Listeners from around the world share how ‘Through the Bible’ has revitalized their spiritual walks and renewed their commitment to faith. Dr. J. Vernon McGee sheds light on how ancient warnings remain crucial for today’s societies, while touching upon personal and national morality. Find strength in prayer and reflection on the lessons from ancient texts in our current world.
That’s bad enough. But when you attempt to bring it out and sin in the open, flaunt it before the world, then may I say to you that you’ve gone to the bottom. That’s the reason I believe that this book has a message for our nation or any nation.
SPEAKER 04 :
That’s the important message that we’ll hear from our teacher, Dr. J. Vernon McGee on Through the Bible. I’m Steve Schwetz, welcoming you aboard the Bible bus. And while you find your seat, Greg and I have got some stories to share, this time from Uganda.
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Yes, a country that we have both been to together. We had a real interesting time there. And then I went back. I had such a great time. But no, we like to make sure we stay up to date with our team there. And it is an amazing team that just is doing so many great things.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, I love the fact that it was two separate churches that came together to produce the original Lugandan program and the way those two formed. physically relatively close to each other and not competing and taking really the best from both congregations to make the program a success.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yes. And you and I even had the privilege of tag team preaching, you know, dropped us off. Yeah. And then you preached in one and then we, we switched. But yeah, we’re so excited right now. This team started in Luganda, but now we are airing in Uganda three languages, which are African English, Luganda, and Runyachitara, which is in the west.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah. But that team also produces another language, which is… Yeah, which is Juba Arabic, which is in the north, which reaches into South Sudan. Yeah. And I’ve said this before, one of the most difficult places to live, I believe, between Haiti and South Sudan. Those guys are competing for the least established country on the planet at this point.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yes. And we’ll give you a little teaser. Maybe we will share with you. We will share with you that there there’s a new language coming in 2025. So we’re excited about that. But as always, let’s make sure we hear from the listeners.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah. So first, here’s a listener that joins us in the now. I say Renya Katara.
SPEAKER 03 :
You said I’ve been trying to learn how they say it. They say kind of run Yachitara.
SPEAKER 04 :
I kind of swallow the R, but it’s a hard thing for us to say. I’ll go with that. Here’s the letter. I thank God for the program because my prayer life has changed ever since I started listening. This is so interesting. Let me continue. I am a minister in the church, but at some point I had started drawing back and I wasn’t diligent in my personal fellowship with God. Wow. Wow. Wow. Ever since I started listening four years ago, which would have been right close to the beginning, right?
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, that would be.
SPEAKER 04 :
You’re absolutely right. I’ve been encouraged to devote myself to the ministry of the word and prayer. As I understood the ways of the Lord, I was revived. And even with love and joy, I took on more responsibilities in my church. Currently, I lead the prayer department. The zeal of the house of the Lord has now consumed me, and I have no more thoughts of drawing back. Glory be to God.
SPEAKER 03 :
Praise God. And I think that’s a lot more common around the world and in the United States. People in vocational ministry can often just get empty. So Through the Bible fills their tank. Now, we have just enough time to hear from Lydia, who listens to Through the Bible in the Luganda language. This program has been a great blessing to me. Today, we don’t have Bible study programs in churches, and this has affected the spiritual growth of the church. This program has helped me master the Word of God and its meaning. It has given me boldness to preach to lost souls and to do it with understanding. Steve, I wish we had more time to share, but we have to pray.
SPEAKER 04 :
Let me open us in prayer. Heavenly Father, we are so thankful for the way you have opened many doors of ministry in the country of Uganda. We pray that you would continue to keep those doors open. Bless the ministry as it goes out in that part of the world, and bless this program as it goes out now. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen. Now here’s Dr. J. Vernon McGee with our study of Hosea 7 on Through the Bible.
SPEAKER 01 :
Now friends, we’re still in this section where we find God dealing in a rather harsh way with the northern kingdom. And yet in a very tender way as he is attempting to call him back to himself before judgment comes. And here in the seventh chapter, Israel turns to Egypt and Assyria instead of turning to God. And Israel, as he will say here, Ephraim is like a silly dove. And he has a few other choice metaphors for them also. And we’ll look at that as we get into this seventh chapter. Now, I want to read verse 1 of chapter 7. He says, “…when I would have healed Israel…” Then the iniquity of Ephraim was uncovered, and the wickedness of Samaria. For they commit falsehood, and the thief cometh in, and the troop of robbers spoileth without. Now, this has been the first mention of Samaria, I believe. Samaria was the capital of the northern kingdom. At least Omri made it the capital. And then his son Ahab and Jezebel, they built a palace up there. And in our last tour, I insisted that that be put on the tour, that the folk could go to that hill of Samaria. and see the fulfillment of prophecy, the judgment of God upon what is probably one of the most beautiful spots in the world to have a palace or a home for that matter. It’s on a hill that overlooks that entire area. You can see to the west, the Mediterranean, to the east, the Jordan Valley, to the south, the city of Jerusalem, to the north, Mount Hermon and Megiddo. What a choice spot. And there’s nothing to obstruct the viewpoint in any direction. But today, it’s a desolate waste. The judgment of God is indeed upon it. Now, what was happening in Israel was this. that the sin that had been covered is now being uncovered. That is, what they had been doing secretly, they’re now doing it openly. That is, there’s no shame or no conviction, no conscience relative to their sin. And it’s as it were, the Lord would forgive their iniquity, But they persist in it and go farther in it. And this last step, I think, is probably the worst step of all. It’s one thing to sin in secret. That’s bad enough. But when you attempt to bring it out and sin in the open, flaunt it before the world, Then may I say to you that you’ve gone to the bottom. That’s the reason I believe that this book has a message for our nation or any nation. This nation happened to be God’s chosen people. They sinned against him and he sent them into captivity. Now, do you believe that any other nation could get by with the same type of sinning? And this certainly is characteristic of our nation before. Now, when I grew up, The few homosexuals in our city, where I lived in Nashville, Tennessee at that time, they were undercover. I tell you, they were operated rather secretly, and they didn’t come out in the open. Now today, they’re having parades, and it’s being uncovered that all across this nation today that there is not called girls, but called boys, homosexuals. and that it numbers in the hundreds of thousands. Now today, even the courts have been lenient, and the lawmakers are making it easy for them. What was done in secret is now brought out in the open, and that’s characteristic of other sins. Somebody said to me some time ago, they said, well, Dr. McGee, in our day, people sin just like they do today. I said, yes, I did. I said, for I was saying, I said, I was with that crowd. I know. And this party says, well, what’s the difference? Well, I said, I’ll tell you, in my day, we kept it secret. It was kept undercover. But today, that thing is brought out in the open. And it’s flaunted before the world, and it’s called a new morality, and there is actually given to it sort of a halo. You are new and daring and courageous. And I heard that compliment given to a girl who admitted that she was living with a man she was not married to, had an illegitimate child. Well, may I say to you, perhaps I’m a square, but as somebody said in a letter the other day, the thing that we like is that you’re square. It keeps you from going around in circles. Well, maybe that’s it. But frankly, I must say that we’re stepping downward as a nation, and this is not a mark of any advancement. It’s a mark that we’re losing what was called civilization, actually a Christian civilization, although I never believed it. Now, verse 2, “…and they consider not in their hearts that I remember all their wickedness. Now their own doings have beset them about there before my face.” God says they are now doing all of this out in the open. I knew, he said, that they were sinners before. But they’ve taken a step farther away from me, and I’m tempted to call them back to me. And they continue on. In other words, they have reached now the lowest depths of immorality. Now, in verse 3, they make the king glad with their wickedness and the princess with their lies. And the king applauded all of this. And the princess, they applaud all this sort of thing. And I think it’s tragic today when the leadership of the nation in any field, whether it be education or science or politics or in the church, give themselves over to foul and blasphemous language, which they now are doing at something else that’s out in the open today. foul-mouthed leadership today, and they applaud this sort of thing. That means you’re a he-man. It also means you’ve got a very poor vocabulary, by the way, and not able to express yourself. Now, this is something here that is very applicable to this nation, and it’s been applicable to the great nations of the past that have now passed off the stage of human events, and they today lie in rubble and ruin and covered with the dust of the ground. Now, he continues on, verse 4, “…they are all adulterous like an oven heated by the baker.” who ceaseth from raising after he hath kneaded the dough until it be leavened. Now, here you have something, and this is another figure of speech that I think is quite interesting, that the baker got his oven ready, but he held back the heat of it and didn’t let it become hot enough to cook bread until he got the dough all kneaded and ready, and then he turned the heat up. And this is a tremendous metaphor that he’s using here. He says that immorality, and he says here, they’re all adulterous. And he’s not talking here about spiritual adultery. He’s talking about gross immorality. Now, he said, heretofore, they kept this undercover. But now, he says, they’re like an open oven, heated hot, you see, hot with passion. And today, why the thing that you get the impression of is that men are trying to prove that they are virile and that women are trying to prove that they are sexually alert. And today, that seems to be the thing that’s now out in the open, you see. And today, this obsession with sex is something that is tremendous indeed. And he goes on now to say in verse 5, “…in the day of our king the princes have made him sick with skins of wine. He stretcheth out his hand with scoffers.” In other words, the king has become an alcoholic and he’s making a fool of himself. And again, the thing that we’ve mentioned before here, what was it that brought down the northern kingdom? Well, it was idolatry. It was turning from the living God. And that always leads to gross immorality. And gross immorality, as we’ve indicated before, wine and women, the bottle and the brothel, sauce and sex. That is the thing that occupied the attention of those people. Now, let me ask you a fair question. If you think that I’m a squire being unfair today, or I’m a bigot or something like that, may I say to you as you look about you today, what is the chief occupation of men and women in all walks of life? Isn’t it an occupation with liquor and with sex today? Hasn’t that become a very prominent thing in this civilization of ours? Now, the thing is, it’s brought out in the open today. And when it was brought out in the open in Israel, God says, I’ll have to move in and judge you now because I’ve been calling you back. You were sinners all the time, but you were covering it up. Now you brought it out in the open. Now I read verse 6. For they have made ready their heart like an oven while they lie in wait. Their baker sleepeth all the night, in the morning it burneth like a flaming fire. In other words, everything is done to stir up the passions of men and women. And we hear this so-called sophisticated argument about pornography. Well, today we’re adults and we ought to be able to choose what we want to see and what we want to hear. Well, I’m not able to choose what I want to see and what I want to hear on the radio and on the television today. And I can’t walk down the street without I see things and I hear things. I don’t choose that. It’s more or less chosen for me. And I’m of the opinion that there are a great many people would like to see better things and hear better things than we are today. It’s owing to whose liberty that you’re talking about and whose freedom that you’re speaking of. Now, he says, verse 7, “…they are all hot as an oven.” Now, I think, oh boy, is that a picture of our nation today. “…they are all hot as an oven, and have devoured their judges. All their kings are fallen. There is none among them that calleth unto me.” Now, he begins to talk about their kings are fallen. Well, may I say to you, the northern kingdom… Never had a good king. If you were with us when we were back in the historical books, and in my notes, I list the kings of Israel and Judah. Now, Judah had a few good kings. In fact, five of them that led in revivals. But the northern kingdom didn’t have a good king in the lot. Every one of them was a king that was as wicked as he could be. And Ahab and Jezebel, I suppose, reached the bottom of the list. But there were some that would run him a very close second. You may be sure of that. Now, let’s continue to move on down here. And by the way, I should add that many of their kings were slain in the northern kingdoms. And they made about nine different changes of dynasty. In other words, it started off with Jeroboam. And you don’t go very far from Jeroboam until somebody gets in and murders his line. And another line starts out and it doesn’t go very far. And then somebody else is murdered. And then you have some that only one reign. The son didn’t even make it to the throne. So that that was a judgment upon them. And the kings were kings that God did not choose, you see. It was the line of David. And that line should have been the line that God would bless, not this line in the north. And he certainly did not. Now, verse 8, he says, Ephraim hath mixed himself among the people. God never goes in for mixture. Have you ever noticed that? And I don’t care what it is you mix. He somehow or another has never approved of that. I know that certain mixtures in food are delicious. And I like to mix fruit juices. It makes, I think, a marvelous drink. Put together pineapple juice and papaya juice and all these others. And it makes a very delicious drink. But for some strange reason, God never went in for mixture. God has said that it’s best that you and I stay on our own level, in our own crowd, actually. And you will find that has been true. And that’s one reason God’s people today, God’s children, born-again believers, ought to begin to recognize that we’re all brothers and sisters in Christ. And this question of race or Color are of any kind of other thing that would divide us, ought not to divide us if we’re in Christ. And there is a real division if we’re not in Christ. Now he says, Ephraim is a cake not turned. And here we go again with another good homely illustration. And Hosea has many of them. Ephraim is a cake not turned. What does he mean? Well, if you’ve ever cooked pancakes, You see, in that day, they cooked on top of the stove. And they never had an oven as we have it today. It was a matter of cooking these cakes. And they still do that over in that land today. They’re cooking on top of the stove. It’s like pancakes. And they can be burnt on one side. And on the other side, they can be raw. And that is what you have in this picture here. You have a picture of a nation. hot on one side, but burn, and on the other side, raw. What a picture it is of them. They’re burned on one side, raw on the other. They blow hot and cold toward God. That story is told. It’s a sort of a story about a man wandering through the woods, and he came to the house of a very strange individual, and this man that came in was a very strange individual himself. And so the man that lived in the house said, are you hungry? Would you like to have a bowl of soup, porridge? And the man said, yes, he would. And as he came in, he blew on his hands. And he said, my, my hands are cold. And he blew on them. And they sat down to eat the soup. And the man blew on the soup. And the man that lived there said, what are you doing? He says, well, it’s hot. I’m making it cool. And so this man that lived there jumped up and ran out of his own house. He said, I don’t like anybody that can blow hot and cold. My friend, today, that’s the way a great many people are doing as far as Christianity is concerned. With one crowd, they blow hot. With another crowd, they blow cold. On one day, they blow hot. On another day, they blow cold. Ephraim is a cake, a pancake, not turn. strangers have devoured his strength, and he knoweth it not. Yea, grey hairs are here, and there upon him, yet he knoweth not. And the pride of Israel testifieth to his face, and they do not return to the Lord their God, nor seek him for all this. Ephraim also is like a silly dove without heart. They call to Egypt, and they go to Assyria. Now, if you’ve ever been dove hunting, You know that if a dove has a nest with either eggs or little ones in it, that if you go near, why, she will act as if she’s got a broken wing and actually let you get very close to her. She’s luring you away. Now, that actually is not smart because it tells two things. When you get that close, you know there’s a nest nearby. That’s number one. Number two is she endangers her life. Now, here was Ephraim. Ephraim now, not turning to God, ran first down to Egypt for help. And then she changed and went up to Assyria when Egypt wouldn’t give the help they wanted. Back and forth like a silly dove. What a picture. In verse 12, “…when they shall go, I’ll spread my net upon them.” And when I was a boy, I remember we used to get a big box of and prop it up and put corn under it, and we’d hide over in the barn, and the doves would come, and we’d have the corn outside and lead right under. Then when two or three doves got under that box, we pulled a string, and the box came down on them. Silly doves. That’s what God says here. He says, “…I’ll spread my net upon them. I’ll bring them down like the fowls of the heavens. I will chastise them as their congregation hath heard.” Woe unto them, for they have fled from me, destruction unto them, because they’ve transgressed against me, though I have redeemed them, yet they have spoken lies against me. God had a redemption for them, and yet these people were turning from the living and true God. What a picture it is. “…and they have not cried unto me with their heart. When they wailed upon their beds, they assembled themselves for grain and wine, and they rebelled against me.” They didn’t realize that the famine they were having was a judgment of God upon them. And they were crying about they had no food. Though I have bound and strengthened their arms, yet do they imagine mischief against me. They return, but not to the Most High. They are like a deceitful bow. That is, you put an arrow in it to shoot and the thing breaks, string breaks. It’s a deceitful bow. You can’t depend on them. Their princes shall fall by the sword for the rage of their tongue. This shall be their derision in the land of Egypt. And actually, Egypt will begin to mock them and ridicule them for the way that they were acting in that day. May I say to you, this is a very severe section of the Word of God, but it ought to have a message for us today. Somehow or another, Hosea is not the most popular prophet. He wasn’t in his day, and he won’t be today. Now we’re going to pick up right there next time. Until then, may God richly bless you, my beloved.
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, Hosea’s message probably wouldn’t be very popular today, but it’s certainly for our time and for our nation. Find out about Through the Bible and how you can partner with us in taking God’s whole word to the whole world at 1-800-65-BIBLE or visit ttb.org. If you prefer to contact us by mail, you can find us at Box 7100. Pasadena, California, 91109. In Canada, Box 25325, London, Ontario, N6C, 6B1. Our study of Hosea continues, and I sure hope that you’ll hop aboard the Bible bus as it passes through your town.
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Sin had left a crimson stain. He washed it white as snow.
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We’re grateful for the faithful and generous support of Through the Bible’s partners, whom God uses to take the whole word to the whole world.
