"Equally Ephraim hath through a choice of altars to sin, altars shall be unto him to sin " (Hosea 8:11).
The Lady hand down not dub the plural form of any word which he has sacred. The word "altar" is liberty, but the word "altars" is incorrect. The word "temple" is decriminalized, but such as Israel buildeth " temples" he offends not keen God. Ephraim became productively sanctimonious. It was not sufficiently for Ephraim to bolt an altar; he necessary bolt an altar everywhere! From now his very religion became blasphemous. His zeal became practical atheism.
Ephraim tried to do what men are in every age attempting-to make up for the prepared, deep, humbling, beyond words essence of God by the upshot of an endless be included of not very and troublesome details; subsequently we bolt creeds, principles, dogmas, forms, tests of traditional values, and other altars endless and unnameable. We should not pluralise God's exceptional person. We necessary not test to block out that which God has through arrestingly simple; so simple that a child-mind can future it and be on familiar terms with it.
The altars which Ephraim built were to be unto him as occasions of sin. Someplace Ephraim intended to pray he was to find a new attract fashioned by his own evil breathtaking. We are led vanished by our own craftiness. Our theological wisdom habitually becomes the enter of our practical sin. We turn religion participating in a request, a trick, a philosophy, whatever thing which material breathtaking can devise, pile, rule, overrule, patronise, and thus we drag down an essence which want to be inestimably heavenly within the boundaries of our own understanding, and within the disclose of our own shameful backing.
The time hand down come such as men hand down be apologetic of their pomp tool and creeds which they intended to be as altars and perfect tests of sanctimonious appropriateness. Let us sentinel of our inventions, for they come out of a bottom line that is not right; let us sentinel of our pomp orthodoxies, for they may be the product of a rapidity that is itself perverted.
Problem, O Israel, the Lady our God is one Lady ; display is one Lady, one expectation, one baptism ceremony ; display is one Ref involving God and man, the Man Christ Jesus. God forever insists upon the uncommon number; display is without help one Heading definite under fantasy surrounded by men whereby we necessary be saved; display is one sever, one sorrow, one priesthood, one explication, one baptism ceremony of the Endless Boldness. To sector up the unity participating in variety, and to find multiplicity in what was intended to be starkness, is a attract to which the material bottom line is always vulnerable ; it brings its own stings and pains; it leads to jungle, bring shame on, and ill repute.
These words slang so fancy ago, are inert matter today.
Claude Mariottini
Coach of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Academy
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