Ephraim mixes with the nations Hosea seven, eight centuries before the time of Hosea, God had declared that his people were to be holy. We typically think that the word holy means sacred, and that is true. But on a practical level, to be holy means to be different from those around. God said, you are to be holy because I am holy. God is different from all beings around him. So his command that we be holy means that we who are his people are to be different from other who are not his people. We aren't always very good listeners, though. For example, when the Israelites demanded a king in the days of Samuel, their reasoning was that having a king to rule over them would make them like all the other nations around them. This was a direct violation of God's command to be unique and not like all the other nations. By the time of Hosea, God's people were so steeped in sin that they were virtually indistinguishable from the nations around them. Not only were the people themselves engaged in sinful attitudes and practices, or, as Hosea put it, engulfed by sin, but their government was corrupt as well. One of the biggest sins of both government and people is the failure to seek spiritual counsel and guidance for their lives. They do not cry out to me, complained the Lord. In time, gods people became more like the nations and less and less like the people of God. Ephraim mixes with the nations. In other words, the people of God have blended in so well with the nations around them that they are indistinguishable from those nations. But we are to be different from the world. We live by different standards and different rules. God has not once told us to fit into the world, but he has repeatedly told us to stand apart from the world. It's hard to argue with logic. That concludes that a bird that looks like a duck and walks like a duck and quacks like a duck must be a duck. By this same logic, those who live and think and talk and act like the world must belong to the world, even if they claim to belong to God, because those who belong to God will stand out from the world, not blend into it. Oil and water are two very different things, and they don't mix. The people of God are very different from the people of the world, too, and they don't mix either.

This has been your thought for the day with Steve Burkham, pastor of Community Christian Church in Stockton, California. If you have questions or comments for Pastor Steve, please send them to dailythoughtspodcastmail.com. Have a great day. And we hope you'll join us tomorrow as Pastor Steve opens God's word to bring us another thought for the day.