CRITICAL NOTES.—
Hosea 7:1.] Exposure of wickedness continued. Healed] politically and morally. The danger of a wound only discovered when probed and healing attempted. Spoileth] Heb. strippeth off a garment: plunder extensive and without resistance. Falsehood] Deception toward God and man. “Falsehood was the whole habit and tissue of their lives” [Pusey].
Hosea 7:2. Consider] Lit. say not to themselves in serious reflection. Rem.] Notice and punish (Deuteronomy 32:34; Psalms 90:8). Beset] as fetters and witnesses against them (Psalms 9:16; Proverbs 5:22).
Hosea 7:3. Lies] People conformed to wicked laws and seductive rites of kings and princes; flattered and pleased them with applause and immoralities (Acts 12:13).
HOMILETICS
A SAD DISCOVERY.—Hosea 7:1
The exposure of moral depravity is continued. The efforts of God to heal are frustrated by the disease. Greater iniquity is discovered. The grace of God is turned into lasciviousness.
I. A disease malignant in its working.
1. It was secretly hidden. It broke out in one place when the physician was curing another. “When I would have healed Israel, then the iniquity of Ephraim was discovered.” Sin is never hid from God. It lies concealed in the heart of man, and only waits for a chance to break out in acts. “Who can understand his errors? cleanse thou me from secret faults.”
2. It was openly violent. The thief cometh in, and the troop of robbers spoileth without. They were infested with thieves within and spoiled by foreign invaders from without. Wounded afresh day by day. No place was secure and free from sin. Secret sins indulged in become stronger and more violent in their manifestations. Spots break out in the character and errors in the life, like some malignant humour in the body. The body is robbed of its beauty, the mind of its vigour, and the life spoiled in its influence and end.
II. A disease complicated in its symptoms. Within and without, politically and religiously, the disease was spreading.
1. There was falsehood toward God. “For they commit falsehood.” Falsehood in their worship and profession, in their principles and practices. They said they were willing to be healed and to be ruled by God: “nevertheless they did flatter him with their mouth, and they lied unto him with their tongues.”
2. There was treachery toward man. Take away the fear of God and there will be no regard to man. “He cannot be faithful to me who is unfaithful to God,” said the father of Constantine the Great. Religion is the basis and cement of society. If we throw off fidelity to truth and God, what is there to bridle passion and check corruption? Treachery destroys all principles of confidence and security by which society is bound together. The Romans even disdained to practise it towards their enemies. How disgraceful for a Christian people to be guilty of it. “Why do we deal treacherously every man against his brother?”
III. A disease incurable in its nature. “When I would have healed”—by the teachings of the prophets and the chastisements of Providence—“they would not hearken nor be amended.” The disease defied all remedy, was more irritated by it and laid open in its extent and malignity. Many distempered churches and afflicted nations neglect the hopeful crisis, then go from bad to worse, and never get cured. Their wickedness is incorrigible and their disease incurable. When once inwardly rotten and corrupt, the foulness will break out and be externally visible. No earthly physician can sew up or heal the wound. Death in the body can never be cured. There is no death so sad and momentous in its results as the death of things which die within. “The greatest epoch in a man’s life is by no means the day of his physical death, but the day in which he died to something more important to him than the whole world.” “We would have healed Babylon, but she is not healed; forsake her.”
DIVINE REMEMBRANCE OF SIN.—Hosea 7:2-3
God saw the wickedness of Israel. All things are naked and opened before him. The manifold and intricate ways of sin, with their surroundings and consequences, are known to him. “They are before my face.”
I. God remembers the sins of men. “I remembered all their wickedness.” These words are full of awful truth, confirmed by Scripture and every-day experience. God is omnipresent; beholds us everywhere; and we can never sin with security. If I wished to escape inspection, “whither shall I go from thy Spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence?” God is omniscient, having infinite and intimate knowledge of the affairs of men. He needs no light to discern sin, but the light of his countenance. Our open transgressions and secret sins are before his face. “Thou hast set our iniquities before thee, our secret sins in the light of thy countenance.” But this knowledge is remembrance. Not that God ever forgets. Though punishment does not always immediately follow transgression, yet the sin itself is not forgotten or buried in oblivion. God sees and knows it. Men may wink at sin and forget it, but God never does. God’s remembrance is—
1. Minute,—even the most secret things are known to him.
2. Constant,—“remember” continually.
3. Individual,—“their wickedness.”
4. Universal,—“all their wickedness.”
III. Men think that God is indifferent to their sins. “They consider not in their hearts.” They forget God, and think that God forgets them. “They say, The Lord shall not see, neither shall the God of Jacob regard it.”
1. Men forget God in their thoughts. “They consider not.” If they acknowledge him in words, they do not wish to have him near to them. They do not speak to their own hearts, nor listen to the voice of conscience within. The young and old, the rich and poor, the gay and busy, shun acquaintance with him—put him in the background of life, and curtain him out of sight lest he should trouble them. They desire not the knowledge of his ways, wish to remain ignorant, and say, “Depart from us.” A French philosopher even declared, “that the first duty of an intelligent and free man is to chase incessantly from the mind and conscience the idea of God.” Practical atheism abounds now in the world. Men abandon faith in the unseen and spiritual, and virtually say, No God. “The wicked, through the pride of his countenance, will not seek after God, God is not in all his thoughts.”
2. Men disregard God in their ways. If God is not in our thoughts he will not be in our ways. Conduct results from thoughts, as fruit from a tree. Thought may not always be embodied in deed; may inadequately be represented by a man’s life; but the connection of one with the other is like cause and effect. “For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he.” “There are many devices in a man’s heart” which lead him to act independently and forgetfully of God. Scientific men talk of “generative powers,” “vital energies,” and “eternal laws.” We have the designs of Balak and Balaam, of Haman and Herod. Men take no account of God in their daily duties and avocations, their plans and pursuits. Self is their oracle. and self their counsellor, “for they have perverted their way and forgotten the Lord their God.”
III. When men disregard God in their ways, they become more wicked in their lives. Due regard to God is essential to the order and harmony of society. What a desolation would happen to a world without the knowledge of God! The French Revolution is a lesson to all nations in this respect. The results of idolatry have been sad in the extreme. Even among the chosen people, amid light and privileges, when God was forsaken, every barrier was removed. Falsehood and injustice, cruelty and sensuality, increased more and more. They gave full play to passions and lusts; perpetrated sins without fear or shame; and indulged in unbridled folly. Two things are specially pointed out.
1. The highest ranks were corrupted. “They made the king glad with their wickedness.” Those who should have been models of truth and virtue, encouraged the people to sin by their example and influence. Their unjust laws and customs were eagerly obeyed; they were pleased with the flattery, made glad with the homage of the people. In pomp and unbounded arrogance they proceeded further in sins, like Herod; and not only did the same, but had pleasure in them that did them.
2. The lowest ranks were servile. “And the princes with their lies.” An unhappy complaisance was the ruling character of Israel. Their consciences were versatile and accommodating to the circumstances of the day. They approved and followed whatever was commanded by those in power; acquiesced in legalized idolatry, and preferred their kings to their God. They pleased the king, but they were not sincere. They flattered the prince, but they lied in their hearts. They conformed to the customs, but cursed the persons of their rulers. Even now, men bow in homage to those who crush them to poverty; lose their manhood by worshipping the rich and the mighty. “It is the voice of a god, and not of a man.” Wicked sovereigns and wicked people are a curse to each other. When kings and princes are corrupted the people will be corrupted. Ahab preferred falsehood to truth, and was surrounded by lying prophets. “Lies will be told to those that are ready to hearken to them.” The sinful ruler is a tool for all kinds of wickedness. He drives the godly from his presence, and ever finds those that minister to his folly. “If a ruler hearken to lies, all his servants are wicked” (Proverbs 29:12).
ENCIRCLED IN SIN.—Hosea 7:2
If the sinner pays no regard to reason and the All-seeing eye of God, he cannot hide his sins. They will chain and imprison him, go with him and encircle him at all times. His sins become a constant torment and a deadly punishment. “Now their own doings have beset them about.” The sinner is beset—
I. By the sting of conscience. He seeks to hide his sins, but conscience detects them, brings them to remembrance, and accuses him of guilt. The consciousness of sin haunts him continually, and his sin is ever before him.
II. By the force of habit. Sin by repetition grows into habit. Habit becomes a ruling power, and cannot be given up easily. “A rooted habit,” says Tillotson, “becomes a governing principle. Every lust we entertain deals with us as Delilah did with Samson; not only robs us of our strength, but leaves us fast bound.”
III. By the influence of example. The doings of men live before them in their effects upon others. They cannot die, but they encircle them in the bands of associates and companions. Example is repeated and imitated by others; goes forth with self-propagating power, and may descend from one generation to another. “The evil that men do lives after them.”
IV. By the consequences of natural law. Punishment follows sin by a natural law, the law of causation. Even now men are encircled by their own doings, in loss of health and position; in decay of intellect and disorders of mind; in the torments of conscience and the tyranny of habit; in misery, despair, and death. In the future, punishment awaits the sinner. “Is not this laid up in store with me and sealed up among my treasures? “Unless repented of, and washed in the blood of Christ, sins are destined to be cited against the sinner. In time and eternity “his own iniquities shall take the wicked himself, and he shall be holden with the cords of his sins.”
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 7
Hosea 7:1. If we had eyes like those of God, we should think very differently of ourselves. The transgressions which we see and confess are but like the farmer’s small sample which he brings to market, when he has left his granary full at home. We have but a few sins which we can observe and detect, compared with those which are hidden from ourselves and unseen by our fellow-creatures [Spurgeon].
Hosea 7:2. Habits. As impossible as it is for a blackamoor to cast away his skin and to become white, and for a leopard to put away his spots; so impossible is it for them that ensnare themselves, and accustom themselves with evil doing, to change their custom and do well [Cawdry].