CRITICAL NOTES.—
Hosea 5:8. The evil denounced is vividly described as actually come.
Hosea 5:9. Shall surely be] Lit. established or well grounded in God’s purpose. On lofty summits the invasion of the enemy is announced, Jud. is menaced, and Isa. is occupied, destruction is sure and permanent. The kingdom shall be overcome and for ever laid waste.
Hosea 5:10. Bound] Removers of land-marks were to be cursed (Deuteronomy 19:14; Deuteronomy 27:17). Princes of Jud. had removed the boundaries of truth between Jehovah and Baal, the worship of God and idolatry. “If he who removes his neighbour’s boundary is cursed, how much more he who removes the border of his God” [Hengsten.]. God’s anger would fall upon them like water in full stream (Psalms 69:25; Jeremiah 10:25).
Hosea 5:11. Oppressed] with heavy calamity. Broken] Crushed in contest with God. Command.] The statutes of Jeroboam and Omri (1 Kings 12:28; Micah 6:16).
HOMILETICS
“AN EARNEST MINISTRY THE WANT OF THE TIMES.”—Hosea 5:8-11
The prophet is now commanded to warn the people—to sound the horn, and stand upon the most prominent places on the borders of Benjamin. The judgment is certain; the enemy is near, and the nation must be roused from its slumbers. With intense feeling and earnestness the alarm is given. Hence the title of our subject borrowed from Angell James.
I. The nature of an earnest ministry. Life is earnest and happy only in the degree in which it is consecrated to action. Action and enjoyment are contingent upon each other. When we are unfit for work we are incapable of pleasure and success. Hence the advice, “Be in earnest.” Earnestness in the Christian ministry is not mere activity, noise, and bustle. It is the pursuit of a certain object, and the determination to accomplish it; an endeavour to realize our aspirations. “This one thing I do.”
1. It is specific in design. One thing filled and fired the mind of Hosea. He saw the danger, and longed to deliver his people from it. Amid many inferior designs, the preacher has one chiefly in view. His mind is not intently employed nor his heart deeply engaged on a multiplicity of objects. He has not energy and time thus to divide. He has selected his object, made up his mind, and cannot be driven from it. His sermons are preached and his efforts directed to the conversion of sinners. When a few friends stood round the bed of Dr Beecher, one put the question, “Dr B., you know a great many things, tell us which is the greatest of all things.” In a moment he brightened up and replied, “It is not theology, it is not controversy, but it is to save souls.” No earnest minister will be satisfied without this. Applause, honour, and position sink into insignificance. He cries out, “My little children, of whom I travail in birth again, until Christ be formed in you.”
2. It is enthusiastic in feeling. “O Benjamin,” cried the prophet. The heart yearns “when thought” is “enkindled to a high degree.” The abstractions of the intellect kindle the affections of the heart. Where there is no feeling, there can be no fervour of spirit. “We want men with burning hearts,” said a heathen to a missionary. Ministers are the best orators when they feel. The spring of power is within, and the life that quickens dwells in the soul. Feeble preachers result from feeble Christians. There is often cold orthodoxy without fire. The soul is not poured into duty, and all is routine and form. “The wildest enthusiasm is more rational than indifference,” says Paley. It is said of Baxter when he preached, “you might find his very spirit drenched therein.” Noise and display may attract attention, just as Eastern mourners wailing for the dead stir the sympathies of the multitude. But the man whose soul is profoundly moved is “pressed in spirit” and often of “silent tears.” He speaks in words that burn and thoughts that breathe. “O that I was all heart and soul and spirit,” said Rowland Hill, “to tell the glorious gospel of Christ to perishing multitudes.”
3. It is conducted under Divine guidance. We all feel the need of direction in the choice of a sphere and the discharge of duty. But in the ordinary and the special work, in the cottage and in the pulpit, the minister must seek Divine aid. In the study of the word and the discovery of truth: in matter, manner, and results, our sufficiency must come from God. God directed the prophet to speak. The Spirit guided the apostles to persons and places, and in public and private efforts “the hand of the Lord was with them.” We must not only recognize, but honour the Holy Spirit by seeking his direction and speaking under his inspiration. If Pericles never ascended the rostrum without imploring a blessing from the gods, does he not condemn many Christian ministers? “I forgot explicitly and expressly, when I began, to crave help from God, and the chariot-wheels drove accordingly. Lord, forgive my omissions, and keep me in the way of duty,” wrote Philip Henry. In a large town or a country village, in the beginning and at the end of our ministry, we must “stand and wait,” eager for work—
“Ready to run at his command;
At his command stand still.”
4. It is characterized by constant activity. Work is the law of our being, the living principle that carries men and nations onward. Nothing but constant toil maintains their authority and extends their dominion. “We must work (Laboremus),” said the Emperor Severus on his death-bed at York, where he had been carried on a litter from the foot of the Grampians. A fervent spirit will prompt to active life. Hearty relish for our work, and a sense of its importance, will inspire with ardour. The nation requires a living ministry, earnest men, men that will pray and labour, watch and weep for souls. “Oh that I were a flame of fire in my Master’s cause,” cried Brainerd.
“Wake, ere the earthly charm unnerve thee quite,
And be thy thoughts to work Divine addrest:
Do something, do it soon—with all thy might!
An angel’s wing would droop if long at rest,
And God himself inactive were no longer blest.”
III. The necessity of an earnest ministry. Ephraim was not merely to be chastised, wasted by famine, but destroyed; to become a desolation, an entire waste. When Judah had removed the bounds, broken through all restraints human and Divine, then destruction like a flood would overwhelm the land. Yet they were careless and insensible to danger. Men now are asleep in sin, heedless of Divine warning. Ministers must “cry aloud and spare not.” “I love those that thunder out the word,” said Whitfield. “The Christian world is in a deep sleep. Nothing but a loud voice can awaken them out of it.”
1. Earnestness is demanded by the spiritual condition of men. “Ephraim shall be desolate;” “I will pour out my wrath upon them like water.” God rebuked, judgments were threatened, but they were impenitent and presumptuous.
(1) The danger is real. It is not imaginative, not an alarm to frighten. Sin and punishment, heaven and hell, are awful realities. The truth must be told. Without Christ the sinner cannot escape—will be lost, eternally lost.
(2) The danger is near: Not like an enemy afar off, but on the borders, in the land, spreading desolation on every hand. Sin enters the heart, exposes to present danger and eternal death.
(3) The danger is overwhelming. “Ephraim is oppressed and broken in judgment,” crushed by his own folly and oppressed by captivity. Danger within and without, nothing but danger! Who can withstand when God pours out his wrath like a deep and irresistible flood? (a) It was severe—“a flood.” (b) It was fixed—“which shall surely be.” (c) It was perpetual—the desolation was for ever, the grandeur of the nation was never restored. “Flee from the wrath to come.”
2. Earnestness is demanded by the activity of the age. The features of the age are peculiar and not a little hostile to the gospel, notwithstanding great revivals. Earnestness marks every department of life. Restlessness and energy are found in trade and commerce, science and literature. Rationalism, Ritualism, and Scepticism are seen in battle arrayed. We must meet this activity, which is the boast, before it becomes the bane, of the age; direct it to its proper ends; and turn its turbid currents into streams of life. What but an earnest ministry can intone society, rouse and help God’s people to bear up against Mammon and the selfish spirit of the day? Energy in politics, education, and philanthropy necessitate deeper feeling in the preacher. Tame and spiritless sermons, common-place performances on Sunday, will not break the spell of six days’ excitement and influence. We require a Whitfield and a Wesley, sons of thunder, the spirit of Luther, to rebuke this material and utilitarian age. “Nothing is more indecent,” says Baxter, “than a dead preacher speaking to dead sinners the living truth of the living God.” The earnestness of this holy man was exemplified in his own lines—
“I’ll preach as though I ne’er should preach again;
And as a dying man to dying men!”
HOMILETIC HINTS AND OUTLINES
Hosea 5:9. I. Days of rebuke.
1. Days of solemn warning;
2. Days of grievous affliction;
3. Days of actual calamities, to individuals and families, churches and nations. II. Days of rebuke unheeded. Followed by—
1. Severer threatening—
2. Awful destruction. The scattered sons of Israel were made preachers to the nations around, Divine warnings to all people. Or, I. The cause of rebuke—“iniquity” (Hosea 5:5). God pronounced sentence upon the nation; individuals contribute to national guilt, and must feel their responsibility. God is angry with sin, and seeks to purge his people from it, to take away the evils, not the comforts of life; the dross, not the gold. II. The design of rebuke. Trials are not penal afflictions to God’s people, but fatherly corrections, friendly rebukes. III. The effect of rebuke—“desolate in the day of rebuke.” Ephraim was not restored. The wicked are consumed, utterly destroyed, when rebuked in wrath and hot displeasure. The believer is chastened, but not destroyed; treated not as an enemy, but as an erring child. “God may rebuke when he is angry, and yet restrain in his anger; but to rebuke in his anger, is to let loose the reins to his anger, and to make it outrun his mercy. Then what a miserable case to be in! to have his anger assault me and not his mercy relieve me.”
Hosea 5:10. Bounds. The land-mark was a memorial of antiquity and the rights of man (Proverbs 22:28). Its removal was forbidden as selfish and unjust invasion of property (Deuteronomy 19:4); irreverence for well-established principles; love for rash innovation; branded with a curse (Deuteronomy 27:17); and regarded as the cause of national provocation. The heathen admitted the sanctity of land-marks, and honoured them as gods, without which every field would be subject to contention. God himself has set bounds in the physical and moral world; locating each nation; restraining each part; and governing the whole. Hence removal of bounds is—
1. Encroachment upon Divine authority;
2. Destruction of moral distinctions;
3. Exposure to moral guilt. Some remove, bounds and set up others. Israel removed the law of God and set up their own will (Hosea 5:11). Rome takes away Scripture and sets up tradition. Philosophy rejects the gospel and substitutes science. The application must not be absolute and universal. We are not to be too conservative in politics and religion, nor yet too rash with innovations; but seek the mean between blind reverence for antiquity and love of novelties.
Hosea 5:11. Notice—I. The object of pursuit—“the commandment.” An object sinful, ensnaring, and dangerous. II. The method of pursuit—“willingly.” A method easy to comply with, fashionable, and upheld by State authority. III. The results of pursuit—“oppressed” from without, “broken in judgment.” from within, (a) A natural result; (b) A just result. “Ephraim preferred man’s commands and laws to God’s; they obeyed man and set God at nought, therefore they should suffer at man’s hands, who, while he equally neglected God’s will, enforced his own. For this sin God judged them justly, even through the unjust judgment of man. God mostly punishes, thro’ their own choice, those who choose against his. The Jews said, We have no king but Cæsar, and Cæsar destroyed them [Pusey].
The commandment of men, though enforced by authority, terror, and danger, is no excuse for sin. Sin does not cease to be voluntary, inexcusable, and aggravating on that account. Oppressors corrupt the worship of God, flatter and carry away the people, till their own ends be accomplished, but they will crush them in the long run. Jeroboam carried on the rent under pretence of ridding the people of great oppressions, and invented a way of religion pretending the people’s ease, yet by him and his successors “Ephraim is oppressed and broken in judgment;” not only in the righteous judgment of God, but in the administration of justice they were crushed by corrupt rulers, who were great bribers (ch. Hosea 4:18) [Hutcheson].
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 5
Hosea 5:8-11. Brainerd had such intense compassion for souls, and was so earnest for their salvation, that he said, “I cared not where or how I lived, or what hardships I went through, so that I could but gain souls to Christ. While I was asleep I dreamed of these things, and when I awoke the first thing I thought of was this great work. All my desire was for the conversion of the heathen, and all my hope was in God.” It is amazing what difference heat makes on both mental and material objects. The only difference between ice and steam is, that the one has less and the other more heat. Now earnestness converts ordinary qualities into powerful and elastic forces. It enhances everything it touches, turns bricks to marble, and copper into gold. It changes liking into love, joy into ecstasy, and expectation into hope. It stamps on every virtue its currency, whether in heaven or in earth. Love, pity, kindness are all cold and worthless unless they bear the impress of a fervent spirit [Dulce Domum].
Hosea 5:11-14. Vice is sometimes punished instantly and sometimes gradually. This seems to be the method of Divine procedure. We have slow and rapid consumption in the bodies of men. We have the gradual decay and the sudden overthrow of empires, the seed-time of evil and the harvest of judgment. The changes of circumstances are so various and frequent, so great and sudden, that the same person, the same people, afford an example of the greatest prosperity and the greatest misery. Henry the Fourth of France was despatched by a sacrilegious hand in his carriage, in the midst of popular applause and the triumphs of peace. Like Herod, the grandson of Herod the Great, he found but one step between adoration and oblivion. The ruin which God inflicts upon the impenitent and presumptuous sinners is often beyond precedent most sudden and most fearful. What folly, then, to trust in man, when God can easily destroy him!