Baalism in the Pulpit: Covenantal Drift in Contemporary Presbyterian Preaching.

Section 1: Introduction.

 Israel's idolatry in Scripture is rarely the crude rejection of God in favour of rival deities; more often it is the subtle reconfiguration of the true God into a form more amenable to human instincts, cultural pressures, and religious desires. In Israel’s history, Baal worship persisted, not because the people consciously repudiated their covenant relationship with the Lord, but because Baal provided a religious vision that seemed more compatible with their hopes for prosperity, security, and the exaltation of the self. The modern iteration of Baal is as serious for the contemporary church as it was for ancient Israel. Hosea’s prophecy is useful to expose this tragedy with particular clarity: Israel continued to invoke Yahweh’s name, yet reshaped His character into the likeness of the god they preferred. The tragedy of contemporary Reformed preaching in the Presbyterian Church of Victoria is eerily similar.

 This study examines five sermons from the Presbyterian Church of Victoria (PCV) in light of the biblical pattern of idolatry developed in Romans 1 and Hosea 11. While these sermons maintain orthodox doctrinal forms, their rhetorical structures and homiletical instincts invite comparison with the covenant distortions the Scripture identities as Baalism. The following essay will show how this pattern emerges and why it matters for Reformed preaching. As Augustine observed when summarizing disordered love, “For wherever the soul of man turns itself, unless toward thee, it is enmeshed in sorrows, even though it is surrounded by beautiful things outside thee and outside itself.”[i] This turning of the soul away from the living God is not always explicit rebellion, as Hos 6:1 demonstrates, it often appears as the pursuit of comfort, self-definition, or even a defining of God in agreement with personal needs, Thus, while these sermons do not explicitly teach idolatry, they inadvertently cultivate it.

 One of the central claims of this essay is that idolatry is not primarily a doctrinal error but a misdirection of worship. Luther’s famous maxim is instructive: “Whatever your heart clings to and relies upon, that is properly your god.”[ii] Calvin expands this by insisting that “man’s nature, so to speak, is a perpetual factory of idols.”[iii] If the Reformed church is to live by its confession of ecclesia semper reforanda, then we must expect that even our preaching will require reformation. When contemporary preaching fails to confront the heart’s misdirected clinging, it leaves the factory intact. 

The sermons examined here do precisely this. In various ways, they soften divine wrath against ungodliness, they displace the text’s indictment toward the culture rather than the congregation, they sentimentalize the character of God, or they make salvation contingent on human decision. These tendencies are not merely unfortunate emphases; they form a coherent pattern that corresponds to the ancient lure of Baal.

The argument unfolds in several stages. It begins by defining Baalism as a biblical pattern of idolatrous exchange and covenant infidelity. Romans 1:18–32 is then considered as Scripture’s anthropological core of idolatry, followed by Hosea 11 as the prophetic narrative of Baal-shaped covenant betrayal. These biblical foundations frame the later analysis of the contemporary sermons from PCV ministers, showing how Baal-shaped patterns can appear homiletically even where formal doctrine remains orthodox.

This inquiry is not motivated by cynicism or by the desire to denounce individual preachers. Rather, it seeks to discern how the church may unintentionally participate in the very sins Scripture most urgently warns against. David Wells’s diagnosis of the evangelical church in 1994 remains alarmingly relevant: “God rests too inconsequentially upon the church today”.[iv] When the weightiness of God is replaced by emotional warmth or by appeals to personal choice, the covenant Lord is quietly exchanged for a deity who resembles Baal more than Yahweh. The purpose of this study is therefore constructive as much as critical. By tracing how Baal’s logic appears in contemporary preaching, we may recover a homiletic shaped by covenant holiness, divine authority and the gospel that confronts before it comforts. If the enemy can damage everything in the sanctuary, Psalm 74:3, there is no reason to assume he cannot do the same in the PCV.

So, the burden of this essay is simply this: Baal has not disappeared. He has merely taken new forms, appearing in modern guises that preserve his ancient patterns. In a reformed church, sermons that soothe the conscience while leaving the heart unchallenged and unchanged become the very places where his presence thrives.

Defining Baalism in a Biblical-Theological Framework

Any attempt to identify Baal-shaped preaching in contemporary reformed pulpits requires a clear and carefully delimited definition of Baalism itself. It would be easy to use modern labels such as Gnosticism, Arminianism, wokism, therapeutic or prosperity gospel, but these are not biblical terms and do not readily translate to meaningful biblical categories. In Scripture, Baal is not merely one Canaanite deity among others. When Israel is accused of worshipping Baal, it involves the reshaping of Yahweh into the image of the Baals of the surrounding cultures. Thus, a recurring pattern in which the covenant community reshapes the Lord into a form more compatible with its desires is identifiable. This essay is concerned with the appearance of Baalism wherever the people of God retain the vocabulary and outward structures of orthodox faith while inwardly adopting an alternative understanding of who God is and how He may be approached. This is also the burden of Hosea.[v] The patterns Hosea identified enable us to identify modern iterations. It is therefore not confined to ancient Israel but represents a perennial temptation for any worshipping community that desires divine blessing without divine holiness, divine compassion without divine authority, or divine presence without covenant fidelity.

Several elements recur whenever Scripture addresses Baal. First, Baalism involves covenant infidelity. Israel continues to name Yahweh as her God, yet seeks security, fertility (prosperity), and emotional reassurance from a rival. Hosea 11:2 describes this as a relational betrayal in which “the more they were called, the more they went away”. This captures the central paradox of Baalism: it flourishes not by replacing the Lord but by supplanting Him. Second, Baalism assumes that divine favour can be elicited or managed. In the ancient world, Baal promised agricultural productivity and personal wellbeing through rituals that allowed the worshiper to feel some measure of control. Modern equivalents need not involve literal rituals, instead they may take the form of therapeutic expectations, manageable moral demands, or a gospel that places the decisive act of faith in human hands. Third, Baalism always involves the exchange of glory, which is the pattern Paul identifies in Romans 1. It directs trust toward what appears immediately beneficial, emotionally comforting, or personally empowering. In this sense, Baalism is not a relic but a recurrent deformation of worship whenever the creature reconfigures the Lord God of Scripture into the image of cultural desires.

A working definition suited to this study may therefore be stated as follows: Baalism is the reshaping of the covenant Lord into a deity whose favour can be secured, whose demands can be softened, or whose blessings can be obtained through human initiative, emotional intuition, or cultural assimilation. This definition arises inductively from the biblical material and is expansive enough to include ancient syncretism as well as modern therapeutic or decisionistic patterns. It also frames the homiletical analysis that follows; that sermons may fall into Baalism not by denying God, but by subtly presenting Him in ways that mirror Baal’s theological logic.

Romans 1:18–32 and Hos 11 have been chosen as the biblical foundation for this definition. Romans 1 provides the canonical anatomy of idolatry. It describes the suppression of truth, the exchange of glory, and the disordering of human life that results whenever God is known yet not honoured as God. The emphasis is structural ad universal. Every human heart is prone to such exchange, regardless of theological precision or religious profession, as Romans 7 makes clear. Romans therefore, supplies the anthropological framework necessary to interpret distortions in preaching. Any redirection of trust away from the holy God toward an image of our own making constitutes idolatry, even when the name of God is preserved.

Hosea 11 supplies the complementary relational and covenantal dimension. Paul explains how idolatry works; Hosea reveals whom it wounds. Hosea’s portrayal of God as a father who taught Israel to walk, who bent down to feed him, and who called him repeatedly captures the emotional and moral gravity of idolatry. Israel’s turning to Baal is not simply theological error, but relational betrayal. Divine holiness and divine compassion meet in tense juxtaposition, exposing the seriousness of a community that claims God’s name while reshaping His character. This dynamic is essential for evaluating contemporary sermons that soften wrath, sentimentalize love, or present divine mercy in ways that obscure covenant fidelity. Although such distortions may be expressed overtly, they more often occur covertly in reformed sermons, the congregation is shielded from the weight of the preached Word.

 Together, Romans 1 and Hosea 11 provide the dual lens though which Baalism can be defined and recognised in modern preaching. Romans establishes the universal exchange at the heart of idolatry; Hosea discloses the covenant drama that unfolds whenever God’s people prefer an altered deity to the God who calls them back to Himself.

Section 3: Methodology; Sermons as Windows into Functional Theology.

This study employs sermons as its primary qualitative data because preaching provided a uniquely transparent window into the operative theology of a denomination. Doctrinal statements may remain unchanged for generations, even centuries, but sermons reveal how doctrine is activated and applied in the life of the church. Preaching is not merely the transmission of information but an act of pastoral formation in which the congregation encounters the character of God. The nature of sin and man’s need of a saviour may be catechised for posterity and act as an interpretive lens, but the sermon is the printed image of the doctrines by the preacher. In The Preacher’s Portrait, for example, John Stott develops the image of the preacher as a “herald”, one who proclaims a message entrusted to him rather than generating his own.[vi] Such heralding discloses what the church actually believes about God, about holiness, sin, repentance, grace, and the human condition. This is the pattern used in the 7 Letters to the Churches in Revelation. There, the congregations were not assessed according to stated doctrines, but by the spiritual conditions produced under the teaching taking place. Faulty or selective proclamation shapes the life of a church long before it alters its confession. Sermons thus provide a reliable index of a community’s functional theology, whether or not it aligns with its formal confessions

 Five sermons from the Presbyterian Church of Victoria have been selected for analysis: four expounding Rom 1:18–32 and one expounding Hosea 11:1–11. The selection process proceeded first, with the selection of texts, and then a perusal of available online sermon recordings on the selected texts. These sermons were not chosen for being extreme or idiosyncratic but because they represent mainstream expository preaching within a conservative reformed denomination. Furthermore, these sermons were all preached by senior ministers within the denomination. Their selection allows for a controlled and coherent comparison across preachers and texts. The Romans sermons provide a baseline for examining how idolatry is handled homiletically in a passage expressly concerned with the universal human exchange of worship. The Hosea sermon offers a complementary test case that reveals how a preacher handles a text where Baalism and covenant infidelity stand at the theological centre.

 Three interpretative controls guide the evaluation. First, the expositions of Calvin and Martyn Lloyd Jones (MLJ) serve as historical and homiletical benchmarks. Calvin’s insistence on confronting the hearer and MLJ’s emphasis on the necessity of divine authority and holy disturbance, a theme developed in Revival [vii],  provide standards against which to measure doctrinal fidelity and homiletical tone. Second, for cultural analyses, Wells, McCallum, Chandler, Trueman, and Sayers help identify background pressures that may shape preaching unconsciously. Third, the biblical definition of Baalism developed in the previous section furnishes the criteria by which sermons can be evaluated for alignment or divergence.

 The purpose of this methodology is not to assess the personal intentions of individual but to identify recurring theological and homiletical patterns. When multiple sermons independently display the same drift, this signals not a personal error but a systemic issue in contemporary reformed preaching within the PCV.

Section 4: The Biblical Theology of Idolatry in Romans 1 and Hosea 11.

A study of Baal-shaped preaching requires an account of idolatry that is both structurally precise and relationally rich. Scripture furnishes this dual perspective above all in Rom 1:18–32 and Hosea 11. Taken together, these passages disclose the essence of idolatry as a movement away for the loving God through the suppression of truth and the betrayal of covenant love. They also reveal that idolatry need not entail overt apostasy. It may occur within the life of the covenant community, under the language of faith, and in the midst of religious practice.

 4.1 Romans 1: Idolatry as Worship Exchange.

Romans 1:18–32 provides the paradigmatic description of the inner logic of idolatry. Paul does not begin with the external worship of images but with the suppression of revealed truth. Humanity knows God, for “what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them,” Rom 1:19, yet it refuses to glorify Him or give thanks. Idolatry is therefore fundamentally a misdirection of worship, a turning of desire and trust toward something other than the Creator. Paul’s repeated use of the language of “exchange” captures the structural dynamic: the glory of the immortal God is exchanged for images, the truth about God exchanged for a lie, and natural worship exchanged for disordered desire. This is the universal pattern underlying all false worship, whether ancient or modern, religious or secular.

Paul’s anthropology in in Romans 1 therefore, offers a framework for analysing contemporary preaching. Any sermon that redirects the hearer’s trust toward personal performance, emotional experience, cultural norms, or therapeutic comfort participates in the very exchange Paul describes. The preacher may name God, quote Scripture, and affirm orthodox doctrine, yet still lead the congregation into functional idolatry if the sermon ultimately presents a God who differs from the Holy One who Paul proclaims. Romans thus supplies the structural and universal criteria by which modern distortions can be identified.

4.2 Hosea 11: Idolatry as Covenant Betrayal.

If Romans 1 provides the anatomy of idolatry, Hosea 11 supplies its covenantal drama. Here the Lord speaks as a father who has nurtured His son, taught him to walk, and bent down to feed him, only to be met with ingratitude and rebellion. “The more they were called, the more they went away,” Hosea laments, “they kept sacrificing to the Baals and burning offerings to idols”, Hos 11:2. This portrayal reveals idolatry not only as a distortion of truth but as a betrayal of divine love. It is relational before it is ritual, a refusal of God’s covenant embrace even while the outward forms of worship continue.

This is the pattern used in the 7 Letters to the Churches in Revelation. There, the congregations were not assessed according to stated doctrines, but by the spiritual conditions produced under the teaching taking place. Faulty or selective proclamation shapes the life of a church long before it alters its confession. Sermons thus provide a reliable index of a community’s functional theology, whether or not it aligns with its formal confessions.

The contrast can now be drawn sharply. Baalism is fundamentally transactional: it is a system in which the worshipper seeks predictable benefits through manageable rituals, attempting to bring the divine under human control. By contrast, covenantal worship is its opposite. Covenantal worship is the trusting surrender of the heart to God’s steadfast love within the unfolding of His providence. By providence, I mean God’s wise, holy, and loving governance of all things, by which He upholds, directs, and orders creation toward His sovereign purposes. At a personal level, covenantal worship trusts God’s one to one dealings with His people. Covenantal worship receives with joy and gratefulness, rather than seeking to manipulate God. It rests in God’s inherent goodness when it appears hidden, rather than seeking to bargain or to secure a blessing. As an example, Baalism promises therapeutic relief from psychological wounds, treating the divine as a means to personal soothing, whereas covenantal worship entrusts those wounds to the Lord’s providence. Covenantal worship rests confidently in the knowledge that His purposes are wiser than our demands for immediate comfort. This distinction will govern the analysis that follows. It is an argument of this essay that contemporary preaching in the PCV reinforces transactional instincts that inevitably reproduce the biblical pattern of Baalism even though clothed in orthodox vocabulary.

The relevance of Hosea 11 for evaluating contemporary preaching is profound. Sermons that sentimentalise divine love, soften divine wrath, or relocate the decisive act of salvation to human choice replicate the very dynamics Hosea condemns. When God’s holiness is mustered and His love reframed as emotional approval, rather than covenant loyalty, the preacher unintentionally offers the congregation a version of God more akin to Baal. Hosea thus provides the relational and moral clarity need to discern the logic of Baalism within what is seen as faithful Christian preaching.

4.3 Synthesis: Romans and Hosea Together.

Romans 1 and Hosea 11 form a complementary biblical foundation. Romans explains the inward mechanics of the exchange that lies at the heart of idolatry. Hosea eaposes the relational nature of that that exchange as a betrayal of covenant love. Romans identifies the universal human condition; Hosea discloses the particular grief of God. Bluntly put, Romans describes the act; Hosea reveals the heart. Together they establish a theological matrix for recognising how contemporary sermons may unwittingly be proclaiming Baalism while retaining the vocabulary of Reformed Christianity.

Section 5: Historical and Homiletical Benchmarks

To evaluate whether contemporary preaching exhibits the theological distortions associated with Baalism, it is necessary to establish reliable historical and homiletical benchmarks. John Calvin functions as the primary exegetical authority for Romans and Hosea. His covenantal reading of the texts resist both sentimental reductions of divine love and evasions of human guilt. Martyn Lloyd-Jones is helpful with Romans but he only occasionally directly quotes from Hosea. Like Calvin though, his preaching insists doctrine proclamation that divine holiness must confront the hearer before grace can comfort. Alongside these voices, Raymond C. Ortlund Jr’s God’s Unfaithful Wife provides a modern biblical theological benchmark for reading Hosea covenantally. Ortlund frames Baal worship as spiritual adultery and divine love as holy, jealous and resistant to therapeutic domestication. Together, these figures supply doctrinally rigorous and pastorally penetrating controls against which the sermons examined in this study may be measured.

5.1 Calvin’s Exegetical and Theological Priorities.

Calvin’s exposition of Romans 1 is marked by its relentless universality and its refusal to allow the church to exempt itself from Paul’s indictment. Against readings that restrict Romans 1 to a critique of pagan nations or pre-Christian societies, Calvin insists that Paul is uncovering a condition that persists wherever fallen humanity suppresses the truth of God. The apostle’s claim that “what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them” establishes not only the grounds of human culpability but also the ongoing relevance of the text for those who live under divine revelation. The problem Paul exposes is not ignorance but refusal: humanity knows God and yet refuses to honour Him as God or give thanks to Him.

A persistent obstacle to the ecclesial application of Romans 1 has been the interpretative scheme commonly associated with Charles Hodge and those relying his framework. Hodge argued Roman’s 1 functioned primarily as Paul’s indictment of the Gentile world, Romans 2 as his critique of Jewish moralism, and Romans 3 as the point at which universal guilt is finally established. This structure offers a pedagogical clarity and has exerted wide influence within reformed preaching. Yet when treated as a fixed partition, as we will see in the first sermon on Romans below, it subtly relocates Romans 1 outside the immediate address of the church. The passage becomes something the congregation observes rather than experiencing moral exposure. Calvin’s reading exposes the weakness of this move. For Paul, Romans 1 is not a preliminary stage to be passed through but an enduring diagnosis of humanity’s suppression of God’s revelation wherever it occurs.

For Calvin, Romans 1 functions not merely as a prologue to the gospel but as a continuing diagnosis of the human heart, including the religious heart. The suppression of truth, the exchange of glory, and the collapse of moral order are not aberrations of an irreligious past but ever-present dangers wherever God’s revelation is received without submission. Any preaching that redirects Romans 1 exclusively towards “culture”, “society”, or the “world” fails, on Calvin’s reading, to reckon with Paul’s intent and denies the text of its searching power.

Therefore, homiletical considerations mean that Romans 1 must be allowed to confront the congregation directly. This confrontation is not as mere observers of human failure, but as participants in universal Adamic rebellion. Calvin’s reading leaves no room for a morally elevated class within the church who stand above the text’s indictment. The church is not the audience watching Paul critique idolatry; it is the community being summoned to recognise how easily it reproduces idolatry under religious forms.

5.2 Calvin on Hosea: Covenant Betrayal and the Refusal of Sentimentality.

Calvin’s treatment of Hosea reinforces this ecclesial application. Hosea 11, in particular, presents idolatry not as abstract theological error but as covenant betrayal by a people who bear God’s name. In modern terms, we would say unfaithfulness to Christ by Christians. When the Lord declares, “I taught Ephraim to walk”, Calvin draws attention to the intimacy of divine care and the depth of Israel’s ingratitude.[x] The tragedy of Israel’s Baalism lies precisely in the fact that it unfolds within a covenant relationship. Israel does not deny Yahweh’s existence; she reshapes Him while continuing to invoke His name. It does not take much imagination to picture Christians in the church today behaving exactly the same way; not outright denying Christ, but reshaping his Lordship over their own lives. This is how Calvin applies Hosea’s Baalism to the papists of his day.

For Calvin, the divine compassion expressed in Hosea 11 does not soften the seriousness of Israel’s guilt. The tension in God’s self-disclosure is not between wrath and love, but between covenant loyalty and covenant violation. God’s compassion burns precisely because his holiness has been affronted. Calvin therefore rejects any interpretation that reduces Hosea’s language to emotional fluctuation or therapeutic reassurance. Divine mercy does not cancel divine righteousness, and judgment arises not from divine instability, the Lord’s covenant faithfulness.

This reading directly resists the homiletical tendency to sentimentalise Hosea or to treat divine love as unconditional affirmation. Calvin insists that preaching Hosea requires exposing false images of God that the covenant community has embraced. For this reason, his famous observation that “man’s nature, so to speak, is a perpetual factory of idols” is not a comment on paganism alone but a warning directed toward the church. Hosea, no less than Romans 1, must be preached as a word from God to God’s people, lest covenant betrayal be concealed beneath religious language.

 5.3 Lloyd-Jones, Romans 1, and the Homiletic of Confrontation.

Martyn Lloyd-Jones stands as a twentieth-century witness to the same ecclesial seriousness in preaching Romans. His exposition of Romans 1 consistently rejects attempts to limit Paul’s argument to ancient paganism or modern secular culture. For Lloyd-Jones, Romans 1 exposes a universal human condition that persists wherever the truth of God is resisted, including within the visible church. No preacher, he insists, is faithful who allows the congregation to hear the text as a description of others rather than as a revelation of themselves. In his sermon on Rom 1:18-20, MLJ explicitly warns against distancing the text: “There is no greater mistake than to read this chapter and to, ‘This is a description of the pagan world.’ If we do that, we have completely missed the point of the Apostle”.[xi]

Lloyd-Jones conducted his preaching in the belief that the truth is meant to disturb before comfort can be offered. From his Preachers and Preaching we read: “The business of preaching is not to make observations about life, but to bring people face to face with God. If they are left discussing others, the sermon has failed”.[xii] Romans 1 therefore cannot be used to reassure the church of its moral superiority or to provide sociological commentary on cultural decline without risking a collapse into Baalism. The wounds that Scripture inflicts upon hearers, if it is correctly perceived, will lead to repentance, before it brings comfort. Baalism short-circuits this pattern. Divine wrath and divine love are not competing themes but inseparable revelations of God’s holiness. Comfort offered without conviction is not gospel comfort but religious anaesthesia.

Although MLJ did not preach extensively on Hosea, his homiletical theology coheres closely with Hosea’s covenantal logic. Divine pathos is never sentimentalised; it exposes the gravity of betrayal rather than mitigating it.  In this sense, MLJ functions here, not as an exegete of Hosea but as a homiletical control, guarding against sermon structures that shield the congregation from the force of divine confrontation. His preaching embodies the conviction echoed by P. T. Forsyth, that the preacher “has to rouse not against a common enemy, but against their common selves.”[xiii]

 5.4 Benchmarks for Evaluation

Taken together, Calvin and Lloyd-Jones establish a framework that makes the ecclesial application of Romans 1 and Hosea 11 unavoidable. Calvin supplies exegetical precision and covenantal clarity; Lloyd-Jones supplies homiletical seriousness and resistance to therapeutic softening. Both insist that Scripture must be allowed to expose idolatry where it most readily hides; within the religious community itself.

For the purposes of this study, these figures do not function as idealised models but as doctrinal and homiletical controls. They clarify why Romans 1 cannot be safely externalised and why Hosea cannot be sentimentalised. Against this benchmark, the sermons analysed in later sections reveal a recurring pattern; the relocation of Paul’s indictment away from the congregation, the softening of covenant betrayal into psychological brokenness, and the reshaping of divine love into reassurance without repentance. It is precisely this drift that allows Baal’s logic to operate from the pulpit under orthodox forms.

Section 6: Cultural Pressures and the Enduring Threat of Baalism

Idolatry does not emerge in a vacuum. It arises wherever the people of God inhabit cultural environments that reshape their expectations of God, the self, and the purpose of religion. While Romans 1 and Hosea 11 disclose the theological and covenantal logic of idolatry, contemporary analyses help explain why modern preaching is susceptible to distortions that mirror Baal’s pattern. Although the preachers whose sermons are examined in this study stand within a confessionally Reformed tradition, their homiletical instincts operate within a late modern environment that exerts subtle yet profound pressures. These pressures cannot excuse theological drift, but they help to clarify its sources. Five thinkers in particular are used in this study to illuminate the cultural terrain: Dennis McCallum, Matt Chandler, Carl Trueman, Mark Sayers, and David Wells.

6.1 McCallum: The Collapse of Truth and Rise of the Therapeutic Self

In The Death of Truth, McCallum argues that contemporary Western Culture has replaced objective truth with personal reference. According to McCallum, postmodernism has replaced truth with preference, and conviction with intuition, rather than confrontation. The impact of postmodernism upon culture, and thus indirectly upon the church and its preaching, is that sin is reclassified as dysfunction. This dysfunctionalism is has the self at its centre with its concerns for well being and need of psychotherapy.  McCallum helps us to see the subtle impact this has upon people listening to sermons. A sermon, to be regarded as good, will reinterpret divine authority through the lens of individual autonomy. The modern preacher therefore faces temptations to soften sin, reclassify holiness into therapeutic categories, and avoid themes of judgment. These impulses map closely onto the third Baal type identified in this study, the Household or Therapeutic Baal, wherein God is presented primarily as a comforting presence rather than as the Holy One who summons His people to repentance.

McCallum’s analysis helps explain why sentimental portrayals of God appear plausible even within conservative congregations. When cultural plausibility structures favour emotional safety, preaching that emphasises divine compassion without divine holiness becomes intuitively appealing. The Sermon on Hosea 11 examined later in this essay exemplifies this drift: the deep covenant tension between divine wrath and divine love is obscured in favour of a message of reassurance structured around the listener’s emotional needs. McCallum thus exposes the cultural soil in which Baalistic distortions can flourish.

6.2 Chandler: The Incomplete Gospel and the Loss of Tension

Matt Chandler’s The Explicit Gospel critiques the tendency of modern preaching to emphasise either the personal, individual dimension of the gospel or its cosmic, redemptive scope, while neglecting the other. Chandler argues preaching must include God’s holiness and human sin if we are to avoid obscuring the gospel. His diagnosis is particularly relevant to sermons that retain orthodox vocabulary but lose the structural tension within the gospel itself. When holiness is downplayed, sin becomes therapeutic rather than moral, and grace becomes affirmation rather than deliverance. Conversely, when personal response is emphasised without the prior announcement of divine judgment, the sermon devolves into moral exhortation or decisionistic appeal.

Chandler’s insights intersect with Baalism at the point where divine holiness is eclipsed. Ancient Baal worship offered blessing without covenant loyalty, fertility without obedience, and prosperity without repentance. Contemporary preaching may fall into a similar pattern when it offers assurance without conviction or present divine compassion without the costliness of atonement. He uses the term “therapeutic deism” to describe the idea that we are able to earn favour with God by virtue of our behaviour. Chandler therefore helps frame the theological drift found in the third and fourth sermons in this study, where God is portrayed as emotionally available or where salvation is construed as contingent on human decision.

6.3 Trueman: The Crisis of Ecclesial Confidence

Carl Trueman provides the most incisive account of why orthodox churches drift from theological integrity in practice. In Crisis of Confidence, he argues that the greatest danger to the church is not external opposition but the internal loss of conviction. Underpinning this loss of conviction is the loss of confidence in historic creeds, confessions, and the church’s doctrinal heritage. Without the benefit of past victories that the creeds and confessions preserve for us, the modern church presents ambiguity about truth and doctrine. The “no creed but the bible” approach identified by Trueman results in a distrust of these ancient documents as “words of men only”, leaving the modern church unable to speak with authority. This is manifested by an unwillingness to name sin directly, and a preference for moral encouragement over prophetic confrontation. Preachers fear being perceived as harsh, irrelevant, or insensitive, and this adopt a tone of caution that dilutes the force of Scripture.

Trueman’s critique is essential for understanding why sermons on Romans 1, a passage steeped in divine wrath, may avoid confronting hearers with the weight of God’s judgement. When proclamation is shaped by cultural expectations of gentleness, affirmation, or respectability, the preacher may inadvertently reshape God into a safer, more manageable figure. This aligns closely with the second Baal type, Exegetical Misdirection, in which the preacher correctly explains the text but directs its force away from the congregation toward external cultural targets. Trueman helps account for this phenomenon by exposing the modern discomfort with authoritative divine speech.

 6.4 Sayers: Secular Formation and the Autonomy of the Self

Mark Sayers deepens this analysis by highlighting the way secular culture forms Christians prior to and beneath explicit beliefs. Sayers argues that our age disciples us to be autonomous selves who see freedom as freedom from authority, rather than freedom under God. In such a context, sermons that emphasise divine command, divine sovereignty, or covenant obligation cut against the grain of cultural plausibility. The preacher may therefore feel pressure, often unconsciously, to present God as one who validates personal choice rather than one who demands submission.

Sayers insights shed particular light on the fourth Baal type, the Baal-Berith or Decisionistic Baal, in which the decisive act in salvation is construed as an individual human choice. In Hosea’s world, Baal worship offered Israel a sense of control over her future; in the modern world, the autonomous self plays a similar role. When sermons shift the causal weight of salvation from divine initiative to human decision, they echo the dynamics of Baalism more closely than those of covenant theology.

6.5 David Well: The Displacement of God and the Re-Emergence of Baal

As helpful as each of the preceding works are, the most sustained theological analysis of the cultural forces that deform contemporary preaching is found in the work of David Wells. His four-volume critique of modern evangelicalism offers a conceptual framework indispensable to this study. Across No Place for Truth, God in the Wasteland, Losing Our Virtue, and Above All Earthly Powers, Wells argues that the central crisis of the modern church is not merely methodological or stylistic but theological: God has been displaced from the centre of Christian consciousness and replaced by the sovereign self. This displacement creates the conditions in which Baal’s logic—self exaltation, therapeutic religion, covenant infidelity—can reappear within churches that still affirm orthodox doctrine.

For Wells, the defining mark of modernity is that the self becomes the organising principle of reality, and the church, driven by cultural accommodation, begins to reshape the gospel around this self. In other words, the church becomes a religious marketplace that is driven by the self rather than by the truth. Such a diagnosis resonates profoundly with Paul’s description of humanity’s “exchange of the glory of the immortal God”, Rom 1:23. In Wells’s account, modern preaching is tempted to adopt the psychological vocabulary of the age, translating sin into brokenness and salvation into healing, thereby performing a theological exchange parallel to the one Paul identifies. Sin becomes weakness rather than rebellion, and holiness becomes affirmation rather than transformation—an exchange that mirrors the pattern in Hosea in which Israel professes knowledge of God while multiplying Baals, Hos 11:2.

Wells’s critique reaches its sharpest point when he argues that the modern church has embraced a “weightless God”, one who no longer commands reverence or repentance but instead affirms the interior world of the individual. This is not the biblical God who confronts Israel’s covenant betrayal in Hosea 11, nor the God whose wrath is revealed against all ungodliness in Romans 1. It is a god restructured to inhabit the modern consciousness of “expressive individualism”—a god made compatible with human desires, cultural pressures, and therapeutic expectations. Such a god is not Baal in name, but he is Baal in function.

Wells therefore provides the conceptual bridge between Scripture’s critique of idolatry and the homiletical patterns examined in this study. The sermons considered below exhibit precisely the tendencies Wells identifies: the minimising of divine holiness, the reframing of sin as psychological distress, the privileging of human autonomy, and the implicit construction of a religious world in which God orbits the self. These tendencies are not aberrations; they are predictable outcomes of the theological and cultural drift Wells describes. His analysis shows how a church committed to Reformed orthodoxy can, under cultural pressure, adopt the instincts of Baalism even whole retaining its confessional vocabulary.

By recovering a God of weight, transcendence, holiness and covenantal authority, Wells exposes the thinness of modern preaching and clarifies the theological stakes of this study. His work confirms that the Baal-shaped patterns emerging in Presbyterian pulpits are not merely individual homiletical weaknesses but symptoms of a deeper cultural captivity. The return of Baal, in other words, is not accidental but structural, arising wherever the self-displaces God at the centre of the church’s consciousness.

Section 7: Four PCV Sermons on Romans 1 and Their Baal-Type Mapping

Baalism does not enter the pulpit through doctrinal denial but through pastoral instinct. The preacher, wishing to comfort his people, adjusts the tone before he adjusts the message. Wrath is muted, holiness is softened, sin reframed, and divine compassion is allowed to eclipse divine majesty. The congregation’s desires—for reassurance, affirmation, and stability—quietly become the hermeneutical center, and the sermon is shaped less by the text and more by what the preacher believes the hearers can bear. This is precisely the dynamic Hosea condemns: the people use God’s name while reshaping His character according to their emotional and cultural expectations. When this instinct becomes habitual, the pulpit becomes a site where Baal’s logic thrives—not through overt idolatry, but through the subtle redirection of God’s revealed identity toward the exultation of the self.

The four sermons analysed in this study provide a revealing cross-section of the functional theology operative within contemporary reformed pulpits. A clear limitation of the study is the limited number of sermons, each from a different church. Thus, there is no suggestion here that the pulpit’s at these churches are habitually presenting sermons that are allowing Baalism to thrive. The value of these four sermons though is that it allows patterns to be identified. Each of the sermons affirm Scripture’s authority and rehearses orthodox vocabulary, yet their operative message repeatedly aligns with what Scripture identifies as Baalism.

The pattern is consistent with the biblical portrayal of idolatry, not as outright rejection of Yahweh, but as His subtle reshaping. John Currid’s Against the Gods strengthens this interpretative framework, demonstrating that Baal worship represents a rival theological system in which the deity is recast into forms more compatible with human longing. Each sermon study below will begin with a synthesis of the sermon’s message, followed by explicit mapping to the biblical Baal patterns.

7.1 Nelson: Baalistic Self-Exemption in Romans 1:18-32

The first sermon in this study, titled “In Sin’s Grip” was preached by Rev. Ben Nelson at the South Yarra Presbyterian Church.[xiv] Nelson’s sermon on Roman’s 1:18–31 constructs a three-tiered universe that is foreign to Paul’s argument and closer to being functionally Baalistic for this reason. He begins by insisting that in this passage “he’s [Paul] going to address all the nations” and clarifies that by this he means “all the nations that didn’t have the scriptures, who didn’t have Israel’s witness”. From the outset, Romans 1 here is framed as a word about “them”, the nations “out there”, rather than a word to the gathered congregation in his church. Later he returns to the same frame: “Here we are, the nations of the world, rearing up our own gods that we have made and thinking that they can return to us blessing”.

Across the sermon the explicit objects of God’s wrath are “the nations,” “this world”, our culture,” “a nation,” “the wonders of this world” and “our towers of Babel”. The congregation is allowed to watch these things, comment on them, even lament them. What the sermon does not do is locate the hearers themselves within Paul’s indictment. The rhetoric repeatedly gives the congregation the position of those who can read “the page of this world” through the “lenses of knowing the true and living God”. 

Thus, introduced into the sermon is the congregation as a quasi-divine third party: God, the nations, and “us believers” who stand above the fray as interpreters rather than participants. That is exactly the structural move that this essay is calling the “Forensic Displacement” Baal pattern.

Throughout the sermon, reformed language and terms are used, the universality of guilt in principle is affirmed, but the operative portrayal of sin in the sermon functions primarily as an external, cultural, and national phenomenon rather than a personal, inward condition of the hearer. And this pattern is established right at the beginning of the sermon when Nelson frames the passage directed “to all the nations that didn’t have the Scriptures”. This framing governs the sermon’s moral logic. Sin is repeatedly described as what cultures do, rather than what sinners are. Information is imparted and analysis supplied, but the conscience is never summoned to stand personally before the righteous verdict Paul announces. The suppression of truth Paul refers to is cast by the sermon in collective and civilizational terms: “We have scratched out his name…we have taken the world”, where the “we” functions rhetorically as society rather than the congregation before him. Paul locates the root of idolatry not only in false worship but in ingratitude, yet the sermon never confronts the failure to “give thanks” as a personal moral rupture before a known and beneficent God.

This is the pattern used in the 7 Letters to the Churches in Revelation. There, the congregations were not assessed according to stated doctrines, but by the spiritual conditions produced under the teaching taking place. Faulty or selective proclamation shapes the life of a church long before it alters its confession. Sermons thus provide a reliable index of a community’s functional theology, whether or not it aligns with its formal confessions.

Lloyd-Jones, in his exposition of the same chapter, affirms this God-centred and universal reading. He notes that Paul does not begin with felt needs or Christian experience but with the wrath of God. The reason, Lloyd-Jones says that the wrath of God is first is because Paul was a God-centred man, rather than man-centred. The significance of Lloyd-Jones here is that he writes, if we are to come into a right relationship with God, we first need to know the truth of our current relationship: we are under God’s wrath and in danger of everlasting damnation. Applying Lloyd-Jones here to this sermon sermon, it is not “culture”, “society”, or “the nations” that are in this danger, it is humanity steeped in ungodliness. The sermon permits lament over cultural decline, but it does not induce the fear that Scripture associates with standing under the righteous judgment of God.

Seen in this light, Nelson’s sermon is not merely unbalanced, it is structurally Baalistic. By allowing the congregation to stand with God and pronounce on “the nations”, it re-enacts the covenant self-exemption Hosea condemns and denies the universal reach of sin. Referring to Calvin again, Nelson’s sermon leaves the idol factory of the human heart largely undisturbed within the church, the very place God has appointed for its demolition.

Although the sermon employs the vocabulary of “sin”, the term functions primarily to describe cultural disorder and moral consequences rather personal guilt before the righteous judgment of God. Sin appears chiefly as the outcome of idolatry and the condition into which societies fall once God is excluded. There is a subtle undermining of the doctrine of original sin with this approach. This subtle undermining is seen in the dominant rhetorical force of the sermon lying, not in naming sin as transgression requiring repentance, but in tracing the social and moral devastation that supposedly follows its embrace. Moreover, the term “sin” is consistently overshadowed by broader categories such as idolatry, exchange, and cultural decline, which, while biblically legitimate, allow the hearer to observe sin as a phenomenon rather than to confess it as a personal reality in the lives of the congregational members.

Although the misappropriation of sin is a major tactic of Baalism, the righteousness of God is always that which exposes it. In this sermon, the righteousness of God in v17 is not allowed to frame human unrighteousness or the justice of divine wrath.

This pattern need not arise from conscious theological denial, but from a homiletical instinct that explains judgment without allowing it to bind the hearer. Within the Baal taxonomy developed in this study, the sermon exemplifies what may be called forensic displacement, a form of Baalism in which divine judgement is acknowledged but detached from the righteousness that renders it personal and inescapable. In Romans 1, Baalism takes the form of an exchange: the truth of God is suppressed, His glory is displaced, and worship is redirected toward manageable substitutes. David Wells identifies how this displacement takes place when he writes “God rests too inconsequentially upon the church; His truth is too distant, His grace too ordinary, His judgment too benign, His gospel too easy, and His Christ too common.”[xviii] In this sermon, there is the erosion of the divine verdict upon humanity, a mitigation of sin.

7.2 The Exegetical Misdirection Baal—Accurate Explanation with Safe Application

This is the pattern used in the 7 Letters to the Churches in Revelation. There, the congregations were not assessed according to stated doctrines, but by the spiritual conditions produced under the teaching taking place. Faulty or selective proclamation shapes the life of a church long before it alters its confession. Sermons thus provide a reliable index of a community’s functional theology, whether or not it aligns with its formal confessions.

Calvin warned against this tendency of eloquence in preaching in his preface of Commentary on 1 Corinthians: “which consists in skilful contrivance of subjects, ingenious arrangement, and elegance of expression. He [Paul] declares that he had nothing of this: nay more, that it was neither suitable to his preaching nor advantageous.”[xx] The advantage Calvin was arguing for here was the accurate interpretation of doctrine to be applied. Calvin’s concern is not stylistic excess but theological displacement, where clarity and elegance become substitutes for the Word’s authority over the hearer. 

This sermon by Keath lacks the application that would bring advantage to its hearers. He offers excellent insights into the structure of Paul’s argument but avoids the crucial step of naming the idols likely to tempt his congregation. As a result, the test’s moral and spiritual force dissipates. Truth is received as information, not as revelation or command from God.

Exegetical misdirection occurs when the preacher handles Scripture with technical competence yet steers its message away from the hearer’s conscience. A sermon may be hermeneutically sound yet spiritually evasive. Lloyd-Jones characterizes such preaching as “lecturing rather than heralding”, for it transfers information without summoning the congregation to repentance. The sermon in question devotes considerable attention to philosophical explanation of atheism, cultural commentary, and apologetic reflections. Whilst these elements are not inherently problematic, they occupy the space where direct confrontation should occur. The danger here is not merely pedagogical weakness, but the tacit formation of a religious posture in which correct handling of Scripture substitutes for covenant obedience. Lloyd-Jones repeatedly warns that such preaching is unfaithful because  it informs without summoning the conscience.

This is the pattern used in the 7 Letters to the Churches in Revelation. There, the congregations were not assessed according to stated doctrines, but by the spiritual conditions produced under the teaching taking place. Faulty or selective proclamation shapes the life of a church long before it alters its confession. Sermons thus provide a reliable index of a community’s functional theology, whether or not it aligns with its formal confessions.

The absence of personal and congregational application is not a minor omission. Romans 1 is designed to expose the hearer’s own idolatry. When a preacher explains the text without pressing its implications, he inadvertently teaches the congregation that knowledge is sufficient for spiritual health. This is the very exchange Paul warns against: exchange the transformative truth of God for an intellectual likeness that demands little. The Baalism of this sermon operates, not by doctrinal deviation but by failing to call the hearer to the obedience of faith.

Up to this point, the discussion concerning this second sermon has been relatively abstract. When we ask what are the consequences of laying aside the application of the text inherent in this sermon, the seriousness is revealed. What is actually being laid aside is the holiness of God, as if it were irrelevant. Although Paul does not use holiness in this passage, God’s righteousness is what sets Him apart. David Wells diagnoses the irrelevancy of God’s holiness as a characteristic of modernity. Wells writes that the irrelevancy of God’s holiness renders the rest of God’s character as irrelevant also.[xxii] A subtle shift takes place in such preaching that, to quote Wells again, “clouds our perception of God and saps our interest in Him and His holiness”.[xxiii] Keath, most likely inadvertently, has brought modernity and its concerns for quick answers to problems, into the pulpit. Thus the Exegetical Misdirection Baal has been allowed to replace God with Self.

7.3 Therapeutic Baal—A God Who Explains, Reassures, and Stabilises

The third sermon we are looking at in this study exemplifies what may be described as Type 3 Therapeutic Baal. My personal experience in the PCV is that this is the most prevalent Baal type I have encountered. Unlike the first 2 patterns, the theological difficulty here does not arise from exegetical inaccuracy or doctrinal deviation. This sermon, preached by Rev Toby McIntosh, at Ebenezer Presbyterian Church in Ballarat on the 16th Feb, 2025.[xxiv]  It is careful, reverent, and largely orthodox. Romans 1:18–23 is explained clearly, divine wrath is affirmed rather than denied, and idolatry is treated as a serious biblical category. These features are worthy of recognition. Yet when the sermon is analysed according to its pastoral function and sequencing, a consistent therapeutic ordering emerges that reshapes how the text acts upon the hearer.

From the outset, McIntosh has framed the passage as that which helps the congregation understand humanity and the world. He repeatedly explains why people suppress the truth, how general revelation operates, and how idolatry manifests across the cultures and history. 

This explanatory emphasis is sustained throughout the sermon. While Paul’s stated aim in Romans1 is to announce that “the wrath of God is revealed from heaven” in order to render humanity “without excuse”, this sermon’ dominant effect is to create interpretative distance. The text becomes a diagnostic account of “humanity in general” rather than a divine address confronting those presently under the Word in the congregation.

The sermon does define the wrath of God, and it does so in careful, orthodox terms. Divine wrath is repeatedly distinguished from human anger and described as rational, controlled, and just. Yet this definition functions pastorally to neutralise rather than intensify the force of the doctrine. Wrath is explained, but never directed. The congregation is not addressed as those whom God’s wrath stands, nor are the consequences of remaining under the wrath of God exposed. Romans 1 presents wrath not as an abstract aspect of God, but as an active judgment already at work. In the sermon, wrath remains a concept to be understood rather than a reality to be feared.

Similarly, sin is explained extensively but framed in ways that soften its judicial weight. Suppression of truth, futile thinking, and idolatry are described as universal human tendencies, common mis-directions of attention, or failures to give God due credit. What is notably absent is any presentation of sin as enmity with God. The congregation is never addressed as hostile to God, under condemnation, or in need of reconciliation. Sin is treated as dysfunction rather than rebellion. As a result, the hearer is never brought to the point of person collapse where repentance becomes unavoidable.

This sequencing is decisive. Explanation consistently precedes exposure, and reassurance arrives before any moral crisis is allowed to develop. There is not a direct call to repentance, no imperative to turn, and no moment in which the congregation is summoned to respond decisively to the the Word. Confession appears only within the closing prayer, after encouragement and reassurance have already been supplied. Assurance is given without repentance having been first demanded. As Lloyd-Jones repeatedly insisted, the truth is meant to disturb before it can comfort. In this sermon, comfort consistently precedes disturbance and, in practice, replaces it.

The gospel is mentioned frequently and warmly affirmed as the power of God to save. Yet it is never defined in relation to the problem of Romans 1 establishes. Christ is presented as the one who meets needs, offers fulfillment, and provides a better alternative to idols. What is absent is Christ as the one who deliverers from wrath, bears judgment, and reconciles enemies to God. Because the hearer is never placed in a position of imminent peril, the gospel never becomes necessary rescue. It functions instead as encouragement and reassurance. This aligns with David F. Well’s diagnosis of modern preaching in God in the Wasteland, where God is not denied but rendered therapeutically manageable, such that His Holiness “clouds our perceptions of God and saps our interest in Him and His holiness.

Throughout the sermon, the congregation is addressed more as observers of humanity than as covenant hearers under divine address. This is much the same as we witnessed in the first sermon of this study, The repeated focus on “people,” “humanity,” and cultural patterns creates explanatory distance. The hearer is rarely addressed as one who must respond now, under the authority of God’s revelation. This allows the sermon to be admired without being obeyed. There is no cost attached to non-response. In this respect, the sermon reflects what Mark Sayers describes as the formation of the autonomous self, for whom religion exists to assist meaning-making, rather than to command obedience.

This therapeutic ordering stands in contrast to the pastoral instincts of John Calvin, who warned against preaching that prioritises clarity or eloquence while failing to bring doctrine to its proper use. For Calvin, the purpose of exposition was not merely understanding but submission, such that the Word would “strip men of every empty confidence.” In this sermon, confidence is not stripped but preserved. The hearer is informed, reassured, and encouraged, but not unseated.

Theologically, this pattern aligns with the Baalism condemned in Hosea. Baal was not preferred because he was obviously false, but because he was manageable. He offered security without repentances and blessing without covenant fidelity. In this sermon, God becomes manageable not through ritual manipulation but through therapeutic framing. He is allowed to explain reality, but not to interrupt it. He comforts without first wounding, reassures without first accusing, and restores without first judging.

The pastoral intent behind such preaching may be sincere and the doctrinal content largely orthodox, but the functional outcome remains Baalistic. A God who explains but does not oppose is not the God revealed in Romans 1. It is a therapeutic rendering of God, shaped by modern affective expectations rather than apostolic design. This sermon therefor represents a clear instance of therapeutic Baalism, not because of what it teaches incorrectly, but because of what it consistently prevents the Word of God from doing to those who it.

7.4 The Baal-Berith or Decisionist Baal—A God Who Offers but Does Not Act Until We Choose

The Fourth sermon reveals the most explicit and developed form of Baalistic pattern: the Baal-Berith or Decisionist Baal. It is the Baal I least expected to see in PCV preaching, but the sermon under discussion here was preached by Rev Chris Duke at Essendon PCV. [xxv]  In ancient Israel, Baal-Berith was the god of covenant choice, under whom Israel imagined that divine favour could be secured by human initiative, ritual assent, or voluntary alignment. Judges 9 records Israel’s apostasy under this title, and Hosea repeatedly exposes the same logic when Israel imagines that she can secure blessing from a deity who responds to her choices rather than from the Lord who binds Himself in sovereign covenant love.

The modern version appears whenever salvation is framed primarily as a human decision rather than as God’s sovereign act of grace. The sermon analysed here presents Romans 1 as a backdrop for a climatic appeal in which hearers are urged to “make a choice,” “decide to accept the gift,” or ‘choose whether to live under God’s judgement or under His mercy.” 

While such language is familiar in evangelical contexts, it subtly but significantly relocates causal agency from God to the individual. The sermon concludes that a Christian is someone who has “chosen to accept the offer,” a formulation that distorts the Pauline argument.

Paul’s purpose in Roman’s 1 is to strip the sinner of every ground of self-confidence. Calvin emphasises that Paul exposes the depth of human corruption precisely to show that repentance is impossible apart from divine renewal. This sermon, however, reverses this order. Divine action is presented as contingent upon human choice. Grace becomes an offered possibility rather than an effectual work of God. In this schema, God may desire the sinner’s salvation, but He cannot bring it about without the sinner’s decisive act.

This pattern bears bears striking resemblance to Baalism. In Hosea’s context, Baal was a deity whom the worshiper could activate or appease through ritual. The power lay not in Baal himself bit in the worshiper’s agency. Similarly, in decisionistic preaching, the decisive moment of salvation depends upon human will. Grace is presented as a gift waiting to be unwrapped. God’s mercy is passive until acted upon by the sinner. Such a framework is alien to both Calvin’s doctrine of grace and Paul’s theology of conversion. It reflects a fundamentally anthropocentric soteriology.

Duke’s sermon also softens divine wrath in order to make the appeal more palatable. The wrath of God, which Paul presents as a present reality revealed from heaven, is reframed as a future possibility that can be avoided through the individual’s decision. The emphasis falls on human agency rather than divine judgement. This displacement is typical of the Baal-Berith pattern, in which the worshiper perceives salvation as a transaction within his control. It also mirrors the dynamic exposed by contemporary cultural analysis. Sayer’s account of the autonomous self and our obsession with “solutionism” helps explain why decisionistic frameworks persist: they affirm the individual’s capacity to determine his spiritual destiny. Duke is presenting the equivalent to Sayer’s “killer-app”.[xxvi] This sermon therefore resonates more closely with secular narratives of choice than with biblical covenantal witness.

Furthermore, the sermon neglects the relational and covenantal dynamics of idolatry. Paul does not describe sinners as free agents weighing divine options but as those who are “given over” because they have “exchanged the truth about God for a lie”. The human condition is not one of neutrality but one of bondage. By obscuring this reality, the sermon implicitly denies the necessity of divine regeneration. It also reduces repentance to the acceptance of a proposal rather than the turning of the heart effected by the Spirit. Lloyd-Jones warned that such preaching places unbearable moral weight on the hearer, transforming the gospel into another law. As Lloyd-Jones writes in his commentary on Rom 1:2, Old Testament history proves mankind was totally unable to make right decisions, “proving that any attempt on man’s own part to save himself is futile”.[xvii] This sermon is exhorting its listeners to participate in acts of futility.

From a pastoral perspective, decisionistic preaching can appear urgent and evangelistically effective. Yet the theological consequence is profound: it offers a god who is willing but not able to do anything until acted upon by the human will. This is the modern form of Baal-Berith. This sermon thus represents the clearest example of Baalism in this study, for it relocates the decisive act of salvation from the God who raises the dead, to the sinner who must choose his own salvation.

Although these four sermons were preached within a confessional Presbyterian context, each sermon consistently functions outside the covenantal logic that defines the Reformed theology. The sermons may appear orthodox in content because of the Reformed language and terms used and yet they stand at odds with covenantal theology in their operative assumptions and pastoral sequencing. As a result, the sermons operate within a theological logic that is difficult to reconcile with the covenantal framework revealed in the Old Testament and confirmed in the New Testament, and historically confessed within Presbyterian theology.

Section 8: The Hosea 11 Sermon—The Most Revealing Case Study.

The preceding analysis of the four sermons from Romans 1 exposes distinct patterns of theological drift, each corresponding to one of the Baal types identified in this study. Yet none displays the Baalistic dynamic as starkly or as theologically revealingly as the sermon on Hosea 11 preached by Rev Dave Martin at the New Life Presbyterian Church in Officer.[xxix] The significance of this sermon lies not merely in its content but in the text’s context. Hosea 11 is the canonical locus of Israel’s Baalism, the passage in which the prophet confronts the covenant people with the emotional, theological, and relational depth of their betrayal. It is the chapter in which God’s holy love stands in direct opposition to Israel’s idolatrous functional disobedience. A distortion of this text therefore constitutes not only a misreading of Scripture but a re-enactment of the very dynamics that the text condemns.

This section examines the Hosea sermon in three stages. First, it outlines the biblical and theological structure of Hosea 11 as the prophet presents it. Second, it contrasts this structure with the interpretation given in Martin’s sermon with reference to Calvin as a historical and doctrinal benchmark.

Finally, it demonstrates how the sermon reproduces the logic of Baalism even while warning against it, thereby revealing the most serious form of homiletical drift in this study.

8.1 Hosea 11 as Scripture Presents It: Covenant Love and Infidelity in Tension.

Hosea 11 is a deeply personal passage. God speaks as a father who has raised Israel form infancy. “I taught Ephraim to walk,” He declares, “I took them up in my arms”. Yet Israel has persistently refused His call. “The more they were called, the more they went away; they kept sacrificing to the Baals”. The relational betrayal is explicit. Idolatry here is not an abstract theological deviation. It is the rejection of divine care. Derek Kidner describes Hosea 11 as “one of the boldest in the whole Bible in exposing to us the mind and heart of God in human terms.”.[xxx] The interplay of tenderness and judgment evident throughout Hosea climaxes in chapter 11 where it is God’s love that is revealed as wounded yet holy.

Two themes dominate the chapter. First, divine holiness requires judgment. Israel’s refusal to repent places her under the threat of Assyrian invasion. Hosea does not conceal the intensity of God’s anger. This is clearly seen in the rhetorical language of Hos 2:2; “For she is not my wife and I am not her husband”. Second, divine compassion restrains judgment. God’s heart recoils within Him; His compassion grows warm and tender. Yet this compassion does not cancel His holiness. “I am God and not a man,” He insists, “the Holy One in your midst”, Hos 11:9. The theological tension is essential. God’s fatherly love is not sentimental affection but covenantal loyalty that refuses to abandon His people while still upholding His holy character.

Israel’s fundamental sin in Hosea 11, according to YHWH, is the worship of Baal. Israel prefers a god whose blessings can be obtained without covenant faithfulness. This reveals itself in the outward performance of rituals of worship for security but avoiding the covenant love of God. This is why Hosea’s diagnosis is so penetrating. Israel believes herself faithful while living in functional idolatry. She retains the name of Yahweh yet rejects the obligations of covenant.

8.2 The Sermon’s Interpretation: From Covenant Treachery to Sentimental Divine Affection.

Against this background, Martin’s interpretation of Hosea 11 exhibts several theological inversions that significantly alter the text’s meaning. The most striking is the transformation of divine compassion into sentimental affirmation. The sermon presents God primarily as a grieving parent whose love overrides judgement. Wrath is mentioned only briefly and abstractly. The focus rests on God’s emotional pain, not on the moral weight of Israel’s unfaithfulness. This reframing obscures the covenantal dynamic of the passage and recasts God’s love in therapeutic categories.

Calvin’s exposition stands in clear contrast. For Calvin, the imagery of divine fatherhood in Hosea 11 intensifies the seriousness of Israel’s betrayal. After writing on how Israel had been brought by the hand of God from the grave to light, Calvin writes: “now God goes further, and says, that he had not ceased to show his love to them, and yet had obtained nothing by his perseverance; for the wickedness and depravity of the people were incurable.”[xxxi] Divine grief is not emotional fragility but the moral outrage of a holy God whose covenant love has been scorned. When Calvin comments on the divine question, “How can I give you up, O Ephraim,” he rejects any interpretation that suggests divine indecision. Rather, he insists that God is revealing the depth of His mercy in a way consistent with His holiness. Martin’s sermon, however, implicitly treats God’s compassion as a form of permissive tenderness, diminishing the force of divine wrath and the necessity of repentance.

A second distortion concerns the portrayal of human agency. The sermon suggests that God’s love remains ineffective until the hearer “accepts” it or “returns” by an act of their will. Salvation is presented as a divine offer waiting for human response. This is the logic of the Baal Berith pattern, in which the decisive act is human rather than divine. Hosea, by contrast, repeatedly emphasises Israel’s inability and the necessity of divine intervention. “I will heal their faithlessness” is the wider context of the book. Hosea 12:6 is one such text where the Lord promises to undertake for his people. Calvin confirms what should be a Reformed POV when he asks “is there any softness in a stone”?[xxxii] Repentance must come from God alone and He must be sought for it. Martin’s sermon therefore, with its decisionistic framing, stands at odds with the covenant theology of Hosea and aligns more closely with the very idolatrous dynamics the text condemns.

A third distortion lies in the absence of covenant categories. The sermon speaks of God’s love for individuals but not of His covenant relationship with His people. There is no discussion of Israel’s obligations, of the moral implications of divine fatherhood, or of the seriousness of Baalism. God’s love appears unconditional in the modern psychological sense rather than in the biblical covenantal sense. As Kidner notes, “God’s mercy, in the great soliloquy of verses 8 and 9, decreed survival and a future for His people, when they deserved neither.”[xxxiii]

8.3 How the Sermon Reproduces Baal’s Logic

Most striking in Martin’s sermon is the irony that the sermon reenacts the logic of Baalism precisely in the act of condemning it. Baalism, as defined earlier, involves the reshaping of God into a deity who blesses without demanding covenant fidelity and whose favor can be secured through human initiative. The Hosea sermon here presents a God whose love is unlinked from holiness and whose saving action demands human choice. In this way, the sermon creates a contemporary equivalent of Baal; a god who is emotionally available but covenantally undemanding.

Several features reveal this dynamic. First, the sermon's emphasis is God’s emotional experience without corresponding emphasis on His moral character. Divine grief becomes a therapeutic motif rather than a theological revelation of holiness violated. This reproduces Baalistic sentimentality, in which the deity’s role is to provide comfort rather than to uphold covenant righteousness.

Second, the sermon omits the theme of Israel’s covenant obligations. By focusing almost exclusively on divine affection, it obscures the theological structure that makes Hosea 11 intelligible. Without covenant categories, Baalism cannot be named and called out because the distinction between true and false worship collapses into categories of emotional experience.

This final sermon in the five we have briefly looked at is perhaps the most serious case of Baal-shaped preaching in this study. Its distortions arise not from overt doctrinal error but from the subtle accommodation of therapeutic and decisionistic frameworks. This is precisely the kind of idolatry Hosea condemns: a reshaping of the Lord into a figure who meets emotional needs while leaving the heart’s idols unchallenged.

The pastoral consequences of Baal-shaped preaching are profound. When sermons soothe rather than summon, comfort rather than confront, the congregation gradually loses the capacity for repentance. Divine holiness becomes a background assumption rather than a living reality; sin is reframed as weakness rather than rebellion; and God’s mercy is sentimentalised into a form of psychological support. Over time the people of God become catechised into presumption, expecting comfort without contrition and grace without glad submission. Hosea warns that such distortions do not merely misinform the mind but deform the soul, producing a covenant community that bears God’s name while refusing His character. The tragedy is not that such sermons are overtly heretical, but that they slowly unmake the moral and spiritual instincts necessary for genuine faithfulness. On this, let Rev 3:15 have the final word here: “I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. I could wish you were cold or hot”.

8.4 The Significance of this Case for the Study

The Hosea sermon is the interpretative climax of this analysis for two reasons. First, Hosea 11 is the passage in which Scripture most clearly diagnoses Baalism. When a sermon on this chapter reproduces Baalistic patterns, the extent of theological drift becomes unmistakable. Second, the sermon demonstrates how idolatry can re-enter the pulpit even under the guise of pastoral care or evangelistic warmth. The preacher intends to comfort the congregation, yet in doing so he reshapes the character of God in a manner inconsistent with Scripture.

This case thus illustrates the central thesis of the study: Baal returns to the pulpit not through doctrinal rebellion but through subtle shifts in tone, emphasis, and application that realign the hearer’s trust away from the Holy One of Israel towards a god compatible with contemporary sensibilities. The Hosea sermon serves as the clearest example of this dynamic, revealing how Baalism can be revived within the very act of condemning it.

If we ask, how can this happen when a preacher is seeking to be pastoral and encouraging, the answer lies in an inadequate understanding of the doctrine of sin. When sin is no longer understood as covenant infidelity against a holy God which by definition, places the sinner under divine wrath, Scripture is compromised. Efforts to portray sin as a condition to be soothed or managed, result in the holy God of Hosea being quietly displaced, and a more accommodating deity takes His place.

Section 9: Toward a Reformed Homiletic of Covenant Fidelity

This essay was not intended to be sermon reviews. As such, the many worthy insights contained within each of the sermons, whilst not addressed, are to be recognised as substantial. Nor can viewing sermons online be a replacement for being a regular worshipper at your local church where the local pastor knows his congregation and seeks to faithfully care for his flock. Nor should it be taken that these sermons are either representative of the ministries of each of the ministers, or necessarily, of the whole Presbyterian Church of Victoria. 

However, throughout Church history, faithful pastors understood that the gospel heals only after it wounds. Sin must be exposed in the light of God’s holiness before grace can be received. This principle arises from the nature of the gospel itself. The good news of salvation is unintelligible without the prior announcement of divine wrath, human corruption, and the moral gravity of idolatry. Romans 1 begins with the revelation of God’s wrath precisely so that the hearer may comprehend the necessity of the gospel Paul proclaims in Romans 3. When sermons soften or bypass this confrontation, they risk producing listeners who feel reassured without being redeemed.

A homiletic of covenant fidelity must therefore begin where Scripture begins. Preaching must confront the congregation with the holiness of God, the reality of judgment, and the universality of idolatry. This confrontation is not cruelty but grace, for it strips away the false securities offered by the Baal patterns identified earlier. By naming and exposing sin plainly and pressing it upon the conscience, the preacher undermines the therapeutic God of sentimentality, the decisionistic God of human autonomy, and the cultural gods of comfort and approval. Only when the congregation encounters the God who is “a consuming fire” can it rejoice in the God who is “merciful and gracious”.

It is not enough to present divine love as emotional tenderness that promote a therapeutic narrative and moral encouragement to do better. Reformed preaching must restore covenantal categories if it is to withstand sentimental distortions that lead to functional Baalism. Our preaching must assert divine initiative if the hearer is to be set free from the anxiety of Baalistic decisionism. Faithful preaching will dismantle the Baalistic assumption that God is waiting upon us before He can save us. Ultimately, the task of the preacher is not to offer a manageable God, but to proclaim the God who is “merciful and gracious”, and yet, “a consuming fire”. Only such preaching can guard the church from the Baalistic preaching uncovered in the sermons of this study.

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