CRITICAL NOTES.—
Hosea 8:8. Swallowed] up as devoured by beasts of prey. Vessel] worthless and dishonoured (2 Timothy 2:20); and broken (Psalms 31:12; Jeremiah 22:28; Jeremiah 48:38).
HOMILETICS
A PICTURE OF UNGODLY LIFE.—Hosea 8:7-8
Israel is still threatened. Their continual labour is all in vain. They reap no reward, will be grievously disappointed, and not only the harvest, but they themselves will be devoured. Such will be the result of their ungodly conduct.
I. Laborious in its efforts. “For they sow the wind.”
1. Effort is put forth by all men. They live and labour for good—seek to gain happiness and have a seed-time in life.
2. Painful are the efforts of the ungodly. They “plough iniquity,” and practice it day by day. “They sow the wind,” most earnestly and perseveringly, in hope of profit. Sinners are sore labourers. They put themselves to trouble and expense to make and worship their idols, to pursue their aims, but all in vain. They are labouring for the wind (Ecclesiastes 5:16); “embracing a shadow; grasping the air; wearying themselves for that which hath no substance nor true felicity in it.”
II. Disappointment in its results. “It hath no stalk: the bud shall yield no meal,” &c. First no ear, or if an ear, no yield, or if it advance thus far, the enemy will devour the produce.
1. Vanity is reaped. He that soweth iniquity shall reap vanity (Proverbs 22:8). There is a harvest in sin, and men reap what they sow (Galatians 6:7-8). Vanity, emptiness, and vexation result from sin. Satan is a hard task-master. His service is slavery and the wages miserable. “Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread? and your labour for that which satisfieth not?”
2. Divine retribution is reaped. “They shall reap the whirlwind.” The wind sown and penned up in ungodly life, will be reinforced in strength and burst forth into a mighty tempest. Men sow and cultivate what at last will make them the sport and mockery of its resistless violence. They will be carried away with their own folly like chaff before the wind. The whirlwind will overthrow their dwellings, wreck their hopes, and drive them away in their wickedness. Sennacherib in olden time reaped the whirlwind (Isaiah 10:5-12; Isaiah 10:24-25; Isaiah 30:31). Napoleon, robbed of empire, shorn of greatness, and driven into exile, reaped the harvest of his own sowing. Spain with its Inquisition, and France with its Black Bartholomew, countries remarkable for persecution, reaped the whirlwind in bloody revolutions and civil wars. The ungodly are consumed by Divine judgments in this life and by Divine wrath in that which is to come. “They that plow iniquity and sow wickedness, reap the same. By the blast of God they perish, and by the breath of his nostrils are they consumed.”
III. Destructive in its end. “Israel is swallowed up.” Not mere disappointment, but destruction will be the result of sin. Israel were carried away, the whole nation were swallowed up by foes. They lost their privileges and honour. Their land was devoured and eaten up by strangers. They were dishonoured by God, and despised by men as a broken vessel. Sin and idolatry in gross or refined forms will bring misery and degradation. They undermine the foundations of moral life, beget more place for vanity and more thirst for pleasure. Those who do not love and serve God will be given up by God. There will come, though long delayed, a terrible day of wrath, a harvest of whirlwinds to consume their glory and destroy their hopes. “Be not deceived: God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap.”
HOMILETIC HINTS AND OUTLINES
Hosea 8:7. “They have sown.”
1. Human life a sowing time. “Behold a sower went forth to sow.” The relation of men one to another like that of seed and soil. Men are sowing by thoughts, words, and deeds. In each a permanent influence, a germ of imperishable life.
2. The kind of life—moral seed. Some sow good seed, others worthless seed. The pleasure-seeker and the man of the world, the hypocrite and the false professor, are sowing “the wind.”
3. The accompaniments of life—the harvest. The harvest is good or bad, the same in measure and quality as the sowing. Men reap to-day what they had sown yesterday, will reap in eternity what they sow in time. God’s laws are unchangeable and will never be reversed. “For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the spirit shall of the spirit reap life everlasting.”
Not only may men expect to reap as they sow, but sinful and vain courses will bring further disadvantages, and raise violent tempests, either in the undertaker’s conscience, or outward condition, or both; for “they have sown the wind, and shall reap the whirlwind” [Hutcheson].
Hosea 8:8. Sinful courses persisted in may consume the Church, deprive of religious ordinances, and gratify the wishes of the enemy, who greedily devour God’s people (Psalms 14:4).
When professors decline in religion and despise God, then God will despise them before others. So long as Israel was consecrated to the Lord those who sought to injure her were injured themselves (Jeremiah 2:3); but when they made leagues with idolaters they were swallowed up by them. “For them that honour me I will honour, and they that despise me shall be lightly esteemed.”
Dishonoured vessels.
1. A useless vessel. Empty of everything good, filled with everything bad, and taking the place of vessels more useful and worthy.
2. A broken vessel. Broken in credit and reputations, broken to pieces in hopes and fortunes; broken by their own conduct and by the judgments of God upon that conduct.
3. A vessel put to some vile purpose. Israel given to idolatry. Men dishonouring body and soul by sin, making them objects of loathing and disgust before others. “There are not only vessels of gold and silver, but also of wood and of earth: and some to honour, and some to dishonour” (2 Timothy 2:20). All men are vessels of mercy, or vessels of wrath fitted to destruction (Romans 9:22).
Such has been the history of the ten tribes ever since; swallowed up, not destroyed; among the nations, yet not of them; despised and mingled among them, yet not united with them; having an existence, yet among that large whole, the nations, in whom their natural existence has been at once preserved and lost; everywhere had in dishonour; the Heathen and the Mohammedan have alike despised, outraged, insulted them; avenging upon them, unconsciously, the dishonour which they did to God [Pusey].