The Politics of Dust: Your Do-It-Yourself Damnation Text: Hosea 8:4-6
Introduction: The Illegitimate Kingdom
We live in an age that is drunk on autonomy. Modern man believes that he is his own, that his rights are his own, that his government is his own, and that his destiny is his own. He looks at the world as a grand buffet of options, and he is the sovereign chooser. He believes he can declare independence from God and then, with a straight face, wonder why his own house is falling down around his ears. He sets up his own kings, appoints his own princes, mints his own gods, and then is perpetually surprised when the whole enterprise comes crashing down in ruin.
The prophet Hosea is sent to a people who thought they could have it both ways. They wanted the name of God on their lips, but the rebellion of Satan in their hearts. They wanted to be known as the people of Yahweh while simultaneously running a political and religious system that was a direct affront to Him. They were masters of the syncretistic two-step, bowing to God on the Sabbath and to their golden calves the rest of the week. But God does not do timeshares. He does not accept a consulting role in a government where He is supposed to be King.
What Hosea diagnoses in ancient Israel is the same root spiritual disease that infects our own culture. It is the sin of self-reference. It is the belief that we can establish a just and stable society apart from the express will and Word of the living God. We think that politics is a religiously neutral sphere, that economics is a matter of pure pragmatism, and that worship is a private affair for the closet. But God, through Hosea, detonates this entire framework. He tells Israel, in no uncertain terms, that their political project is illegitimate, their worship is an abomination, and their self-made saviors are destined for the scrap heap.
This passage is a divine audit of a nation that has declared spiritual bankruptcy. It shows us that all political rebellion is, at its root, theological rebellion. When you get your worship wrong, you will get everything else wrong. When you manufacture your own gods, you will inevitably manufacture your own destruction.
The Text
They have set up kings, but not by Me;
They have appointed princes, but I did not know it.
With their silver and gold they have made idols for themselves,
That they might be cut off.
He has rejected your calf, O Samaria, saying,
“My anger burns against them!”
How long will they be incapable of innocence?
For from Israel is even this!
A craftsman made it, so it is not God;
Surely the calf of Samaria will be smashed to splinters.
(Hosea 8:4-6 LSB)
Autonomous Politics (v. 4a)
We begin with the Lord's indictment of Israel's political establishment.
"They have set up kings, but not by Me; They have appointed princes, but I did not know it." (Hosea 8:4a)
This is a devastating charge. God is not saying that He was unaware of their political machinations. He is omniscient; nothing escapes His notice. The phrase "I did not know it" is covenantal language. It means, "I did not approve. I did not authorize this. This was not done with My blessing or under My authority." It is the same sense in which Jesus will say to the workers of lawlessness, "I never knew you" (Matt. 7:23). It is a statement of disavowal and rejection.
The northern kingdom of Israel was born in rebellion. After Solomon's death, Jeroboam led the ten northern tribes in a secession that was, in one sense, permitted by God as a judgment on Solomon's idolatry (1 Kings 11:31). But the way Israel conducted their politics thereafter was a continuous stream of coups, assassinations, and power grabs, all done without any reference to God's law or His prophets. They ran their government as functional atheists. They set up kings according to their own wisdom, their own ambition, and their own strength. They wanted a king who would be their creature, not God's minister.
This is the foundational sin of all secular politics. Men want to establish governments "but not by Me." They want to write constitutions, pass laws, and appoint leaders without acknowledging the ultimate Lawgiver and King. They want a government that derives its authority from "the consent of the governed," not from the decree of the Almighty. But this is to build a house on the sand. Any authority that is not derived from God's authority is, by definition, illegitimate. It is a pirate ship, not a vessel of state. Paul tells us in Romans 13 that there is no authority except from God. This means that any ruler who does not acknowledge his subordinate position as a "minister of God" (Rom. 13:4) is a usurper. Israel's kings were a long line of usurpers, not because they lacked popular support, but because they lacked divine sanction.
Let us not miss the application. When a nation decides that its political process is a closed loop, a self-contained system of human will, it has done exactly what Israel did. It has set up kings, but not by God. And the result is always the same: instability, corruption, and ultimately, judgment.
Autonomous Worship (v. 4b-5)
Political autonomy is always downstream from theological autonomy. Once you have declared independence in the civil square, you will inevitably declare independence in the sanctuary. Verse 4b shows the connection.
"With their silver and gold they have made idols for themselves, That they might be cut off. He has rejected your calf, O Samaria, saying, 'My anger burns against them!' How long will they be incapable of innocence?" (Hosea 8:4b-5)
Notice the source of their idolatry: "their silver and gold." They took the very blessings of God's provision and melted them down to create rivals to Him. This is the essence of materialism. It is not simply having silver and gold; it is trusting in silver and gold. It is looking to your wealth, your economy, your prosperity, as your savior. Israel took the stuff of God's world and fashioned it into a god of their own making. And for what purpose? The text is brutally clear: "That they might be cut off." Their idolatry was not a neutral mistake; it was suicidal. They were building their own gallows.
The specific idol mentioned is the "calf of Samaria." This refers to the golden calves Jeroboam set up in Bethel and Dan to keep the northern tribes from going to Jerusalem to worship (1 Kings 12). This was a brilliant political move, but it was damnable spiritual treason. Jeroboam didn't tell the people to worship a foreign god. No, he said, "Behold your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!" He was trying to worship Yahweh, but in a way that God had explicitly forbidden. He was creating a syncretistic, state-sponsored, illegitimate cult. He wanted a god he could control, a god who would serve his political agenda.
And God's response is visceral. "He has rejected your calf." The Hebrew can be rendered, "Your calf stinks, O Samaria." God is not impressed with their gold-plated worship. It is an offense to His nostrils. His anger "burns" against them. This is not the petty temper of a pagan deity. This is the holy, righteous, covenantal wrath of a husband who has been betrayed. God is jealous, and He has every right to be. He is jealous for His own glory and for the good of His people, who are destroying themselves with their spiritual adultery.
"How long will they be incapable of innocence?" This is a cry of divine frustration. Sin is not just a series of bad choices; it becomes a condition, an inability. They have sinned for so long that they have lost the capacity for purity. Their rebellion has become second nature. This is what happens when a people, or a person, persists in idolatry. The heart grows hard, the conscience is seared, and the mind becomes incapable of distinguishing the Creator from a metal cow.
The Folly of Man-Made Gods (v. 6)
In the final verse, God exposes the sheer stupidity of their idolatry. He pulls back the curtain on their religious manufacturing process.
"For from Israel is even this! A craftsman made it, so it is not God; Surely the calf of Samaria will be smashed to splinters." (Hosea 8:6)
The argument is devastating in its simplicity. Where did this "god" come from? "From Israel is even this!" It didn't descend from heaven. It didn't speak the world into existence. It came out of an Israelite workshop. "A craftsman made it." A man with a hammer and tongs, sweating over a forge, fashioned this thing. And the conclusion is inescapable: "so it is not God."
This is the fundamental absurdity of all idolatry. Man, the creature, presumes to create his creator. He takes a piece of wood or a lump of gold, things God made, and he carves it and shapes it and then bows down to it. As Isaiah mocks, a man cuts down a tree, uses part of it to warm himself, part of it to cook his dinner, and the rest he makes into a god and prays, "Deliver me, for you are my god!" (Isaiah 44:17). It is a form of spiritual insanity.
And because it is not God, it has no power to save itself, let alone its worshippers. The prophecy is certain: "Surely the calf of Samaria will be smashed to splinters." What man makes, man can break. And what man makes, God can certainly obliterate. When the Assyrians came, they would not be impressed by Israel's shiny calf. They would cart it off as booty, melt it down, and the so-called god of Israel would become an Assyrian brick-a-brack. All man-made saviors have an expiration date. All political systems that are "not by Me" will eventually be smashed to splinters. All economic idols made of silver and gold will be proven worthless in the day of wrath.
Conclusion: The Politics of the Cross
The diagnosis in Hosea is bleak. A nation has committed political and spiritual suicide. They have rejected their true King for kings of their own choosing. They have rejected their Creator for a god they created. They have sown the wind of autonomy and are about to reap the whirlwind of destruction.
Is there any hope? In the immediate context, the judgment is fixed. But the entire prophetic message is shot through with the promise of a God who will not ultimately abandon His people. The God whose anger burns against sin is the same God whose love is relentless.
This passage drives us to the ultimate distinction. We, like Israel, are utterly incapable of innocence. We are born with hearts that are perpetual idol factories, always melting down the gold of God's blessings to fashion gods in our own image. We set up kings in our hearts, whether they be ambition, or lust, or greed, but they are not by Him.
The only hope is a King who is not "from Israel," not from us. We need a King who is "from heaven." We need a Savior who was not made by a craftsman, but who is the Craftsman Himself, the one through whom all things were made. The cross is where the politics of dust gives way to the politics of resurrection. At the cross, our self-made kingdoms were judged. Our idols of self-righteousness and autonomy were smashed to splinters. God took the rebellion of man and, in His sovereign wisdom, made it the very instrument of our salvation.
Unlike the calf, which was made from corruptible silver and gold, we have been redeemed with the precious blood of Christ (1 Peter 1:18-19). He is the King who was truly appointed "by God." He is the one whom God "knew" and ordained before the foundation of the world. Therefore, the call of the gospel is a call to political revolution. It is a call to depose the illegitimate kings of our hearts and to bow the knee to the one true King, Jesus Christ. It is a call to stop manufacturing our own flimsy salvations and to receive the one that was forged in the fire of God's wrath and love at Calvary. Only when we submit to His authority can we be saved from our own.