Ephraim, he mixeth himself among the peoples; Ephraim is a cake not turned. Hosea 7:8. Ephraim is a cake not turned—half-baked. The term “half-baked” is not a compliment. To say that someone is half-baked means that he is lacking something. In other words, he is deficient.
That is what God said about Ephraim. He mixed himself among the peoples. He was a man who was made up of many things. That is true of all of us. But the key is to come to the place where we are not absorbing the world round about us—we are immune to it.
Instead, we are absorbing from the Lord. That which contaminates people is that they are susceptible and they absorb from every source, until they become a mixed thing.
Ephraim is a cake not turned. He had something of an experience but it wasn’t completed—like a pancake not turned. One side nice and brown and the other side not so good: no evidence of the fire and no evidence of that which completes the work.
Sometimes that happens to people because they don’t submit to the Lord. In the thing which God begins within them they don’t persevere.
As in the stock market, we put up a stop order on God’s dealings. “I’m ready to lose so much, but I’m not ready to lose it all,” or “I’m going to quit while I’m ahead.” We say, “Lord, if this thing gets to a certain place, I’m cashing in—I want out.” Or if we get just so blessed, “That’s enough, Lord, this is good enough, we’ll just walk in this. We don’t want to pay the price for anything greater”—that’s the cake not turned: unwilling to let the Lord complete what He is doing in your life; definite boundaries on how far you will go.
We have to be prepared to say, “Lord, whatever it is You have in Your will, give me the grace to submit to it.” You don’t know how far He will go. “Ephraim is a cake not turned”—willing to let the work begun, but not willing to see it through. But God is the Author and He is the Finisher of our faith. There must be that within us which submits to Him, saying, “Lord, I want to go all the way.” Probably the reason Ephraim never went on to a full experience is that he mixed himself among the people. There are certain things that we instinctively think we need in life; and we start looking for them. We look for them in the world, in associations, in everything, and we absorb what we think we need. And then we try to draw from the Lord what we think He has for us, too. We mix it. That is not a good thing.
There has to be a way that we turn away from everything that the world has—I mean everything—end, total. Because it’s the dead fly that causes the ointment of the apothecary to send forth a stinking savour: so does a little folly in him that is reputed of wisdom and honor (Ecclesiastes 10:1). It doesn’t take very much to change things. We want to be one hundred percent for the Lord. We don’t want to be a product of this age in any way. We don’t want to say, “Lord, You have done so much in us, but the rest is contamination that came from the world round about us.” The last days saw that happen, and because iniquity shall be multiplied, the love of many shall wax cold. Matthew 24:12. This was the prophecy our Lord gave. The abounding iniquity will have a way of corrupting, getting down into the lives of people.
Probably for the first time in all of God’s dealings in the church down through the centuries, we are concerned today with the problem of loosing people from bonds, restraints, conditioning, and conditioned reflexes.
You have to realize how the world is geared today to con you into things; to get you to accept things; how corrupting and defiling the world is in all that it brings to us. We used to use the term, “the world,” and we meant a few little pleasures of the world, places to go, etc. The world is a spirit, an attitude, a thing that corrupts your spirit. You can become worldly, without the necessity of being in the sins of the world. You can begin to think like the world, be sympathetic with the world; and if you say that you are tolerant, what you mean is that your whole process of thinking is corrupted. How few people today can really read the Scriptures and see what God says about wickedness and sin and hate it like God hates it. Unconsciously we see it all about us, and we are tolerant of it. One thing that saved Lot was that day by day his soul was vexed with their unrighteous deeds. He never would have made it otherwise—there couldn’t have been a way out. We must hate the garments that are defiled by the world, by the flesh. We must reach in and say, “Lord, I want to be pure, to be clean; I can’t mix myself among the peoples.”
At the beginning of a walk with God there is a feeling, “We are not under law, we are under grace.” We had a great deal of liberty, and that liberty became more real as the years went by—and it brought us to the place where we are now. Where some of the young folks have come out of deep conditioning of sin, how do they get loose from it? Because they don’t want any part of it. It’s not a matter of legalism, it’s not a matter of walking the chalk line lest they fall into the world, but it’s a matter to flee from it. The grace of God is not something that covers over or overlooks; but it gives us something with which to overcome the world, the flesh and the devil; and to reach into the grace of God with all of our heart.
Israel is a luxuriant vine, that putteth forth his fruit: according to the abundance of his fruit he hath multiplied his altars; according to the goodness of their land they have made goodly pillars. Their heart is divided; now shall they be found guilty: he will smite their altars, he will destroy their pillars. Surely now shall they say, We have no king; for we fear not the Lord; and the king, what can he do for us? They speak vain words, swearing falsely in making covenants: therefore, judgment springeth up as hemlock in the furrows of the field. Hosea 10:1–4.
Judgment just springing up. Why did it spring up? Because they came to the place where they could stand and say, “Lord, I care not for riches, neither silver nor gold;” but they were as some churches today where you pay plenty of money for a pew and yet they say they don’t care for riches. They rob everybody they can and then come to church and try to cover it over. They do care for riches! But they can speak the word falsely; they run through the motions; it doesn’t mean a thing.
When they took Israel and Judea into captivity, one thing was common about both the northern and southern kingdoms: They feared the Lord and served their own gods. II Kings 17:33a. They were divided in heart. You can ask people today, “Are you Christian?” “Yes, I am Christian in the sense that I believe in Jesus Christ and all of that and I want to live by the golden rule.” But they have other gods, too. It is the divided heart. It is that being mixed among the peoples that we read of Ephraim. It is having half of an experience but not going on until it is total, complete, and absolutely unreserved to God.
This is what the Lord wants of a kingdom church. It is what He wants of His people everywhere. He wants you not to be divided in your heart—pulled by this or that. There are many ways to be divided. You can be living for many other things besides the will of God. Probably the greatest test that you can have of what is really in your heart is to stop and say, “Am I really content and happy? Am I driven to do the will of God? Is that the delight of my life above everything else? Or do I find that empty feeling within me—I must be missing life. I’m called to serve the Lord, am I missing something? Am I losing out on something? Do I feel frustrated because there are things of the world that I need, things in this passing existence that I have to have? Am I driven by these needs?” A divided heart will bring you to the place where, when the pressure is on, you’ll say, “Do I want to serve the Lord?” “Well, I do want to be a part of this walk, but my husband, my wife, my children,” etc.
One man stayed away from church because his teenage son didn’t want to go. He thought that if his boy didn’t want to go to church, he wasn’t going to go to church either. He was just pulled—divided heart. His wife went along with the same thing. Then he went through years back in the world living a sinful life. You see, it was already in his heart. Other things were pulling, pulling. What is it that makes a person come along so far, and then you see that seed of defeat that must have been lying dormant within that heart. And the rain of adversity and circumstances rains upon it, and the defeat grows and brings forth its deadly fruit. Like hemlock in the furrows of the field, judgment springs up. We can’t be divided in our heart. How total that was with the disciples—the Lord made it so simple.
Who would have thought of demanding of the disciples what the Lord did? And how necessary it was. And they denied themselves; they denied everything; they had to come to the place where, “If any man will be My disciple he has to hate father and mother—hate them—hate his own life.” (Luke 14:26). Of course, we can say that that term is relative, it means love less. But there is a hatred—you hate the bond, the tie, that pulls you away from God. And only by hating it can you break it. Does that mean that you wouldn’t love father and mother? No, of course you love them; but you don’t wholly love or hate. With every bit of love there is a little hatred and with hatred there is a little love; even an admiration for the enemy that you hate the most. Your enemies are usually those who were once your best friends. Love and hatred go together. You can love God with all of your heart, and you can come to hate everybody, and yet love them at the same time. You can love them deeper than human love is capable of—and still there can be a hatred of that thing that would draw your spirit away from the Lord. You can have a love from God that reaches out, it will be far greater than that hatred—but that hate can be strong enough that you will hate the thing that would drag you back down into the pit, and chains that you were lifted from by the Lord.
Lord, let us not be divided in our heart. Let there not be, O Master, that which would cloud us and draw us—we know it takes just a little to deflect the compass and head us to the rocks. We are aware that we can have so much desire to make it and to follow the course and still have the roots of the love of the world, the love of sin and flesh in our hearts until it destroys. We declare war on it, Lord! We declare war with all of our heart. This morning we pray that we will be like that cake that is turned until everything within our experience begins to mature, to come forth in the completeness of Thy divine grace. Forgive us, Lord, and cleanse us; uproot out of us every distracting, hindering thing. We don’t want those seeds of defeat that could lie dormant another month, a year, or five years, and then in the moment of adversity spring up and destroy us. A little root of bitterness can be so corrupting and so defiling. We don’t want it. O Lord, loose us from it! Let there not be an unforgiving thought, or deep malice, or hatred within us. Let there be nothing within our spirits that clings to anything that You condemn. We put it to the death of Thy cross and say, “Lord, we want to follow You with all of our heart, not a divided heart—with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength.”
Oh, Father, through Jesus Christ whom You delivered up for us that we might be loose from all sin; our Blessed Jesus whose name means He shall save His people from their sins, we come asking cleansing and forgiveness. Asking, Lord, that there be not any hypocrisy in us or that we cover over or excuse anything that Thou hast condemned. Neither do we hold tightly, Lord, that which Thou sayest must go. We desire to abhor evil, to love righteousness and to seek first Thy kingdom and Thy righteousness; to lay all before Thee and say, “Thy will be done, Lord.” We not only submit to Your will, but aggressively we cry, “Thy will must be done, it must be done within our hearts, we must be loosed to serve You, we must be Your holy and clean people, showing forth the grace of God in every respect.” Amen.