CRITICAL NOTES.—
Hosea 7:8. Mixed] by leagues and adoption of idolatrous customs. The Heb. indicates a mixing which disorders and involves confusion. A cake] burned at the bottom and sad at the top,—an image of worthlessness. One side scorched and black, the other unbaked and doughy; the whole spoiled and only fit to cast away.
Hosea 7:9. Gray hairs] Symptoms of age and declining strength. “Thy gray hairs are thy passing bell” [Pusey]. Wisdom is not always found with age (Job 32:7; Proverbs 23:35). Israel indifferent, though ripe for destruction.
HOMILETICS
THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH ENDANGERED AND INJURED BY WORLDLY ASSOCIATION.— Hosea 7:8-9
From the internal corruption, the prophet passes on to the foreign policy of Israel, and unfolds its disastrous effects. God separated the nation to be his peculiar people; to train them up in virtue; and make them a blessing to the world. But they mixed themselves with other nations in social customs and political leagues. In the application of these words learn—
I. That the Christian Church is in danger of unlawful association with the world. “Ephraim, he hath mixed himself among the people.” We are not to shut ourselves out from all intercourse and innocent association with the world. Family ties, business and spiritual engagements, bind us to it. But we must not “be conformed to this world,” in its evil customs and pursuits, its principles and spirit. We have no need to go out of the world literally; but keep ourselves from its evil; separate ourselves from its frivolities, and be Christians entirely.
1. The Christian Church is endangered by outward proximity to the world. The world is near, present with us, and appeals to our senses. It influences more than things spiritual and unseen. Its wondrous forms and fair pretences gradually get hold upon and eventually overcome the careless professor. Demas-like, he forsakes God, having loved this present world. Its pursuits and demands engross our attention. Before we are aware we are brought under its spell; walking according to rules, and governed by “the prince of this world.”
2. The Christian Church is endangered by the inward tendency to love the world. There are snares and dangers within us, from natural cravings and corrupt desires. We are fond of its company and eager for its rewards. Its attractions are strong, because resistance is weak; its trifles realities, because we prefer toys to eternal treasures. “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world.”
II. The Christian Church is injured by association with the world. Contact with it wears away seriousness of mind, indisposes for religious duties, neutralizes religious influence, and expels religious sentiment. Professors who needlessly mix up with sinful practices and company are sure to suffer in their character and condition. The text specifies—
1. Moral deterioration. “Ephraim is a cake not turned.” They had been mixed up and steeped with heathen idolatries and vices, and had become worthless. The fire of Divine judgment made only an outward impression upon them, and they were more hopelessly spoiled by their conduct. Burned on one side and dough on the other, perfectly useless. Many Christians now are utterly worthless in their lives and examples. Many societies have lost their prominence and savour; sunk into degradation, and do not answer the end for which they were created. Inward corruption will never overcome outward temptation. If individuals, churches, and nations do not contain power to prevent deterioration and impart life, they will become morally insipid, and fit for nothing but the fate which history and Scripture declare awaits them.
2. Social injury. “Strangers have devoured his strength.” Foreign powers, Assyria and Egypt, whose aid Israel had invoked, robbed them of money, wasted their treasures, and diminished their numbers. Like Samson, bereft of his strength by sensual pleasure, Israel was stripped of social privilege and power. Sad to think of many socially and individually ruined by unlawful connections and sinful lusts: Intellect and memory, dignity and manhood: the health of the body and the happiness of the soul “devoured” by strangers to God and his people! “Evil communications corrupt good manners.”
3. Unnatural decay. “Gray hairs are here and there upon him.” Loss of inward strength and outward beauty will soon bring age and decay. “Men get old before they are young.” A general laxity of morals may sap and undermine our commerce. The body politic may be covered with marks of hoary age and ripening for destruction. Christian churches may decay through discord, worldliness, and pride. Families and individuals may fall by sin and die while young. Gray hairs are forerunners and forewarners of death.
4. Religious insensibility. “Yet he knoweth it not.” To be insensible of disease and decay is the worst symptom of all. Men hide from themselve tokens of death, and it comes upon them unawares. They think that outward forms, orthodox creeds, and the course of time will recover their strength. They are insensible and stupefied in sin, and sleep quietly amid dangers and death. “They have stricken me, shalt thou say, and I was not sick: they have beaten me, and I felt it not; when shall I awake?” (Proverbs 23:35; Isaiah 42:25.)
HOMILETIC HINTS AND OUTLINES
Hosea 7:8. A cake not turned. Soft and pliable under Divine chastisement, hardened and cold in sin—half-heartedness, half-baked and half-burned, displeasing to God—hypocrisy, hot in forms, dead in spirit, rejected by God. “Such were the people; such are too many so-called Christians; they united in themselves hypocrisy and ungodliness, outward performance and inward lukewarmness; the one overdone, but without any wholesome effect on the other. The one was scorched and black; the other, steamed, damp, and lukewarm; the whole worthless, spoiled irremediably, fit only to be cast away.” “Thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.”
Hosea 7:9. Gray hairs. I. Gray hairs are a sign of decay. God for wise purposes gives distinctive features to human life. Nature teaches us to reverence age in the pages of an old book; in the leafless branches of an old tree; in the silent, deserted halls of an old roofless ruin; still more in one whose head is white with the snows of fourscore or a hundred winters. Gray hairs are associated with—
(1) Parental honours,
(2) the ripe wisdom of age, and
(3) the piety of venerable men. II. But in the text they are signs of decay, premonitory symptoms of dissolution: and teach that men live in ignorance and act in disregard of signs that should warn and alarm them.
1. This appears in the history of States. In the kingdom of Israel, in England, illegitimacy, drunkenness, continental morality, Sabbath-breaking, and irreligious customs are signs of national decay; which, but for thousands of good and earnest men, who know it, would bring death upon us.
2. This applies to the false security of sinners.
3. This appears in men’s insensibility to the lapse and lessons of time [From Dr. Guthrie].
I. Explain the ignorance here mentioned, or show how it is that many a man is backsliding and declining in grace, and yet knows it not. This is often caused by a want of acquaintance with one’s own soul. Some there are who do not want to know any evil thing of themselves. Many see not the gray hairs because they do not look into the glass to see them. There are some who look into the glass to see whether there are gray hairs coming, but they use a false mirror, one which does not truly reflect the image. II. I am to hold up the looking-glass. One of the gray hairs which marks decay is a want of holy grief for daily sin. A second gray hair is the absence of lamentation in the soul when Jesus Christ is dishonoured. A third gray hair in the Christian, a very plain one, and marking that the disease is gone far, is the indulgence of certain minor sins. Covetousness is a very common gray hair upon the heads of professors. With some it is not quite covetousness, but worldliness. Another gray hair is pride. Neglect of prayer another. It is a gray hair when we have no delight in listening to the word. And another is, want of love to God. Want of love to perishing sinners is a sad gray hair to be found, I fear, in some ministers, as well as in the people. Another is the suspension of communion with God. III. Recommend certain remedies for this decay. Inquire whether you be a child of God or not. Next remember what will be the result of decays in grace. I recommend to every believer a daily self-examination. Then with repentance join much supplication and renewed faith and daily watchful activity [Spurgeon].
Hosea 7:10. Pride prevented humility and confession.
2. Return to God, who had afflicted them.
3. Testified against them in their stupidity and rebellion against God. “Men complain of their ‘fortune,’ or ‘fate,’ or ‘stars,’ and go on the more obstinately to build up what God destroys, to prop up by human means or human aid what, by God’s providence, is failing; they venture more desperately, in order to recover past losses, until the crash at last becomes hopeless and final” [Pusey].
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 7
Hosea 7:8. The World and The Church. Companions may be compared to the river Thames, which is a sweet and pretty river enough near its source; but in the great metropolis it has kept company with drains and sewers, under the belief that its current was too powerful and pure to be injured by them. It was meant that the river should purify the sewer, but, instead of that, the sewer has corrupted the river [Union Magazine].