CRITICAL NOTES.—
Hosea 4:7. Increased] in number and wealth. Shame] i.e. dishonoured by the loss of all. Some, in proportion as priests were elevated in power and dignity above the people, they surpassed them in sin.
Hosea 4:8. They] The priests made gain on the sins of the people, lived upon them. Set their heart] Lusted after, strongly desired, instead of checking iniquity.They encouraged idolatry for selfish ends.
Hosea 4:9. Punish] Visit upon them. Reward] Make to return upon them their doings; rank and wealth will not preserve them from sharing the fate of the nation. Presumptuous sins return to their own bosom (Proverbs 1:31).
HOMILETICS
THE DANGER OF WORLDLY PROSPERITY.—Hosea 4:7-9
The increase may refer to number, or wealth, power, and dignity. Israel had grown into a strong and powerful nation, but increase of greatness was attended with increase of sin. Its prosperity was attributed to idols (Hosea 2:7), thought to be the fruit of their worship, and strengthened them in their delusion. God would therefore turn their glory into shame and make them a warning to others.
I. In worldly prosperity men forget God. The standard of revolt was erected in the first sin. The history of man since has been an endeavour to build an empire, governed by laws and replenished with resources, independent of God. Having by apostasy cut himself off from the true God, he has joined himself to idols, or in his own sufficiency deified himself and made himself his own first and last, all in all.
1. God is not recognized. The gifts are received with ingratitude or attributed to human skill and effort. God is shut out entirely from men’s thoughts and business. When men do not fear, they sink into utter forgetfulness of God, into practical atheism. “Because they have left off to take to the Lord,” Hosea 4:10.
2. God is forsaken. “As they were increased so they sinned against me.” It is easy to forsake God when once he is forgotten. Worldlings make their prosperity minister to their pride and ingratitude. Increase of wealth occasions increase of pomp. “Jeshurun waxed fat and kicked, then he forsook God which made him, and lightly esteemed the rock of his salvation.” An abundant population begets haughty self-reliance, and tempts nations to war. Riches and wealth are not evil in themselves. Nor is the mere possession of them wrong. In almost every stage of civilization they procure the necessities and conveniences of life, and may be made the means of doing good. But to desire them for their own sake, to put them in the place of the highest good, and to let them beget a rapacious worldly spirit, is to abuse them and sin against God. “A man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth.”
II. In worldly prosperity men become covetous. “They eat up the sin of my people, and they set their heart on their iniquity.” The priests made a gain of the sins of the people. They encouraged idolatry, which involved desertion of God, and connived at sinful customs. The more the people sinned, the more sin-offerings were presented. Their fees and support were derived from the calf worship. They set their heart, i.e. their longing desire, upon their iniquity, had an interest in its growth, and did all in their power to uphold and increase it.
1. False religionists feed upon sin. Religious teachers are most assuming in their authority and dictatorial in their conduct. They feed upon the ignorance and are worshipped by the superstitions of the people. Servility and flattery exalt them and puff them up with pride. A train of followers, a multitude of dependants, look up to them when they go out and when they come in. “Self, is Dives in the mansion, clothed in purple, and faring sumptuously every day—the cause of Christ, is Lazarus lying at his gate, and fed only with the crumbs which fall from his table.” Religious professors are satisfied with forms and ceremonies, anxious for the reputation without performing the duties of Christians, and feed upon merit, not upon Christ. They turn religion into traffic, and “suppose that gain is godliness.”
2. Covetous men feed upon sin. Every passion seeks to justify itself, but covetousness is defended and espoused by all the passions. Covetousness was manifest in the first transgression, and has maintained a fatal ascendency ever since. It turned the nations of old into rapacity, arrogance, and pride, which braved the very throne of God. Alas! it changes the priests and ministers of God into mercenary hirelings, “The heads of Zion judge for reward, and the prophets therefore divine for money.” All covetous men seek to feed, to support themselves, by fraud and deceit; by worldly lusts and pleasure; by idolatry and selfishness. “The covetous man lives as if the world was made altogether for him,” says South, “and not he for the world; to take in everything and part with nothing.” Worldly men have perverted spiritual appetites, relish only inferior and sinful pursuits, and feed upon ashes (Isaiah 40:20).
III. In worldly prosperity men are ruined. “I will punish them for their ways.” “Therefore will I change their glory into shame.” Sin brings its own punishment. The very objects which excite it form a rod for its chastisement. God is perpetually reminding men that pursuit of worldly good is attended with great anxiety and exhausting toil—that its possession is often a mortification and its loss an anguish—that it is dangerous and destructive, leading men “into temptation and a snare, and piercing them through with many sorrows.”
1. Ruin instead of glory. I will change their glory into shame. God overrules the purposes and pursuits of men. They reap what they do not sow, and are rewarded with the opposite of what they anticipate. God can strip worldly prosperity of all its glory, turn the ornaments of character, and the acquisitions of fortune, into a curse instead of a blessing.
2. Glory the means of ruin. Beauty is often the cause of pride. Pride and a haughty spirit come before a fall. Ambition, power, and population drive nations to war and destruction. “Ambition overleaps itself, and falls on the contrary side.” Amaziah would take no warning, lost his own wealth, and wasted the treasures in God’s temple, and the walls of Jerusalem were broken down, and the city exposed to shame and contempt (2 Kings 14:10).
3. Ruin upon all the people. “Like people, like priest.” Priest and people were alike in sin and must suffer in punishment. “As with the people, so with the priest” (Isaiah 24:2). Prosperity would not exempt the one, nor sanctity secure the other. None would escape, all must be carried away into disgrace and death. The people shelter themselves under the example of the priest: and the priest excuses himself by the power of number, the weakness of our nature, and the strength of temptation; but God “will punish them for their ways.” The wicked may prosper and rule for a while; but God will visit them. They act foolishly by turning God’s mercies to their own destruction, and because they prosper confirm themselves in their folly. Their fame will become infamous, their disgrace conspicuous, and their “shame will be their promotion” (Proverbs 3:35). “The prosperity of fools shall destroy them.”
HOMILETIC HINTS AND OUTLINES
A just retribution: if we turn God’s glory into shame by idolatry (Psalms 106:20; Jeremiah 2:2; Romans 1:23; Philippians 3:19); God will take away glory and give us our shame. “Such is the course of sin and chastisement. God bestows on man gifts, which may be to him matter of praise and glory, if only ordered aright to their highest and only true end, the glory of God; man perverts them to vain glory and thereby to sin; God turns the gifts, so abused, to shame” [Pusey].
In our own days Christian ministers and Christian laymen, from fear of man and love of popularity, shrink from denouncing the fashionable sins and follies of all classes, the spurious liberalism in religion, the equivocal amusements, luxury, absence of modesty in apparel, and covetousness, so prevalent. Ministers conniving at the corrupt ways of the people, and the people screening their sin behind the worldliness of ministers, are both alike in guilt, and shall therefore be also alike in punishment. God will make their sin their punishment; their own presumptuous doings shall be their reward [Fausset].
Like priests like people.
1. Like in moral character—good or bad.
2. Like in moral conduct—consistent or inconsistent.
3. Like in moral destiny—saved or lost. “Let your life be a commentary on your sermons” [Lamont]. “The life of a pious clergyman is visible rhetoric” [Hooker].
“When nations are to perish in their sins,
’Tis in the Church the leprosy begins.” [Cowper.]
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 4
Hosea 4:7. Gratitude. Special favours call for great gratitude, as those who rent the largest farms generally pay the most for them. There is ingratitude in concealing a benefit or forgetting it, as well as not making a return for it; but the worst ingratitude is returning evil for good. Prosperity. No sooner does the warm aspect of good fortune shine, than all the plans of virtue, raised like a beautiful frost-work in the winter season of adversity, thaw and disappear [Warburton].
Hosea 4:8-9. Covetousness never judges anything unlawful. Blood is not too sacred for it to buy, nor religion too Divine for it to sell. It has turned the priests and ministers of God into mercenary hirelings. In Popery every shrine has its gift, every confession its cost, every prayer its charge, and every benediction its price [Wilson].