Hosea 11:5-12

The ingratitude of Israel and its punishment.

Both are remarkably manifested in these verses. After all God's loving-kindness they refuse to turn to God.

I. THEIR PERVERSENESS . History repeats itself. This is true ecclesiastically as well as civilly, under the Jewish economy as in the Christian dispensation. Once before, at an early period in Hebrew history and on a remarkable occasion, the Israelites, discouraged by the teachings of the spies, debased by previous servitude, deficient in moral courage, and, worst of all, distrustful of Divine providence, refused to march into Canaan. They murmured against God and against Moses. "Back to Egypt," was their cry. And back they went, not to Egypt, but to wander in the wilderness for eight and thirty years longer, as a justly merited punishment for their unthankfulness and rebellion against God. Similarly on the occasion to which the prophet here refers. They bad grievously sinned against God, yet they fancied they would find refuge in Egypt; they had rebelled and resisted all the means employed to bring them back to God, but they would not return to him. And now they cry, like their forefathers, "To Egypt," as if shelter and safety could be obtained there. But God frustrates their silly, sinful purpose. A worse than the bondage of Egypt awaits them; they were destined to go into captivity to Assyria.

2. So with stubborn and stout-hearted sinners still. They will go anywhere, or resort to any expedient, even returning to Egypt, rather than return to God. For a time the prodigal would rather be a swineherd, and share the husks on which the swine fed, than return to the abundance of his father's house. "Some stubborn children care not what miseries they suffer rather than return and humble themselves to their parents;" so some stubborn spirits seem disposed, in their folly and desperation, to return to their former state of bondage and misery rather than repent and submit themselves to God. Let such beware lest, owing to their impatience and impenitence, a worse thing befall them.

II. THEIR PUNISHMENT . The three chief scourges by which God chastises a disobedient people are famine, pestilence, and the sword.

1. Of the three, the sword is, perhaps, the worst. At all events David thought it so. When he was called to make choice between seven years of famine, three days' pestilence, and three months' flight before the pursuing sword of the enemy, he preferred falling into the hand of God rather than into the hand of man, choosing the pestilence rather than the sword.

2. And yet the sword also has its commission from God, as we learn from the exclamation of the prophet, "O thou sword of the Lord, how long will it be ere thou be quiet? put up thyself into thy scabbard, rest, and be still." But it is added, in answer to this inquiry, "How can it be quiet, seeing the Lord hath given it a charge against Ashkelon, and against the sea-shore? there hath he appointed it."

3. The Prophet Hosea pictures the severity of the stroke either by the wide area which the sword swept over, or the length of time it continued to distress them; also by the fact that the cities which were looked upon as the strong fortresses, at all events the strength of the land, were the main objects of attack. Elsewhere in the fields or open country the ravages of war are not quite so dreadful as in the city with its crowded population, where human beings, densely massed together, are literally mowed down. Nor yet were the villages spared, nor did their bars shut out the enemy.

4. The duty of prayer is incumbent in time of war. This lesson is inculcated by the example of the psalmist. After speaking in the fifty-fifth psalm of having seen violence and strife in the city, while men hurried to and fro upon the walls, with other sad accompaniments of troublous times—mischief, sorrow, wickedness, deceit, and guile—he announces the course he pursued: "As for me, I will call upon God; and the Lord shall save me. Evening, and morning, and at noon, will I pray, and call aloud: and he shall hear my voice;" while peace and deliverance were the happy outcome of his prayers: "He hath delivered my soul in peace from the battle that was against me: for there were many with me."

III. THEIR PRONENESS TO BACKSLIDE . Proneness to backsliding was not peculiar to the people or the period of Hosea's prophesyings. The unregenerate heart is invariably the source of backsliding. When a religious profession is influenced only by external motive and not by internal power, men may be expected to backslide. In the days of our Lord it was sorrowfully said of some that they went back and walked no more with Jesus. In seasons of religious revival, of many who make a profession of religion, that profession, in the case of some, proceeds from an outward impulse, certain convictions, or even the power of sympathy, and soon as the time of excitement is over they backslide; their convictions did not ripen into conversion; the root of the matter was never in them. The same is occasionally found in the case of some young communicants. At the first communion, the boy in the freshness of his youth, the girl in the purity of her childhood, feel much ardor of affection and manifest much fervor of devotion; but what from unfavorable surroundings, or evil communications, or little sins unchecked, the love of their espousals grows cold, and backsliding ensues. Even in the case of persons truly converted, a degree of coldness creeps over them; they seem to grow weary of the ways of God; they become apathetic, and backslide for a time. Beware of grieving the Holy Spirit; beware of resisting the strivings and stirrings of conscience; beware of putting the hand to the plough and then turning back or turning aside to folly; in a word, beware of backsliding. Be warned by that solemn Scripture, "If any man draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him."

IV. THE PERPLEXITY CAUSED TO THE ALMIGHTY . With reverence be it spoken, the conduct of Israel seems to have puzzled the all-merciful One himself. Judgment was due, but love holds it in check; the vials of wrath were ready to be poured out, but the voice of mercy intercedes; punishment was well deserved, but the hand of pity pushes it aside. They had been called to the Most High, to acquaint themselves with him, to acknowledge him, and to accept him as their God and King; but they stopped their ears against those calls. They refused to lift themselves up from their low groveling course of conduct, and they refused to exalt the Most High, or to bless that glorious Name which is above all blessing and praise. We cannot exalt God, or make him more glorious than he is, "yet then God accounts himself to be exalted when he is known and acknowledged as the high, supreme, first Being; when we fear him as God; when we humble ourselves before him as before a God; when we are sensible of the infinite distance there is between him and us; when we are willing to consecrate what we are, or have, or can do, to the furtherance of his praise; when his will is made the rule of all our ways, and especially of his worship; when we make him the last end of all; when it is the great care of our souls and work of our lives to do what possibly we can, that he may be magnified and lifted up in the world; and when we account the least sin a greater evil than can be recompensed by all the good which heaven and earth can afford us;—when we do thus, God accounts himself exalted by us." But Israel had acted in opposition to all this; hence the controversy, the perplexity, the puzzling questions which follow. Four questions are followed by four answers.

V. THE PURPOSE DENOUNCED . He will not execute the fierceness of his wrath, nor return to destroy Ephraim, nor enter into the city. Here we note a remarkable contrast in God's dealings with us. He compares himself to a man in the exercise of mercy. It is different in regard to the execution of his wrath; then he is God and not man. In expressing his mercy he speaks after the manner of men; in the yearnings of his bowels, in the extent of his mercifulness, he expresses himself as man, though more, infinitely more, than man. But when he speaks of wrath, he assures us he is God and not man. A man of war may, with the soldiers under him, come upon a town or city, capture it, and plunder it; months or years elapse, and he returns to the same place again, lays siege to it, and sacks it, leaving it in a much worse state than at first. But God will not so return to destroy. He is God, not man. Free from all the weakness of human passion, from all vindictiveness of feeling, from all fickleness of purpose, from all the littlenesses of the human spirit, he dens not revoke his purposes nor recall his promises of mercy, neither does he retain his anger for ever, nor renew the outpouring of the vials of his wrath.

1. He is, besides, the Holy One: even in his vindicatory justice he is holy; no unholy element of any kind mingles with his wrath. Holiness is at once an attribute of his nature and a characteristic of all his administrations. Oh, to be holy as God is holy, pure as Christ is pure, perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect! His presence is with his people, according to his promise, "I will walk among you, and will be your God, and ye shall be my people;" nay, more, "I will dwell in them, and walk in them."

2. When, in the close of verse 9, God says, "I will not enter into the city," it is "to be taken in reference to the manner of God's proceedings in the destruction of Sodom; after he had done conferring with Abraham, he entered into the city, and destroyed it by fire and brimstone. God many times stands at the gates of a city, ready to enter in and destroy it, but humiliation in prayer and reformation keep him out Oh! let not our sins cause a merciful God to go out, and a provoked God to enter in."

VI. THE PREDICTION UTTERED .

1. The walking after the Lord here predicted is to follow the Lord whithersoever he leadeth. The Savior is given fur a Leader to his people; he is represented as the Captain of salvation, and just as a good soldier follows his superior officer at the head of the storming party or in the perilous breach, in the onward march and in the unwelcome but necessary retreat; so the Christian soldier, loyal to his Lord, follows him fully, faithfully, fearlessly, through evil report as well as good report, closely, carefully, and constantly. "These are they which follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth." The path may appear perilous, the way may he difficult; we may have to turn our backs on our dearest delights, on our sweetest comforts; we may be ignorant of the immediate goal to which the Lord leads us, or the use he intends to make of us, or what he means to do with us; yet none of these things shall doter us. If we only make sure that the Lord is leading us, we run no risk in following him; and though he lead us by a way that we know not, we are sure it is the right way, the safe way, and in every respect the best way in the end. The opposite course is that pursued by those who walk, not after the Lord, but after the lusts of their own hearts, or their own inclinations, or their own inventions, or their own counsels, or the example of wicked men.

2. The prediction includes a hasty return in obedience to the Divine summons. God's calling people to return to him is not inaptly compared to the roaring of a lion. By judgments on the adversary, or by a solemn awe on the spirits of his people, or by terrible things in righteousness, God summons men to submission and obedience.

3. When God speaks the word in whatever way, his children hurry home out of many lands from the far West, the distant East, and the remote South. Thus it is in seasons of revival, thus it shall be more literally in the millennial period, and in the time of the restitution of all things When the Spirit shall be poured out from on high in Pentecostal power and in Pentecostal plenty, men shall, as at the first Pentecost, when they were assembled from many lands, join themselves to God's people. They shall not only come hastily, but swiftly. Their hasty arrival is compared to a flight resembling that of the dove, which flies swiftly, as implied in the psalmist's words, "Oh that I had wings like a dove!" They shall, moreover, arrive in great numbers, as doves fly in flocks, as implied in the words of the prophet, "Who are these that fly as a cloud, and as doves to their windows?"

4. A place of rest is promised them. When men walk after the Lord and unite themselves lovingly with his people, they are assured both of rest and refreshment. Whether this may have had a literal fulfillment, in the return of members of the ten tribes from Assyria with their brethren of Judah from Babylon, and others of the same people from Egypt, we do not know for certain; but this much is sure, that such a return of God's people to him shall actually take place in the day of the restitution of all things; while its figurative application repeats itself in every real revival of religion, when sinners, truly penitent like the prodigal, shall return from many a far country of sin and shame and sorrow to their Father's house and home, renouncing the swineherd's husks for that rich spiritual abundance of bread enough and to spare.

VII. THE PRETENCES OF ISRAEL . The people of Israel, or the ten tribes with Ephraim at their head, that is, rulers and ruled, are here charged with lies and deceit. Their professions of worship were nothing better than lying pretences; their political schemes were little less than deceitful maneuvers. Their piety and their policy were alike hollow and futile. With such false worship and carefully devised strokes of policy, which were but deceitful tricks, they compassed God as though they could deceive the omniscient One himself. The following illustration from an old divine seems apt, though homely: "I am, in respect of their sins, as a man beset round, who would have egress, but when he goes one way there he is stopped, and another way he is stopped there too. God compares himself to such a man, as if, in going on in the ways of mercy, he is there stopped by some course of sin, and entering on another part he is there stopped again." How many there are whose acts of worship are so many solemn lies! Their professions of piety are mere pretences; their prayers may be eloquent and comprehensive, but they do not proceed from the heart; their presence in the sanctuary is only bodily, their thoughts being away about their worldly business, or reaming over mountains of vanity. Many there are who are ready to acknowledge God, his greatness and glory, his glorious majesty, his almighty power, his infinite wisdom, and his sovereign disposal of all human affairs; but they do not realize the august nature of the Divine attributes, nor the wondrous workings of his providence. Many, too, confess their great sinfulness, and profess deep humiliation on account of it; but their confession is not accompanied by contrition, nor is their professed humiliation either provable by facts or practical in its effects.

3. Strange, passing strange, it is that men thus impose on themselves, or attempt to deceive God! "They did flatter him with their mouth," says the psalmist, "and they lied unto him with their tongues." And if this is the conduct men venture on in relation to God, how much more likely they are to compass their fellow-men with lies, or overreach them by deceit! If they carry their deceit into the sacred exercises of religion and the solemn services of the sanctuary, how much more may we expect to find fraudulent transactions and deceitful dealings in their intercourse with fellow-men!

VIII. THE PRE - EMINENCE OF JUDAH . While Israel or the ten tribes were besetting God with their lies and provoking him by deceit, their worship being idolatrous and their service false, Judah for so far continued in the true worship. With not a few drawbacks and many defects, they had hitherto adhered to the ordinances he had prescribed, the place he had chosen, and the mode and ministers of religion he had appointed. Such is the drift of the verse according to the Authorized Version. Assuming this to be the right rendering, we find Israel left without excuse. They could not plead the example of Judah. If an evil example had been set them by Judah, it might have in some sort extenuated, but could not have excused, sin in Israel. The absence of such example was no small aggravation of their guilt.

3. It redounded to the honor of Judah that in the day of Israel's defection they persevered in the way of truth, and maintained the true worship of Jehovah. It is recorded to the credit of those Sardians who remained faithful in a corrupt place and a degenerate age, "Thou hast a few names even in Sardis which have not defiled their garments; and they shall walk with me in white: for they are worthy."

4. When we serve God we reign with him. It is righteousness that exalts a nation and elevates an individual. To serve God is our highest glory, and to enjoy him our greatest happiness. To serve God is the most honorable service; hence our blessed Lord has made us kings as well as priests unto God. Luther, commenting on this verse, speaks of certain errorists "not venturing to embrace the true doctrine for fear their rule should be lost. So is it with many people; they are afraid of the loss of their rule if they should entertain the true ways of God's worship; they think that the true ways of God's worship cannot consist with their rule and power, and therefore they had rather retain them and let the true worship of God go."

HOMILIES BY C. JERDAN