention, O priest. You shall stumble by day; the prophet also shall stumble with you by night;  and I will destroy your mother. My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge; because you have rejected knowledge, I reject you from being a priest to me. And since you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children. The more they increased, the more they sinned against me; I will change their glory into shame.

They feed on the sin of my people; they are greedy for their iniquity. And it shall be like people, like priest; I will punish them for their ways and repay them for their deeds. They shall eat, but not be satisfied; they shall play the whore, but not multiply, because they have forsaken the Lord to cherish whoredom, wine, and new wine, which take away the understanding. – Hosea 4:4-11 ESV

God held all of the people of Israel responsible for their sin, but He had a special word of accusation against the spiritual leaders of Israel. The priests and prophets, while not actually men appointed by God, were still going to be held accountable because of their claim to be representatives of God. The priests of Israel were actually unsanctioned by God, because they had been appointed by Jeroboam after the kingdom split in two. He had created his own gods and appointed his own priests. They were not Levites, as God had commanded. So these were actually false priests leading the people in the worship of false gods. So God held them to a higher standard and leveled more severe charges against them. The same was true of the false prophets who were claiming to bring messages from the false gods they worshiped. These men were supposedly speaking new revelations from their gods, giving the people of Israel divine direction. But they were simply misleading the people. The revelations they received, if indeed they received any, were most likely demonic and most definitely not from God.

God’s main accusation against the priests was that they were leading the people away from Him, not toward Him. The people’s knowledge of God was actually diminishing, not increasing. God said, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge; because you have rejected knowledge” (Hosea 4:6 ESV). The priests were not seeking after the one true God, so the people were becoming increasingly ignorant of God and His ways. The priests were not teaching the laws of God, so the people were breaking them without even knowing it. And all of this was leading to their destruction, both spiritually and physically.

As priests, these men were to be promoting godliness and the worship of God. They were to be leading the people into a deeper understanding of and appreciation for God. But God said, “The more priests there are, the more they sin against me. They have exchanged the glory of God for the shame of idols” (Hosea 4:7 NLT). They were leaving God out of the equation. They had replaced Him with false gods and the peoples sins were actually increasing, not decreasing. And God even accused the priests of wanting the people to sin more, because the more they sinned, the more sacrifices they had to bring to repent of their sins. And the more sacrifices the people made, the more portions of those sacrifices they got to eat as their priestly payment. They were actually getting fat and happy off of the sins of the people. “When the people bring their sin offerings, the priests get fed. So the priests are glad when the people sin!” (Hosea 4:8 NLT).

There was evidently a common saying among the Israelites that said, “And what the priests do, the people also do” (Hosea 4:9a NLT). These so-called spiritual leaders were actually setting the standard for sin. They were leading the people into idolatry, immorality, and sins of all kinds by their very actions. Which led God to declare, “So now I will punish both priests and people for their wicked deeds” (Hosea 4:9b NLT).

One of the saddest results of turning from God and seeking false gods is that the blessings you seek never come to fruition. The benefits you hope to derive from your false god never appear. The satisfaction you want remains illusive and unattainable. And God told the people of Israel, “They will eat and still be hungry. They will play the prostitute and gain nothing from it, for they have deserted the Lord to worship other gods” (Hosea 4:10-11a NLT). If you make money your god, you will never have enough of it to make you happy or bring you satisfaction. If you make popularity or beauty your god, there will always be someone more popular and more beautiful than you are. If you place your hope and trust in an individual, they will inevitably let you down. Whatever you end up worshiping in place of God will always let you down. It is incapable of delivering what you seek.

While the Israelites were guilty of worship golden calves and idols made of wood, our false gods are more sophisticated and subtle. Ours take the form of people, careers, material things, money, politicians, success, entertainment, and even self. And sadly, in our culture, there are those claiming to speak for God who encourage the worship of these false gods. They claim to speak for God, but actually direct people away from Him by encouraging actions and attitudes that are opposed to His will. These false preachers and pastors promote happiness over holiness. They downplay the topic of sin and portray God as some kind of self-help guru who exists to meet all your personal desires. They preach inclusion and tolerance at the expense of God’s holiness and man’s need of repentance and salvation from sin. They teach the love of God as some kind of syrupy, sweet, all-accepting idea where God never opposes sin and never condemns the sinner. In essence, they emasculate God, turning Him into a doddering grandfather in the sky who doles out blessings on any and all, free from judgment and mindless of the idea of accountability. But this is not the God of the Bible. And like the false priests and prophets of Israel, the pastors, teachers, evangelists and prophets of today who lead people away from the one true God, will be held responsible by God for their actions.

No Comparison.

For to which of the angels did God ever say, “You are my Son, today I have begotten you”? Or again, “I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son”? And again, when he brings the firstborn into the world, he says, “Let all God's angels worship him.”

Of the angels he says, “He makes his angels winds, and his ministers a flame of fire.” – Hebrews 1:5-7 ESV

For the author of Hebrews, it seemed important to establish the uniqueness and complete sufficiency of Christ. Writing to a Jewish audience, he wants to ensure that they understand that Jesus was much more than just a man, so he presents seven facts concerning Jesus. 1) He was appointed the heir of all things by God. All that belongs to God, which includes everything, belong to Jesus as His Son. 2) He created the universe. All that exists in time and space was made possible by Jesus as the second person of the Trinity. Paul wrote to the believers in Colossae:

Christ is the visible image of the invisible God. He existed before anything was created and is supreme over all creation, for through him God created everything in the heavenly realms and on earth. He made the things we can see and the things we can’t see—such as thrones, kingdoms, rulers, and authorities in the unseen world. Everything was created through him and for him. He existed before anything else, and he holds all creation together. – Colossians 1:15-17 ESV

Jesus wasn’t created by God. He is the God who created all things. 3) He is the radiance of the glory of God. In His incarnation, Jesus made God visible to man. He shone forth the glory of God, if be it in a veiled sense during His earthly days on earth. But His words and works revealed the power and majesty of God to man. 4) He is the exact imprint of God’s nature. In seeing Jesus, men were able to see the nature of God revealed. He made God’s goodness, wisdom, glory and righteousness visible to men. 5) He upholds the universe by the word of His power. His very word sustains and maintains the universe. His word has power beyond that of any other source. 6) He made purification for sins. By sacrificing His own life, Jesus made it possible for mankind to experience both the cleansing from and removal of sin and its deadly consequences. 7) He sat down at the right hand of God. Having faithfully and obediently completed His God-appointed task, Jesus ascended back to heaven and retained His rightful place next to God the Father, where He rules and reigns.

All of this puts Jesus on a different plane than anyone and everything else. There is nothing and no one who can compare with Him, including angels. These heavenly beings, who played a vital role in the history and religious understanding of the Jews, were not to be compared with Jesus. In Judaism, angels were viewed as divine messengers from God. In fact, the Jews closely associated angels with the giving of the Law of Moses. We read in Deuteronomy 33, “The Lord came from Sinai and revealed himself to Israel from Seir. He appeared in splendor from Mount Paran, and came forth with ten thousand holy ones. With his right hand he gave a fiery law to them” (Deuteronomy 33:2 NET). Paul tells us that the law “was administered through angels by an intermediary” (Galatians 3:19 NET). So angels were venerated by the Jews. And it would seem that there were some in the early days of the church who took the veneration of angels and turned it into worship. Paul warned about it in his letter to the church in Colossae: “Don’t let anyone condemn you by insisting on pious self-denial or the worship of angels, saying they have had visions about these things. Their sinful minds have made them proud, and they are not connected to Christ, the head of the body. For he holds the whole body together with its joints and ligaments, and it grows as God nourishes it” (Colossians 2:18-19 NLT).

The writer of Hebrews wants us to understand that angels, while superior beings in many ways, are not to be compared with Jesus. And to support his point, he provides four Old Testament passages as evidence. Quoting from Psalm 2:7, he asks if God had ever said to any angel, “You are my Son, today I have begotten you?” And the answer is no. The Jews in his audience would have known that Davidic psalm as speaking of the Messiah. And while angels were often referred to in the Old Testament Scriptures as “sons of God,” no angel was ever called “the Son of God.” Quoting from 2 Samuel 7:14, the author asks whether God ever said of any angel, “I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son” (Hebrews 1:5 ESV). Again, the Jews would have recognized this as a promise of God given to David the king. It was a Messianic passage, partially fulfilled in the life of Solomon, David’s son, but ultimately fulfilled in Christ, “who was descended from David – according to the flesh” (Romans 1:3 ESV). Using Deuteronomy 32:14 as his reference, the author reminds his readers that God said even the angels would one day worship Jesus. Finally, using Psalm 104:4, the author presents angels as nothing more than divine messengers. The psalmist compares them to wind, invisible and at the mercy of a far greater power. There were created by God and were designed for His glory, not their own. Like flames of fire, they sometimes brought illumination and, at other times, judgment. But they were never meant to be worshiped.

In the book of the Revelation, John was visited by an angel and given words from God that he was to write down. John's response was to fall down and worship the angel, but he was told, “You must not do that! I am a fellow servant with you and your brothers who hold to the testimony of Jesus. Worship God” (Revelation 19:10 ESV). And then the angel gave John an important point of clarification: “For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy” (Revelation 19:10 ESV). All that John was being shown in his vision concerning the end times revolved around the person of Christ. In fact, in the very next verses of John’s revelation, we read:

Then I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse! The one sitting on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war. His eyes are like a flame of fire, and on his head are many diadems, and he has a name written that no one knows but himself. He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood, and the name by which he is called is The Word of God. And the armies of heaven, arrayed in fine linen, white and pure, were following him on white horses. From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron. He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty. On his robe and on his thigh he has a name written, King of kings and Lord of lords. – Revelation 19:11-16 ESV

Jesus is superior to angels. He alone is to be worshiped and revered. It is He who sits at the right hand of God and who will one day return as the King of kings and Lord of lords. There is nothing and no one to compare with Jesus. He alone is worthy of our praise, worship, glory, honor, and love.