Hosea 6:3

Hosea 6:3

It is Christ whom our faith must grasp under these two figures, the Day-dawn and the Rain.

I. The day-dawn and the rain represent some resemblances between the coming of Christ in His Gospel and in His Spirt. (1) They have the same manifest origin. The day-dawn comes from Heaven, and so also does the rain. They are not of man's ordering and making, but of God's. It is not less so with the Gospel and Spirit of Christ. The same God who makes morning to the world by the sun, gives the dawn of a new creation to the spirits of men through the Saviour. (2) They have the same mode of operation on the part of God. That mode of operation is soft and silent. The greatest powers of nature work most calmly and noiselessly. And like to these in their operations are the Gospel and Spirit of Christ. The kingdom of heaven cometh not with observation. (3) They have the same form of approach to us in perfect freeness and fulness. The morning light comes unfettered by any condition, and so also descends the rain. And in this they are fit and blessed emblems of the way in which Christ approaches us, both with His Gospel and His Spirit. (4) They have the same object and end. It is the transformation of death into life, and the raising of that which lives into higher and fairer form. Here, too, they are emblems of the Gospel and Spirit of Christ. These, in like manner, have the same aim life and revival. The Gospel of Christ is the word of life. The Holy Ghost is the Spirit of life.

II. Notice some of the points of distinction between them. (1) Christ's approach to men has a general and yet a special aspect. The sun comes every morning with a broad, unbroken look, shining for all and singling out none. But the rain as it descends breaks into drops, and hangs with its globules on every blade. There is this twofold aspect in the coming of Christ. (2) Christ's coming is constant and yet variable. The sunrise is of all things the most sure and settled. But for the rain man knows no fixed rule. Christ visits men in His Gospel, steady and unchanging as the sun. But with the Holy Spirit it is otherwise: His coming may vary in time and place, like the wind which bloweth where it listeth, or the rain, whose arrival depends on causes we have not fathomed. (3) Christ's coming may be with gladness, and yet also with trouble. And as God's sun and cloud in the world around us are not at variance, neither are the gladness that lies in the light of His Gospel and the trouble that may come from the convictions of His Spirit. (4) Christ's coming in His Gospel and Spirit may be separate for a while, but they tend to a final and perfect union. The Gospel, without the Spirit, would be the sun shining on a waterless waste. The Spirit, without the Gospel, would be the rain falling in a starless night.

J. Ker, Sermons, p. 82.