Sermon: Never Allow Your Love to Wax Cold

#1804A
Clyde Finklea
Given 15-Feb-25; 35 minutes 2025-02-15

About a week ago, I was still searching for a subject to speak on the Sabbath and found myself in the book of Hosea. And because I have been thinking about our nation and how corrupt this past administration was, the word harlotry popped in my mind. And so I was looking in the fourth chapter when an email popped up on my phone. And it was from the Hebrew word study site that I have visited before. And the main Hebrew scholar on there is Chaim Bentorah. So I just want to quote from this article that had popped up there. Chaim said,

I consider these little studies a personal journey and not really teachings. I opened my Bible this morning [this is the same day that I was looking into this] seeking a word from God. Sometimes I wish God would speak to me openly and clearly as He does for others, but that's not my story. The only way I know how to hear from God is through His Word. No doubt He speaks to others through other means, but in my case, I have to spend hours in His Word to find out what He's saying to me. And this morning, I needed to hear from God, and I found myself in the book of Hosea of all things.

Well, I thought that was very interesting, so I started looking at Hosea. Because I am like Chaim. I do not hear a voice from Him saying, OK, Clyde, this is what I want you to talk about. No, I spend hours and hours, just like he said, searching and researching until I feel like this is what God wants me to do. And I am sure most of the other speakers are pretty much the same way. It seems like it always gets down to the wire with me.

Anyway, I am going to be talking a little bit in Hosea, specifically in the 4th chapter, and we are going to concentrate on one verse there. We are going to go through that verse and show you how Chaim Bentorah broke it down from a Hebrew perspective and then we will take a look at that. I think you are going to find it pretty interesting.

But before we get into this, I just want to bring something to our remembrance. That when looking into prophetic books that there is duality. We have heard that before, type and anti-type, former and latter, and we have the physical and spiritual. So turn with me if you would to Isaiah 41. I just want to bring this out because remember what Hunter [Swanson] said last week in his sermonette. He said, "You don't know what you don't know." And I do not know that everybody knows that this is one of the places we get this from. So Isaiah 41, verse 21. This is God speaking to the false gods bringing a challenge to Him.

Isaiah 41:21-22 "Present your case," says the Lord. "Bring forth your strong reasons," says the King of Jacob. "Let them bring forth and show to us what will happen; let them show the former things, what they were, that we may consider them, and know the latter end of them; or declare to us things to come."

Now, if you are listening and you did not know, now you can say, "I know what I did not know."

Please turn to Hosea 4, because that is where we are going to be. But I just want to go over a few things before we get into that particular verse. You see, it is very difficult to actually describe just how bad Israel's spiritual condition had become by the time this book was recorded. I just want to go through a list of things that are mentioned in this book, mostly from chapter 4 really, where God here is telling us, He says,

Hosea 4:1-2 "There is no truth or mercy or knowledge of God in the land. By swearing and lying, killing and stealing and committing adultery, . . .

The prophets and the priests were corrupt. The priests no longer taught the knowledge of God. The leaders had become merely opportunists in their greed profiting from the sins of the people. There was harlotry, drunkenness, and the people had become idol worshippers. Virtually every hill and shade tree in Israel had become a place for the immoral reveries involved in the worship of Baal and Astarte, that is, the male and female fertility idols. And we are told that the people of Israel had sunk so low that the more shameful the deeds, the more they loved and flaunted them. They were then, in effect, boastful of just how bad they were.

When we look at this, that is how Israel had become at that time. Now, where is Israel today? You know, there is the former, there is a latter. There is a descendant of Israel, of the house of Israel that I am speaking of. Well, there is a reference here in Genesis 48 that gives us a little bit of an indication. And again, I am just going to read one scripture here. If you have never heard this and you do not know, this is the story where Joseph brings his two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim, to Jacob, who was on his deathbed basically, and he brought them there to bless the lads.

Genesis 48:16 [He says] "The Angel who has redeemed me from all evil [he is speaking of the one who became Jesus Christ, He was the Lord], bless the lads; let my name be named upon them."

What we see here and what we are hearing, the way these people are, it sounds pretty remarkably like the United States of America today, does it not? It is absolutely amazing to me that we have fallen through the same thing. So the two great nations (when he said these two lads), we are talking about Manasseh and Ephraim. Manasseh was the oldest son and Ephraim was the younger. And he crossed his hands, remember, and put his right hand on the younger son and his left hand on the older son. And of course, Joseph tried to stop him, but he said no, he knew what he was doing. That the older son would be great, but the younger son was going to be greater.

Most scholars believe that the two greatest nations that have been on the face of this earth is Great Britain and the United States of America. So some of us are basically descendants of those Israelite people. Of course, there is a lot of intermarriage and stuff down through the years and all that have come to this, but I am sure there are some that are still from the descendants from those people. So when we are looking at this, we can see that there is type and anti-type or there was the former, and now we can see the latter within our own nations.

The scripture I am going to talk about today is going to be verse 6 in Hosea 4.

Hosea 4:6 "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I will also reject you from being priest for Me; because you have forgotten the law of your God, I will also forget your children."

Now, we are going to break this down. I just want you to realize this comes from that Hebrew word site and the author was Chaim Bentorah. And so he is the scholar, I am certainly not. But anyway, let us start with the word "people." He says, "My people." The word for people here is a word in the Hebrew. . . Remember, Hebrew language is different than English. You cannot just translate verbatim or word-for-word from Hebrew to English. The Hebrew has more of a picturesque type thing to it. They do not have vowels, they have to add the vowels in accordance with the context and what they are trying to mean.

But the word people here is amam. And amam comes from a root word that is found in most Semitic languages which carry the idea of hidden or concealed. So in the Hebrew root of this word, it actually has a double mem. The mem is in the Hebrew alphabet that we are talking about. It is two Ms, M and M, but they call it mem. And what it means is when it is like that is that one is open and one is closed. So God's people are those who are intimate with His revealed and hidden knowledge. You can see the open and the close. It was hidden, and then He revealed it to His people.

That is what makes them special, His people; yet they are destroyed, He says, for a lack of that knowledge.

Now the word lack here is balaa, which means a wearing down or a gradual withdrawal. But the word knowledge here comes from the root word yada. We have heard this before. I actually gave a sermonette on this. It might have been split, years or so ago. John Reiss even wrote an article on it. And then we have heard others speak about this too, this word yada, which is rooted in the idea of intimacy.

But what God is saying here, is that His people may have His revealed and hidden knowledge, but they are destroyed because they lack intimacy with Him. I am going to show you this over in Amos the third chapter, verse 2.

Amos 3:2 "You only have I known [that is the word yada] of all the families of the earth; . . .

Now, you do not think God knows who all the people on this earth are? He knows all the stars in the universe, and each has a name. Now what He is saying is, "You are the only ones I have known, I had an intimate relationship with, and I have revealed to you a hidden knowledge, hidden secrets." He said,

Amos 3:2 . . . therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities."

That is, the problem is sin, lawlessness.

The word destroyed here according to Chaim,

The word destroyed is an unusual word to use here. It is the Hebrew word nidemu, which comes from the root word of damam or damah. What we have here is a play on two words which has the idea of being silenced or made still or defeated. The nun [that is that "n" at the first of that Hebrew word there that is translated to destroyed, nidemu] at the beginning of the word, is most likely why the translators use the word destroy. But within this context, it could more easily mean being in such defeat that you're unable to speak a word after you move[?].

First, God says that His people lack knowledge. Then He says that they reject the knowledge. This is a clue. There is something embedded in the word to give us a better understanding here. The word for reject is maás. And it actually means to melt away. It is in the picture, and I thought this was really very interesting here, this kind of starts bringing it all together. It is a picture of a candle as it melts down to just a blob of wax until the fire goes out. Now we are kind of starting to pull this together.

You see, the problem is that we are not so much rejecting our intimacy with God as we are just letting that intimacy gradually melt down until the fire goes out. So, we could actually render this as, "My people Israel, who have the revealed and hidden knowledge of Me, an intimate relationship, are destroyed or defeated by their gradual withdrawal from an intimacy with Me." Seems to make a little more sense.

Remember what Paul said in I Thessalonians 5:19? If you do not, I am going to quote it for you. He says, "Do not quench the Spirit." When that fire goes out, is that what that means? When we quench God's Spirit we let that intimate relationship get so bad that it gradually goes out. You know, we can compare this to a married couple who allows their intimacy and affection to gradually melt down until the fire actually goes out. What happens to the marriage when there is no intimacy and affection in it? Well, the marriage begins to fall apart, right?

Turn with me over to Exodus. I want to show you something here.

Exodus 19:3-6 And Moses went up to God, and the Lord God called to him from the mountain, saying, "Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob, and tell the children of Israel: 'You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles' wings and brought you to Myself. Now therefore, if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be a special treasure to Me above all people; for all the earth is Mine. And you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.' These are the words which you shall speak to the children of Israel."

Now, when we go back to Hosea 4:6, God goes on to say, "I will also reject you" from what? "From being priest for Me." So God divorced Israel and they never became a nation of priests. And He goes on to say, "since you have forgotten the law of your God." That was the reason, right? Commandment breaking, iniquity, lawlessness. "I will also forget your children."

The word forgotten here according to the Brown-Driver-Briggs definition can also mean to forget, but it can also mean to ignore; wither; or cease to care. So if we look down in verse 7,

Hosea 4:7 "The more they increased, the more they sinned against Me."

You see, they ceased to care or to be careful about keeping God's law when they became a powerful and wealthy nation. And then He says,

Hosea 4:7 "I will change their glory into shame."

Now, they could have been a glorious nation, a glorious nation of people of priests. But their sins gradually caused them to drift away. And what did God do? Now we are going to find out right here in a minute. He actually sent them into captivity and their children lost their identity as God's people. He said, "I'll forget your children." They do not even know who God is, who the true God is. Most people that are descendants of Israel, because they went into captivity and we call the lost 10 tribes of Israel, but even though we may know where they migrated, they still do not know who they are. That actually the God of Israel was their God and that they were supposed to be a glorious priestly nation.

Let me bring up something else here. So He sent them, they lost their identity. In Jeremiah 3:8, I wanted to bring that verse out right there because I told you God actually divorced them, divorced Israel. So if this is something you did not know, you look in Jeremiah 3, verse 8, and God tells the story. He said,

Jeremiah 3:8 "Then I saw that for all the causes for which backsliding Israel committed adultery [spiritually they committed adultery with idols, that is, idolatry], I put her away and given her a certificate of divorce."

So that is where we found out He divorced them and He sent them away.

Remember in the beginning of the message here I showed you how there is type and anti-type, there is the former and there is the latter, and there is the physical and there is the spiritual. Now, let us take a look at this from the spiritual perspective and see how this scripture actually is written for us too as spiritual Israel, God's people today.

In Revelation 2, verse 4 in the warning in Revelation to the churches, He first talks to Ephesus and it ends with Laodicea and He gives a lot of warnings in there, what people are doing and what is happening.

Revelation 2:4 "Nevertheless I have this against you, that you have left your first love."

Now that word "left" there really means forsaken, indicating neglect. It did not happen all of a sudden. They were neglecting, and they were gradually allowing their candle to melt down and almost allowing the fire to go out. They were getting close. He said, you are neglecting. What were they neglecting? Most likely His commandments because He said they needed to repent.

So He said they neglected their first love, which is agape, that intimate, loving relationship with God. They were about to let their love wax cold.

Revelation 2:5 "Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent and do the first works, or else I will come to you quickly and remove your lampstand from of its place—unless you repent."

When He is saying repent, apparently they were violating God's law, right? They were slipping into iniquity and in the process they were allowing their love to begin to wax cold. They were not treating each other like they did in the beginning. They did not have the fervent love for each other and for God like they did in the beginning and they were fixing to lose it. And this is a warning now for the people at the end of this age.

Now, I do not know if you want to look at it as probably all through the ages, you know, the church as it went through, but I am telling you this is a warning. All these warnings here to the churches is a warning for the people at the end of this age as well. And He says, if you do not do this, if you do not repent, He said, "I'm going to come quickly and I'll remove your lampstand out of its place unless you repent." Now, what good is the lampstand if fire goes out? It is not good for nothing, is it?

They were allowing their intimate, loving relationship with Christ to wax cold and they were on the verge of quenching God's Spirit because they were forsaking the keeping of God's commandments. That is stressed over and over again, the reason for God's people to be defeated.

So if unrepented of, Christ says He is going to remove our lampstand and this could lead to spiritual blindness as we see in the end of the messages in Laodicea. All this goes down to the end if something is not done, if they have not repented, they had not restored that relationship. Christ said, "I'll spew you out of My mouth." What does it mean to be spewed out of Christ's mouth? Well, it means you are no longer a part of His Body. You become separated from Christ. And guess what? We could lose our position as a priest of God in His Kingdom. That is what we are supposed to be.

Turn over to Revelation 20. We will take a look at this real quick.

Revelation 20:4-6 And I saw thrones, and they that sat on them, and judgment was committed to them. Then I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for their witness to Jesus and for the word of God, who had not worshiped the beast or his image, nor had they received his mark on their foreheads or their hands. And they lived and reigned with Christ for for a thousand years. . . This is the first resurrection. [That is the resurrection that we are called to be in, firstfruits.] Blessed and holy is he who has part in the first resurrection. Over such the second death has no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with Him a thousand years.

God is creating in us a spiritual priestly nation in Jesus Christ as our High Priest. That is what we are to become. The point is, can we lose that? Well, if we look at that scripture and we apply it spiritually, if we allow our love to wax cold, that is what is going to happen. He is going to remove us as a priest in His Kingdom.

Let us look at this again in Matthew 24. Jesus is speaking here and letting us know what is coming at the end of this age. He talked about the beginning of sorrows and all the things that were going to happen and He was kind of warning us to be careful, to be not be deceived and fall into this trap. But he says here that many shall be led into sin. There is the cause.

Matthew 24:10-12 ". . . will betray one another, and will hate one another. Then many false prophets [or false teachers as we have already seen] will arise and deceive many. And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold."

In the King James it says, "the love of many shall wax cold." And the reason for it all is what? Lawlessness. We have to be careful about this, having God's laws written in our hearts and our minds. This is serious. We have got to stay on top of that. Remember what happened to the Worldwide Church of God. They had become big and powerful, wealthy, as it says of the Laodiceans. They did not have need of nothing, so to speak, but they did have need of something. They were letting their love grow cold. And what happened? God blew it apart, did He not? How many people?

Now we had all these splinter groups because Christ says, "I stand at the door and knock" there in Laodicea. In Revelation, He says, "I stand at the door and knock," just let Me in. So a lot of splinter groups have popped up and we have invited Christ back in, so to speak, trying to get regrouped and get ourselves in that relationship and building on that relationship again through the obedience to Jesus Christ. Because He said, "If you love Me, keep My commandments."

So we had to build that love and relationship from there. I am not saying that everybody allowed their candle to go out. Probably those who are still here were able to work on that, repent of any lawlessness or whatever was done, and now we are able to move on with a close relationship with our Savior.

But what happened to most of the people? Were they not called? And that God's people today, My people, spiritual Israel? What does it say in Hosea 6? "My people." If we look at this spiritually, He is talking about the many who were called into an intimate relationship with Jesus Christ and the Father.

Remember, Christ says many times, "Many are called but few are chosen." There are only few that get through that narrow gate even though many try. So, He says, "My people," that is, those who have that intimate relationship with Christ, the ones that were called to that relationship, "are destroyed." In other words, they have been defeated or are being defeated "for a lack of knowledge" because of a gradual withdrawal from the intimacy with Him. He said, "Because you have rejected," because you have allowed your love to wax cold, "I will also reject you from being a priest for Me" in My Kingdom. "Because you have forgotten the law of your God." What did they do in the Worldwide Church of God? The false teachers, deceivers came in and they deceived a lot of people. Because iniquity was abounding in the church, and they allowed their love to wax cold.

You see, this is really serious business, very serious business. We must never allow our love to wax cold. We have our ups and downs. Yeah, we have days that we are on top of it and zealous, and there are times that we get a little slack. But we always have to be in a spirit of repentance and always, always have to keep God's commandments in our hearts, meditate on them and realize that we got to be serious about that. And spiritually we have to have that loving relationship, intimate relationship with Christ.

We have to love each other first. We have to keep that loving relationship with each other. You see, we do this by maintaining that loving and intimate relationship with each other and with our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and with our heavenly Father.

Now I want to begin to summarize this and come to a close here. Let us turn to II Peter. This is probably some of my favorite scriptures I like to go to occasionally. Kind of keeps me on top of things, really.

II Peter 1:2-7 Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord, as His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue [It is going to bring us to glory if we do not let it the love wax cold.], by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you might become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust. But also for this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness, to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love [of God].

Now listen to this, this is the part you need to pay attention to,

II Peter 2:8-9 For if these things [that is what he just said, I look at it as like a conversion process that where we are growing in, as long as we are growing in it and continuing] are yours and abound, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. [We will never lack in that intimate relationship with Him and the Father if we continue, if these things exist and abound in us.] For he who lacks these things is [spiritually] shortsighted, even to blindness [Did He not say that the Laodiceans were spiritually blind?], and he has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins.

What I picture with them is that they are a little bit on the self-righteous side. And because of that, they have a hard time forgiving others because they are so righteous. You know, they forgot about their sins and apparently cannot see their own sins. I do not know. I am just saying this is what Peter is saying.

II Peter 2:10 Therefore, brethren, be even more diligent to make your call and election sure, for if you do these things you will never stumble.

And let me add to this, your love will never wax cold.

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