Hosea 9:7-9

There is no joy, any more than peace, to the sinner.

However men put away from them the evil day, they can neither stave it off altogether nor delay its coming.

I. THE CERTAINTY OF THE DIVINE JUDGMENTS OVERTAKING SINNERS . In the previous verse the prophetic past is used, to intimate that, though the event predicted had not yet taken place, yet was it as sure of accomplishment as if it had already occurred. Here the words "are come" are repeated to apprise sinners of its certainty; thus we read in the same tense, and with like repetition, "Babylon is fallen, is fallen." So also in Ezekiel 7:6 , "An end is come, the end is come … behold, it is come;" while in the verse preceding, and in the one succeeding, the same expression is repeated to impress men with the fact of the threatened judgments being both sure and near, and thus prevent self-deception.

II. THE CHARACTER OF THE DIVINE JUDGMENTS .

1. They are days of Divine visitation . Men's sins shall be searched out and brought to light; they shall be scrutinized by the omniscient and heart-searching God.

2. They are days of recompense , when not only shall an exact account be taken, but a just recompense of reward dealt out to each according as his work shall be. The recompense shall correspond to the visitation; the stricter the former, the juster and more exact the latter.

3. They are days near at hand, so near as well as certain that they are spoken of as already come.

III. THE CONDUCT OF THE PROPHET . If, as some suppose, the prophet here mentioned is

" 1. What a great God they had to deal with.

2. How vile a thing sin is.

3. The vanity of all their shirtings.

4. The dreadfulness of Divine wrath.

5. The faithfulness of God's prophets.

6. The wisdom of those who dared not do as they did.

7. The folly and vanity of all the false prophets that did before seduce them."

IV. THE CAUSE OF ALL THEIR ERRORS WAS THE MULTITUDE OF THEIR SINS . Faults in their life, as is not unusual with wicked men, bred errors in the brain. Their iniquity had been great and aggravated, and, in addition to their multiplied iniquity, they were just objects of hatred and subjects of the same—at once "hateful and hating." Besides their vile heart and wicked life, they hated God, his ambassadors, his ways, and. all godliness. Could they fail to be children of wrath while their carnal mind was thus enmity to God? It was reasonable that God should abandon such persons to prophets of lies, to deceive and undo their souls; or, on the other hand, it was in keeping with the malignity of their hearts and the malice of their nature to calumniate the prophets of the Lord and vilify them as fools and madmen; while the fact of accounting them so, aggravated their sins, hastened the fast-coming visitation, and intensified the recompense of reward.