The Pride That Kills and the God Who Is
Introduction: The Gravity of Forgetting
We live in a world that has made a virtue of forgetting. Our entire civilization is an elaborate conspiracy to induce a collective amnesia. We are told to forget where we came from, to forget the God who made us, to forget the covenant that defines us, and to forget the sins that will most certainly destroy us. And in this grand project of forgetfulness, the modern West is simply the dim-witted spiritual descendant of ancient Ephraim. Ephraim, the northern kingdom of Israel, was a people who had seen the mighty hand of God, who had been delivered from bondage, who had been given the very oracles of God, and who decided, in their affluence and pride, that they could do better.
The book of Hosea is a searing, covenantal lawsuit. God, through his prophet, is indicting His bride for spiritual adultery. And here in chapter 13, the closing arguments are being made before the sentence is passed. What we find in these opening verses is a diagnosis of a terminal spiritual disease. It is a disease with two primary symptoms: a pride that elevates man and an idolatry that cheapens God. These two always go together. When man becomes big, God necessarily becomes small. And when God becomes small in the eyes of men, they feel perfectly at liberty to replace Him with something more manageable, something they can make with their own hands and control with their own rituals.
This passage is a stark reminder that theology is never an abstraction. What you worship determines how you live, and ultimately, what your final destiny will be. To abandon the living God for dead idols is not a lateral move. It is not a simple change in religious preference, like switching from one brand of soap to another. It is an act of cosmic treason. It is to exchange life for death. And as Hosea makes painfully clear, the God of the Bible is not a God to be trifled with. His judgments are not idle threats. Those who build their lives on the shifting sands of their own self-importance and the flimsy idols of their own making will find that their entire world is as substantial as a puff of smoke.
The Text
When Ephraim spoke, there was trembling.
He lifted himself up in Israel,
But through Baal he became guilty and died.
And now they sin more and more
And make for themselves molten images,
Idols made from their silver according to their understanding,
All of them the work of craftsmen.
They are saying of them, "Let the men who sacrifice kiss the calves!"
Therefore they will be like the morning cloud
And like dew which soon disappears,
Like chaff which is blown away from the threshing floor
And like smoke from a chimney.
(Hosea 13:1-3 LSB)
The Rise and Fall of a Proud Man (v. 1)
We begin with the anatomy of the fall, laid out with brutal precision in the first verse.
"When Ephraim spoke, there was trembling. He lifted himself up in Israel, But through Baal he became guilty and died." (Hosea 13:1)
Here we have the whole sad history of the northern kingdom in miniature. Ephraim, as the dominant tribe, stands for all of Israel. There was a time when their word carried weight. "When Ephraim spoke, there was trembling." This refers to their political and military strength. They were a force to be reckoned with. Other nations paid attention. But notice the source of this elevation. "He lifted himself up in Israel." This was not a God-given exaltation that was received with humility; this was self-exaltation. This is the primordial sin. It is the sin of Satan, who said, "I will ascend." It is the sin of Adam, who wanted to be like God. Ephraim's strength became the seed of his destruction because he took the credit for it. He forgot that it was God who had raised him up from nothing, and he began to believe his own press clippings.
Pride is the great spiritual anesthetic. It numbs you to the reality of your own creatureliness. Once a man, or a nation, begins to believe he is the master of his own fate, he is ripe for the most profound follies. And the chief folly, the one that always follows on the heels of pride, is idolatry.
"But through Baal he became guilty and died." The moment Ephraim took his eyes off the God who gave him his strength, he had to find a new source of strength. And what did he turn to? Baal. The Canaanite storm god, the god of fertility, the god of material prosperity. He traded the transcendent Creator for a glorified farm animal. This is not an upgrade. This is the essence of what Paul describes in Romans 1: exchanging the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.
And what is the result? Guilt and death. When he abandoned Yahweh for Baal, he "became guilty." This is covenant language. He broke the marriage vows. He committed spiritual adultery. And the wages of that sin is death. This was not just a spiritual death, though it was certainly that. It was a national, political, and historical death. His pride led to idolatry, and his idolatry signed his own death warrant. The nation began to rot from the head down.
The Addiction of Idolatry (v. 2)
Sin is never static. It is always progressive. It is a ravenous beast that is never satisfied. Verse 2 shows us the downward spiral in motion.
"And now they sin more and more and make for themselves molten images, idols made from their silver according to their understanding, all of them the work of craftsmen. They are saying of them, 'Let the men who sacrifice kiss the calves!'" (Hosea 13:2)
"And now they sin more and more." This is the nature of rebellion. Once you start down the path of compromise, the brakes fail. The initial flirtation with Baal has now become a full-blown addiction. They are manufacturing idols on an industrial scale. Notice the source of these idols: "from their silver." The very wealth that God had given them as a blessing, they were now melting down to fashion replacements for Him. This is the height of ingratitude. It is taking God's gifts and using them to slap Him in the face.
And look at the design principle: "according to their understanding." This is key. Idolatry is always the worship of the self. They are not conforming to a divine revelation; they are creating gods in their own image, according to their own specifications. They want a god who will rubber-stamp their desires, a god who makes no ethical demands, a god who can be put on a shelf when he is inconvenient. These idols are "all of them the work of craftsmen." The irony is thick. They are bowing down to something a man made in a workshop. They are worshipping their own reflection, admiring their own cleverness.
The verse culminates in the liturgical command of this new religion: "Let the men who sacrifice kiss the calves!" Kissing an idol was an act of worship, of affection, of allegiance. Think of the utter degradation here. The people of the covenant, who were called to kiss the Son lest He be angry (Psalm 2:12), are now slobbering on a metal cow. This is what pride does. It promises to make you a god and it ends with you paying homage to livestock. It is the rejection of the infinite, personal God of Abraham for a dumb, mute, deaf piece of hardware. This is not just a theological error; it is a profound intellectual and spiritual collapse.
The Judgment of Impermanence (v. 3)
God's response to this high-handed rebellion is not complicated. He simply holds up a mirror to their sin. They have chosen to worship things that are nothing, and so they themselves will become nothing. Their judgment is to become as insubstantial as their gods.
"Therefore they will be like the morning cloud and like dew which soon disappears, like chaff which is blown away from the threshing floor and like smoke from a chimney." (Hosea 13:3)
Here we have a four-fold picture of utter impermanence. Ephraim, who once spoke with trembling authority, will vanish. His existence will be fleeting, transient, and ultimately meaningless. He will be like a "morning cloud" or the "dew." Both appear in the cool of the morning, giving the promise of substance, but the moment the sun, the reality of God's judgment, rises, they are gone. There is nothing to them.
He will be like "chaff." On the threshing floor, the grain is beaten to separate the heavy, valuable wheat from the light, worthless chaff. When the wind blows, the wheat falls to the ground, but the chaff is carried away to be burned. Ephraim has made himself lightweight. He has abandoned the weight and glory of God's covenant and has become spiritually worthless. God's judgment is the winnowing wind that will expose this reality and blow them away.
And finally, he will be "like smoke from a chimney." Smoke is the byproduct of a fire. It makes a bit of a show, it curls and rises, but it has no substance. It dissipates into nothing. This is the final destiny of a proud and idolatrous people. For all their self-exaltation, for all their carefully crafted idols, for all their political posturing, their end is to be a puff of smoke. A brief, dirty smudge against the sky, and then nothing.
The Gospel According to Hosea
This is a heavy word of judgment. And if the story ended here, it would be a story of utter despair. If our destiny was tied to our own faithfulness, we would all end up as chaff and smoke. For who among us can say that we have not, in our pride, lifted ourselves up? Who can say that we have not taken the good gifts of God, His silver and gold, and fashioned idols according to our own understanding? Our idols may not be golden calves; they may be idols of comfort, or security, or reputation, or political power. But the sin is the same. We have all broken the covenant. We are all guilty. We all deserve death.
But this is not where the story ends. Just a few verses later, Hosea records one of the most glorious promises of the gospel in the entire Old Testament. After describing His wrath, God asks a stunning, rhetorical question: "Shall I ransom them from the power of Sheol? Shall I redeem them from death? O Death, where are your plagues? O Sheol, where is your sting?" (Hosea 13:14).
This is the voice of the apostle Paul, centuries before he was born. This is the promise of the resurrection. How can a God of justice say this? How can He ransom a people who are as fleeting as the morning dew? He can do it because of another man who spoke with authority, one who did not lift Himself up, but rather humbled Himself, even to the point of death on a cross (Philippians 2:8). Jesus Christ is the true Israel. He is the faithful Son who never bowed the knee to Baal.
On the cross, Jesus became like the chaff for us. He was blown away, cut off from the land of the living. He endured the full force of the winnowing wind of God's wrath. He became a curse for us, so that we, the guilty ones, might be brought back into covenant. He died the death that Ephraim deserved, the death that we all deserve. And because He died, and because He was raised on the third day, death has lost its sting. The grave has lost its victory.
Therefore, the call of this passage is a call to repentance. It is a call to turn away from the pride that kills and the idols that lie. It is a call to stop kissing the calves of our own making and to kiss the Son. It is a call to abandon our own fleeting, smoke-like righteousness and to be clothed in the rock-solid, eternal righteousness of Jesus Christ. He is the only Savior, the only one who can deliver us from becoming a morning cloud. In Him, and in Him alone, we find a substance, a reality, and a life that will never fade away.