CRITICAL NOTES.—
Hosea 6:6. Sac.] which they brought. Mercy] which they lacked; a comparison by negatives; things less worthy are rejected. Moral obedience is better than ritual offerings (Matthew 9:13). Knowl.] experimental and practical, which is more than empty service. Internal is put before external worship; the prophet, a teacher and interpreter of the law, rebukes apostasy.
Hosea 6:7. They] Eph. and Jud., God’s professed people. Like men] Lit. like Adam in covenant relation to God, have wilfully transgressed, are guilty of a breach of fidelity. Others, like men generally, who break lightly every day compacts with their fellows. God sought to preserve Adam and Israel in intimate relation to himself. Sin is a violation of the covenant—Israel contradicted their destiny as the people of God. There] Wherever and whenever sin is committed, the place is known to God and pointed out by the Divine finger.
HOMILETICS
MERCY AND NOT SACRIFICE.—Hosea 6:6
There are two sides of religion, the outward and the inward: Israel depended upon sacrifices, ritual forms, rather than moral life, the knowledge and love of God. If men offer “sacrifice” to God without joining it with “mercy” to men, or offer it in fanatical zeal and unmercifulness, he will reject it. He prefers “mercy” which contains cheerfulness and self-sacrifice. Looking at these words in their connection, learn—
I. God desires to give mercy rather than accept sacrifice. Israel would give to God rather than seek the healing mercy required. But God will take nothing from them, desires to impart mercy to them. It is for us, first and above all, to seek pardon; confess and forsake sin. “The less is blessed of the better,” without any contradiction. God requires no sacrifice from us. Our offerings cannot enrich or bless him. Pagan sacrifices were considered feasts to the gods. “If I were hungry,” says God, “I would not tell thee; for the word is mine, and the fulness thereof.” He can provide for himself, and will never be suppliant to his own creatures. “The cattle upon a thousand hills” are his gifts, are not our own; and faith in the offering without love in the heart represents God as beholden to man. “Thou desirest not sacrifice, else would I give it: thou delightest not in burnt-offering.” No form of burnt-offerings can purchase Divine favour; no banners and music and incense will be acceptable “without truth in the inward parts.” God will have mercy and accept a broken spirit. “A broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.”
II. God stamps mercy with more value than sacrifice. God does not reject all, only heartless sacrifices. They must not be neglected nor despised, but offered in the right spirit. Christ commends the scribe for giving due place and proportion to the ceremonial and moral service. Sacrifice is good for its own sake, required by God and reasonable in man. But “go ye and learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy and not sacrifice” (Matthew 9:13). The ritual must not be esteemed above the moral. We must not be religious before God and immoral before men; alive to the letter, but dead to the spirit of the law; scrupulous in the formalities, but negligent in the moralities of life. He who finds mercy from God, will be kind and compassionate to men. We must “do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with God.” “The tithing of cummin must not be neglected,” says Gurnal, “but take heed thou doest not neglect the weightiest things of the law—judgment, mercy, and faith: making your preciseness in the less a blind for your horrible wickedness in the greater.” “To do justice and judgment is more acceptable to the Lord than sacrifice.”
III. Sacrifice must not be substituted for mercy. No amount of offerings can replace the everlasting principles of morality. But how easy to present the one for “the living sacrifice” of the other. The Corban gift stands in the place of filial piety. The present on the altar atones for the offence to a brother. Love to God whom we have not seen covers charity to man whom we see day by day. Temple service is honoured above godly life, and sacrifice is offered before mercy. God delights in showing mercy, and “earthly power doth then show likest God’s when mercy seasons justice.” God is better pleased with the relief of suffering than gold and silver offered in the church. Transient enthusiasm, fashionable benevolence, and party spirit must not supersede love to God and man. The first commandment is like unto the second. One cannot supersede and must not be placed instead of the other. “To love him with all the heart, and all the understanding, and with all the soul, and with all the strength, and to love his neighbour as himself, is more than all burnt-offerings and sacrifices.”
IV. Sacrifice and mercy must ever be united together. One is the outward form and fruit of the other. “He who prays as he ought, will endeavour to live as he prays,” says Dr Owen. There is a balance of moral as of natural forces. Religion unites what philosophy could not—supreme devotion to God and paramount obligation to man. Faith and works, piety and charity, contemplation and activity, heaven and earth, are reconciled in Christian life. The life hidden with God is the life that diffuses blessings among men. Without love to man, love to God grows languid. They are inseparable and essential to each other. This union was perfect in the life of Christ, and constitutes the keystone of morality. All true philanthropists have worked in his spirit and carried out his teaching. Howard in the prisons of Europe, Judson in benighted Burmah, and Florence Nightingale in the Crimea, were devoted to God in their sacrifices for humanity. A life of purity is a life of public duty. The man who loves God will not serve his country less. “Allow them to pray to God, they will not fight the worse for it,” was said of some. The heat and the light can never be separated from the sun; benevolence to men can never be cut off from love to God. What God has joined together let not man put asunder. “Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father, is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.”
COVENANT BREAKERS.—Hosea 6:7
In this verse we have a reference to the fall of man and the first covenant with Adam. God stood in covenant relation to man. Israel was bound by God’s goodness and their own oath. But they sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgression. God was constant and faithful, but they were inconstant and treacherous, they broke the covenant. Notice—
I. The guilt of which they were accused. They “have transgressed the covenant.”
1. Out of irreverence to its authority. If it be only a man’s covenant, there is something sacred and binding (Galatians 3:15). But God’s word is supreme and of Divine authority.
2. In forgetfulness of their own promise and privileges. Israel solemnly took an oath to keep all the words of the law—not to forsake God; but they sacrificed to other gods, and were base and perfidious in their conduct. Men who break their promise and despise their obligation bring shame and disgrace upon themselves, and deserve not the confidence and esteem of their fellow-men. Truthfulness should shine in every word and deed.
II. The spirit in which they indulged. “They dealt treacherously.” They not only rebelled, but aggravated their guilt by falsehood and treacherous dealing. They disregarded most singular privileges, thought most sacred obligations of no consequence, and covered most heinous sins in the garb of religious forms. They sinned (a) wilfully, (b) obstinately, and (c) deceitfully. “For the house of Judah and the house of Israel have dealt very treacherously against me, saith the Lord.”
HOMILETIC HINTS AND OUTLINES
Transgressing like Adam.
1. Violating sacred obligations.
2. Justifying sin when committed—charging it upon God or their own nature, upon circumstances or fate. “Man, as man, that is as sinful man, desireth that there might be a seal set or a vail put upon all his sins. It is as natural to man to be a sin-coverer as a sin-committer; and he had rather make some poor shift of his own to cover it than go to God (whose privilege and glory it is to cover sin) to have his sin covered. Neither Adam nor the woman denied what they had done; but both thought they were very pardonable in doing it. Both made a confession, yet theirs was a faulty confession. They covered while they acknowledged their sin, and hid it in their bosoms while they held it out upon their tongues. Thus did Adam the first man, and thus do the sons of Adam excuse their sins, and increase their guilt and punishment” [Caryl].
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 6
Hosea 6:6. The outward service of ancient religion, the rites, ceremonies, and ceremonial restraints of the old law, had morality for their end. They were the letter, of which morality was the spirit; the enigma, of which morality was the meaning. But morality itself is the service and ceremonial of the Christian religion [Coleridge]. The artist may mould matter into forms of surprising beauty, and make us feel their elevating and purifying influences: but what is the marble Moses of a Michael Angelo, or the cold statue of his living Christ, compared to the embodiment of Jesus in the sculpture of a holy life? What are all the forms of moral beauty in the Pharisee of religion, compared with the true and holy life of the heart of the devoted Christian? [Bishop Thompson].