CRITICAL NOTES.—
Hosea 4:10. Enough] Not be satisfied. Left off] keeping, observing Jehovah (Zechariah 11:11). All other means of increase failed. Polygamy against the law, and will bring the curse of God.
Hosea 4:12. My people] Their wood, give keenness to the reproach. God’s people seek to be instructed by a staff, depend on wooden idols constantly and entirely! From under] his authority and subjection.
Hosea 4:13. Tops] Thought to be near God and heaven (Deuteronomy 12:2). Shadow] screening from the heat of the sun, and filling the mind with certain awe. God delivers up to vile affections as a punishment for idolatry (Romans 1:26).
Hosea 4:14.] God turns from the reckless nation as unworthy of being mentioned, and speaks in the third person. They] Husbands and fathers go aside to be alone with harlots. Sacrifice] Come to the altar with them instead of their own wives, “the climax of shameless licentiousness.” The young cannot be blamed, for the older are much worse. Hosea 4:15-19 a warning to Judah not to partake of Israel’s guilt.
HOMILETICS
SINFUL INDULGENCES.—Hosea 4:10-14
God will visit the priests for their presumptuous sins. Those who eat up greedily the sin of the people shall receive neither enjoyment nor sustenance. Insatiable desire is its own tormentor. Sonsual indulgence can never satisfy the cravings of the soul. “Ye eat, but ye have not enough; ye drink, but ye are not filled with drink.”
I. Sensual indulgences do not satisfy our wants. “For they shall eat and not have enough.” The food of the priests did not nourish their bodies, nor satisfy their greedy appetites. Sinful desires are never satisfied. The more they are gratified the more intensely do they crave, and cry, like the horse-leech, “Give, give.” Every indulgence creates the appetite. Men seek happiness in created good, and are wretched because they do not find it. God made man upright, with a healthy spiritual appetite, that sought its support and fruition in him. But deceived by sin, man sought out many inventions, prepared many idols, and substituted many pleasures for God, which cannot appease his hunger. The debaucheries of drunkenness, gluttony, and lust, are husks only fit for swine. The cares and toils of sin, the pursuit of wealth and honour, of fame and fashion, indicate the disease, but give no satisfaction to the soul. Even amid the surfeits of earth’s richest feasts men cry, “Who will show us any good?” Charles the Fifth, after a life spent in military pursuits and the active, energetic prosecution of ambitious designs, resigned his crown sated with its enjoyment. The poet Campbell, who sung in early youth “The Pleasures of Hope,” in the evening of life said to a circle of friends, “As for fame, it is a bubble that must soon burst. Earned for others, shared with others, it was sweet; but, at my age, to my own solitary experience, it is bitter. Left in my chamber alone with myself, is it wonderful my philosophy at times takes fright; that I rush into company; resort to that which blunts but heals no pang; and then, sick of the world, and dissatisfied with myself, shrink back into solitude?” They spend their lives and waste their substance in that which disappoints; “confessing all the time,” says a writer, “that they fail even when in form they succeed, and showing by their symptoms of disappointment and dissatisfaction that their objects, whether gained or lost, have no relation to their wants.” Nothing can satisfy the immortal soul that is not adapted to its nature and constitution. The enjoyment must be lasting and real, but the pleasures of sin are short-lived and only “for a season.” They gratify and excite, but never satisfy the mind. Our thirst dries up all earthly things, and our hunger craves for fuller joys than sensual indulgences. We must go out of ourselves, beyond the things of sense, and feed on God, the only good.
II. Sensual indulgences are pursued by unlawful means. “They shall commit whoredom and shall not increase.”
1. They are increased by sinful methods. Whoredom was not the way to increase their offspring. Children are a heritage from God. Polygamy is against the law of God and the welfare of humanity. The fruit of illicit intercourse God will turn to decay. Those who seek to increase in their families, to prosper in their business, and secure worldly wealth, by unlawful means, fight against God. Dishonest ways can never prosper. Nothing can succeed without God. He can desert the means or curse the issue. “Treasures of wickedness profit nothing (Proverbs 10:2); ill-gotten gains are a dangerous and uncertain possession (Proverbs 13:11; Proverbs 21:6); and the wages of unrighteousness will be the reward of those who follow ways of covetousness and sin.”
2. They are sought in forgetfulness of God. “They have left off to take heed to the Lord.” Once they regarded God’s authority and law, but now they take no heed at all. God is neither acknowledged in worship nor discerned in providence. They live in total forgetfulness and disregard. Men should “take heed,” look to God, “as the eyes of servants look unto the hands of their masters,” for support, direction, and duty. But when the eye is fixed on lower objects, and the heart centred on sinful pursuits, God is forgotten and forsaken. The lawless and hopeless ways of men spring from disregard to God and neglect of his word. When the eye ceases to watch God, they fall into error, wander amid the pomps, and vanities, and lusts of the world. “Show me what thou truly lovest,” says Fichte, “show me what thou seekest and strivest for with thy whole heart, when thou hopest to attain to true enjoyment, and thou hast hereby shown me thy life. What thou lovest is that thou livest. This very love is thy life, thy root, the seal, the central point of thy being.”
III. Sensual indulgences injure the spiritual nature. They were so attached to whoredom and wine that they seemed to have lost all sense of moral duty and religious obligation, and given themselves up to “work all manner of sin even with greediness.”
1. Sensual indulgences darken the understanding. They “take away the heart” from God their Benefactor. Sinful passions brutalize men, and “a brutish man knoweth not.” The unbelieving heart does not know nor understand God and his word. Men may parade their intellect, and boast of their gifts, but estrangement from God degrades their condition, and sinks them in the rank of being. If we have no sanctified principle within us, we look at God’s works, interpret God’s ways, and receive God’s blessing, just like the beasts of the field. We extract no useful and spiritual thoughts from them. We are content with the natural use, nay, we degrade the natural use of things. Vain imaginations darken the foolish heart (Romans 1:22). When the light and life of God have departed from the soul, when the wicked have cast out the knowledge of God, God will give “them over to a reprobate mind;” a mind void of judgment and perception, weakened in power to apprehend and approve of the truth and goodness of God (Romans 1:28). When once sinful indulgence darkens the mind, it becomes stupid, and its active powers are suffered to sleep in stupidity. Men could not preserve the truth and philosophy, could not retain the knowledge of God, without moral aid. Habits of sense and sin, of indulgence and passion, destroy the perception of the mind and blunt the understanding. Sensual life impairs and paralyzes the intuitive powers and bedims the judgment. What a sad picture to see the decay of knowledge, to see the moral sense extinguished in man, the king and lord, the minister and interpreter, of nature! It is melancholy to see the fair creation, which God pronounced good, poisoned and cursed by disease and death. But to make religion degenerate into idolatry, to pervert the moral instincts of our nature, and confound by evil habits and constant crimes the distinction between right and wrong, light and darkness, is sad beyond degree! “If the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!”
2. Sensual indulgences deaden the affections. Man is a creature of appetites and instinctive desires, in common with the mere animal. If he were nothing more, he would be innocent in the abandonment of himself to their gratification. But they need controlling, lest his higher interests be endangered—his instincts and affections must be subordinated to a sense of duty and the love of God. If the sensuous predominate over the spiritual, and self-indulgence and self-gratification become the law of life, then his nobler feelings are crushed and his affections vitiated. “Fleshly lusts” war against the soul, the very centre and citadel of man’s nature. The “divers lusts and pleasures,” to which natural man is a slave, are dishonourable to the Christian and perilous to all. They disturb the peace of the soul by corroding care and by the tumult of passion—they darken its vision, and taint its powers with corruption—they threaten its life, and intercept its communication with God and spiritual influences. To be carnally-minded is death. In spiritual death men are “past feeling” and beyond the charms of life. The conscience is stifled, the heart hardened through the deceitfulness of sin, and they are left without moral sense, and shame, and hope.
3. Sensual indulgences debase the moral nature. Every created object expresses some thought, some quality of the Divine nature. The moral character of God was revealed in the moral nature of man. “God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him,” in knowledge and true holiness. “Man,” says Clement, “is the most beautiful hymn to the praise of the Deity.” Divine properties in him were incarnated and humanized, and lodged in him were principles before at large. He was “crowned with glory and honour.” But he voluntarily broke away from God, deranged the harmony of his moral nature, disturbed the peace of the universe, and exposed himself to death. Sin has defaced God’s image, and man has lost his original righteousness. The understanding is blinded by ignorance and prejudice. The heart is alienated from God by wicked works. The affections are disordered, and the desires corrupted. Man is now subject to sense and a slave to sin. He defiles himself by the filthiness of the flesh, and deforms himself by sensual indulgence. Luxury and lusts bind the will and make him unable and indisposed to restore himself. He has become the sport and prey of his passions. There is a tendency to animalism, and an immortal being is compelled to ride on the back of lusts and “presumptuous sins.” There is a loss of the consciousness of God and a forgetfulness of the presence of God. The supernatural tie is broken, and man wanders into error and lives in earthly, sensual, and devilish sins. Any idol debases the moral nature, and changes the glory which distinguishes man “into the similitude of an ox” (Psalms 106:20).
IV. Sensual indulgences are oftenconnected with superstition. “My people ask counsel at their stocks, and their staff declareth unto them.” It was a sad fall for the people of the living God to consult a heathen staff and say to mere wood, My father (Jeremiah 2:27). But the descent is easy and gradual. There is a tendency in man to depart from God, to acquire and foster false ideas of God, even in the midst of the clearest indications of his existence and the tenderest reasons for clinging to him. Guilt, fear, and despair isolate the soul and turn it from God—make it drop, and cut it off as a plant from the light of the sun. Then we approach God in terror. We create gods of our own fancy, philosophy, and early prepossessions. “Fear made the gods,” says a heathen writer. It is certain that superstition, polytheism, and atheism are only the counterpart and exponent of the moral condition of nations. Our nature is religious, and the corrupt heart will produce gods like itself. The philosopher contemplates nature, rejects a personal God, and becomes a pantheist. The wicked wishes there to be no God; governed by his wishes, and led to believe against all moral evidence, he says there is no God, and becomes an atheist. The ignorant multitude, dreading God, become superstitious, and foster and express their religious feeling in figurative representations “made by art and man’s device.” Men associate their notions of Deity with the palpable realities by which they are surrounded, and in every light of heaven and every element of nature they behold the presence of a presiding power. The grove and the mountain, the valley and the stream, have been peopled with divinities. The pride of monarchs and the ambition of heroes, the veneration of priests and the licentiousness of people, have swelled the catalogue of gods. In Egypt and Assyria, in Greece and Rome, in their palmiest days, idolatry was supported by the deepest principles, the most violent passions, and the most obvious interest of legislator and prince, sculptor and poet. Originating in the depraved propensities of fallen nature, depending upon their activity for existence and sup port, it afforded a patron for every vice, a plea for every cruelty; it consecrated every lust and sanctioned every crime. Its terrible effects are written in the destruction of institutions, the corruption of morals, and the doom of nations. Modern civilization fares no better. If men do not consult blocks of wood and stone, they kneel before statues and pictures, endow human conceptions with the attributes of Divinity, and set the creature on the throne of the Creator. We have Ritualism and Romanism, priestcraft and priesthood, sacrifice and offering, with their deadly evils. The mind is filled with narrow conceptions, the eyes are habituated to artistic nullities, and the morals are polluted by gross caricatures and sensuous worship. In the bosom of the Christian Church untaught myriads are sinking into modern heathenism, and believe “the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone.” We have material idolatry and superstition in the present day. The gods of sensualism are represented by lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God—by those who seek enjoyment in the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life. The worshippers of the golden calf bow down to riches and worldly success. Devotees of literature and science deify Nature and turn her into a temple of adoration. Worldliness, idolatry, and superstition, in their most refined and plausible forms, vitiate our conceptions of God, lower the standard of morality, wounds society at its core, and spread dire results in families and nations. They have breathed pestilence in the ordinances of the Christian Church—corrupting their simplicity, polluting their sanctity, and tarnishing their glory. Though upheld by the traditions of antiquity, the suggestions of expediency, or the dictates of human authority, they entice, deceive, debase, and are rebellious against the authority, the absolute and sole right of God to claim our homage. “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath.”
V. Sensual indulgences affect posterity. “Therefore the people that doth not understand shall fall.” Sin and suffering are inseparable. The moral order of the universe must dissolve and perish before a breach of God’s law can bring anything but evil and distress. Under the moral government of God, the consequences of an act do not pass away with the transgressor. We are taught to calculate upon remote results, impressed with our responsibility and aided in duty. The Jews were commanded to obey God—taught that obedience would secure, and disobedience would forfeit, their privileges to their posterity, and reminded that the principle of involving their children in the temporal condition of the fathers was a just and merciful provision. Religion appeals to the strongest instincts of our nature, guards its purity by enlisting the affection of parents for their offspring, and grafting on that affection a salutary fear of the visitations of God.
1. By the influence of example sensual indulgence affects posterity. “Therefore your daughters shall commit whoredom, and your spouses shall commit adultery.” Children naturally imitate, do as you do, not as you say, and “catch the infection” of parents. Hence a wise man speaks of his children as his “future state.” According to example, will this future be good or evil, a success or a failure. If parents drink and swear, neglect the house and forsake the service of God, will their children walk in any other way? If fathers and mothers are spendthrifts, pleasure-seekers, and indulgent in vice, their children will follow their steps, and God recompenses parents in their children. The child copies the foibles of the father and pleases him; he copies his vices and punishes him. Men may love their sins, but they will be alarmed when they see them in their posterity. Antipathies are imbibed, reproduced, and intensified. Lusts are bred and born, and bring forth death in the rising generation. In the French Revolution, the children amused themselves by killing birds and small animals with little guillotines. This was the natural result of what they had seen. Children live again the lives of their parents, act their deeds, and are rewarded or punished by their example. “God layeth up his iniquity for his children.”
2. By a natural law sensual indulgence affects posterity. Parents and children, the present and the future generation, are bound together not by accidental circumstances, but by organic unity. The existing generation is giving the impress of its character to the one that is to follow it. No man liveth unto himself. Every action in this life is the beginning of a chain of results, the end of which cannot be seen. As in the natural, so in the moral world, there is a “conservation of force.” Example is contagious. Men beneficially or perniciously influence others, raise them up or bring them down to their own standard of morality. Good and evil are diffusive, and seeds of conduct ripen and reappear in the life of others. “That which is born of evil begets evil,” says Ruskin, “and that which is born of valour and honour teaches valour and honour.” The sensualist and the sabbath-breaker, the drunkard and the glutton, are spreading “the savour of death unto death!” The wicked and licentious are influencing the morals of those around them. The health and happiness, the honour and the degradation, of posterity are in the power of the present. When children are “born thieves,” or “born liars,” their parents and progenitors are to blame. Drunkards beget drunkards; dishonesty and lusts are hereditary vices. Sensual and vicious parents beget sensual and vicious children. Diseased parents transmit weakened constitutions and diseased tendencies to their offspring. Thus “the evil that men do,” as well as the good they do, “lives after them.” The law of influence is a continuous, ever-increasing power, working consequences to the end of time. “Thou recompensest the iniquity of the fathers into the bosom of their children after them.”
HOMILETIC HINTS AND OUTLINES
Hosea 4:10. Take heed to the Lord.
1. God the object of love, regard, and life.
2. When men do not take heed, disregard God, they fall into sin, wander into the vanities and lusts of the world.
3. Culpable neglect of God, persisted in, is lawless and hopeless, involves the loss of blessing, and ruin. “As the true cause of all men’s departure is their not serious minding of God, that they might observe and love him, so where this neglect is he cares not for external form and performance, and especially is he provoked when men make apostasy from better things to this temper, for it is challenged as the root of their miscarriage and God’s judgments, because they have left off,” &c. [Hutcheson].
Hosea 4:11. The Triple Association. Whoredom, voluptuousness, and drunkenness—their influence upon individuals, families, and societies. “As it is God’s judgment on unfaithful ministers and people that they are given up to sensuality, so that will soon besot them and make them sapless in their doctrine and careless in their duty” [Hutcheson].
The Threefold Apostasy.
1. By whoredom, or illicit worship rendered to heathen gods by the chosen people. This worship was spiritual fornication, and by it their hearts were captivated, taken away from that exclusive trust and allegiance which they owed to God, their covenant King.
2. By yayin, wine—the type of sensual gratification—their hearts had been taken away from supreme affection to God, their Divine Redeemer and Benefactor.
3. By tirosh, the fruit of the vine—the type of natural earthly good—their hearts had been captivated from God, the infinite goodness and Fountain of spiritual joy. This was the apostasy of which the children of Abraham had been guilty; they went after strange gods instead of the true God; their best affections centred in sensual pleasures, instead of being fixed upon the Divine love; and their estimate of good was limited to earthly things (represented by tirosh, one of the most delicious of natural elements), instead of embracing him “from whom all blessings flow.” Or taking the ascending scale, their understanding was darkened, for they esteemed temporal good above the Giver of eternal good; their affections were sensualized, by being exclusively engaged with animal delights; and their spiritual nature was debased, by being prostrated before stupid idols [Temp. Commentary].
Hosea 4:12. Idolatry does not consist merely in calling upon idols, but also in trust in our own righteousness, works, and service, in riches and human influence and power. And this, as it is the most common, is also the most harmful idolatry [Luther].
Idolatry never stands alone. All the sins of Israel were centred in it. By association even good was magnetized with evil, and confirmed it. In heathen nations it is connected with cruel and barbarous rites—in modern times, lasciviousness and intemperance, with all their attendant evils, follow in its train.
Hosea 4:13-14. When men forsake God, mark the steps of degradation.
1. They worship sticks and stocks, inferior creatures.
2. They seek counsel and direction from them, and take any allusion for response.
3. They set up human ordinances for Divine, the creature for the Creator, and consecrate mountains and hills, groves and valleys, as temples of superstition.
4. They forsake God’s direction, go from under his providence and protection. God will not accept any but spiritual worship, and all who forsake him shall perish.
5. They bring ruin upon themselves. “The people that doth not understand shall fall,” and be confounded (Proverbs 10:8; Proverbs 10:10). “Ignorance which we might avoid or cure, if we would, is itself a sin. It cannot excuse sin. They shall, he says, fall or be cast headlong. Those who blind their eyes, so as not to see or understand God’s will, bring themselves to sudden ruin, which they hide from themselves, until they fall headlong in it” [Pusey].
The sins of the fathers descend very often to the children, both in the way of nature, that the children inherit strong temptations to their parents’ sin, and by way of example, that they greedily imitate, often exaggerate them. Wouldest thou not have children which thou wouldest wish unborn, reform thyself [Pusey].
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 4
Hosea 4:10-11. Sin is a disease equally dangerous, whether it works secretly within, or breaks out into odious displays of vice. Yielding to immoral pleasure corrupts the mind; living to animal and trifling ones debases it; and both in their degree disqualify it for its genuine good, and consign it over to wretchedness [Wilson].
Hosea 4:12-14. Idolatry is the adoption of a false god. Apostasy is the rejection of the true God. The idols of the heathen stood, so to speak, between heaven and earth, obscuring the vision of God, intercepting and appropriating the incense which should have ascended to the eternal throne. If we look upon the world as a musical instrument, well-tuned, and harmoniously struck, we ought not to worship the instrument, but the Being that makes the music.