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Hosea Chapter
Six
Hosea 6
Chapter Contents
An exhortation to repentance. (1-3) Israel's instability
and breach of the covenant. (4-11)
Commentary on Hosea 6:1-3
Those who have gone from God by consent, and in a body,
drawing one another to sin, should, by consent and in a body, return to him,
which will be for his glory, and their good. It will be of great use for
support under afflictions, and to encourage our repentance, to keep up good
thoughts of God, and of his purposes and designs concerning us. Deliverance out
of trouble should be to them as life from the dead. God will revive them: the
assurance of this should engage them to return to him. But this seems to have a
further reference to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Let us admire the wisdom
and goodness of God, that when the prophet foretold the deliverance of the
church out of her troubles, he should point out our salvation by Christ; and now
these words are fulfilled in the resurrection of Christ, it confirms our faith,
that this is He that should come and we are to look for no other. Here is a
precious blessing promised; this is life eternal, to know God. The returns of
the favour of God are secured to us as firmly as the return of the morning
after a dark night. He shall come to us as the latter and former rain unto the
earth, which refreshes it, and makes it fruitful. The grace of God in Christ is
both the latter and the former rain; and by it the good work of our
fruit-bearing is begun and carried on. And as the Redeemer was raised from the
grave, so will He revive the hearts and hopes of all that trust in him. The
feeblest glimpse of hope in his word, is a sure earnest of increasing light and
comfort, which shall be attended with purifying, comforting grace that makes
fruitful.
Commentary on Hosea 6:4-11
Sometimes Israel and Judah seemed disposed to repent
under their sufferings, but their goodness vanished like the empty morning
cloud, and the early dew, and they were as vile as ever. Therefore the Lord
sent awful messages by the prophets. The word of God will be the death either
of the sin or of the sinner. God desired mercy rather than sacrifice, and that
knowledge of him which produces holy fear and love. This exposes the folly of
those who trust in outward observances, to make up for their want of love to
God and man. As Adam broke the covenant of God in paradise, so Israel had
broken his national covenant, notwithstanding all the favours they received.
Judah also was ripe for Divine judgments. May the Lord put his fear into our
hearts, and set up his kingdom within us, and never leave us to ourselves, nor
suffer us to be overcome by temptation.
── Matthew Henry《Concise Commentary on Hosea》
Hosea 6
Verse 1
[1] Come, and let us return unto the LORD: for he hath torn,
and he will heal us; he hath smitten, and he will bind us up.
Come — The prophet here brings them in, exhorting one
another.
He hath torn — We now see his hand in all we
suffer.
Verse 2
[2] After two days will he revive us: in the third day he
will raise us up, and we shall live in his sight.
After two days — After some short time of
suffering, God will shew us his favour, and revive our dead state.
Revive us — Though we were as dead men,
buried in our miseries, yet our merciful God will quicken us.
Live — Flourish in peace, wealth, and joy; in righteousness
and safety.
In his sight — The eye of our God being upon us
for good.
Verse 3
[3] Then shall we know, if we follow on to know the LORD:
his going forth is prepared as the morning; and he shall come unto us as the
rain, as the latter and former rain unto the earth.
Know — What worship he requires. And the knowledge of God
shall be to us a spring of all holy, righteous, sober conversation.
Follow on — By a diligent attendance to the
word, and works of God, we shall know experimentally, how holy, how good, how
faithful God is.
His going forth — Before his people; his gracious,
faithful, holy, just, and wise providence, for his peoples good and comfort.
As the morning — As sure, beautiful, grateful, and
as clear as the morning; which dispels the darkness, and proclaims its own
approach.
As the rain — Which revives, makes it fruitful,
beautifies it, and gives a new face to all.
Verse 4
[4] O Ephraim, what shall I do unto thee? O Judah, what
shall I do unto thee? for your goodness is as a morning cloud, and as the early
dew it goeth away.
What shall I do — What shall I do more to save you
from ruin, and save my own honour, truth, and justice?
Verse 5
[5] Therefore have I hewed them by the prophets; I have
slain them by the words of my mouth: and thy judgments are as the light that
goeth forth.
Therefore — Because I would do for you
whatever might be done.
Hewed them — I have severely, and unweariedly
reproved, and threatened them.
By thy words — As I did by word foretel, so I
did effect in due time.
Thy judgments — The punishments threatened, which
fell upon this people, did so fully answer the prediction that every one might
see them clear as the light, and as constantly executed as the morning.
Verse 6
[6] For I desired mercy, and not sacrifice; and the
knowledge of God more than burnt offerings.
For — I so hewed and slew them, because they did not what I
most of all required; they were full of sacrifices, but either to idols, or
else in formality and pride.
Mercy — Compassion and charity towards men, this one principal
duty of the second table put for all. In this I delight, I have found little of
this among you.
Not sacrifice — Rather than sacrifice.
The knowledge of God — The affectionate
knowledge of God, which fills the mind with reverence of his majesty, fear of
his goodness, love of his holiness, trust in his promise, and submission to his
will.
Verse 7
[7] But they like men have transgressed the covenant: there
have they dealt treacherously against me.
The covenant — The law of their God.
There — In that very place, the good land which by covenant I
gave them: they have broken my covenant.
Verse 8
[8] Gilead is a city of them that work iniquity, and is
polluted with blood.
A city — A city full of notorious transgressors, the
inhabitants though Levites and priests, work all manner of wickedness.
With blood — Murders committed there.
Verse 9
[9] And as troops of robbers wait for a man, so the company
of priests murder in the way by consent: for they commit lewdness.
The company of priests — The priests by
companies lay wait, and rob, and murder.
Verse 10
[10] I have seen an horrible thing in the house of Israel:
there is the whoredom of Ephraim, Israel is defiled.
The whoredom — Idolatry.
Of Ephraim — Which was brought in by an
Ephraimite, by Jeroboam, two hundred years ago, and is there still.
Israel is defiled — It hath overspread
all Israel.
Verse 11
[11] Also, O Judah, he hath set an harvest for thee, when I
returned the captivity of my people.
He — But God hath appointed an harvest for thee; thou shalt
not as Israel be cut off; a seed of thee shall be sowed, and thou shalt reap
the harvest with joy.
── John Wesley《Explanatory Notes on Hosea》
06 Chapter 6
Verses 1-11
Verse 1
Come, and let us return unto the Lord.
The characteristic marks of true penitence
These words are the expressions of that penitence which was
excited in the Israelites by God’s departure from them, and by His grace that
accompanied the affliction.
I. The
characteristic marks of true penitence. It will always be attended by--
1. A sense of our departure from God. With unregenerate men the
thought of being at a distance from God never distresses. As soon as the grace
of repentance is given, men see that they are as sheep gone astray.
2. An acknowledgment of affliction as a just chastisement for sin.
The impenitent heart murmurs and rebels under the Divine chastisements: the
penitent “hears the rod, and Him that appointed it.”
3. A determination to return to God. When a man is once thoroughly
awakened to a sense of his lost condition, he can no longer be contented with a
formal round of duties. To hear of Christ, to seek Him, are from henceforth his
chief desire, his supreme delight.
4. A desire that others should return to Him also. This is insisted
on as characteristic of the great work that shall be accomplished in the latter
day (Isaiah 2:3). The penitent feels it
incumbent on him to labour for the salvation of others.
II. The grounds on
which a penitent may take encouragement to return to God.
1. From a general view of God’s readiness to heal us.
2. From that particular discovery of it which we have in the wounds
He has inflicted on us.
Apply--
1. To those who have deserted God.
2. To those who are deserted by God. (Skeletons of Sermons.)
Man’s highest social action
The prophet calls on those who had been smitten, or sent into
exile, to put away all confidence in an arm of flesh, to renounce all
idolatries.
I. That society is
away from God. Not locally, of course: for the Great Spirit is with all and in
all, but morally. Society is away from Him in its thoughts; away from Him in
its sympathies; away from Him in its pursuits.
II. That
estrangement from God is the source of all its trials. Because the prodigal
left his father’s home he got reduced to the utmost infamy and wretchedness.
Moral separation from God is ruin. Cut the branch from the root and it withers;
the river from its source, and it dries up; the planet from the sun, and it
rushes into ruin. Nothing will remove the evils under which society is groaning
but a return unto God. Legislation, commerce, science, literature, art, none of
these will help it much so long as it continues away from Him.
III. That return to
him is a possible work. (Homilist.)
Luxury and ease
I. The fact of
backsliding. Had there been no wandering from the Lord, there would have been
no need of a return to Him. From passages in the histories of Solomon and
David, as shewing how luxury and ease conduce to backsliding. Solomon would be
now caned a child of God. He did start well. But the history of Solomon shows
us that no amount of experience is in itself a safeguard. Whether young or old
in the faith, we need the preserving grace of God from moment to moment. In
Solomon’s case the affinity with Pharaoh, and marriage with his daughter, are
like the first links in a long chain of backsliding. Is it not often the case
that believers, even when apparently walking in the fear of the Lord, may be
cherishing some secret sin or indulgence, which, like a seed concealed in the
earth, finally germinates and blossoms forth into open backsliding! Solomon
fell through self-indulgence. And the Christian who is self-indulgent, who
makes the means entrusted to him by God minister to his love of luxury and
desire for worldly pomp, is on the high road to idolatry. God did not leave
Solomon undisturbed in his idolatry and self-indulgence. The record of David’s
fall is given in 2 Samuel 11:1-27. Idleness is the
parent of vice. Lurking lusts, encouraged by the quiet, creep out of their
hiding-places, hold converse with the heart, and seek to drag him into all
manner of sin. David fell before temptation, and set himself to commit further
sin, in the hope of covering that already committed. This is almost invariably
the case with the backslider.
II. God’s dealings
with the backslider. “He hath torn--He hath smitten.” It is in mercy, and not
in wrath, that God deals with His backsliding children. Punishment has for its
object, the vindication of the authority of God as the moral Ruler. It is
judicial as well as remedial. But its chief purpose is the backslider’s
restoration.
III. A glimmer of
faith on the part of the backslider. “He will heal us--He will bind us up.” In
the heart of the backslider there lies hidden the germ of a God-given faith,
like seeds in a mummy case.
IV. The goodly
resolve. “Come, and let us return unto the Lord.” Some seek to heal their
backslidings without dealing with God Himself. How are we to return? Through
Jesus, the once crucified, the now risen and exalted One. (W. P. Lockhart.)
Signs of true penitence
I. Wherever there
is true repentance, there will be a returning unto the Lord.
1. A true penitent will be sensible, not only of straying from God,
which hath made a distance between God and him, but that his straying hath
begotten an averseness, and turned his back upon God, so that he needs to
return.
2. A penitent will have a deep sense, that all other courses he has
essayed in his straying from God, are but vanity.
II. The ordinary
forerunner of a time of mercy, is the Lord’s stirring up His people to seek
Him. Here they are excited, and excite one another to this duty. “Come, and let
us return,” and this is their temper in a time of love. (George Hutcheson.)
For He hath torn, and He
will heal us.
He hath torn, and He will heal us
The philosophy of the Divine judgments is here most explicitly
expounded. The motive of every Divine judgment, within the limits of this life,
is mercy. We see but dimly what may lie beyond this life. Here, at any rate,
the one constant patient aim of God, by every means of influence which He
wields, is to bring men unto Himself. It is important to remember, what some
schools of Christian thought have strangely forgotten, that God’s righteousness
is not a righteousness which would be satisfied equally by the conversion, or
by the punishment of a sinner. We cannot abstract the righteousness from the
living person who is also the Father of that sinner; and who loves him with
such tenderness that He is capable of even an infinite sacrifice, that that
child may not die but live. God’s righteousness, God’s justice, God’s holiness,
yearn for the restoration of the sinner to righteousness, quite as much as His
mercy and His love. And through life they are spending all their arts and
efforts to take him captive, and to bring him home. It is beginning to be fully
recognised, in the physical sphere, that judgments are but rich blessings in
disguise. There are indeed some dark passages of Scripture history which seem
to contradict this principle: e.g., Pharaoh of the hardened heart. This
cannot be fully explained, but it makes this terrible suggestion--what must be
the doom of a heart that is hardened even against the Divine love? There is a
growing hardness where the will is in it. The blow that is sent in mercy, if it
fails to open the heart’s sealed portals, strikes down. The heart hardened
against God, hardens itself further. And this is His law, and part of the
solemn conditions of our life. But there,, is nothing on earth irreparable
while “we can repent and turn unto the Lord; for He hath torn, and He win heal
us.” There is absolutely nothing in the experience of the sinner, the sufferer,
which God cannot transmute into joy. No calamity can long oppress the spirit
which He wills to draw to the shield of His strength, and to rest on the bosom
of His love. Or is the sorrow a remembrance of sin? With the word of
forgiveness, the bitterness of the sorrow passes. God can forgive the iniquity
of the sill IS it temptation? Believe that temptation is God’s benignant
ordinance for the trial and assay of spirits. God has not left you untroubled.
(J. Baldwin Brown, B. A.)
God’s time for mercy
1. When God’s time of mercy is come, He puts a mighty spirit of
seeking into men.
2. A joint turning to God is very honourable to god. “Come, and let us
return.”
3. Times of mercy are times of union.
4. True penitent hearts seek to get others to join with them.
5. In times of the greatest sufferings a truly penitent heart retains
good thoughts of God.
6. a penitent heart is not a discouraged heart.
7. A repenting heart is not a discouraged, but a sustained heart. But
we must not falsely encourage ourselves. Our hope is in God. (Jeremiah
Burroughs.)
He hath smitten, and He
will bind us up.--
Hope for a bleeding Church
The text may be considered as the language of a Church.
I. Smarting under
recent chastisements.
1. Shew the sufferings of such a Church.
2. These sufferings are to be received as from the hand of God.
3. And regarded as chastisements of God for the sins of the Church.
II. Hoping for a
speedy revival. That hope rests on the following grounds.
1. On the mingled exercises of mercy and judgment which characterise
God’s government of His Church.
2. On the regard which God has to the honour of His name, and the
success of His cause in the earth.
3. On the ground of the mediatorial prerogatives of the Son of God.
4. On the promised power and grace of the Holy Spirit.
III. Resolving upon
immediate reformation. Let us give up the language of complaint and mutual
recrimination, and substitute for it the voice of prayer. (T. Vasey.)
Hope in God’s mercy
The reason here given, why the Israelites could return safely and
with sure confidence to God is, that they would acknowledge it as His office to
heal after He has smitten, and to bring a remedy for the wounds which He has
inflicted. The prophet means that God does not so punish men as to pour forth
His wrath on them for their destruction; but that He intends, on the contrary,
to promote their salvation, when He is severe in punishing their sins. The
beginning of repentance is a sense of God’s mercy; when men are persuaded that
God is ready to give pardon, they then begin to gather courage to repent;
otherwise perverseness will ever increase in them. (John Calvin.)
Verse 2
After two days will He revive us: in the third day He will raise us
up, and we shall live in His sight.
Death the gate of life
Let us look, not on the dying side, but on the living side.
Each shadow has its light; each valley its height; each night its dawn; each
wound of the oyster-shell its pearl; each kind of death its counterpart of
life. To have the one is to have both. It is, therefore, a mistake to be ever
thinking of what you must give up. Think rather of what you must take in.
Follow hard after Christ, to be with Him, for Him, like Him. Let your intimacy
with Him be like those closely pointed stones in the old buildings of Thebes,
between which it is impossible to insert even a sheet of writing-paper. Obey
Him up to the hilt. So will ever new blessings disclose themselves to you; and
as you climb to them you will be insensibly drawn away from things that
fascinated and injured you. Preaching out after a fuller measure of life, you
will hardly realise the cost by which alone you can enter upon its enjoyment.
The wrench of death will be less perceptible amid the joy which sheds its light
on your face, and the warm glow into your heart.
1. Above all, trust the lead of Jesus. “He will revive us; He will
raise us up; and we shall live in His sight.” He knows every step of the way
through the dark valley; because, as the Captain of salvation, He has been
obliged to traverse it with each son whom He has brought to glory. He is with
you, feeling for you infinitely, though you cannot see Him. It is impossible
for Him to take one false step, or inflict one needless stab of pain. Out of
your suffering He is going to bring glory to Himself and blessedness to you. He
sometimes seems to tarry. His stages of redemption are so slow; but His love is
dealing more wisely with thee in its delays, impetuous spirit, than it could in
haste! It is hard to wait when heart and flesh are failing; but thy God will be
the strength of thy life, and thy portion for ever. He knows the nearest path
that will lead thee to it. Trust His hand and purpose running through the
circumstances of thy life.
2. And out of all this will come the more abundant life. Suffering at
first isolates us;: but afterwards it links us in the closest bonds with all
who are sitting on the hard benches of the school of sorrow. We learn to
comfort them with the comfort with which we have ourselves been comforted of
God. The water streams from the smitten rock. The flower springs from the dead
seed. The crystal river flows from the melting glacier. The bright gold emerges
from the dark mine and the cleansing fires. When you are sure that Jesus asks
aught of you, yield up your will to Him; ask Him to come, and take it and blend
it with His own. Be willing to be made willing. Wait for Him. Trust Him. Do not
be afraid. He will gently open the door of life, through which you will pass out
of the vale of death into wider and more abundant blessedness. And, in the end,
when the lesson is fully mastered, we shall find that His going forth has been
prepared as the morning; and He will come unto us as the rain, as the latter
and former rain, unto the earth. Abraham shall take his Isaac from off the
altar and lead him home; Joseph shall weep tears of welcome on his father’s
neck; Job shall have more prosperity than before his trial; the young
confessors shall emerge from the fire without their bonds; flowers shall grow
where the black cinders lay; and where the body was buried in the sepulchre
amid tears of hopeless sorrow, there shall be a joyous resurrection. We shall
live again, and shall know the Lord as never before. Wait to see the end of the
Lord; He is very pitiful; He is human in His tenderness. (F. B. Meyer, B. A.)
Christ and His people
I. The connection
of Christ with His people. The head and the members. “We are made alive in
Christ.” His victory over death is ours. He who had life in Himself quickens
whom He will.
1. The power manifested on the third day was a type of the power to
be manifested at the general resurrection.
2. Christ’s resurrection not only a type of a physical but of a
spiritual resurrection. The soul is quickened together with Christ.
II. The presence of
Christ realised by His people. The risen life is spent in the sight of the
Lord. Before the crucifixion the apostles had the bodily presence of the Lord,
subject to time and place, e.g., Christ was not with the dying Lazarus,
because He was in Peroea. After the resurrection they lived in His presence as
they had never lived before. Stephen saw Him standing in the ready attitude of
help. He stood by St. Paul; His eye was on His faithful martyr, Antipas. All
the disciples went about with a constant sense of Christ’s oversight, working
under the King’s eye. The soul risen with Christ believes that it lives in His
sight. Faith in this promised presence will be a source of strength and
patience. Remember how Christ’s eye is on His servants at their work, in their
sufferings, and during their worship. (W. Watters, M. A.)
The third day
In shadow, the prophecy was never fulfilled to Israel at all. The
Ten Tribes were never restored. Unto the Two Tribes what a mere shadow was the
restoration from Babylon, that it should be spoken of as the gift of life, or
of resurrection! The strictest explanation is the truest. The “two days” and
the “third day” have nothing in history to correspond with them, except that in
which they were fulfilled, when Christ, “rising on the third day from the
grave, raised with Him the whole human race.” (E. B. Pusey, D. D.)
Verse 3
Then shall we know, if we follow on to know the Lord.
Follow on
In the context, the deliverance of God’s Church out of her
troubles is foretold. In the same words our salvation in Christ is figured
forth. “Knowledge” here includes the whole of experimental and practical
godliness; for in religion we only know what we feel and do. In making progress
in the life of godliness, the two words of our text are--a condition, a rule,
and a spur.
I. The
recommendation of our text implies--
1. That the pursuit is worthy.
2. That there is a leader whom we are to follow.
3. That the pursuit is begun. Regeneration has been experienced,
pardon has been conferred, spiritual life is possessed.
4. That there is danger of stopping short. There are difficulties
without, and foes within.
II. Special reasons
for obeying the text.
1. Only so can the genuineness of our religion be proved.
2. Only so can our mission be fulfilled.
3. Only so can our characters be developed.
4. Only so can heaven be reached. How much there is enfolded in that
ward “overcometh.” Uncoil it by Divine help in your lives.
III. Encouragements
to cheer and stimulate.
1. Bread is provided for the hungry.
2. A staff of promises for the weak.
3. Repose for the Weary.
4. Complete success is guaranteed. (R. Berry.)
Knowing the Lord
Ignorance is a lamentable evil. It unfits persons for acting their
part with propriety in civil life, and it is far more injurious to them in the
concerns of eternity.
I. What is meant
by knowing the Lord.
1. It is to be scripturally acquainted with His character. No correct
knowledge can be acquired concerning God and salvation, but through the
instrumentality of the Word. In the volumes of nature and providence there is
much to be learned concerning the existence and goodness of God. Only from the
volume of inspiration we learn what God is, not only as our Creator and
Preserver, but also as our Redeemer.
2. It is to give Him the homage which is due unto His name. There is
the necessity of acknowledging Him--returning unto Him in new allegiance, by
repentance unto life, and giving Him an unreserved reverence, in obedience to
all His laws, ordinances, and commandments. Knowledge without a corresponding
practice would only add to our condemnation.
II. Explain the
proposal of following on to know the Lord.
1. It is to persevere in cultivating intercourse and acquaintance
with Him. In so far as it has pleased God to reveal Himself unto us in His
Word, it is our duty to learn what He hath revealed. We may, however, learn all
that is to be theoretically known regarding God, and yet remain spiritually
ignorant of His gracious character. His perfections will be best understood by
a practical reliance upon them, and on acting agreeably to their nature.
2. Following on to know the Lord shall be crowned with success.
Exertion in this Divine pursuit shall be successful. Disappointment is
impossible. We shall know all the blessings of the New Covenant, whether
pertaining to justification, adoption, or sanctification. We shall know and
understand the law of our God, believingly feel its importance, and sincerely
practise its requirements.
III. The
encouragement to follow on to know the Lord. This blessing of our Saviour’s
coming is--
1. Progressive and certain. “Prepared as the morning.” A knowledge of
Divine things cannot be obtained but by a Divine teacher. The going forth of
God the Saviour to enlighten and cherish His people, when they seek after Him,
is as certain as the outgoings of the morning, which are a settled and regular
constitution of nature.
2. Pleasant and desirable. “His going forth is prepared as the
morning.” It is ever comfortable to know that in the midst of difficulties
there is One prepared to give us relief. Christ, our Almighty Saviour and
Friend, is so prepared. As the morning air and light are agreeable to the
watchman who has been marching his weary rounds in the dark--to the
weather-beaten mariner who has been tempest-tested through the night--so
agreeable, and unspeakably more so is the coming of God our Saviour to
enlighten and relieve them that are cast down and overwhelmed with the sense of
sin, to help and comfort them that are ready to perish.
3. Quickening and salutary. “He shall come unto us as the rain.” Rain
is not less necessary than heat for the production of vegetable life. It is
like the circulation of the blood in the human body, that which keeps the whole
system alive.
4. Invigorating and satisfying. “As the latter and former rain unto
the earth.” The expression, latter and former rain, has reference to the two
periodical rains that fell in the land of Canaan. As necessary as these rains
are the showers of grace in the Church to water the seed of the Word, that it
may spring up in our hearts unto everlasting life, to encourage its growth, and
to perfect its fruits of holiness and meetness for the heavenly world. From
this subject we may see ground for cherishing large expectations. God is
gracious, His promise is large, and His Word is unimpeachable. God is able to
carry you on to perfection; trust in Him then for all needful supplies, and you
will not be disappointed. From this subject all may see the importance of being
possessed by saving knowledge. (John Shoolbraid.)
The fuller knowledge of God
Some give this rendering, “We shall know, and shall pursue on to
know Jehovah,” and they explain the passage thus,--that the Israelites had
derived no such benefit from the law of Moses, but that they still expected the
fuller doctrine which Christ brought at His coming. They then think that this
is a prophecy respecting that doctrine, which is now by the Gospel set forth to
us in its full brightness, because God has manifested Himself in His Son as in
a living image. But this is too refined an exposition; and it is enough for us
to keep close to the design of the prophet. (John Calvin.)
Need of perseverance in seeking the knowledge of God
All Scripture writers bear witness to the faithfulness of God; and
call upon us, by patient continuance in well-doing, to seek for glory, honour,
and immortality.
I. The important
object of the believer’s pursuit. Of true believers it may be said, “ they
follow on to know the Lord.” In what does this knowledge consist; and in what
way is it communicated to the mind? It is not a mere knowledge of such a Being
as God, as Creator and Upholder; nor is it such an idea of God as is conceived”
by those who exalt one attribute to the exclusion of another, who make Him all
mercy, forgetful of His perfect justice. We cannot know the Lord to our
comfort, till we know Him as our God and Father in Jesus Christ. By nature, we
stand at an immeasurable distance from God; and the more correct are our
notions of His power, His holiness, and His glory, the more discouraging will
they be if they are unconnected with the Redeemer as our Mediator with the
Father. This knowledge is implanted in the soul by the Holy Ghost.
II. The certainty
of its final success. He who “follows on” shall not fail of the grace of God.
This truth is plainly declared, and figuratively exhibited. The figures are the
morning and the rain. Learn--
1. How needful is this knowledge.
2. The reason why those who have attained some knowledge of Christ do
not attain to more enlarged and experimental acquaintance with spiritual
things. Be patient in hope, and persevering in prayer. (W. Mayers, A. M.)
The duty and happiness of progressive spiritual knowledge
The works of God in nature are here employed to describe His moral
government, His ways with His Church, His dealings with His people for their
spiritual discipline and sanctification. The enlightening and comforting
influences of the Holy Ghost shall as surely be vouchsafed to the soul longing
for salvation, as the rain, the former and the latter, refreshes and fertilises
the earth. The laws and operations of nature are net more certain than the
fulfilment, in the revelation of grace, of God’s exceeding great and precious
promises. The Divine promises and threatenings rest on the same foundation--the
immovable foundation of His everlasting unehangeableness, His perfect
faithfulness, His universal presence, His almighty power. The text contains a
duty and a promise. Our duty is to “follow on to know the Lord,” and to its
performance we are incited by a gracious promise. “Then we shall know him.”;
for His going forth, His care and condescension to meet us in mercy is
prepared--is as predetermined and customary as those successive changes and
established operations of His visible works which we so beneficially and
continually experience. According to the text, the safety and happiness of
knowing the Lord, and of following on to know Him, are consequent upon
returning to the Lord with penitent acknowledgment and lively compunction on
account of apostasy and disobedience. Suffering and wretchedness, in this world
or in the next, or in both, are necessarily the results of sin. Alienation from
God is likewise spiritual insensibility, a moral death. It is also a condition
of ignorance. The way of transgressors is hard. Consider what it is to know the
Lord. How incomparably great is the excellence of this knowledge! The knowledge
of the Lord comprehends the experience of the Divine goodness and
loving-kindness, together with the fruits of faith and obedience to His
commandments. Saving knowledge is communicated through the offices of the one
Mediator, and the agency of the Holy Ghost, imparting an efficacious blessing
upon prayer, the Word, and the ministrations of the Church. It consists in
veneration and love towards the Lord--a meek but firm affiance in His promises
and mercy, and in persevering obedience to Him. Let us make it our first and
supreme concern to attain to the knowledge of God as our reconciled Father in
Christ Jesus. Having attained this, your salvation is begun. While this
knowledge implies and cherishes an approval of God s ways and will, and is
accompanied with love to Him and delight in Him, it likewise implies justice
and mercy and charity to our fellow-creatures. (Thomas Ridley, M. A.)
The progressive character of the Christian life
Christian life is not a house, but a plant. It is not complete,
but grows.
1. It is growth in faith. Its beginning is, or may be, as small as a
grain of mustard-seed. The least bit will do to begin with. Act upon what you
now believe to be true and right as relates to our duties to God, to our
fellows and ourselves. With God’s help I will under take every known duty. Sin
is to be eradicated, and holiness is to increase in such a spirit the seed will
germinate, the tree will grow, and strength will come, and what before was
impossible will now be easy.
2. In knowledge: acquaint thyself with God. Ascend the mountain.
There are ever new disclosures in creation, providence, and redemption.
3. In experience: here faith is verified. If any man will do His
will, he shall know of the doctrine. Faith alone blesses our life; unbelief is
destructive. It works ruin to all our highest interests to live without
faith--in government, in society, and in the family. Principles which cannot
with safety to all dearest concerns be followed are necessarily false. Faith is
confirmed in life and assured in death: “I will never leave thee, nor forsake
thee.”
4. In good works: religion is also practical. The tree bears good
fruit, and bears it perennially. The Christian will improve in the quantity and
quality of the good he does. Like the palm-tree, he will be fruitful to the end
of life. (L. O. Thompson.)
Divine knowledge, and the means of acquiring it
It is a universal law that nothing great can be achieved without
perseverance. For want of considering this, many who commence a religious
course with zeal and joy run well for a season, but meeting with unex pected
difficulties, grow weary and give up the race.
I. Divine
knowledge.
1. To know the Lord implies a general knowledge of His being, nature,
and attributes,
2. It signifies a more particular and experimental knowledge of God,
especially of His justice and mercy, these being the two great attributes
exercised in the stupendous work of human redemption. The true believer is
happily possessed of an experimental knowledge of the Divine mercy.
3. A more peculiar knowledge of God, especially of His goodness and
love, is obtained by the sincere and pure in heart who “follow on to know” Him.
4. To know the Lord includes also, profound veneration; ardent love;
humble confidence; and sincere and uniform obedience.
II. The means of
acquiring Divine knowledge.
1. God could, no doubt, communicate a perfect knowledge of Himself
instantaneously. But in doing so He must work a miracle, and this without
answering any valuable end. The gradual operations of God in providence and
grace are accommodated to our finite capacities, enabling us, step by step, to
trace Him in His wondrous works.
2. To illustrate this Hosea uses two beautiful figures--the “morning”
and the “rain.”
3. That this is the mode of the Divine manifestations evidently
appears--
Perseverance in attaining the knowledge of God
I. to know God
requires that men should seek to know Him. The know ledge clothe Most High is
not instinctive and intuitive. Now, the world by wisdom knoweth not God. How
strange that men should think to know God and religion without diligence,
whilst they think not to know any human science or profession without
application, and diligence, and exertion! Would to God that men were as wise
for eternity as they are for time. It is, however, not merely necessary to give
diligence in order to know God, we must “follow on” to know Him. The crowning
grace of the Christian is constant perseverance. To him that overcometh, the
promise of eternal life is made.
II. The
encouragement as it is here so vividly portrayed. “Then shall we know.” God who cannot lie hath spoken
this. The prophet adds two beautiful figures. The morning of the day is sure to
come. The former and the latter rain will return in their seasons. (Hugh
Stowell, A. M.)
Following on to know
In Christ, the prophet promises, they should have inward knowledge
of Him, ever growing, because the grace, through which it is given, ever grows.
We know, in order to follow; we follow, in order to know. Light prepares the
way for love. Love opens the mind for new love. The gifts of God are
interwoven. They multiply and reproduce each other, until we come to the
perfect state of eternity. Through eternity we shall follow on to know more of
God. (E. B. Pusey, D. D.)
Divine knowledge
We may consider this in two ways.
1. As an address of good men to themselves, being a kind of
soliloquy, or self-admonition and encouragement.
2. As addressed to the godly from each other. The language is an
expression of holy confidence. This admits of various degrees, but without some
degree of it we shall never seek the Lord; shall never cleave to Him with full
purpose of heart. Between this holy confidence and presumption there is no
resemblance.
I. An important
subject--Divine knowledge. To be destitute of this knowledge is to be in a
perilous and even a perishing condition. Knowledge is the same to the soul as
the window is to the building, or the eye to the body. Knowledge is essential
to right conduct. It is from ignorance that a disregard to the Saviour springs.
It is from ignorance that legality springs. Nothing can be truly religious or
moral that is done in ignorance, because then there would be no motive or
principle, and to these the Lord looks in all our actions; all righteous
conduct is begun and carried on in the renewal of the mind. God’s empire is
founded in light; the devil’s kingdom is founded in darkness. God opens the
eyes of all His subjects, and they follow Him from conviction and disposition.
Bishop Hall says, “God never works in a dark shop.” “He that commanded the
light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of
the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” But what is
this knowledge to which such importance is attached? What is it to know the
Lord? It is one thing to know that there is a God, and another to know what He
is. It is much more than knowing Him to be almighty. It is a knowing Him to be
“righteous in all His ways, and holy in all His works.” Such knowledge as this,
if there be no more, will operate upon a sinner’s mind conscious of guilt, so
as to produce distance, alarm, and fear. It is necessary to the recovery of a
fallen creature that God should be known as the justifier of those who believe
in Christ. In creation God is above us. In providence He is beyond us. In His holy
law He is against us. But in Christ He is with us, and for us, and in us too.
This knowledge is not a merely speculative know ledge. It is experimental. Some
professors are like December nights, very clear, but alas: very cold. This is
all that can be said with regard to their religion. But the knowledge of the
Gospel is saving; it is the light of life; it descends from the head to the
heart. What a difference there is between a mere conviction and a cordial
assent!
II. A necessary
duty. “Follow on to know the Lord.” This includes three things.
1. The practising what we know. Why should God give you more light
while you are not disposed to make-use of what you already have?
2. Diligence in the use of appointed means. God has ordained
meditation, reading the Scriptures, hearing the Word, conversation with those
who know a little more than ourselves, but, above all, prayer to the Father of
mercies, as the appointed means.
3. It implies continuance in this active course. You have not only to
hear, but also to watch.
III. An assured
privilege. “Then shall ye know.” If probability is enough to actuate a man, how
much more should real certainty do so. The assurance of success should
encourage us in regard to others. Do not deal harshly with them. If unable for a
time to embrace religious truths, be not impatient. God shall reveal this to
them in His own time and way. Let this encourage you with regard to prayer. Are
you desirous of knowing more of the blessed Saviour? Go on and you will know
more and see more. Two cases in which this encouragement may be applied.
1. If you are in perplexity with regard to the path of duty.
2. Do you wish to know God better by appropriation? Are you anxious
to know your own interest in Him?
IV. A striking
illustration. Taken from the “morning” and the “rain.” As the morning,
gradually; as the rain, periodic ally and regularly. He who gives the former
rain in its season, will not fail to give the latter rain in its season. Even
after the stress and strain of life, there shall be a reviving in your
spiritual experience, to your own great comfort, and to the praise of our
faithful and covenant-keeping God. (William Jay.)
The knowledge of God
It is spoken of here as something distinct and definite. It is as
palpable as the morning light. It is as sensible as the rain that waters the
earth. Is any knowledge of God possible? The agnostic says, “We cannot know
God. If He exists, He is beyond our reach. He is unknowable He does not deny
that there is a God; he only denies that He can be known. In an important
sense, the agnostic is right. The agnostic is not born again; he has never
known the regenerating power of the Holy Ghost; therefore he cannot see the
kingdom of God. Degenerate man cannot understand and appropriate the things of
God--the truths of the spiritual world. Is man, then, born into this world with
no capacity for knowing God? By no means. The spiritual faculties are not
completely destroyed. In many ways they respond to the voice of God. No man is
born either an atheist or an agnostic. The organs of spiritual life may be only
rudimentary, but they exist. It is possible to know God, but only by the
renewing and enlightening grace of His Holy Spirit. The knowledge of God is not
reached by an intellectual process. It is faith which apprehends the invisible
God, yet it is also experience which affixes the seal to the knowledge which
faith attains. It is no exclusive privilege of the man of culture, it is
equally open to the unlettered, the simple, the child. The “pure in heart shall
see God.” It may be said, if one man can know God, why may not another? There
is a gulf between the natural and the spiritual man, wider than that between
animal and plant life. The distinction is as broad as between the living and
the dead. The new life of regeneration is a beginning, a bud of promise, a day
dawn; it is not the consummation of the spiritual life. The work and duty of
the Christian is to follow on to know the Lord. We must take heed lest we
become examples of “arrested development.” How can firm lasting faith be
attained?
1. By realising to its depth our emptiness and need, and then our
utter inability to supply it.
2. By clearing away certain obstacles which commonly clog up and
check the flow of the grace of God. Of these the first and most obvious is sin.
Then there is worldliness. Then neglect of prayer. Prayer is the key that will
unlock the treasures of Divine knowledge. (R. H. M’Kim, D. D.)
A new consciousness
The infatuation of knowledge is the course of life; to know, the
desire to know, unsettles life. Yet what is most of our knowledge? The world is
a vast, wide churchyard, and what we call knowledge is but a reading of
inscriptions. Much so-called knowledge is but curiosity, and when that
curiosity is satisfied, it turns, like other unsatisfied appetites, upon, and
corrodes itself. Our nature seeks Divine knowledge; knowledge, not of notions,
but of facts; not of sentiments, but of laws. A man may talk of God, who has no
rest in God.
1. If religion is progression, it is surely, before it can be this, a
beginning; but as a beginning it is a consciousness. Consciousness which being
translated is knowledge. Religion should produce happiness, but that is not the
chief idea of religion. A holy heart has three stages in its history.
2. But it is a progression. “Follow on.” What states grow out of this
first state, the seminal germ of the Christian life? The evidences brighten as
we follow on to know the Lord. You should determine to ascend to the knowledge
of the higher law of the Christian life. Then shall we know when our knowledge
shall no longer be narrowed by limited sensations. Every sense I possess is
only a material sheathing of some deeper and higher sense, which cannot find
its appropriate expression here. I can only conceive of the state of souls as a
state of immortal consciousness, a state where hope and memory are one, and
love is only passive in certain and secure possession. (Paxton Hood.)
Diligence in religion
Doctrine: That the way to thrive in religion is to follow on, to
pursue, to hold our hand to it, when once our hand is in it.
I. Who they are
whom we may call to follow on. There are some whom we cannot call to follow on,
because they have not yet stirred a foot in religion. There may be some whom
the King has brought into His chambers, and assured of His love. Their business
is to follow on. Others have got but some glimmerings of solid hope from the
Lord. Others have gained some mastery over spiritual foes. Others are yet only
striving. Others can only be said to have some desires towards God. Others have
only had passing convictions of sin. Yet others know nothing more than inward
uneasiness.
II. What is it to
follow on?
1. You must make religion your great end.
2. You must be persuaded of the weight and worth of religion.
3. You must hold fast what you have.
4. You must be moving forward, labouring for more.
5. You must habitually attend upon religion, and make it your chief
business.
6. You must be resolute and vigorous in your endeavours.
7. You must entertain a hope of success.
8. If you fall, you must get up again, and quicken your pace.
III. Confirm this
doctrine. However small your beginnings or hopes may now be, yet persevere. You
have God’s Word for it. “You shall reap, if you faint not.”
1. You have God’s Word of promise for it (Matthew 25:29).
2. It is the Lord’s ordinary way in His works, to bring great things
by degrees out of small beginnings.
3. The works of grace in the soul ordinarily arise from very small
beginnings. Consider--
4. The bountiful nature of God, who surely will not always flee from
those who follow Him, but will at length be found of them.
5. No person gets a refusal from heaven, but those who court it by
their own indifference. A faint way of seeking is to beg a denial.
6. As importunity is usually in all cases the way to come speed, so
it has special advantages in this case which promise success.
7. Such followers the Lord does not bid to go back. And this is
encouraging.
8. The Lord commands you to follow Him (Luke 11:19).
IV. Practical
improvement.
1. Those who have not yet begun to seek the Lord are neither
prospering in their souls, nor are they in the way to it.
2. It is no wonder that back sliders have lean souls.
3. They are in no prospering case who are at a stand in religion.
4. The smallest spark which you now have may be brought to a flame.
5. See what is the ruin of many communicants.
It is not that they get nothing, it is that they carry nothing
away; they follow nothing on. They do not hold their hands to it when they are
at home. (T. Boston, D. D.)
The benefit of following on to know the Lord
I. A course of
conduct proposed. Knowledge in general is an excellence. The knowledge here
proposed is most excellent, as to its nature and object, and most profitable to
its possessor.
1. The proposal implies a previous state of ignorance and
estrangement. This was manifestly the case with Israel, and it is but too true
a picture of our own times.
2. The proposal implies reformation begun. The obstinacy has given
way. They are ashamed. They seek His face “early,” earnestly.
3. The proposal is that of following up these good beginnings. We may
learn much concerning God in His attributes and relations. The inquiry should
be followed up in the way He has prescribed--the way of righteousness,
self-denial, prayer, and religious obedience generally. We should follow on in
the manner He has prescribed--sincerely, humbly, fervently, perseveringly.
II. Thy
encouragement assumed.
1. This “going forth” is a certain blessing. The “outgoings of the
morning” are settled by a Divine constitution.
2. This “going forth” is a progressive blessing. The condition
suggested is that of improvement--of going on from good to better. It is a
state of improving light.
The subject should teach us--
1. The importance of saving knowledge. Those who remain at a distance
from God must remain in darkness and barrenness and misery.
2. It should encourage exertion.
3. It should induce large expectations.
4. It should confirm us in a patient continuance in well-doing. (Sketches
of Four Hundred Sermons.)
Conditions of knowledge
There must be no sitting down by the wayside, no loitering, no
laziness in all the school of the Church. “We shall know if we follow on
to know.” If we practise the little we do know, we shall get outlook of things
that lie beyond, and confidence to deal with them. Love shall beget love;
capacity shall enlarge itself into a still fuller capacity, and practice in
prayer should, so to say, end in skill of supplication; we shall know the way
to the throne and the seat of mercy, and come boldly to it as of right, not in
ourselves, but invested in us by the grace of God. “Prepared as the
morning”--is established as the morning. It is a great action of law, a
great movement settled, regulated, determined from eternity. “He shall come
unto us as the rain,” not the occasional shower, not the intermittent baptism
of soft water, but “as the latter and former rain unto the earth.” Both must
come, each in its own time, and in its own way. Thus we have law, and thus we
have mercy. Here we have philosophy which earthly philosophy has not yet
comprehended; condescension that leaves behind no amazement that it can stoop
so low as to touch the fartherest away. It is in these mysteries we live; in
these voices we hear the only music we care to listen to. (Joseph Parker, D.
D.)
Patient perseverance
Is God revealed by the works of creation, or are those works the
instruments for the memorial and confirmation of a previous revelation? We
incline to the latter view. We cannot regard mankind as having been at any time
independent of a revelation. Every man has, by traditionary revelation, a knowledge
of God’s existence. When we examine into the works of nature, we find the
confirmation of the truth with which we have been previously and independently
made acquainted. There is no such thing as a light of nature, or natural
religion.
I. The object of
this knowledge. In the works of nature, and without the aid of the Bible, God
is merely set forth as God, and not as the Lord; that is, He is known only as
Creator. We regard this knowledge of the Lord as absolutely essential to man’s
happiness. By the knowledge of the Lord, we mean acquaintance with His purposes
and plans. For this a preternatural revelation is necessary. We must know God
as a being possessing a mind and purpose with respect to human actions and
conduct. We can see but a faint shadow of God’s purposes in the works of
creation. It is desirable to know the Lord, for the sake of His law. Unless
there be a law of moral restraint, there must exist a state of misery.
II. The nature and
kind of this knowledge of the Lord. It must be of a practical character. It
must be capable of the test of good deeds. Unpractical knowledge and imperfect
knowledge are one and the same thing. To know is to perceive with certainty, or
to see with approbation. Love is not perceived and apprehended by the intellect,
but by the heart. Intellectual knowledge should be the handmaid of heart
knowledge. And a heart knowledge is identical with a practical know ledge.
III. The prescribed
means of acquiring this knowledge. “Follow on to know the Lord.” The advance to
the perfect knowledge of the Lord is independent of all external circumstances
and all innate abilities; and thus if we all employ the same simple means, then
the result will be the same in all. (W. H. Wright, B. A.)
Go on, go on
Arago says, in his Autobiography, that his master in
mathematics was a word or two of advice which he found in the binding of one of
his text-books. Puzzled and discouraged by the difficulties he met with in his
early studies, he was almost ready to give over the pursuit. Some words which
he found on the waste leaf used to stiffen the cover of his paper-bound
text-book caught his eye and interested him. “Impelled,” he says, “by an
indefinable curiosity, I dampened the cover of the book, and carefully unrolled
the leaf to see what was on the other side. It proved to be a short letter from
D’Alembert to a young person disheartened like myself by the difficulties of
mathematical study, who had written to him for counsel. ‘Go on, sir, go on,’
was the counsel which D’Alembert gave him. ‘The difficulties you meet will
resolve themselves as you advance. Proceed, and light will dawn and shine with
increasing clearness on your path.’ That maxim,” says Arago, “was my greatest
master in mathematics.” Following out those simple words, “Go on, sir, go on,”
made him the first astronomical mathematician of his age. What Christians it
would make of us! (Old Testament Anecdotes.)
Knowing by following on
When climbing Snowdon, I one day scaled some precipitous rocks
called “Crybydiskil,” i.e., “edge of the plate,” because on each side of
the narrow ridge was a sheer precipice of several hundred feet. A thick fog
came on which hid from view everything but ourselves and the bit of knife-edge
on which we straddled. We knew that the ridge led direct to the summit, which
we should reach if we went “forward.” We could see two yards beyond us, but not
an inch farther. This was enough for the very next advance, when a further
similar glimpse was revealed. So by creeping along the first few inches, we saw
the next few hitherto hidden. So, as the Scripture says, “Follow on to know the
Lord.” (Newman Hall.)
Practical devotion promotes our knowledge of God
Near the Arctics the fogs are prevalent and thick. This is because
there is so much ice drifting down from the vast frozen fields of the north,
the meeting of which with the warmer southern waters fills the air with
moisture. If we keep our minds at the edge of the cold regions of secularity,
we may expect that our minds shall be in a fog as respects religious truth. Drift
into the warmer air of practical devotion, accustom your heart to the
prevalence of spiritual sentiments, and see how clear God’s truth will become.
(J. B. Ludlow, D. D.)
His going forth is
prepared as the morning.
Morning cometh
1. The time of deliverance is the morning, the morning after the sad,
dark night, As light is comfortable in the, morning, after a dark and stormy
night, so is deliverance after trouble. God s mercies after afflictions are
very sweet.
2. The Church has no afflictions unfollowed by a morning.
3. It is God’s presence which constitutes the saints’ morning.
4. God’s mercies to His people are prepared and decreed.
5. The saints in the night of their affliction can comfort themselves
in this, that the morning is coming. It is night yet, but the morning will
come; it is approaching.
6. The saints’ night is darkest a little before their deliverance; as
a little before the dawning of the day the darkness is most dense and terrible.
7. God’s mode of deliverance is gradual. As the day breaks by
degrees, so the saints shine gradually in their lives, answerable to the light
which God imparts. (Jeremiah Burroughs.)
The going forth of the Lord prepared as the morning
These words show just where Ephraim was in soul experience. He
does not represent one destitute of spiritual light and life, but a quickened
vessel of mercy, but one who was wrapping himself up in a garment, not of
Christ’s giving, nor of the Spirit’s application. And there are many still who
have the fear of God in their hearts who are wrapping themselves up in a
covering which is not of God’s Spirit. There is something more to be known than
the bare doctrine of Christ’s righteousness. That doctrine may even become a
lying refuge if the mere letter of truth is sheltered in, and the Holy Ghost
does not experimentally make it known to the soul.
I. The soul
experience indicated. “A following on to know the Lord.” To know the Lord is
the desire of every living soul. To know Him by His own Divine manifestations,
by the gracious revelation of His grace, His love, His presence, His glory. To
know the Lord is to know, experimentally and spiritually, the power of Jesus’
blood and righteousness. Thus to know the Lord is the sum and substance of
vital godliness. But the expression “follow on” implies that there are many
difficulties, obstacles, and hindrances in a man’s way, which keep him back
from knowing the Lord.
1. Sometimes a man takes up the notion that he is but a self-deceiver
and a hypocrite.
2. Sometimes Satan hurls a blasphemous suggestion into our carnal
mind.
3. Sometimes the remembrance of past sins, lying as a heavy weight on
the conscience, presses a man down with despondency and despair.
4. Sometimes the gusts of infidelity will so blow on a man’s mind as
to make him doubt the reality of all religion.
5. Sometimes the recollection of many inconsistencies, foolish
thoughts, words, and actions, stand like mountains of difficulty in his way.
6. Sometimes great worldly troubles hinder him.
7. Sometimes darkness besets the mind, and clouds of unbelief rest on
the soul, and the way is obscure. The work of the Spirit in a man’s soul is to
carry him on in spite of all these obstacles. It is really astonishing how
souls are kept alive. For what are we to follow on? To know the Lord, as the sum
and substance of all religion, as the very marrow of vital godliness.
II. Seeking the
Lord and not finding Him. This is a part of experience through which every soul
passeth. Here lies the difference between a living soul in his darkest hours
and a dead professor. A living soul knows that God is to be found of His
saints, but cannot always find Him for himself; but a dead professor knows
nothing about God at all. It is to the living soul walking in darkness, and
unable to find God, that the text says, “His going forth is prepared as the
morning.” There is an appointed time for the Lord to go forth: and this is
compared to the rising of the sun. All His goings forth are as much prepared,
and the moment is as much appointed, as the time is fixed every morning for the
sun to rise.
III. The fruit and
effect of the Lord’s coming. As the rain--softening and fertilising. To
understand the spiritual, we must first know the meaning of the natural figure.
Explain the two rain seasons of Palestine. In the “early rain” is a figure of
Christ’s first coming to the soul. By the “latter rain “ is suggested Christ’s
coming in Christian experience. (J. G. Philpot.)
Christ the day-dawn and the rain
The most ancient Jewish commentators find the last fulfilment of
these words in the great promised Messiah. It is Christ, then, whom our faith
must grasp under these two figures, the day-dawn and the rain. The world is a
great book of symbols for the soul of man to read God by. There is something of
common likeness in these two figures, and yet something distinctive is
conveyed. There is a twofold coming of the Son of God, the first in His own
person to establish and confirm the Gospel, the second in His Holy Spirit, to
apply it to the heart. The one of these may very fitly be compared to the
morning, and the other to the rain.
I. The day-dawn
and the rain represent some resemblances between the coming of Christ in His
Gospel and in His Spirit.
1. They have the same manifest origin. The day dawn comes from heaven
and so does the rain. They are not of man’s ordering, but of God’s. And it is
not less so with the Gospel and Spirit of Christ. Man neither invented them nor
discovered them. They carry their evidence with them, like heaven’s sun and
heaven’s rain. We may learn the origin of our faith in a study of the grandeur
and comprehensiveness of its plan, and in a feeling of its power in our souls.
The same God who makes morning to the world by the sun, gives the dawn of a new
creation to the spirits of men through the Saviour.
2. They have the same mode of operation on the part of God. That mode
of operation is soft and silent. The greatest powers of nature work most calmly
and noiselessly. And like to these in their operations are the Gospel and
Spirit of Christ. When our Saviour came into the world, it was silent and
alone. So it was with His entrance into the heart. There is no outward crisis
to tell of the birth of souls.
3. They have the same form of approach to us--in perfect freeness and
fulness. The morning light comes unfettered by any condition, and so, also,
descends the rain. The Gospel opens on the world priceless and free as the
light which waits but for the eye to be unclosed to see and share it all. As
free is the Spirit of Christ. Nor has He less fulness.
4. They have the same object and end. It is the transformation of
death into life, and the raising of that which lives into higher and fairer
form. The Gospel and Spirit of Christ have the same aim--life and revival. The
Gospel of Christ is the Word of life. The Holy Ghost is the Spirit of life. As
both work together for life, so both must co-operate for revival.
II. Some points of
the distinction between them.
1. Christ’s approach to men has a general and yet a special aspect.
The sun comes every morning with a broad unbroken look, shining for all, and
singling out none. There is a universality of kindness about him which men,
with all their powers of limitation, have never been able to abridge. But the
rain as it descends, breaks into drops, and hangs with its globules on every
blade. There is a wonderfully individualising power in the rain. The Gospel of
God’s grace enters the world with the broad universal look of daylight. It
singles out none that it may exclude none. The arms of God are as wide as His
call, and the power of Christ’s atonement is as unlimited as the invitation to
it. But Christ comes after another manner with His Spirit. Here no man can tell
how God is dealing with another.
2. Christ’s coming is constant, and yet variable. The sunrise is of
all things the most sure and settled. And Christ visits men in His Gospel,
steady and unchanging as the sun. But with the Holy Spirit it is other wise.
His coming varies in time and place, as the rain, whose arrival depends on
causes we have not fathomed.
3. Christ’s coming may be with gladness, but also with trouble. What
can be more joyful than the returning sun? But God comes also in the cloud, and
there is a shade over the face of nature. So Christ comes, through His Spirit,
in the conviction of sin.
4. Christ’s coming, in His Gospel and Spirit, may be separate for
awhile, but they tend to a final and perfect union. They are indispensable to
each other. Sunlight without rain, and rain without sunlight, can only work
evil. The Gospel without the Spirit, would be the sun shining on a waterless
waste. The Spirit without the Gospel, would be the rain falling in a starless
night. Some have a very distinct perception of the Gospel in its freeness and
fulness, but they have ceased to derive from it the comfort they once enjoyed.
They need the rain. They have been too neglectful of the secret life of
religion, which is its soul. (John Ker, D. D.)
The goings forth of the Lord
By His going forth, we are to understand the communications of His
grace in behalf of those who desire an interest in His favour.
I. The idea
suggested by this expression is that of certainty as to the event. Before the
faintest streaks of light appear, we feel no misgivings as to the return of
morning. The longest winter night will come to an end. Thus certain and
infallible are God’s gracious purposes to penitent souls. As soon shall the sun
forget to rise, as His goings forth of grace and mercy be frustrated. This may
encourage seeking souls, afflicted ones, weeping mothers and fathers, and those
who are approaching the end of life.
II. An idea
suggested by the first image in the text is that of clearness. What a change
does the dawning morn produce upon the face of nature and the views of man! We
find the path which before was doubtful open to our view. We can go to our
avocations without stumbling, or, if travellers, prosecute our journey without
fear. By the glorious light which God sheds upon their path, His people are
guided into all truth. The most wonderful discoveries are made to their souls,
and they see more accurately than they ever did before the marvellous things of
God’s law. The entrance of God’s word gives light, and crooked things become
straight before it.
III. Another idea
suggested is that of gladness and joy. “The light is sweet; and a pleasant”
thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun.” As the night is the season of
gloom, the morning is one of cheerfulness and joy. In Psalms 130:1-8. the truly penitent soul
is represented as waiting for the consolations of religion under the image of
those who watch for the coming of the morning. Neither the moon in all her
beauty, nor the stars in all their brightness, can compare with the splendours
of the orb of day. At his rising universal nature is refreshed, and the earth
on which he shines puts on a robe of gladness. And it is thus with the “goings
forth” of the Lord. Let but the healing beams of the Sun of Righteousness arise
upon the soul, and even the wilderness and the solitary place will be glad for
them. The whole heart is inspired with a joy that is unspeakable and full of
glory.
IV. Another idea
suggested is that of progress. Not all at once, but gradual, is the beauty of
the morning. So the goings forth of the Lord are gradual upon the soul, until
from the first dawnings of spiritual light it is rendered capable of beholding
the august glories of the Gospel. The second illustration in the passage is
taken from the rain. Between rain that descends upon the earth, and the
influences of Divine grace on the soul, many pleasing analogies obtain. Rain is
the work of God. It falls according to the appointment of Him who causes it to
descend on One city and not upon another. The rain falls sometimes gently and
persistently, sometimes violently. Like the former and the latter rain of the
East, there are two seasons in the Divine life, when the influences of the
Divine Spirit are particularly requisite. Young converts stand in need of the
one, and aged saints of the other. (J. L. Adamson.)
Coming as the morning
A recent traveller gives a striking description of sunrise
among the Himalaya Mountains. “We were watching,” she says, “the first flash of
rosy dawn on a high snowpeak, as the stars disappeared one by one. The song of
the first bird blended with the roar of the stream that fretted its way through
the narrow gorge. Then we could trace the forms of trees, shrubs, and flowers
above and below our path, and enjoy the fragrance of the eglantine blossoms
strewn hither and thither like patches of snow.” Presently, however, her
attention was drawn to a mimosa-tree which seemed quite dead. Its leaves,
although green, were closed and drooping. Yet the root had not been
disturbed--branches, twigs, blossoms, and the leaves themselves all appeared
perfect. Was it dead, or only asleep? “As we watch and wonder, the slanting
rays of yellow light from the great sun, hidden hitherto by the mountain
opposite, creep toward us. They touch the mimosa-tree, and at the same moment
we hear the rustle of the morning breeze among its leaves. Even as we look the
delicate twigs are stirred; they flutter in the wind, they lift themselves to
the golden rays, and, ere we pass on, the leaves are expanded, the blossoms
erect, and the tree seems to rejoice among its fellows in its gracious fulness
of life.” (Sunday Companion.)
Genuine piety
I. In genuine
piety the individual man has to do with the great God. He has to “follow
on to know the Lord.”
II. In genuine
piety the great God has to do with individual man, “His going forth is prepared
as the morning,” etc.
1. He cometh to him as the “morning”--full of promise. What a
delightful season is the morning. It rings the knell of the dark night, and
heralds the coming day. How delightful the morning to the sufferer on his bed;
to the mariner on the ocean, etc. God comes to the man that is “following on”
to know Him; puts an end to the night of his guilt, and throws around him the
first beams of a glorious day. He comes as the night to the wicked; He comes as
the morning to the good. We would not have Him come as the noon to us. He would
consume us with His glory.
2. He comes to him as “the rain”--full of refreshing influence. “He
shall come unto us as the rain, as the latter and former rain unto the earth.”
What a glorious change do the seasonable showers produce upon the parched
earth! they change every part into life and beauty. Thus the Almighty comes to
the good man, and he feels it to be a time of refreshing from the “presence of
the Lord.” Learn from this the glorious destiny of the good. It is a “following
on” to know Him, “whom to know is life eternal.” (Homilist.)
The gentleness of Christ
The Jews regarded these words as a prophecy of Christ. As
such take them. How beautiful is the morning! How refreshing is the rain!
I. Both are
independent of man. “The day is Thine, O Lord, Thou hast prepared the light.”
“He prepareth rain for the earth.” They both emanate from God. How true of
grace and mercy! He who gives morning to the world gives dawning to the soul.
1. How softly, and silently come the light and the rain! How true of
Christ’s coming into the world and of His mission among men! “He shall, not
strive,” etc. “The kingdom of God cometh not with observation--with spectators
looking on.
2. How true of Christ’s entrance into the soul! Not in the storm, but
in the still small voice. “My conversion,” says a French evangelist, “was as
gentle as a mother’s kiss.”
II. Both are
necessary to man. Nansen tells us how they longed for the light! In India and
Australia, how the thirsty land cries out for the refreshing showers! So the
soul of man needs Christ.
III. Both are full
and free for man. The sun and the rain come for all. No “Trusts” can monopolise
them. How true of the Divine love! It is like the great sea whose waves beat upon
every shore. “Draw up the blind,” said George Dawson; “let in the light.” When
the gentle rain descends, you put out your ferns and flower-pots. Get where
there are showers of blessing that your soul may be refreshed. (A. Hampden
Lee.)
He shall come to us as the
rain.--
Christ as the rain
1. Christ’s coming to the heart, and the rain’s coming to the flower,
are alike in this, that each is by the sovereign ordering of God. Modern
science has attained wonderful knowledge of the laws that govern the movements
of the clouds. But we are as dependent upon God now, as ever, for the early and
the latter rain, for the showers that water and refresh the earth. Equally
dependent are we for those influences of the Holy Spirit by which Christ in all
His preciousness and graciousness is communicated to the soul.
2. The coming in each case affords scope for the energy and efficacy
of prayer. Whilst God is sovereign in His gifts, He is not arbitrary in their
bestowment either in nature or in grace. There are innumerable and
well-attested instances in which God has heard the prayers of His people for
rain. And so the coming of Christ with spiritual power into the heart and into
the Church may be secured by earnest and importunate prayer.
3. The coming of Christ in refreshing presence and power is often pre
ceded by lightning and tempest. Dark clouds of adversity, fierce winds of
temptation disturb and terrify the soul. When the storms of spiritual trial
have encompassed the soul, Christ by His blessed Spirit comes in gentlest and
most unobtrusive ministry to every parched leaf and drooping flower of the
Christian graces.
4. The coming of Christ is like that of the rain in its benign and
blessed results. The roots of religious life are fed. The fountains of
spiritual energy in the soul are replenished. (T. D. Witherspoon, D. D. ,
LL. D.)
The Spirit as rain
1. As rain, the influences of the Holy Spirit are copious.
2. Are seasonable.
3. Are refreshing.
4. Are fertilising.
5. Are from above. (G. Brooks.)
As the latter and the
former rain.--The analogy between nature and grace is very close. God employs
nature as a typal thing. He designs through it to image forth Diviner things.
He would have us be observers of nature, to look through nature up to nature’s
God. Years ago, an observing writer told how he “viewed the ravages of winter
as the Jews did the desolation of their temple when its expressive types and
symbols were demolished or defaced by the Babylonian armies, and thus he viewed
spring as the rebuilding of the creation-temple, in which are renewed all the
sweet and significant emblems of the everlasting Gospel.” In the same spirit
may we consider the “early and latter rain,” the second of the two images
employed by the prophet Hosea. Now, we read about the “former and the latter
rain” in other parts of Scripture as well as in Hosea. (Thus in Deuteronomy 11:14; Jeremiah 5:24; Joel 2:23; James 5:7.) Rain typifies and sets forth Divine
influence and grace. It falls to fertilise where all was dry and fruitless. It
falls to renew the face of the earth. It falls to ripen and mature the grain.
In Judea the rain fell plentifully twice in the year. About September, and
about March, if, chiefly and more copiously fell. Now, the month Abib, or March,
was the first month in the ecclesiastical or holy year; and hence we have light
thrown on the expression, “the latter rain in the first month.” It may be
observed, without any undue pressing of the similitude, that rain being the
vapours exhaled by the sun, would cease to fall were the sun withdrawn from the
firmament. The parallel between growth in nature and growth in grace, being
clear, we are taught at once that Divine grace comes not apart from Him who,
being the Son of God, died on the Cross for our sins, that through the Holy
Ghost sent down, the fruitless soil of our fallen nature might have
fertility--be quickened into newness of life. Now, it strikes us as interesting
that, in the passages we have cited, beginning with the Book of Deuteronomy,
and ending with the Epistle of St. James, there should be seen a certain order
which we may follow as we try briefly to exhibit some truths suggested by our
subject. In Deuteronomy, we read how God would give the first rain and the
latter rain. Passing on to Jeremiah, we see how the people refused to fear the
Lord who giveth rain both the former and the latter. In Hosea we read of the
fuller knowledge to be enjoyed by those who serve the Lord. In Joel we read of
the joy of the children of God to whom had been given the former rain. Then in
St. James we read of the patience that becomes the Christian as he waits for
the coming of his Lord. Undesigned as this order may be, it is nevertheless
interesting. It suggests to us the thought of progressiveness. As the Christian
dispensation is fuller, brighter than the Jewish; so the believer should
advance, following on to know the Lord.
Beginning, then, with the words of Deuteronomy, we read in Deuteronomy 11:13-14 --“And it shall come
to pass, if ye shall hearken diligently unto My commandments which I command
you this day, to love the Lord your God, and to serve Him with all your heart
and with all your soul; that I will give you the rain of your land in his due
season, the first rain and the latter rain, that thou mayest gather in thy
corn, and thy wine, and thine oil.” As Israel sought spiritual blessings, so
should Israel enjoy temporal blessings as well. These were the terms of the Divine
covenant. Grace, free and undeserved grace, itself the outflow of the Divine
love, would bestow these blessings. “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His
righteousness, and all these things (temporal necessaries) shall be added unto
you.” Thus the prophet Jeremiah speaks: “But this people hath a revolting and a
rebellious heart,. . . neither say they in their heart, Let us.now fear the
Lord our God, that giveth rain, both the former and the latter in his season.”
In the days of Moses, multitudes of the Israelites had turned from God. They
entered not into the promised land, because of unbelief. On them “the former
and the latter rain “ never fell. So, in the days of Jeremiah, many feared not
God, who yet saw how His covenant with nature was kept, and around whom
privileges were gathered. The words of the prophet Hosea (Hosea 6:3) tell of the bright and blessed
results of real repentance, “Then shall we know, if we follow on to know the
Lord.” We observe in this verse that “the latter rain” is placed before “the
former”; and it may be just said by the way that “the latter rain “ (malkusit,
from a verb “to delay”) was more probably that which fell in the autumn,
and “the former rain” (jirah) that which fell in the spring;
though this is questioned. (See Calmet’s Dict.)
Without seeing in this uncertainty any explanation of the
precedence of “the latter rain” in the verse in Hosea, something perhaps may be
inferred as to the inseparableness of “the former and the latter rain.” Grace
is glory begun. And so the apostle Peter speaks: “And hope to the end (or,
‘hope perfectly,’ τελίως
ἐλπίσατε), for the grace that is being brought unto you ( φερομένην) at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” Life eternal being
the knowledge of God, and of Jesus Christ whom He has sent, Divine grace,
typified by the early rain, must cause this knowledge to take root in our
heart. And then, little and limited though that knowledge be at first, like the
shower’s first drops, yet “we shall know, if we follow on to know the Lord.”
Where rain has come, rain will come. “They go from strength to strength.” Sin,
as they follow on, becomes less strong; God becomes more “the strength of their
heart.” So the prophet Joel speaks of the joy of Christians: “Be glad and
rejoice in the Lord your God, for He hath given you the former rain moderately,
and He will cause to come down for you the rain, the former rain and the latter
rain in the first month.” In this verse, we are directed in the margin to
observe that “the former rain moderately” is in the Hebrew “the . . . according to
righteousness.”
In the Septuagint the literal rendering would be, “For He gave to
you (the) food ( τὰ
βρώματα) towards (or ‘with reference to’) righteousness, and will
rain for you rain early and late (latter), according as before.” It does not
seem quite plain bow we are to take the words, “the former rain according to
righteousness,” or “a teacher unto righteousness” (as Hebrews will have it), if
they are not taken in some way to have regard to a teacher (perhaps Joel
himself) typical of the Messiah. Concerning ourselves, however, with the
rendering of our Authorised Version, “the former rain moderately” (or “in due
measure”), we shall see that the children of Zion were to be glad and rejoice
in the Lord their God, giving glory to Him who had kept and remembered His
covenant, who had sent and who would send the shower to fructify the earth, and
who had shed abroad in their hearts the very grace that shower should typify.
“Be glad and rejoice”; your hearts have been disposed to holiness through
Divine grace; God will perform the good work in you which He has begun. So
spake the inspired prophet. And, in truth, joy becomes the Christian. But this
joy, we remember, requires patience. And St. James, in the last passage
remaining for us, speaks of “patience”: “Be patient therefore, brethren, unto
the coming of the Lord”; and he proceeds to employ an illustration fetched from
the tiller and the field. In the purpose and promise of God, precariousness has
no place; and between seed-time and harvest nature exacts her needed interval.
Time is needed for the early, time for the latter rain to fall. So
spiritually; and more also. Natural rain may be withheld; drought may be
instead. Grace shall always come, if rightly sought. It cannot fail. Patience
becomes the Christian; the Word of God sown in his heart shall not be left
waterless. But a span separates the early from the latter rain. To none should
the time be either too long or yet too short. “Be patient unto the coming of
the Lord.” And once again, there is encouragement in the thought of the rain,
the latter rain, where there may have been a declension, where watchlessness
may have been allowed, or where trial and temptation may have chilled devotion
and zeal. Rain sought again, shall fall to revive. Never forsaken by a covenant
God, penitent Israel, idolatrous and prayerless no more, will receive the
blessing of abundance of rain: “he shall grow as the lily,” and “revive as the
corn.” (Christian Observer.)
Verse 4
Your goodness is as a morning cloud, and as the early dew it goeth
away.
Instances of inconstancy in good men
Men’s convictions die away, their resolutions prove abortive; they
run well, but don’t continue; begin to build, but leave their work unfinished
This is a most unhappy case, as dangerous and fatal as it is common.
I. The causes of
this wretched inconstancy. Is it because men have no power, or no encouragement
to do otherwise? Neither can be the reason, because where there is no power at
all, there is no sin, and where there is no encouragement to exert the power we
have, if we are not altogether without sin, yet we seem to have such an excuse
for our sins, as takes away much the greatest part of their guilt. One
represents God as the author of sin; the other as wanting in goodness and love
to His creatures. That so many do no more than begin well, is not from want of
power; since God, the righteous Governor and Judge of the world, never requires
beyond the measure of what He has given. Does God command all men to repent?
The reason is that by the grace of the Gospel all shall be enabled to repent
who do not wilfully refuse and resist that grace. And no one can plead in
excuse for himself, when he repents of his sins, and then relapses into them,
and after all his fair promises and repeated resolutions, never makes thorough
work of it, that he has not sufficient motives to make him exert himself. The
true causes of inconstancy are--
1. Want of seriously and distinctly considering the nature of the
change upon which they are entering, the reasons for it, and the pains and time
it will cost to effect it.
2. Another cause of men’s inconstancy is their being but half
resolved. And this is a very common case. They are so far from being fully
determined as hardly to know which side they shall take. It is not strange that
such imperfect resolutions are quickly broken. Instability of conduct is the
necessary effect of irresoluteness of temper.
3. Another cause is men’s not exercising a suitable caution and
vigilance, in order to avoid the occasions of sin, and all those temptations
that beset them, and endanger their falling back into their former way of
living. If they would not fall, why do they walk in the same slippery places?
4. Another cause is their not persevering in the instrumental duties
of religion, particularly the duty of secret prayer. Did they from day to day
maintain their intercourse with heaven, they would be much better prepared to
do the will of God upon earth, and to resist and overcome any temptation which
should beset them.
II. The certainty
that these ineffective purposes of amendment, these mere beginnings, will not
be accepted instead of true repentance and holiness of life.
1. The Gospel requires nothing less than repentance and true
holiness. This is abundantly evident from Scripture passages.
2. Such an imperfect transient goodness is not that repentance and
holiness of life upon which the Gospel insists. Is confessing sin the same as
confessing and forsaking it? Can they be said to repent, who do not bring forth
fruits meet for repentance? And the character of a man is to be taken from his
habitual practice. He that doeth righteousness is righteous.
3. Out of regard to the perfections of His nature, and the
declarations of His Holy Word, God will not dispense His saving mercy upon any
other terms than those set forth in the Gospel. Evangelical repentance and
obedience there must be.
III. What method we
should take if we would not only make some entrance upon the ways of religion,
but go on in them, and hold out to the end. Avoid those things which are the
usual occasions of inconstancy in this most important affair. And give
ourselves to frequent meditation of those great truths on which religion is
founded. And often renew our good resolutions, and arm ourselves every day
before we go forth into the business and temptations of the world. Bend our
chief force against those sins which do most easily beset us, and most
frequently overcome us. Frequently make this reflection, that while we spend
our time in trifling thus with religion, life not only goes on, but goes off
too, and death approaches. Let us reflect every one for himself, whether, and
how far, this subject concerns us.
1. Consider that you have all the difficulty without the benefit of a
thorough reformation of heart and life.
2. You can have no real satisfaction in your present course.
3. Every time you return to your sins, after you have resolved to
forsake them, and begun to do it, you make your condition worse than it was
before.
4. In what light will your present manner of acting appear when you
come to die?
IV. The method we
should take if we would not only make some entrance upon the ways of religion,
but go on in them, and hold out to the end.
1. Good men are too apt to change as to their diligence and activity
in the Christian life.
2. Hath the time been when the Christian was vigilant and
circumspect? One would think that the advantages he must have reaped from
thence should have kept him so; and yet they do not always effect it.
3. There may be the loss, as to the good man’s conscience, of its
former sensibility and authority. Conscience is an inward sense and feeling of
good and evil. Sensibility of conscience appears not so much in discovering the
nature as the degrees of moral good and evil. How careful should we be to
maintain this sensibility and tenderness of conscience.
4. Hath the Christian disengaged himself to a great degree from the
affections of the lower life? He is very happy herein, but let him net be
secure, as if he was not liable to a change. The following, are among these affections
of the lower life, which even in Christians sometimes prevail too much.
His indevotion appears in his disuse of religious thoughts and
contemplations, in which time was that he more frequently employed himself. And
also in the little pleasure which Christians take in the duties and exercises
of religion. It is attended with want of desire after spiritual and eternal
blessings. Two directions.
1. Fix in your minds a just and lively apprehension of the much
greater peace and pleasure which attend an even and regular course of piety
than the contrary.
2. Have your eye upon the first tendencies of the heart to wander
from God, and immediately oppose and check them. (H. Bonar, D. D.)
Religious constancy
This is a mournful voice of expostulation. The thing which aroused
the prophet’s sad lament is as familiar to us as it was to those who lived in
that day. The same temptations follow the same passions, and substantially the
same experiences are the result. The inconstancy of men in goodness; the facility
with which they are excited; the quickness with which they recognise the better
way; the rapidity with which they forget it,--these are the themes of the Old
Testament and the New alike, and also of observing men in profane literature.
The topic is the inconstancy, the remission, of religious emotion. There is a
vast amount of tremulous excitement, there is a great deal of feeling, which
runs for an hour very deeply; and yet, the transientness of religious life and
of religious feeling is just as much a matter of remark to-day as it was a
thousand years ago, and just as much a matter of remark in the Church as it was
in the synagogue. The obvious reason will be, of course, in the nature of the
human soul; in its proclivity downward and backward towards the animal, on
which it is based and from which it sprang. Men have a very brief religious
experience because the power of the world is so strong over them. There are
many persons who do not want to be conformed to the world; who do not desire to
have any fluxes of feeling. They ask, How shall I prolong these experiences?
I. There is much
error in the doctrine of the uses of feeling, and therefore of its degrees, and
of the possibility of equal emotion on the part of all. If religion were the
putting of persons through a Divine process from which each one emerged amply
equipped, and equipped like every other, then every one might demand that his
experience should be like that of every other one; but such is not the case.
Men are brought into the religious state with all their conditions of
constitution, or of soul and mind, with all their conditions of education and
non-education, with all their misteachings and prejudices; and they begin at
different points. Each one has problems of his own in life. God in His providence
deals with each particular man according to the method which is adapted to him.
Feeling is not to be sought as a luxury. The object of feeling is to be an
operative one. Though there should be pleasure in it. Persons who enter a
Christian life, and seek to promote such a life by the experience of feeling,
exquisite, abundant, and continuous, may think that they are seeking religion,
while often they are only seeking self. What, then, is to the the limit of
feeling? How much feeling is a man to have? Enough to maintain himself vitally.
Enough to impel him on every side to the duties which belong to his station and
to his nature. The most powerful loves in life are latent. Everywhere in life,
true and wholesome feeling tends to clothe itself in action. I have known many
persons who gave up a thousand ethical duties for the sake of having
experience, as it is called. There are many who are attempting to be eminent in
their Christian life by having a full-orbed emotive experience all the time.
But there are a great many persons so constituted that depths and currents of
feeling such as others have are quite impossible to them. The law of the
production of feeling must be better understood. It is thought that feeling so
exists in men that one has but to wish for it, long for it, pray for it, try
for it, to have it come. No person trying on any other side of the mind would
ever come to such a conclusion. Try it with caution, or mirthfulness. Would
they come at demand? The causes which produce feeling are various. There are
certain ideas or elemental truths which produce the sense of awe: there are
others that produce the sense of faith; others that produce love, or joy, or
sorrow, or remorse. Whoever wants a given feeling must understand what are the
truths which stand connected with its production. Take also into consideration
the law of continuity of feeling in men. Feeling, when it becomes continuous,
is insanity. Emotions never run in channels. They are always changing. They
rise and fall. If one observes a wholesome mind, he will find that there are
scores of feelings which alternate, first one being in the ascendency and then
another. The on-going of the impulses of a wholesome mind is like the progress
of a time. Nothing is worse for a person than to attempt all the time to have
just one state of mind, because he thinks that to be a Christian is to have God
in one’s thoughts all the while. You cannot do it, and you ought not to try to
do it. It is unnatural. There is a law of the inspiration of distinctively
moral feeling. There is an impression that religious feeling is the direct
product of the Divine Spirit. It may be, as harvests are the product of the
sun; but the sun works differently on different growths. Now, the moral or
spiritual part of a human being, that part which makes him a man, not an
animal, comes from God. It is universal mind, moving in universal space, that
gives us vitality, and inspires our reason and moral emotions in all their
variations. A true moral feeling is an inspiration of God; but it is an
inspiration which acts differently in different persons. There is one class of
men whose emotions distinctly run to ideas. All men’s emotions follow reason.
But there are some men who have no distinct conceptions of moral emotion except
those which evolve ideas--that is, differentiated truths, or a series of
propositions. As, for instance, John Calvin. The beauty-loving element
has power to open the door of the soul, and produce profound moral emotions.
There are those whose moral feelings are largely dependent on the imagination.
Two elements constitute the whole revelation of God, fact and fiction. The
imagination, working with the reason, constitutes faith, generically
considered. Every man should have a susceptibility of moral emotion through the
imaginative element. How can any man read the Apocalypse of John, and
appreciate it without imagination? There are different modes of reaching man’s
interior natures. It is ignorance or neglect of the laws of feeling that makes
so much trouble with persons in their religious experience. There are many who
think that if they are to have true moral feelings they must have them in a
particular way; whereas true moral feelings come in an infinite number of ways:
One hindrance to the development of moral feeling and to its continuous flow,
in so far as continuity of moral feeling is practicable, is found in the law of
discord of the force of malign feelings in changing the current and nature of a
man’s emotions. In the human soul, which is the most exquisite of all
orchestras, you may have mirth, reason, wit, and humour, veneration, hope,
faith, and they help each other, and are naturally harmonious, and cannot of
themselves make discord. But when a man is in that peaceful and joyous state of
mind which it is the nature of these combined elements to induce, let one
single malign feeling strike in among them, and it will put them out of concord, and strike
a line of discord through them. (H. Ward Beecher.)
Transient devotions
The Church hath seldom seen happier days than those described in Exodus 19:1-25. God had never diffused
His benedictions on a people in a richer abundance. Never had a people
gratitude more lively, piety more fervent. But this devotion had one great
defect, it lasted only forty days. God had to say, “They have quickly turned
aside.” Some divines regard the text as prophetical. In their opinion the
goodness mentioned in the text is the mercy of God displayed in the Gospel. The
dew signifies Jesus Christ. The morning dew intends the covenant of grace. We,
however, regard a goodness like the morning dew as a seeming piety, which goeth
away, is of short duration, and all the words of the text are a reproof from
God to His people for the unsteadiness of their devotions.
I. The nature of
the piety in question. We are not to understand by it those deceitful
appearances of hypocrites who conceal their profane and irreligious hearts
under the cover of ardour and religion; or the disposition of those Christians
who fall through their own frailty from high degrees of pious zeal, and
experience emotions of sin after they have felt exercises of grace. Hypocrisy
cannot suspend the strokes of Divine justice one single moment, and it is more
likely to inflame than to extinguish the righteous indignation of God. The
piety we speak of lies between these two dispositions. It is sincere, but it is
unfruitful, and in that respect it is inferior to the piety of the weak and
revolting Christian. It is sufficient to discover sin, but not to correct it:
sufficient to produce sincere resolutions, but not to keep them: it softens the
heart, but it doth not renew it; it excites grief, but it doth not eradicate
evil dispositions. It is a piety of times, opportunities, and circumstances.
1. By piety, like the early dew that goeth away, we mean that which
is usually excited by public calamities.
2. In the second class of transient devotions we place that which
religious solemnities produce.
3. That which is excited by the fear of death, and which vanishes as
soon as the fear subsides. The most emphatical, the most urgent, and the most
pathetical of all preachers is death.
II. The
insufficiency of this kind of devotion.
1. In the text is an argument of sentiment and love. God represents
Himself here under the image of a prince who had formed an intimate connection
with one of his subjects. And the subject seems deeply sensible of the honour
done him, but proves faithless. Equivocal reformations, appearances of esteem,
are much more cruel than total ingratitude and open avowed hatred.
2. Consider the injustice of these devotions. Though they are vain,
yet people expect God to reward them. Though men’s complaints of God’s not
rewarding were unjust, yet God sometimes paid attention to them; for though He
sees the bottom of men’s hearts, and distinguishes real from apparent piety,
yet He hath so much love for repentance that He sometimes rewards the bare
appearance of it, as in the case of Ahab. The Jews knew this condescension of
God, and they insulted it in the most odious manner.
3. There is a manifest contradiction between these two periods of
life, between that of our devotion, and that of our sin. A reasonable man
acting consistently ought to choose either to have no periods of devotion, or
to perpetuate them. There is a palpable danger in having both these
dispositions.
4. Every part of devotion supposes some action of life, so that if
there be no such action the whole value of devotion ceases.
5. Transient devotions are inconsistent with the general design of
religion. This design is to reform man, to renew him, to transform him into the
likeness of glorified saints, to render him like God. But how does a rapid
torrent of devotion attended with no moral rectitude contribute to this end?
6. Transient devotions must render promises of grace to you doubtful,
even suppose you should ever, after a thousand revolutions of transient piety,
be in possession of true and real religion.
7. Consider the imprudence of a man who divides his life in this
manner into periods of devotion and periods of sin. A heart divided in this
manner cannot be happy. And the state of suspension which God assumes in the
text cannot last long. (James Saurin.)
The condition of man as a wreck
I. Man is a
wreck. The picture which this book gives us of the Jewish people is truly a
hideous and lamentable one. Sin roils its warm, sparkling, but poisonous
current through the veins of all. Man everywhere is a moral ruin. Physically,
intellectually, and morally man is a wreck. He is at war with himself, at war
with the universe, at war with God. But God is earnest about man in this
condition. He appeals in the most tender and moving strains of love and mercy.
II. Man, though a
wreck, is an object of importance. Nothing impresses so much the importance of
man as the interest which the great God seems to take in him--the earnestness
which He displays for his recovery. A great, mind is never earnest about an
unimportant object. Little minds grow enthusiastic about small matters. There
is a strange power in suffering to heighten affection. As is seen in homes in
times of sickness.
III. Man, though a
wreck, is capable of restoration. Three things show this.
1. The condition of man in this world.
2. The deep aspiration of humanity.
3. The extraordinary means that are provided for man’s restoration.
IV. Man, though a
wreck, exerts a fearful power. Why did all God’s operations fail? On account of
man’s power, even in his wrecked condition, to resist. Man counteracts the
moral influence of nature and the tendency of providence: he even resists the
appeals of the Gospel and the strivings of the Spirit. (Homilist.)
Occasional impressions
How little practical influence do the Divine claims possess on the
hearts and conduct of men! There are some who, if visited by occasional
impression, and if apparently aroused to a sense of their high obligations, yet
fall back again to perverted habits as the natural element of life. To such as
these Hosea wrote.
I. The nature and
exciting circumstances of the disposition alleged. The images employed are
emblems of brevity and evanescence. The morning cloud is soon dispersed, and
the early dew soon evaporates before the sunbeam. It affirms that the persons
indicated had been the subjects of certain emotions towards God and His will,
which appeared to be right and good, but which proved transitory and
unsubstantial, and soon gave way altogether to returning habits of
transgression and rebellion. There may often be the plausible semblance of
regeneration without the vivifying reality. Here in the text is a disposition
which effects no mental renovation, and takes no established hold--a mere
inflamed excitement, subject at once to removal on the rise of new suggestions,
expiring with the impulse of the moment, agitating and subsiding, promising and
disappointing, springing and withering.
1. This disposition may be excited by remarkable interferences of the
providence of God. Public and national providences have given rise, not seldom,
to what has thus appeared as the spirit of religion. As in the times of the
Israelite Judges. Times of prosperity and calamity have similar results in
individuals.
2. By the presence of sickness and imagined approach of death. These
are evidently calculated to lead to serious consideration on the interests of
the soul. But too often the zeal keeps time with the disease; the recovery of
health proves to be the resurrection of sins.
3. By the statements and appeals of Divine truth. Under the preaching
of the Word, the emotions of many prove transitory and ineffective.
II. The effects of
that disposition on the interests of those who are the subjects of it.
1. It assists to render the mind insensible to religion. The
susceptibility is exhausted and deadened, and will no longer answer to what
awakened it before. Persons whose impressions have gone away, cherish an
absolute hatred of the memory of those impressions, and of the circumstances
that inspired them.
2. It exposes to the signal retribution of future punishment. To the
accusation of the text are annexed threatenings of tremendous evils as
consequent on the crime. The judicial result, arising from the previous
transgressions, is at once stated. (James Parsons.)
Emotion in the religious life
No two figures could have been selected, either for delicacy or
for beauty, to represent the religious feelings better than these--the beauty
of the cloud, its promise and its quick departure; and the beauty of the
jewelled morning, that excites admiration everywhere, and the speedy emptying
of its beauty. So is it, so it has been, and so it will be with religious
feeling that rises easily, that promises everything that is ecstatic and that
is fugitive, going as do the clouds and the dew. One of the most important
things to know to-day is the genesis of the feelings. The ignorance of
men as to the laws and uses of feeling, and as to the means of producing,
regulating, and retaining it, is monumental. All action proceeds from emotion,
which is a reservoir of forces. Men seem to act from thinking; but thinking is
altogether subordinate and auxiliary to feeling. That which makes a man act,
that which sets him forward in research, enterprise, effort, is either open or
latent emotion. You cannot produce a sound and large religious character, you
cannot produce any change in the right direction without feeling.
Susceptibility to emotion is, in its largest view, susceptibility to
development in any direction. How much emotion does a person want? Enough to
bring him into a condition of action. More than that. Enough to make him a
little more alert, and to make his work easier. People who want intense emotion
are not wise. It is creditable to persons to enter upon high Christian life
without having had very deep experiences of feeling or emotion. Another mistake
in regard to feeling is the temptation to make it continuous. It is contrary to
nature. Persons often reproach themselves for losing their feeling when they
ought to lose it. We are not constituted so that we can bear continuous emotion
long in a single line. Then there is such a thing as the alternation of
feeling. And alternation is desirable, for alternation is rest. Religious
feelings exhausted by continued religious considerations are restored by the
administration of social and secular things. Often the things which men avoid
seriously and urgently are the very things which are necessary for them. The
production of feeling is a matter very little understood. Buoyancy is a term by
which we mean that kind of general animal emotion which is the result of
high life-feeling such as children and all-young animals show. It is a purely
bodily quality. It must not be confounded with emotion. Quickness of
susceptibility is a sign, not of deep emotion, but of temperament. By
temperament several things are meant. Emotion proper results from the action on
the feelings of some form of intellectual presentation. That is the general
law. Is there any law, any principle, any direction that a man can give or
take, by which one can facilitate the production of any feeling that he wants?
Deep religious feeling is not a matter of chance; it is a matter of
cultivation, as definite as cultivation in a field or garden of plants; and
just as definite as cultivation in schools. (H. Ward Beecher.)
Instability of character
No valuable attainment is to be made without industry; and no
industry is effectual but that which has the character of perseverance. Yet
there is an impression almost universal, that spiritual blessings are to visit
us unsolicited by our patient exertion; that, at all events, an occasional
sensibility of feeling, and transient purposes of amendment will conduct us to
all that is requisite for the life to come. Reflection might teach us the
probability of there being an analogy between the requirement made upon us for
the earthly, and that which is necessary for the heavenly attainments.
Self-examination might show us how very foreign the knowledge of Divine things
is to the darkness within our souls; how opposed the practice of what is righteous
to the corruption which reigns there. Scripture would affix its authoritative
seal on all which reflection and self-inquiry suggest. How unstable was the
nation of Israel! What other means could Divine wisdom invent to give to their
repentance a fixed, a lasting, an effective character? Mercies and judgments
had been tried again and again. God speaks in the text as a man would speak
with respect to persons with whom he had used every means of improvement, and
used them in vain. The case before us is an exhibition of our own character and
danger. It is the prototype of a large class among ourselves. Who have begun,
but whose goodness has been like the morning cloud which flees before the
approaching sun, or as the early dew soon caught up by his scorching heat.
Those who so lately turned from sin to repentance, turn back again from
repentance to sin. What are the causes of this short-lived goodness; the causes
which lead to the relapse into evil? Great deliverances--blessings from God of
an unusual importance--may produce a temporary relaxation of wickedness or
worldliness. This effect is also seen to arise from trouble. There are few who
have not been led by sorrow and disappointment to make what has proved in the
result an abortive struggle. Another frequent cause of temporary heats of
religion is discovered in the power of conviction. Appeal to men is continually
made b.y the Word of God, by His ministers, by His providence. The only
surprise is that such impressions, grounded in truth, should not conduct the
soul further; and that there is any point within the line which divides
insincerity and sincerity at which it should stop. The solution is found in the
state of the heart; there is, in truth, no principle to lead it onward to the
true Christian character. The nature of religion has not been considered; its
motives have not been weighed; its difficulties have not been calculated. No
wonder that animal indulgence, the temptations of the world, and the
persuasions and influence of others make it difficult for a pliable mind to act
independently. (T. Kennion, M. A.)
The instability of human goodness
Ephraim and Judah were made better neither by promises nor
threatenings, so that their case was very hopeless, and nothing seemed to
remain but that the Lord should leave them. In the text we have that which made
their case so hopeless. They had at times some goodness--Hebrew, “kindness.”
They had at times some kindness for God and His way, some warmth of affections
towards good. It was but sometimes. Their goodness was passing goodness. This
instability is held forth by the similitude--
1. Of a morning cloud;
2. Of the early dew.
Such is the instability of many in the good way of the Lord, that
the goodness at which they sometimes arrive passeth away as a morning cloud and
as the early dew.
I. In what
respects does this likeness hold good? The goodness of the saints cannot pass
away totally or finally. But even the saints may lose much of the degrees of
grace.
1. Men’s goodness often goes away very quickly as the morning cloud
which appears only a very short while. Goodness of fellowship with Christ often
fades quickly away. Goodness often passes quickly away after deliverance from
trouble.
2. Men’s goodness ordinarily goes away by degrees, almost
imperceptibly. Carnal security creeps leisurely on men, until by it they are
taken off their feet. When temptation comes, man’s goodness is often amissing.
Much goodness passes away in a time of persecution for the Gospel. And much
when we are called to duty.
II. Reasons why the
goodness of many thus passes away.
1. Many, for all their goodness, have not the living Spirit of Christ
dwelling in them.
2. Because the souls of many do not unite with Christ, who is the
only head of influence.
3. Because, with many, religion is not their proper element. It is a
forced matter with them that they have any at all. Self-love is their highest
principle. They have no real love to the Lord, nor does the intrinsic beauty of
holiness recommend it to them.
4. Because they have no spirit for difficulties and disappointments.
They go forward cheerfully while things are laid to their hand; but disappointments take
heart and hand from them, and they are knocked in the head.
5. Because of the entertaining of unmortified lusts, which, like suckers,
draw the sap from the tree.
6. Because the profits and pleasures of the world soon charm away
men’s goodness.
7. Because of unwatchfulness over the heart and life. I would exhort
you, then, that have attained to anything of goodness or kindness to the Lord
in His way, that you would set yourselves to hold it fast. (T. Boston, D. D.)
The impressions of natural men are lading
In these words God complains that He did not know what to do with
Israel, their impressions were so fading.
I. The fact that
the impressions of natural men fade away.
1. Prove the fact from Scripture. Take the case of Lot’s wife. Or
Israel at the Red Sea. Or the young man who came running to Jesus. Or Felix. Or
King Agrippa.
2. Prove the fact from experience.
3. Show the steps of impressions fading away.
II. Reasons why the
natural impressions of men die away.
1. They never are brought to feel truly lost. The wounds of natural
men are generally skin deep. They may be brought to say, “I am a great sinner”;
but they are not brought to feel undone.
2. They never saw the beauty of Christ. A flash of terror will bring
a man to his knees, but will not bring him to Christ. Love only will draw. A
natural man, under concern, sees no beauty nor desirableness in Christ.
3. He never had heart-hatred of sin. The impressions of natural men
are generally of terror. They feel the danger of sin, not the filthiness of it.
4. They have no promises to keep their impressions. Natural men have
no interest in the promises, and so, in the time of temptation, their anxieties
easily wear away.
III. The sadness of
their case.
1. God mourns over their case. It must be a truly sad case that God
mourns over.
2. God has no new method of awakening. He speaks as even at a loss
what to do, to show you that there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins.
3. No good by your past impressions. When the cloud is dried up off
the mountain’s brow, and the dew off the rock, the mountain is as great as
before, and the rock as hard; but when convictions fade away from the heart of
the natural man, they leave the mountain of his sins much greater, and his
rocky heart much harder. It is less likely that such a man will ever be saved.
Application.
1. You are now older, and every day less likely to be saved.
2. You have offended the Spirit. You have missed your opportunity.
Convictions are not in your power.
3. You have got into the way of putting aside convictions.
4. When you come to hell you will wish you never had convictions,
they will make your punishment so much the greater.
Entreat all who now have any impressions not to let them slip. It
is a great mercy to live under a Gospel ministry; still greater to live in a
time of revival; still greater to have God pouring the Spirit into your heart,
awakening your soul. Do not neglect it. (R. M. M’Cheyne.)
Transient impressions
How is the too common disappearance of hopeful impressions to be
accounted for? The great reason no doubt is that the heart has never been truly
reached. But that is itself an effect produced by other causes which need to be
sought after. The causes which tend to make religious impressions evanescent
may be classified under three heads.
I. Those which are
speculative in their nature.. When the conscience is awakened the soul takes
refuge in perplexing difficulties, which revelation leaves unsolved. But such
difficulties should never be allowed to keep us from religious decision.
1. The existence of difficulties is inseparable from any revelation
which is short of infinite. All perplexities arise from imperfect knowledge.
2. The difficulties in revelation are of the same sort, so far at
least as they touch conduct, as those which we meet in God’s daily providence.
3. Difficulties in regard to things of which we are in doubt ought
not to prevent us from performing duties that are perfectly plain. Whatever a
man may be perplexed about, he knows full well that it is wrong to commit sin.
Some however find perplexities of another kind. They are bewildered by the
questions raised by modem discoveries. It is important for such persons to keep
this principle in mind--truth already ascertained on its own appropriate
evidence is not the less true because there are added to it some important
truths in another department of human inquiry. We welcome truth from all
quarters, for truth is near of kin to Him who sits upon the eternal throne.
II. Those causes
which are practical.
1. Some are hindered from yielding to the promptings of their better
nature by fear of opposition.
2. Others by the influence of evil associations.
3. Another hindrance is the fettering influence of some pernicious
habit.
III. Causes
connected with the conduct of professing Christians. The seriousness produced
by some searching dis course is often wiped out by the thoughtless, flippant
remarks of a so-called Christian on the way home from Church. Or it may be that
in time of trouble professing Christians prove indifferent and neglectful. But
the inconsistency of others cannot excuse us. And, moreover, we know well that
all Christians are not like those we have to condemn. Remember the consistent
ones, and do not dwell exclusively on the inconsistent, (W. M. Taylor, D. D.)
Goodness like a morning cloud
I. Portray the
character indicated.
1. Unfruitful hearers. Such feel a pleasure in attending the ministry
of the Word; the passions are affected, the understanding is enlightened, and
they form purposes for amendment of life, but the impression is momentary;
there is no decision of character.
2. Transient reformers. Those who under providential visitations have
determined to amend their ways and live to God, but afterwards have relapsed
into sin.
3. Inconstant professors. Such go farther than the former: for a
season they make a public profession of religion, and attend regularly the
ordinances of God’s house; but through unwatchfulness and a neglect of
Christian exercises their piety degenerates, their affections become cold, and
at last they abandon religion altogether.
II. Their sin and
danger.
1. Unwatchfulness. They were cautioned, warned, and admonished; but
instead of guarding the avenues of the soul, they were heedless and trifling.
2. Unfaithfulness. Had they walked in the light, their path would
have been that of the just (Proverbs 4:18).
3. Ingratitude. They have had signal displays of the Divine
beneficence. The returns they make are blasphemy instead of praises; pride,
instead of humility; sin, instead of holiness; hatred, instead of love.
4. Rebellion. God has been striving with them in a variety of ways.
Yet their lives have been marked with instability and indecision. Such has been
their sin and such the mercy of God. But the day of vengeance is at hand. And
their state is awful beyond description. (Sketches of Four Hundred Sermons.)
Evanescence of the early dew
By the word of the prophet Hosea, the Divine reproach fell on
Ephraim and on Judah, that their goodness was as a morning cloud, and that us
the early dew it passed away. Bright was the promise of the innocent dawn, but
the promise was unfulfilled. Mr. Kingsley, in a touching reflection--literally
reflection, looking back on the “long lost might-have-been,” adverts to that
personal idea which every soul brings with it into the world, which shines dim
and potential in the face of every sleeping babe, before it has been scarred,
and distorted, and entrusted in the long tragedy of life. Dr. Caird has said of
the birthday of the worst of men, that although it ushered a new agent of evil
into existence, and was a day fraught with more disasters to the world than the
day in which the pestilence began to creep over the nations, or the blight to
fasten on the food of man, or any other physical evil to enter on a career of
world-wide devastation, yet might this day, when the vilest of humanity first
saw the light, be in some aspects of it regarded as better (despite Solomon’s
text) than the day of his death. “For, to take only one view of it, when life
commenced, the problem of good or evil, to which death has brought so terrible
a solution, was, in his case, as yet unsolved. The page of human history which
he was to write was as yet unwritten, and to that day belonged, at all events,
the advantage of the uncertainty whether it was to be blurred and blotted, or
written fair and clean.” Life, even in the most unfavourable circumstances, it
is urged, has ever some faint gleams of hope to brighten its outset. The
preacher owns that the simplicity, the tenderness, the unconscious refinement
that more or less characterise infancy, even among the lowest and rudest, soon
indeed pass away, and give place to the coarseness of an unideal, if not the
animal repulsiveness of a sensual or sinful life. But he insists that at least
at the beginning, for a little while, there is something in the seeming
innocency, the brightness, the unworldliness, the unworn freshness of
childhood, that gives hope room to work. Is there not, he asks, for every
child, not in the dreams of parental fondness only, but in reality, and in
God’s idea, the possibility of a noble future? “The history of each new born
soul is surely in God’s plan and intention a bright and blessed one. For the
vilest miscreant that was ever hounded out of life in dishonour and wretched
ness, there was, in the mind of the All-good, a Divine ideal, a glorious possibility
of excellence, which might have been made a reality.” The most hardened
ruffian, the most obdurate criminal, the most impenetrable reprobate was once a
child. Most of what he has, the grown-up man is shewn to inherit from his
infant self, but it does not follow that he always enters upon the whole of his
natural inheritance. (Francis Jacox, B. A.)
Religious declension
Since in every age of the Church the prophet’s description of
Ephraim finds but too faithful a resemblance, we must appropriate and apply to
ourselves this affecting language. The case before us is that of instability in
religion. The prophet’s lamentation does not regard those who have fallen into
known, deliberate, and grievous sin. The case before us does not regard those
whose ardour of feeling is less strong than it may once have been. Feeling is
no test of principle. Feelings and emotions, though they will ofttimes
accompany a religious state of heart, yet are not necessarily attendant on it;
they are often the effects of mere animal spirits. The prophet deals with the
inconstancy and decline of those who have professed to know God, but whose
acquaintance with Him has not grown, but decayed.
I. The character
here described.
1. Those who have had strong convictions. Their consciences have been
visited by the force of the most solemn and awakening appeals of God’s Word.
The arrows of the Almighty have been lodged, possibly very deeply, in the
heart.
2. These have been accompanied by feelings, strong correspondent
feelings. The representations of God’s free and tender mercy in Christ Jesus
have melted the soul into a love toward the Saviour, and the heart has
prostrated itself at His footstool.
3. And these feelings have been followed by plans for the honour of
God.
4. And this leads him to make great sacrifices. Such are some of the
fair appearances, the goodly blossoms, which, in the outset of life, or after
the first awakenings of the soul, appear in the characters of those who yet,
alas! bring forth no fruit to “perfection.” By and by, the power, the life, the
unction is gone; there has been a worm at the root, eating out the spirit and
the energy of the profession.
II. Some of the
causes of this declension.
1. Excessive ignorance of the heart. He knows not of the ten thousand
specious forms of apology which his heart is devising, and no wonder that he is
not prepared with a resistance.
2. Negligence in devotion. Wherever prayer is disused, or coldly
performed, there are the infallible symptoms of decaying piety.
3. Unheeded afflictions. By trials and afflictions that check our
complacent prosperity, God calls to some one whose early promise of excellence
has disappointed the hopes of heaven. He seemed, whilst the pressure of God’s
hand was still felt, to have learned the things which belonged to his peace;
but the immediate force being lifted off, and the prospect of speedily meeting
God having vanished, he starts back; the things of sense again dazzle his eyes,
stupefy his conscience, and carry him away captive.
4. Seductive worldly connection. Such alliances hang like a clog on
the soul, and drag heavily upon that wing on which it might otherwise mount
upwards with renewed strength towards the centre of blessedness.
III. What is God’s
estimate of the case? It is a case which draws forth His severe anger. But the
language of the passage rather presents God as grieved at the case, than in
wrath. The appeal contains sharp rebuke and tender love. It says, thy case
carries reproach to thyself, and draws compassion from My heart. What means
this backward movement, when thou shouldst have moved forward? (Robert Eden,
M. A.)
Fading impressions
A celebrated preacher of the seventeenth century, in a
sermon to a crowded audience, described the terrors of the last, judgment with
such eloquence, pathos, and force of action, that some of his audience not only
burst into tears, but sent forth piercing cries as if the Judge Himself had
been present, and was about to pass on them their final sentence. In the height
of this excitement, the preacher called upon them to dry their tears, and cease
their cries, as he was about to add something still more awful and astonishing
than anything he had yet brought before them. Silence being obtained, he, with
an agitated countenance and solemn voice, addressed them thus: “In one quarter
of an hour from this time, the emotions which you have just now exhibited will
be stifled; the remembrance of the fearful truths which excited them will
vanish; you will return to your carnal occupations, or sinful pleasures, with your
usual avidity, and you will treat all you have heard as a tale that is told.”
Trifling with impressions
This is one of those passages of Scripture in which God seems to
represent Himself as actually at a loss, not knowing what else could be done to
produce piety in hearts which had heretofore resisted the strivings of the
Spirit. Yet, if you observe what these particular circumstances were which thus
seemed to bring even Omnipotence to a stand, you will not find them such as
might at first sight have been expected to produce such a result. God does not
accuse Ephraim and Judah of being entirely unmoved by all the means which He
had ever taken to move them. An impression had been made, but it had not been
permanent. It is because the impression proved only transient that God
represents Himself as at a loss--His resources exhausted, His purposes
frustrated; for “your goodness is as the morning cloud, and as the early dew it
goeth away.” There were some indications of goodness; some convictions of sin,
some impressions of past guilt were produced. Resolutions of amendment were
made, and partially carried into practice, but at the first impulse of
temptation all these appearances vanished, just as the cloud disperses and the
dew exhales before the sun shining in his strength. There can hardly be a less
hopeful condition than that of a man on whom a weak impression has been made,
but on whom it has not been abiding.
I. The case
described. The style of the preaching to which men are accustomed to listen
will determine, in a great degree, the peculiar moral danger to which they are
exposed. Cold preaching is likely to leave men in their natural torpor, and
fervid preaching is likely to communicate a warmth which may be mistaken for
the glow of spiritual life, but which, proceeding only from excited
sensibilities, and not from a renewed heart, will immediately depart when the
stimulating causes are withdrawn. You have only to follow one of the multitude
who has been thus excitedly impressed, and you will find that no steps are
taken to deepen the impressions. The influences of seasons of affliction are much the same. It
is melancholy and disheartening to observe how rapidly those promising
appearances vanish. Men so often virtually mistake the action of grief for the
action of conscience. This is the case conceived in the text.
II. Why should such
a case produce the startling words of the text? If religious impressions have
been produced and then erased, the heart must be even harder than it was.
Augustine says, “The facility with which we commit certain sins is a punishment
for sins already committed.” It is the property of our nature that the doing of
a thing makes it easier to do it again. This property of our nature should
teach us that in obliterating serious impressions we make it more difficult
than ever that they should be reformed. Then comes the question, if we have
offered successful resistance to the Spirit of God, will the strivings of the
Spirit be more intense than before? It is on this very point that God represents
Himself as putting the question of the text to Ephraim and Judah. Observe in
these words of the text a peculiarity which is very touching and affecting. God
addresses Himself to the very parties themselves whose goodness has vanished as
the morning cloud or early dew. He proposes what we may call His difficulty, in
the shape of questions, as though willing to be directed by those with whom He
had striven in vain. He makes them, as it were, judges in the matter. What have
you to answer to God! You, it seems, are found speechless. We will not say that
your ease is beyond hope, but we will derive a warning from the manifested
peril in which you stand. Take good heed how you trifle with your convictions.
Your eternity may be dependent on your present steadfastness. If you crush your
present feelings, there is a fearful likelihood of your passing from one degree
of moral hardness to another, until God Himself shall not know what to do for
your conversion. (Henry Melvill, B. D.)
A threefold theme
I. Divine
solicitude. The language implies--
1. I have done much for thee.
2. I am ready to do more.
3. I am fettered in My actions.
Almightiness has restrictions. It is God’s glory that He will not
outrage moral minds.
II. Human
perversity. Men set their wills in hostility to God’s. Hence He says, “What
shall I do unto thee?” I can reverse the laws of nature, I can break up old
universes and create new ones, but I cannot make beings whom I have endowed
with the power of freedom, virtuous and happy, contrary to their own will.
III. Evanescent
goodness. Whether the goodness refers exclusively to human kindness, or
includes some amount of pious sentiment it matters not; it was so evanescent
that it was of no worth. Goodness is of no worth to any being until it becomes
supreme and permanent. Thank God for endowing thee with freedom; it is a
fearful power. It gives to men a widely different destiny even here, but a
destiny in eternity infinitely more dissimilar. (Homilist.)
Man’s goodness
Either--
1. God’s goodness towards them, or
2. Their goodness, that is, their piety and holiness.
God’s goodness to them was as the morning cloud, for they, by
their sin, had driven away God’s mercy and goodness from them, even as the wind
carries the dust before it. In these words God charges this people with three
things whereby their hypocrisy was expressed.
On transient impressions
Notwithstanding the paralysing effects of sin upon the
conscience, there are few persons, perhaps, living under the light of
inspiration, who have not, at one time or another, felt the claims of heaven
press upon them, and tasted, in some degree, the powers of the world to come.
I. Impressions
bearing the semblance of religion, and producing effects which are mistaken for
its genuine fruits, are generally, though by no means uniformly, attributable
to external causes.
1. The influence of education, and the force of habit often induce
seriousness of mind, and generate a deportment which seems to harmonise with
the principles of the Gospel. The collateral results of consistent piety are
very many, and often they are very powerful. But they sometimes end in
disappointment. Under the strain and temptation of life, the young man from a
pious home fails and falls, the shadow of religion vanishes into aerial nothingness.
2. Impressions of a similarly transient nature are often produced by
affliction in its varied forms. Such impressions are often, indeed, solid and
permanent. But some persons under affliction resolve on the godly life, and
then as the affliction passes so does the resolve. God removes affliction from
the man’s dwelling, and soon he himself banishes religion likewise; telling
her, in effect, that though she may be a good companion in adversity, she is a
gloomy guest in prosperity.
3. The faithful preaching of the Gospel, in very many instances,
generates impressions which ultimately prove evanescent. The anxious pastor
beholds with grateful joy these supposed fruits of his labours; but how
deceitful these sometimes prove. The flower is nipped by the cruel blast, and
forthwith it droops and fades away.
II. Transient
goodness is an essentially different thing from vital religion, The two may be
more than externally assimilated to each other. The resemblance may, indeed,
elude detection. The impressions we are now considering are essentially
defective in reference to the two great points of sin and salvation. The
professions of sin are not drawn from the hidden depths of self-knowledge; they
do not grow out of that moral feeling which is generated by an insight into the
holiness of God; they are not the genuine distinctive cry of the broken and
contrite heart. They respect danger rather than degradation. There may be
correct views of Gospel theory, they do not arise from, or connect themselves
with a moral apprehension of the suitableness of the remedy to the nature of
the disease. The goodness which is as the morning cloud wants spirituality of
perception, in regard to the salvation of Christ; and it wants that pure
complacency which cements the union of believers with their Lord. Lessons.
1. The importance of ascertaining the true basis on which our
religion rests. In voluntary self-deception there is an equal mixture of sin
and folly.
2. What an awful thing it is to sin against conscience. Backsliding
and apostasy are different things. But no person who is actually sinning
against the remonstrances of conscience can have scriptural evidence that he
has been in a state of grace at all: he may rather draw the conclusion that he
has not.
3. Consider the forbearance and tender compassion of Almighty God
towards those who have basely treated and grievously offended Him. God never
gives up a sinner who is unwilling to give up himself. (W. Knight, M. A.)
Goodness that will not last
Of this their goodness, the prophet says, the character was that
it never lasted. The morning cloud is full of brilliancy with the rays of the
rising sun, yet quickly disappears through the heat of that sun which gave it
its rich hues. The morning dew glitters in the same sun, yet vanishes almost as soon as it appears.
Generated with the cold of the night, it appears with the dawn; yet appears
only to disappear. So it was with the whole Jewish people; so it ever is with
the most hopeless class of sinners; ever beginning anew; ever relapsing; ever
making a show of leaves, good feelings, good aspirations, but yielding no
fruit. “There was nothing of sound, sincere, lasting, real goodness in them”; no reality, but
all show, quickly assumed, quickly disused. (E.B. Pusey, D. D.)
A Divine expostulation
The compassion of God towards His fallen creature man is
manifest in every part of the Divine procedure. Amidst our numerous
provocations and offences the Lord is continually bearing and forbearing with
us. The prophet Hosea points out the tenderness and care of Divine goodness
towards the fallen race of men.
I. The nature of
the expostulation recorded in the text. Nothing can more effectually stimulate
us to obedience than the powerful impulse of gratitude. Whether we contemplate
the works of nature, providence, or grace, we find in each a brilliant display
of the goodness of God. Our salvation from beginning to end is wholly of grace,
and therefore we
are bound by the strongest motives of gratitude to glorify God by a holy life
and conversation. But what is the report which either experience or observation
must make of our daily conduct? If we calmly look back on our past lives, if we
enter into a self-examination of our coldness and deadness in religion, of the
little fruit we produce, we cannot wonder at the affecting and interesting
expostulation contained in the text. What astonishing condescension is it that
God should thus graciously reason with His creatures. God charges both Judah
and Ephraim with wavering irresolution and manifest inconsistencies in their
profession of religion. The charge is that they did not act up to their
convictions. And how justly this may be applied to the whole of our conduct
through life! The expostulation implies that God willeth not the death of the
sinner, if we would renounce our evil courses, and turn with full purpose of
heart unto Him, though He visit us occasionally with afflictions, and temporary
losses, and various
disappointments, yet He only chastens us for our good. The expostulation
plainly suggests that all our ways are noticed by Him who is constantly about
our path. God takes various methods to bring sinners to repentance.
II. What are we to
understand by the charge brought against Ephraim and Judah? The morning cloud
promiseth rain, and the early dew is some refreshment to the parched earth, but
the cloud is soon dispersed, and the dew does not sink deep into the ground. It
does not extend to the root of the tree, and this is a fit emblem of the
superficial religion which designates the character of numbers. The charge of
being wavering and unstable too properly belongs to us. We profess to be
followers of Christ, and yet how few of us imbibe His Spirit, or imitate His
example! Our goodness or piety, which ought to be uniformly alike, is like the
morning cloud or the early dew. It shines bright and conspicuous for a season;
but when temptations or persecutions arise, we have no stability, no depth of
root, and therefore, like the stony ground hearers, are scorched up, wither,
and fade away. Unless there be a fixed principle implanted by the Spirit of God
in the heart, governing the choice, and directing the affections, there will be
no steady or abiding influence on the conduct. When men promise fair, and do
not perform, when they begin well in religion, and do not hold on to the end,
but fall off from a good profession,-the latter state of those men is even
worse than the first. Though men do not quite cast off religion, yet if they
are unsteady, uneven, and inconstant in it, they are like the morning cloud and
early dew. The dispositions of the mind need to be changed by regenerating
grace.
III. The manner in
which we should improve these admonitions, by a serious inquiry into our own
character and conduct. Let every man pay attention to the workings of his own
mind, to the habits of his daily life, and more especially to his favourite
pursuits. In this way he will read the progress or decline of religion in his
own soul. Let him also pray with fervour or the constant aids of the Holy
Spirit, to fan the flame of piety, to cherish holy dispositions, and to keep
him securely to the end. And as these aids are promised to all who ask them,
how can we have the benefit unless we apply for it? Let Christ and His atoning
blood be precious in our eyes. (J. Grose, A. M.)
Goodness as kindness
Some take the words to mean, “Your kindness,” that is, the mercy
which I have hitherto exhibited to you is “as the morning dew” “ye immediately
dry up My favour.” This seems not unsuitable, for we see that the unbelieving
by their wickedness absorb the mercy of God, so that it produces no good, as
when rain flows over a rock or a stone, while the stone within, on account of
its hardness, remains dry. As then the moisture of rain does not penetrate into
stones, so also the grace of God is spent in vain and without advantage on the
unbelieving. (John Calvin.)
Transient convictions and true consecration
I. Two kinds of
religion. The transient and the truthful. Why do so many who seem to be sincere
and earnest endure but for awhile? Worldliness, like the sun, dries up, and
temptation, like the wind, scatters and dissolves what looked so beautiful.
Truthful persons are sincere, there is a reality in their religion, something
that abides. We may also call such a religion truthful as wrought in the soul
by the Spirit of truth, by the Spirit, through the truth.
II. Some people
have only known one of these kinds of religion, and some have known both. Some
have only known the transient. Hitherto it has been conviction without
conversion; resolutions without love; deficient repentance and sorrow without
real surrender. Truth has not conquered; no governing principle has been
introduced into the soul; nothing permanently inscribed on the tablets of the
heart. Some have only known the truthful. A few have been drawn gently and even
from early life. Others have gone on in darkness several years, and have then
been suddenly brought to a stand, and at once “translated into the kingdom of
God’s dear Son.” A third class have known both. In their case there were many
attempts and failures. Many settings out and goings back. Yet even such
unlikely ones have been saved. Therefore let none despair.
III. What must be
done in order really to pass from the one to the other? If you would not have
your feelings pass away, you yourself must pass in, you must yield yourself to
God. Go in through the door, have really and personally to do with Christ, then
religion will become to you an abiding reality. The reason why your religion is
a transient one is that you have not yet begun aright. True godliness begins
with the pardon of sins. God is willing to begin with the blotting out of sin.
(J. Cox.)
Fickleness in religion
“Fickleness cannot but be attended by fatal consequences.” It has
proved fatal to real progress and lasting prosperity. The Celts “shook all
empires but founded none.” Caesar tells us that the same fault characterised
the Gauls, and St. Paul bears witness to the same failing in his Epistle to the
Galatians. It was the recurring sin of the children of Israel God’s gracious
invitations to His people show how great and faithful was His love. But it
seems at times as if Divine love itself were perplexed. “O Ephraim, what shall
I do unto thee,” etc. Silently, imperceptibly, like the evanescent cloud, and
like the sparkling dewdrop, their goodness and love passed away.
I. This is a
common fault to-day. How many begin hopefully and then fall away. One of the
saddest sights angels behold is a warm heart cooling in its love towards God, a
beautiful life withering ‘neath the blight of sin. It is most instructive to
notice the cause of the downfall of Jewish kings. Many of them began well, but
were not thorough, did not continue faithful, but substituted inferior things.
“And King Ahaz took down the sea from off the brazen oxen, and put it upon a
pavement of stones.” Many begin by giving their best to God, but alas! they
give up their early enthusiasm and become less zealous in His service.
II. Before entering
upon God’s service count the cost. Lord Wolseley mapped out the whole campaign
before entering upon the Egyptian war. Britain’s unpreparedness was the cause
of many reverses in the great South African war. Jesus Christ is very explicit
on this point. “Sit down, and count the cost.” There is the bias of the heart
towards sin. “When I would do good, evil is present with me.” A fact that makes
degeneration easy. Goodness requires effort. “Gird up the loins of your mind.”
Temptations and cares beset the upward path. Longfellow’s “Excelsior.”
III. How to continue
faithful. Prayer is the arm of the soul that connects it with God, like the
tram-car with the overhead wire. It brings down light and power. Study well the
chart. Read the Bible. Have fellowship with Christ’s people. The early Hebrew
Christians had many temptations and trials, hence they were enjoined “not to
forsake the assembling of themselves together.” Keep in touch with God and with
His people. (A. Hampden Lee.)
Fugitive piety
I. The piety
characterised by the text. Very beautiful and full of promise, but disappointing.
It was thus with the Israelites in the wilderness (Psalms 78:34-38). And there is much of
the same piety now. Some spend their lives in sinning and repenting. In the
Polar world at a certain season of the year the sun rises just above the
horizon, streaks the black sky with fire, casts on the desolate scene a warm
splendour, and then in a few minutes sinks again, leaving the sky as dark and
the earth as cold as they were before. And thus it is with some amongst us in
respect to their experience of religion. Men receive some great mercy, suffer
sonic great tribulation, are powerfully affected by the truth, deeply wrought
upon by the Divine Spirit, and it seems as if they would forthwith lead a new
life, but in a little while they are as worldly or as wicked as they were
before. What is done on Sunday is undone on Monday; the vow of the sick chamber
is forgotten in convalescence; the promise of the sanctuary withers in the market-place.
II. The
defectiveness of such piety.
1. The shameful inconsistency of it. Vacillating men are held in
contempt, but all other vacillations are trifling compared with this religious
instability. How suddenly, how frequently, how flippantly some of us pass from
the highest to the lowest. Now God, now idols; now the spirit, now the flesh;
now holiness, now frivolity and sin.
2. The profound misery of it. Such people know the sorrows of
religion without its joy. They know little more of the path to heaven than the
struggles of the “Strait Gate” or the woes of the “Slough of Despond.” Before
they get to “Palace Beautiful,” or the “Hill Beulah,” they turn back again, the
bitterness of religion having gone to their heart, and its sweetness only to
their lips.
3. The utter insufficiency of it. Some men look upon their fits of
goodness with some satisfaction, but really there is no reason to do so. A
transient piety leaves out the foremost grandeur of religion--its
unchangeableness. Recognise God’s great love to you. “Follow on to know the
Lord.” “He that endureth to the end shall be saved.” (W. L. Watkinson.)
Fitful piety unsatisfactory
We need to feel the utter unsatisfactoriness of this fitful
piety, Too often we look with complacency upon it. We argue thus: “I am not
altogether bad; I have my times of good feeling, desire, and effort; the barren
wilderness of my heart is relieved by green, blossoming shoots; the winter of
my life has its snowdrops and violets, telling of the neighbourhood of golden
seasons; I am comforted when I remember the recurrence of these days of
gracious sentiment and aspiration’ Such reasoning is entirely erroneous; there
is no justification whatever -for intermittent goodness. Its sufficient
condemnation is its unlikeness to God’s goodness. Hosea points out the
contrast. Our goodness is “the morning cloud,” whilst the goodness of God “is
prepared as the morning” which brightens to the perfect noon; our goodness is
“as the early dew,” whilst the goodness of God is “as the rain, as the latter
and former rain unto the earth,” it drops fatness the year round. “Every good
gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of
lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.” “Thy
righteousness is an everlasting righteousness”; “Thy truth endureth for ever”;
“His faithfulness faileth not.” This is the crowning glory of God,--He abides
from everlasting to everlasting in righteousness and love. The starry,
steadfast firmament is supremely grand, but a meteor flash which startles the
night counts little; the flowing river has a charm all its own, but the summer
brook which dries whilst we look at it is only a disappointing fancy; the
stately cedar sheltering successive generations appeals to the soul, but the
gourd that springs in a night and perishes in one touches no deep chord.
Righteousness in its essential nature is eternal, and therefore the
righteousness of time and change is deeply perplexing and sad. (W. L.
Watkinson.)
Verse 6
For I desired mercy, and not sacrifice.
Mercy and sacrifice not contrasts
God had Himself, after the fall, enjoined sacrifice to foreshow
and plead to Himself the meritorious sacrifice of Christ. He had not contrasted
mercy and sacrifice who enjoined them both. When then they were contrasted, it
was through man’s severing what God had united. If we were to say, “Charity is
better than churchgoing,” we should be understood to mean that it is better
than such churchgoing as is severed from charity. For, if they were united,
they would not be contrasted. The soul is of more value than the body. But it
is not contrasted, unless they come in competition with one another, and their
interests seem to be separated. In itself, sacrifice represented all the direct
duties to God, all the duties of the first table. Mercy represented all the
duties of the second table. (E. B. Pusey, D. D.)
The double rule of religion
It requires both mercy and sacrifice, but the relations between
them properly preserved.
1. The rule of true religion requires that all God commands should be
respected, and obedience endeavoured, so that moral duties be chiefly made
conscience of. Under “sacrifice and burnt-offerings” is comprehended all their
ceremonial performances so far as they were mere external performances rested
on by the people. His “not desiring sacrifice” is not to be understood simply,
as if the Lord did not approve, even of the external performances which were
enjoined by Himself; but comparatively, that He desired moral duties more than
burnt-offerings. To which may be added, that in some cases, when moral duties
come in competition with ceremonials, the Lord doth not desire ceremonials at
that time, but moral duties.
2. Let men submit never so much to the external injunctions of
religion and worship, or think to satisfy their own consciences therewith, yet
where Christ is not closed with, to enable and make men willing and active in
moral duties, they will not be approved in the other at all.
3. Such as would approve themselves to God, ought to make conscience
of moral duties, both of the first and second table of the law, and
particularly, the saving knowledge of God, whereby we may regulate the rest of
our obedience. Shewing of mercy in cases wherein we seem not to be so strictly
bound, will prove our reality in religion. (George Hutcheson.)
Mercy rather than sacrifice
I. Answer some
questions.
1. What is the difference between natural ordinances and instituted
duties? By natural duties understand such duties as we owe to God as God, and
to man as man, which we should have been required to fulfil if there had been
no written law in relation to them. By instituted duties understand those
which, if God had not revealed them, would have had no claim on us. Natural
duties refer to attributes in God’s nature and character, instituted, to the
expression of His will.
2. God required sacrifice as well as mercy, but with these
limitations.
3. Why should God require mercy rather than sacrifice? Because mercy
is good in itself, but sacrifice is good only in reference to something else.
Sacrifices are but to further us in natural duties.
II. Satisfy some
objections.
1. Men’s hearts are deceitful, and they may pretend cases of mercy when
there is no such thing in hand. It is not for us to judge the sincerity of
other men. God gives general rules for the ordering of a Christian life; and
these general rules being observed, particular eases are to be ordered in
prudence, faithfulness, and zeal; end where there is miscarrying through
frailty, God will have mercy.
2. Can any duty of the second table be more excellent than the duties
of the first? In both the tables there are internal and substantial duties and
superadded duties. Comparing them it is plain that the substantial are to be
preferred before the superadded. Yet God is pleased to indulge men so far that He will let the duties
of the second table take precedence.
3. But if God’s ordinances are duties, can they be omitted at any
time? There are two sorts of precepts, negative and affirmative. A negative
binds always and at all seasons, an affirmative only hinds always, but not at
all seasons; for we cannot do two things at once, and one duty must be
preferred to another. It is the Christian’s skill, when two duties come
together, which to choose. If God’s own worship may be forborne in case of
mercy, how much more men’s institutions and inventions. God will have mercy
rather than disputing about sacrifice. Mercy must be preferred before our own
wills and lusts. (Jeremiah Burroughs.)
Verse 7
But they, like men, have transgressed the covenant.
The breach of the covenant of works
General defection is a cause and presage of a sweeping stroke.
1. The crime charged on them. Covenant breaking. This is a crime of a
high nature; it strikes at the root of society among men, and therefore is
scandalous and punishable though it be but a man’s covenant. How much more atrocious
is the crime where God is the one party! God took the Israelites into covenant
with Himself when He brought them out of Egypt.
2. Whom they resembled in breach of covenant. They acted like men.
They were vain, light, fickle, and inconsistent as men. It may however be read,
“like Adam.” And he broke
his covenant. Doctrine. Our father Adam broke the covenant of works.
I. The fatal step
by which that covenant was transgressed and broken. It was the eating of the
forbidden fruit. Consider the progress, the ingredients, and the aggravations
of this act. As to the ingredients, notice the unbelief, pride, ingratitude, contempt of
God, and the breaking of the whole law of God at once. As to the aggravations,
notice that it was righteous Adam. The object by which he was enticed--a morsel
of fruit. The smaller the thing was, the greater the sin. The nature of the
thing. It was theft and sacrilege. The place where it was committed, and the
time when it was committed.
II. How was this
fatal step brought about?
1. The instrument of the temptation was a serpent; a true and real
serpent.
2. It was acted by the devil.
3. Satan set upon the woman first, she being the weaker vessel
4. He moveth a doubt concerning the command.
5. Then he falls on the threatening and contradicts it.
6. He proceeds as one that wished well to her and her husband, and
pretends to show how they might both arrive at a high pitch of happiness
speedily.
7. She being ensnared, he makes use of her to tempt her husband, and
prevails. God left man to the freedom of his own will in this matter. He was
not the cause of his fall. But why was not man set beyond the possibility of
change? It is to he remembered that absolute immutability is the peculiar
prerogative of God Himself, and every creature, in as far as it is a creature,
is incapable of being so immutable. Man abused his own liberty, or freedom of
will, and so broke the covenant.
III. How was the
covenant of works broken by this fatal step?
1. The command was violated.
2. The right and title to the promised benefit by that covenant was
undermined.
3. He fell under the penalty of the covenant, became liable to death
in its utmost extent.
1. The nothingness of the creature when left to itself.
2. The hopelessness of salvation by works.
3. Watch and pray that ye enter not into temptation.
4. Take heed of forgetting the covenant of your God.
5. Here is a demonstration of the absolute necessity of being united
to the second Adam, who kept the second covenant, and thereby fulfilled the
demands of the first covenant. (T. Boston, D. D.)
Verse 8
Gilead is a city of them that work iniquity, and is polluted with
blood.
Divine institutions corrupted
It is supposed that Gilead here means Ramoth Gilead: the
metropolis of the mountainous region beyond Jordan and south of the river
Jabbok, known by the name of Gilead (Joshua 21:28; 1 Kings 4:18). It was here that
Jacob and Laban entered into a sacred covenant with each other. It was once a
very sacred place; it was one of the celebrated cities of refuge (Deuteronomy 20:23; Joshua 23:28). The place, which was once
a city of refuge, an institution of the God of heaven, had now been desecrated
by wicked men, and become the scene of “iniquity” and “blood.”
I. That Divine
institutions, specially designed for man’s good, are often corrupted by him.
Whilst all places on earth are for the good of man, Gilead had a specific
appointment.
1. The Bible is a special ordinance of God for good. Men have
corrupted that by perverting its doctrines.
2. The Gospel ministry is a special ordinance of God for good.
II. That Divine
institutions specially designed for man’s good, when corrupted become the worst
of all evils. Holy Gilead, once the scene of Divine mercy, was now filled with
“iniquity” and “blood.”
1. A corrupted Bible is the worst of all books. Political tyrannies,
slaveries, wars, persecutions, have all been sanctioned and encouraged by a
corrupted Bible.
2. A corrupted pulpit is the worst of all ministries. (Homilist.)
Verse 11
Also, O Judah, He hath set an harvest for thee.
Naturalness of retribution
Divine punishment for sin is elsewhere spoken of as a harvest.
I. Retribution is
natural in its season. There are the “appointed weeks of harvest.” These weeks
come round with an undeviating regularity. Punishment comes to the sinner
naturally, so far as the proper time is concerned. In this life the sinner has
many harvests. Every transgression is a seed, and the seed sometimes grows
rapidly and ripens fast.
II. That
retribution is natural in its results. In harvest, the man reaps the kind of
seed he has sown, whatever it may be, barley or wheat. Also as a rule the
amount; if he has sown sparingly he reaps sparingly, if with abundance he will
reap abundantly. He gets what he wrought for. It is just so in the retributive
ministry of God. Hence he will never be able to blame either God or His
creation for his wretched destiny, he reaps “ the fruit of his own doings.”
III. The retribution
is natural in its approach. As soon as the seed is sown and germination begins,
it proceeds slowly and silently from day to day, week to week, and month to
month, towards maturition, its harvest state. It is just so with sin, it
proceeds naturally to work out its results. “Lust, when it is conceived,
bringeth forth sin; sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.” (Homilist.)
──《The Biblical Illustrator》