Hosea 8:9-13

The justice of the judgments threatened with further additions.

Their errand to Assyria added to their sin; they sought heathen helpers to uphold them in their apostasy and idolatry, increasing their sin.

I. ONE SINFUL ACT IS PROLIFIC OF MANY MORE . One sinful course draws on another, just as one lie necessitates one or more to make it plausible, or prop it up or cloak it. The revolt from the Davidic dynasty was a wrong step and a sinful one; the idolatry Of the calves was still more wicked. The progression was from bad to worse; but to have recourse to foreign allies to secure them in their twofold national iniquity was yet another step down the steep incline of sin.

II. SIN IS AT ONCE A FOOLISH AND EXPENSIVE THING .

1. Ephraim's conduct was as perverse in this regard as the headstrong wild ass that refuses all restraint, and stubbornly pursues its own headlong course through the desert; or, if it be a contrast and not a comparison, the folly of Ephraim is reproved by the wild ass, which is sufficiently wise to roam at large in its own solitary way, keeping aloof from all interference with its liberty and retaining its independence.

2. But Epraim's folly cost them dear. Like a shameless wanton, wooing and not waiting to be wooed, they resorted to sinful helps which were as much adultery as idolatry itself; they hired help by such adulterous alliances. The help they thus procured in reality helped them not; they submitted to the suzerainty of Assyria, and became subject to imposts and tribute. To escape one master, men sometimes put themselves in the power of a worse, repeating the experience of the poet's fable "

A lordly stag, arm'd with superior force,

Drove from their common field a vanquish'd horse,

Who for revenge to man his strength enslaved,

Took up his rider and the bit received;

But, though he conquer'd in the martial strife,

He felt his rider's weight, and champ'd the hit for life."

II. GOD ALONE IS THE SURE REFUGE OF HIS PEOPLE IN THEIR STRAITS . In time of trouble men often sin against God, and sin against their own soul by going elsewhere in search of help. If in their straits they seek help of God, all will be well with them in the end. When trouble comes, when affliction comes, when we are in distress, instead of simple shifts we are to seek help from God; instead of putting confidence in creaturely succors, we must apply to the Creator. To neglect him and sue for relict elsewhere, is forsaking our own mercies and turning our back on God; to depart from God and depend on sinful means of help, is hurtful in the effort and in the effect, as well in the emergency as in the issue and end. Nor need we ever distrust his care or doubt his kindness, if only in earnest we apply to him; his help is real, his help is effectual; he bestows it without stint and without fee or reward, without money and without price. As the psalmist sings so beautifully

"God is our Refuge and our Strength,

In straits a present Aid;

Therefore, although the earth remove,

We shall not be afraid."

IV. WRONG MEANS OF HELP PROVE RUINOUS . The help which Israel hired among the heathen, so far from availing them, put them in a worse position than before.

1. God would frustrate their purpose, gathering their hired allies against them, or themselves as exiles among aliens and enemies. If "a little ' be not referred to time nor understood ironically, it may mean that heavy as was the tribute imposed by the Assyrian monarch, and grievous to be borne so that it caused revolt, it was the source of little grief compared with what followed, when first a portion and then the whole of the nation were carried into Captivity.

2. Partly similar and partly dissimilar is the following exposition of Kimchi: "They at first murmured and complained on account of the burthen of the king and the princes, as is written in the Book of Kings that the kings of the nations imposed tribute on them; and this the prophet calls a trifle in comparison with the Captivity." The taxes and burdens with which they were oppressed were, indeed, mere trifles, and easily borne in respect of the Captivity and the calamities that succeeded.

3. "A people," says an old expositor, "who have suffered under lesser trouble, and yet have made no right use of it to prevent more, or have used sinful means to be rid of it, may expect no other issue but that the Lord will send a greater trouble to make them forget the former; for this had been their carriage under their tribute and burdens, and they are therefore told they shall sorrow a little for the burden of the king of princes." Further, the means that men use will be of little avail so long as they refuse to acknowledge God, while the most prudent plans of their own devising, if unsanctioned and unblessed by him, end in disappointment and disaster; what they hire for their preservation becomes their undoing, and issues in destruction. Israel had applied to Assyria, and as the result of that application "began to be minished through the burden of the king of princes" (according to one rendering of the clause). First came the exactions of Pul, then the captivity of Gilead by Tiglath-pileser, and in the end the deportation of all Israel by Shatmaneser.

V. A SHOW OF RELIGION WITHOUT THE SUBSTANCE SERVES ONLY TO INCREASE BIN . God had, from the time of Moses, appointed one altar at Jerusalem; and when, in the days of Joshua, the trans-Jordanic tribes were thought by their brethren to have built an altar in violation of the Divine appointment, it called forth a most vigorous remonstrance: "What trespass is this that ye have committed against the God of Israel, to turn away this day from following the Lord, in that ye have builded you an altar, that ye might rebel this day against the Lord?" It was only on receiving an explanation that it was not a sacrificial but monumental altar that the western brethren were reconciled.

1. Now, however, they had so far degenerated that beside the once central altar at Jerusalem they had one at Dan, another at Bethel, and others on every high hill and any other place that pleased them. This multiplication of altars had the appearance of religion, but only the appearance; these many altars were in all likelihood made for the ostensible purpose of offering expiatory sacrifices for sin, but were actually an augmentation of the people's sin, each altar becoming an additional element in the national transgression.

2. They had turned aside from God for human help; next they turned aside from the divinely appointed mode of worship to bureau methods, substituting for the pure service of the Most High the miserable semblance of self-devised religiousness. They had made many altars, which, however intended, resulted in the commission of sin; and now these many altars, instead of expiating their sins or making amends for their transgressing God's express command, are counted to them for sin and bring them in guilty before God, not to speak of the fact that the multiplication of altars to the true God would occasion the further sin of dedicating altars to other and strange gods. If men corrupt religion, however plausible their pretext, they do it at unspeakable peril to their own soul and the souls of others,

VI. THERE IS NO REASONABLE EXCUSE FOR SIN . This was specially the case with Israel, and still more particularly with ourselves. If Israel had been left in heathen darkness, if they had been ignorant of the Divine statutes and judgments, if they had not enjoyed the high privilege of being made the custodians of God's living oracles, there might have been some excuse for them, though indeed natural reason is sufficient to leave even the heathen without any reasonable excuse for idolatry.

1. But how different it was with Israel! God had made known to them, and that in permanent written record, the many lessons of his Law; but much as God had done for the people of Jewry, still more has he done for the peoples of Christendom, for while the Law came by Moses, grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. We have in our hands, and for daily perusal, the wondrous things of the Law and the gracious things of the gospel; the twin lips of God's great oracle speak to us.

2. Many and great are the lessons of the written Word. Many as they are in number, they are yet greater in importance—great in their origin, for they come from God and are given by inspiration of his Spirit; great in their utility to man, for they make him acquainted with the things that pertain to life and godliness; great in their issues, for the interests of eternity are intertwined with them and depend on them; great as revealing the one living and true God, the way of his worship, his well-beloved Son our only Savior, and the plan of salvation by him.

3. Proportionately great is the sin of neglecting them. Israel, though God had been at pains to write to them the great things of his Law, turned their back upon them as something strange in which they had no concern, and with which they were disinclined to intermeddle, and which, even if attended to, could prove of little moment. These things, in greater measure and with greater fullness, have been handed on to us; for, though written long ago, they were written for our learning. What a terrible responsibility rests on us if we neglect these things from indifference, or slight them from contempt, or refuse to be directed, guided, and governed by them, or reject them altogether as unworthy of our observance and obedience, or as unsuitable to a progressive age and present circumstances!

VII. SELFISH SERVICES ARE VOID OF SIGNIFICANCE . "Most part of worshippers follow the external duties of religion no further than their own ends lead them; and men's own advantage is the upholder of all false religion, for they sacrifice and eat it ."

1. They feasted on their sacrifices. This was allowable in the case of peace offerings and thank offerings; but in the case of the burnt offerings they were wholly consecrated to God, and ascended (according to the import of the name) in the altar-smoke to heaven. Israel was not, it is probable, careful to mark the distinction or restrict their appetite in the case. It is right and proper that we should carry our religion into our business, but decidedly wrong to carry our business, with all its selfishness or greed of gain, into our religion.

2. Their worship was a lifeless, soul-less, unspiritual service. Besides being offered in the wrong place and by the wrong persons—that is, in places forbidden and by unauthorized persons, such as Jeroboam's priests—they were offered without the right aim or right end, or any true devotion of spirit. It was mere external worship, without spiritual affections, or spiritual dispositions, or spiritual life; and therefore such sacrifices wanted the proper qualities and necessary characteristics of sacrifice; they were, in fact, only flesh, and the victims only carcasses, and consequently the Lord could not away with them; he accepted them not.

3. A proper spirit, a pure heart, and clean hands are among the conditions of acceptable service. God, by the Prophet Isaiah, after affirming his respect to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and trembling at the Divine Word, adds in relation to the opposite character, "He that killeth an ox is as if he slew a man; he that sacrificeth a lamb, as if he cut off a dog's neck; he that offereth an oblation, as if he offered swine's blood; he that burneth incense, as if he blessed an idol." So in the New Testament we are required to present "reasonable service," or service in which the soul and spirit are engaged, as opposed to what is merely outward and corporeal. 4. Unhallowed services only remind God of the offences of the worshippers, whose sins in consequence he remembers, not to pardon them, but to punish them. The God that redeemed them and brought them out of Egypt will send them back into bondage, in Assyria or elsewhere, equal to or worse than that of Egypt. Some literally and actually went to Egypt, and found a grave there.