I’ve enjoyed barbecuing food most of my life. Like many young married couples, my wife and I started with very little money, but owning a grill was a priority. For years my original charcoal kettle accompanied us from one apartment to the next. One day I was walking through the barbecue aisle of a hardware store when I saw a low-end smoker marked down to under fifty dollars. We were about to host a family dinner, so I jumped at it.
Early the next morning I excitedly placed the turkey in my new toy to ensure it would be done in time for dinner. That evening our extended family trickled in, and I kept delaying dinner as I nervously monitored the entrée. I was avoiding people as conversations were plainly giving way to hunger. When the exterior of the bird had finally turned a savory golden brown, I eagerly transferred it to a cutting board. On slicing into it, I was horrified. It wasn’t just undercooked, it was raw, inedible, gross.
For a host, there’s nothing worse than serving food that is unexpectedly underdone. It’s visually unappetizing and physically uneatable. It can make people sick. God knows that too and, for that reason, uses it as a powerfully descriptive analogy.
Ephraim mixes himself with the peoples; Ephraim is a cake not turned. (Hos. 7:8)
The tribe of Ephraim played a significant role in Israel’s history and, as such, in parts of the Old Testament, the name became synonymous with the ten tribes of the north. The accusation leveled by the prophet Hosea was that Israel (the northern tribes) had made alliances with foreign nations while continuing to claim identity as God’s chosen people. By “mixing [themselves] with the peoples,” they assimilated with nations that rebelled against Him. (Remember that, through the book, God equated them to an unfaithful wife.)
God compared the disloyalty of His people with “a cake not turned.” This is because a loaf of bread was baked by placing the dough against the wall of a hot oven. If it was not turned, it would become burnt on one side while remaining uncooked on the other. They were half-baked and, in a sense, crusty toward God while exposing their soft underbelly to idolatrous, enemy nations. Their behavior was as revolting to God as the raw turkey was to me.
Those that claim to be Christians yet continue to identify with the world are like a cake not turned. They are half-baked. They are not just of “less use” to God, they are of no use. They are downright repulsive to Him.
Elijah put it like this, “How long will you go limping between two different opinions? If the Lord is God, follow Him; but if Baal, then follow him” (1 Kgs. 18:21). Likewise, the prophet Zephaniah indicted the people that were swearing to the Lord and also to an idol. They were looking for satisfaction wherever they could find it. They identified with God as long as it was going to get them what they wanted, but if there was a “better” option, they did not hesitate to violate God’s law.
There are no “halfsies” with God. He neither needs nor wants your morality. It’s like trying to keep one foot in a speeding car and one on the road—it’s disaster in the making. True Christian living requires you to sit down, buckle up, close the door and lock it as you travel through this life.
Are all areas of your life evenly in contact with the hot walls of Scripture or are there parts that you keep from God? Is there any portion of your life that you shield from Him yet expose to the world? If in any way you are half-baked, then turn that cake! “Those who are in the flesh cannot please God” (Rom. 8:8) so earnestly pray that He would help you to give it all to Him.
I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth. (Rev. 3:15-16)