Hosea 12:11-14

Reproofs and remembrancers.

Reproofs for sin, and remembrancers of mercy.

I. REBUKES FOR SIN .

1. The richest temporal blessings are blighted by sin . Gilead was a fruitful and pleasant region, as may be inferred from references to it in Scripture, as when God says, "Thou art Gilead unto me, and the head of Lebanon: yet surely I will make thee a wilderness," and when its productions are spoken of, and its pasturages celebrated. It is still a beautiful district, with its hills and dales, wooded slopes, luxuriant pastures, lovely flowers, and refreshing streamlets. In addition to the natural advantages of the country, there was the city of Gilead, where the ministers of religion on the other side of Jordan dwelt. But sin sadly marred this fair and fertile land; so with many a region "where every prospect pleases, and only man is vile." The inhabitants are branded as transgressors of both tables of the Divine Law; iniquity character-fled their conduct towards man, and idolatry their worship of God; while the priests, instead of hindering, only helped the people in their sinful service. However incredible it might appear, nevertheless it was a fact; nor were they improving at the time to which the prophet refers—nay, they seem to have been going from bad to worse.

2. The vanity of will-worship . Will-worship may show much zeal, as appears to have been the case with the Gileadites; yet, without a Divine warrant, it is vanity all the same. They contravened the institution of the Most High, which had appointed one temple, one altar, and one priesthood. Severely, too, had they suffered for their sins. Inhabiting a border-land, they were exposed to the inroads arid attacks of enemies, and much needed the Divine protection; but by their sins had forfeited that protection. Consequently they "were threshed," as a contemporary prophet tells us, "with threshing instruments of iron," and, being among the first that fell under the power of Assyria, they were carried away captive from their goodly, pleasant land.

3. Superstition no substitute for spiritual service . Nearness to God in outward relation or profession may coexist with absence of right religious principle; and where such is the case, outward observances neither secure from sin nor shield from its punishment. Thus the people el Gilgal, though west of the Jordan and belonging to Judah, were nearer the temple, and so nearer in outward relation to its worship, yet were quite as bad as the trans-Jordanic Gileadites. They had the externals of religion, and were no doubt zealous about them; they presented rich sacrifices and possessed numerous altars; but the altars they had set up were either to strange gods in opposition to the true God, or to the true God in opposition to his own appointment. "Whosoever they be, this side or the other, who profess to come nearest, if they mingle their own inventions in worship, God will be more sorely displeased with them: the more piety and holiness, the more we profess to come close to the Word of God, and yet withal mingle our own inventions, the more is God displeased; Gilgal offends more than Gilead."

II. REMEMBRANCERS OF MERCY . They magnified their ancestor Jacob, but misread his history; they gloried in his greatness, but forsook the God who made him great. It is a common thing for people to boast of their family and forefathers, however much they may have degenerated from those forefathers; and not infrequently, the more they have degenerated the louder is their boasting.

1. God reminds them of the humble origin and lowly condition of the patriarch, of whom they boasted so much as their progenitor. The facts of which he thus reminds them conveyed instruction to them, and teach valuable practical lessons still.

2. He reminds them of that great event of their history, that ever-memorable deliverance out of Egypt .

III. RETRIBUTION THREATENED . Punishment is slow, but sure.

1. Notwithstanding all the warnings and instructions and remembrancers, Ephraim persisted in sin, and that of the most provoking kind. Instead of good grapes being produced in the highly favored vineyard of the Lord, Ephraim's grapes were grapes of gall and clusters of bitterness. God here speaks after the manner of men who are provoked by the gross misconduct and affronts from their fellow-men, especially from those whom they have served and benefited. In like manner, despite is said to be done to the Spirit of grace, and the Son of God put to an open shame. How dreadful this misconduct of man, a worm of the dust in relation to God, that infinite Spirit!

2. Ruin irremediable cannot fail to be the result. The ruin, too, is self-procured. So with sinners still: they have themselves, not God, to blame; God will not hold them guiltless, yet the fault lies at their own door; their blood is on their own head; their life is forfeited, but it is their own doing; they are moral suicides.

3. Ephraim by iniquity and idolatry had brought dishonor on the Name and people of God. Sinners cause God's Name to be blasphemed; they bring reproach on our holy religion. This reproach must be rolled away; but it shall at the same time be rolled over or back on those who have occasioned it. Those that bring contempt on religion shall have the finger of scorn and contempt pointed at themselves in the end; those that despise God shall be lightly esteemed; and those who bring reproach upon his cause shall have that reproach returned unto themselves even in this world, while in the eternal world they shall awake up to shame and everlasting contempt.

APPLICATION.

1. Prosperity confirms sinners in their evil ways, and so their hearts are hardened and their consciences become seared.

2. "It is folly to call the riches of this world substance, for they are things that are not.

3. It is folly to attribute our riches to our own industry or ingenuity, as if we made ourselves rich, and as if it were the might and power of our own hand that gets us wealth.

4. It is folly to think our riches are our own, for ourselves, and that we may do what we like with our own. We are only stewards, and shall one day be called to give an account of our stewardship.

5. It is folly to boast of our riches as if they were a permanent possession, or as if they were evidence of peculiar merit in the possessor.

6. "It is folly to think that growing rich in a sinful way either doth make us innocent, or will make us safe, or may make us easy in that way; for the prosperity of fools deceives and destroys them."

HOMILIES BY C. JERDAN

Ho 11:12-12:6

Jacob an example to his descendants.

In this passage the prophet exposes the degeneracy of the Hebrew nation by contrasting their ungodly ways with those of their ancestor Jacob, and strives to win them back to the service of God by reminding them of the mercy and grace of which that patriarch had been the recipient.

I. THE DEGENERATE JACOB . ( Hosea 11:12 , and Hosea 11:1 , Hosea 11:2 ) The entire Israelitish people had proved unfaithful to Jehovah. It was especially so with:

1. Ephraim . The career of the ten tribes had been one of faithlessness and falsehood. The whole life of the northern kingdom was a lie. Its people had renounced the Divine authority. They had lied to God by revolting from the dynasty of David; by rejecting the priesthood of the sons of Aaron; by worshipping the golden calves of Jeroboam; by abjuring Jehovah to do homage to Baal and Ashtaroth; by loosening the bonds of morality in their social life ( Hosea 4:1-3 ); and by seeking help in times of national distress, at one period from Assyria and at another from Egypt ( Hosea 12:1 ). And yet all the while they claimed to be still the Lord's people, and boasted that Jacob had been their father. Ephraim's apostasy, Hosea says, brought the people no satisfaction; it was like "feeding on wind." Their career of national hypocrisy involved them in "desolation;" it proved as disastrous as for a caravan of travelers to "follow after" the simoom, which bears on its wings the hot poison of death. The degeneracy of the nation had also at last begun to affect:

2. Judah . Although the guilt of the southern kingdom was by no means so great as that of Ephraim, yet Judah was now following in some measure the bad example of its northern neighbor. King Ahaz had given himself up to gross idolatry and iniquity; his reign at Jerusalem was a time of sad moral deterioration and spiritual darkness ( 2 Kings 16:1-20 ). So "the Lord had also a controversy with Judah" (verse 2); for Judah was "unbridled against God, and against the faithful Holy One" ( Hosea 11:12 , Keil's translation). " Jacob, " i.e. Ephraim, is already ripe for punishment; but Judah has now gone so far astray as to require solemn reproof and warning.

II. THE TYPICAL JACOB . (Verses 3-5) The Jews gloried in being "the children of Israel," and here the prophet shows them how unlike they were to their father. The national career of Ephraim had been one of constant degeneracy: from the time of Jeroboam, "who made Israel to sin," the people had gone from bad to worse with ever-accelerating speed. Their ancestor Jacob, on the other hand, had trod the path which is "as the dawning light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day" ( Proverbs 4:18 ). Born with a selfish and unlovely nature, and prone to acts of deceit and meanness, he became a child of God, and had his heart molded by Divine grace, until he showed himself not only a really religious man, but a great saint. How different it would have been now with Ephraim had he lived conformably to his claim of being "the seed of Jacob"! The prophet recalls various acts of the Divine favor to the patriarch.

1. Before his birth . His taking his twin-brother's heel by the hand did not foreshadow merely his future overreaching of Esau; rather it was a prognostic of his precedence over him in the Divine purpose of grace, and of the eagerness with which Jacob would labor to obtain the covenant-blessing.

2. At Peniel . There what at first seemed a man wrestled with him; and perhaps Jacob mistook him for a robber of the road, until at length the Stranger with a touch dislocated his hip-joint, thus effectually disabling him. Then Jacob perceived that his antagonist was an "Angel"—the Angel of the covenant himself; so he gave up his useless wrestling, and began to pray. "He wept, and made supplication unto him" (verse 4); and the Divine blessing, which he could never have obtained by wrestling or supplanting, curse to him in answer to his prayer. At Peniel Jacob "was knighted on the field," and there he received his new and heavenly name. He who from the womb had been known as the supplanter, the wrestler, the tripper-up, now became Israel—"a prince with God" ( Genesis 32:24-29 ). Ever afterwards Jacob's weapons were not carnal. He learned at Peniel to "prevail" by the power of faith and prayer, and of a holy life.

3. At Bethel . Hoses elsewhere calls the Bethel of his time by the contemptuous nickname of Beth-avert ( Hosea 4:15 ; Hosea 5:8 ; Hosea 10:5 ); for, alas! "the house of God" had become "the house of vanity"—an abode of naughty idols. At Bethel, where Jehovah "found" Jacob, he himself was lost by Jacob's degenerate children. At Bethel, where Jacob saw in vision the stairway reaching to heaven, Satan had established a stairway leading to destruction. But now the prophet recalls the early national associations, so pure and hallowed, which were connected with Bethel God "found Jacob in Bethel, and there he spake with us." In revealing himself to Jacob he had in view also Jacob's posterity. The patriarch received a Divine visitation at Bethel upon two occasions. The first, when on his way to Padan-aram ( Genesis 28:11-22 ); and the second, twenty-five years afterwards, some time after his return to Canaan. Probably Hoses refers here chiefly to the latter; for then Jacob performed the vow which he had made on occasion of his first visit, and then God confirmed his new covenant name of Israel, and repeated the promise of his blessing ( Genesis 35:9-15 ). God did all this at Bethel to Jacob and to "us" as "Jehovah, God of hosts" (verse 5): as "God of hosts," omnipotent in heaven and earth; and as "Jehovah," the unchanging, covenant-keeping God, who desires his people ever to remember him by this profoundly significant Name ( Exodus 3:15 ).

III. HOW DEGENERATE JACOB MAY BECOME REGENERATE . (Verse 6) These words are an urgent exhortation to Ephraim to return to God, from whom he had "deeply revolted." The word "therefore" indicates that the call is grounded upon the representation just given both of the Divine character and of the Divine goodness to his ancestor Jacob. "Turn thou to thy God," i.e. thy covenant God, who still offers himself to thee, and is still ready to keep his ancient covenant, if thou approach him in penitence and faith. Why should Ephraim go down to destruction when he may have the "God of hosts" for his helper, and when he can plead the promise of the eternal "I Am"? In the second part of the verse the prophet looks at conversion on its practical side. The reality of Ephraim's return to God would show itself in the discharge of moral duty. "Mercy and judgment" are the sum of the duties which we owe to our neighbor, and the performance of these is the most convincing outward evidence of piety ( Psalms 15:1-5 ). Again, to "wait on God continually" excludes idolatry and image-worship, and all other sins against the first table of the Law. Jacob had learned at Peniel to renounce the carnal device of supplanting, and when he came the second time to Bethel he put away Rachel's teraphim and other household gods. Now, Ephraim must begin to-day to act so if he would become, before it is too late, a worthy descendant of his ancestor. True turning to God involves obedience to both tables of the moral Law.

LESSONS.

1. The sinfulness of insincerity in worship ( Hosea 11:12 ).

2. The mischievousness of a life of sin ( Hosea 12:1 ).

3. The duty of following the faith of our godly ancestors (verses 3, 4).

4. Places which have been the scenes of special mercy should be dear to God's people (verse 4).

5. The power that there is in penitent believing prayer (verses 3, 4).

6. "The Name of the Lord is a strong tower;" it brings to the godly man strength and hope and joy (verse 5).

7. The practical nature of true piety (verse 6).—C.J.