CRITICAL NOTES.—
Hosea 5:5 Pride] The haughtiness of Isa. shall be a witness before God of their folly. Others refer it to Jehovah, the glory of Is., who will witness by judgments and the destruction of their false glory (ch. Hosea 7:10; Amos 8:7). Jud.] shall fall, because participating in Israel’s guilt.
Hosea 5:6. Flocks] to propitiate God. Sacrifices of no avail. He has withdrawn from them and will not hear prayer.
Hosea 5:7. Gives the reason. Treacher.] Acted faithlessly in the marriage contract (Jeremiah 3:20). Strange children] Aliens, that have not sprung from conjugal union (ch. Hosea 1:2; cf. Deuteronomy 25:5). Month] A very brief time; judgment is sudden and near. Others, the new moon, the festal season for sacrifices, will devour them. “Your sacrificial feasts shall not bring deliverance, but ruin” [Keil].
HOMILETICS
GOD TESTIFYING AGAINST MAN.—Hosea 5:5-7
The power and pride of Israel were great. They boasted of their kings, their privileges, and even of their sins. This pride testified against them in the sight of God. Pride never conceals itself, but rises in rebellion and pleads for punishment. Or if God himself be their boast and pride, he would witness against them for their presumptuous sins and self-reliance. “They know not Jehovah; they do not concern themselves about him; therefore he himself will bear witness by judgments, by the destruction of their false glory (cf. ch. Hosea 2:10-14), against the face of Israel, i.e. bear witness to their face.” God witnesses against man’s sin in the following ways:
I. God testifies against sin by the ministry of the word. God has three grand witnesses in the world; the Holy Scripture, Christian Church, and the Christian Ministry. All testify to his existence, love, and truth. But the ministry is a special agency, a Divine appointment to bring sinners to Christ; a monument of truth, and the means to spread it. The true cause of man’s wretchedness and the only cure must be kept in view. Ministers must proclaim the guilt and the consequent danger of men, their inability to renew and save themselves—must ever testify to the justice of God in punishing the impenitent, and the love of God in Christ. Boldness in the commission must be met by boldness in the reproof of sin. Sinners are careless, and must be roused by Divine threatenings. Ministers must reprove and rebuke, curse and condemn all sin; save themselves and those that hear them. Their testimony against iniquity must be constant and clear. “Do you not know that my life has been licentious, and that I have violated the commandments of God?” said a dying nobleman to his clergyman, for whom he sent. “You have neglected to warn and instruct me, and now my soul will be lost!” “The Lord testified against Israel and against Judah by all the prophets and by all the seers, saying, Turn ye from your evil ways, and keep my commandments and my statutes.”
II. God testifies against sin by the witness of conscience. Fallen as human nature is, God has not left himself without a witness in its centre and seat. Conscience, the vicegerent of God enthroned within, pronounces sentence, and acquits or condemns. A guilty conscience needs no accuser. It is the harbinger of wrath, and makes “the wicked flee when no man pursueth.” “Conscience doth make cowards of us all.” The victim of remorse withers beneath an influence unseen, and shrinks from an anticipation of judgment to come. Adam tried to hide himself from God. Cain was terrified at his own guilt. Infidels have often felt that “the sound of a shaken leaf shall chase them.” “There is no man that is knowingly wicked,” says Tillotson, “but is guilty to himself; and there is no man that carries guilt about him, but he receives a sting into his soul.” Conscience allows no excuse, no compromise. There is nothing but right or wrong in its court. Moral government is administered by moral sanctions, and the wisdom of God is seen in fixing a tribunal in the bosom of every human being. “He that will not hearken to the warnings of conscience must feel the woundings of conscience.”
III. God testifies against sin by the judgments of providence. “Therefore shall Israel and Ephraim fall in their iniquity.” Pride always comes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall. Sin ever brings ruin upon churches and nations. Men combine and exalt themselves in wickedness, but in the providence of God they fall, and great is their fall. The destruction of the cities of the plain by fire and of the world by flood are solemn lessons in history.
1. Judgments come suddenly. The festal season on which they prided themselves and offered sacrifices to God would bring no joy nor deliverance. Judgment would be sudden and surprising. Rapidly and unexpectedly the end would come. Invasion would sweep away their garrisons and resources. The month, the moon waxing till full and waning away, would measure the time. Men may indulge in luxury, intemperance, and vice; but the day of retribution will carry them away. Cruel devices will be detected, and wicked men “fall” helpless and undone. Easy transitions from one thing to another cause no terror; but in everything sudden and unexpected attention is roused and nature startled. God warns, “but evil men” are wilfully ignorant, and “understand not judgment.” “Desolation shall come upon thee suddenly which thou shalt not know.”
2. Judgments come impartially. There is no respect of persons with God’s providence. Special promises and special privileges may be given to some; but they do not escape the general calamity. Judah and Ephraim were alike guilty and alike punished. National judgments are universal, spare neither saints nor sinners, young nor old, rich nor poor. They fall on all ranks impartially. The priest cannot protect the prince; nor the prince the priest. Those who entice will not be able to deliver the enticed; nor the enticed excuse for being misled. When God pleads, “it shall be as with the people, so with the priest; as with the servant, so with his master; as with the maid, so with her mistress; as with the buyer, so with the seller; as with the lender, so with the borrower; as with the taker of usury, so with the giver of usury to him.”
3. Judgments come unavoidably. They cannot be warded off by any device or desire of man. The sentence is uttered and must be fulfilled. God cannot change nor be defeated in his purpose. He withdrew from Israel and would not aid them.
(1.) Late repentance cannot ward off judgment. The people had been careless and indifferent in their prosperity. Now when judgments are threatened they are alarmed, and vow to God in sacrifice. Many repent of sin, but their sorrow is that of Judas, not of Peter. They are sorry for the consequences of sins, but not for the sins themselves; confess their wrong, but do not wish to forsake it. They vow and resolve, pay homage to God, and wish to escape, but they cannot. Nothing could rouse them when punishment was only predicted, but when it comes, then they bestir themselves and cry for mercy. They are “lashed from sins to sighs; and by degrees from sighs to vows; from vows to bended knees.” Life is often spent in sin, and then offered to God in its dregs and decrepitude. “True repentance is never too late, but late repentance is seldom true.” “Ah! Mr Hervey,” said a dying man, “the day in which I ought to have worked is over, and now I see a horrible night approaching, bringing with it the blackness of darkness for ever. Woe is me! When God called I refused. Now I am in sore anguish, and yet this is but the beginning of sorrows. I shall be destroyed with everlasting destruction.”
(2.) Outward reformation cannot ward off judgments. Many are penitent, give up some sins, but not all. They make great sacrifices, and put forth desperate efforts to amend their lives. Whatever will shelter them from present calamity they earnestly seek. “They go with their flocks and with their herds to seek the Lord,” but do not devote themselves to him. Good works cannot compensate for evil works. Tears may be abundant and sorrow deep, but no art can evade and no power resist the punishment. Superstition and Infidelity have devised means to allay the anguish of a wounded spirit; but their rites and sophistries, salvos and palliatives, have been in vain. The bitterness of the spendthrift cannot recover his lost property; nor the sorrow of the sensualist restore the bloom of his cheek. The sinner cannot repair the injury done to himself and others, nor reinstate himself in holiness before God. Justice is immutable, and punishment is certain to follow the violation of moral as of physical law. It is sad to think that many “fall” without deliverance, and seek when it is too late. Sin brings judgments which cannot be averted by formal worship and outward reformation. “I have no pleasure in you, saith the Lord of hosts, neither will I accept an offering at your hand.” “To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me?” &c.
HOMILETIC HINTS AND OUTLINES
Hosea 5:5. The Pride of Israel.
1. Pride their greatest sin.
2. Pride their continual sin.
3. Pride their destructive sin.
Hosea 5:6. They shall not find him. God is not found—
1. When not sought earnestly;
2. When not sought with a pure motive;
3. When sought in slavish fear;
4. When sought too late. When the judgments of God are drawing near fear impels the most reluctant and the most reprobate to seek God; but the words of Christ prove true—“Ye shall seek me, and shall not find me; and where I am, thither ye cannot come.” “God waits long for sinners: He threatens long before he strikes: He strikes and pierces in lesser degrees and with increasing severity, before the final blow comes. In this life he places man in a new state of trial even after his first judgments have fallen upon the sinner. But the general rule of his dealings is this; that when the time of each judgment is actually come, then as to that judgment it is too late to pray. It is not too late for other mercy or for final forgiveness, so long as man’s state of probation lasts; but it is too late as to this one. And thus each judgment in time is a picture of the eternal judgment, when the day of mercy is past for ever to those who have finally in this life hardened themselves against it” [Pusey].
Hosea 5:7. Treacherously. Men cloak their sins and act deceitfully in God’s service—
1. When they vow and do not perform;
2. When they pray and do not labour;
3. When the outward performance does not agree with the inward condition. In the sanctuary they are often one thing, in daily life another. “Measure not men by Sundays,” says Fuller, “without regarding what they do all the week after.”
1. He that serves God with the body, without the soul, serves God deceitfully.
2. He that serves God with the soul, without the body, when both can be conjoined, doth the work of the Lord deceitfully.
3. They are deceitful in the Lord’s work that reserve one faculty for sin, or one sin for themselves, or one action to please their appetite and many for religion.
4. And they who think God sufficiently served with abstaining from evil, and converse not in the acquisition and pursuit of holy charity and religion [Jer. Taylor].
The unfaithfulness and treachery of Israel were transmitted to their children, who were regarded by God as the offspring of idolatry. When children, the hope of the future, are reared in apostasy there is little prospect of national amendment. Godless children are punished like Godless parents, the rising generation suffer with the present, may be cut off, and both may perish with their portions and possessions.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 5
Hosea 5:5-7. Our consciences (which are God’s) keep a record, write our lives and count our steps. Many cannot read the book of conscience, and so know little that is in it. But a time will come (if conscience be not purged by the blood of Christ) when they shall perfectly read all their sins in this book within; and if conscience, which is God’s deputy, testifieth against sin and marketh it, how much more God, who is the Judge of conscience. God needs not judge upon information, but upon observation. He will reprove every man whom he doth not pardon, and is able to set before us in order whatsoever any of us have done [Caryl].
Though repentance be never too late, yet late repentance is seldom true [Brooks]. Mercy, in this the day of her reign, sovereignly seizes judgment before its time, and works that mighty lever to move mankind. The terrors of the Lord are not permitted to sleep unnoticed and unknown, till the day when they shall overwhelm and overflow all his enemies; they are summoned forth in the interval, and numbered among the all things that work together for good. Though kept like a reserve in the rear, their grim hosts are exposed to view, in order that they may co-operate with kindlier agencies in persuading men to yield, and fight against God no more [Arnot].