Hosea 4:9 And there shall be, like people, like priest: and I will punish them for their ways, and reward them their doings. In this passage' the Lord charges the priests of the ten tribes with having grievously abetted the idolatry and immorality which were rampant in Israel; and in the verse before us he declares that, as people and priest have been one in guilt, they shall be one also in punishment. When the judgment falls, there shall be no "benefit of clergy." The four words of the text sound like a proverb (Isaiah 24:2). We may justly view them as an apothegm respecting the mutual relation of pastor and people. We read the word "priest" here "writ large" as "presbyter." We use it in its widest sense as denoting a minister of religion - one who officiates in the sacred service of the Church. I. THERE IS A LIKENESS IN THE NATURE OF THINGS. In their relations to God and to their fellow-men, it is "like people, like priest." 1. The principle applies to matters of personal life. The priest is "taken from among men" (Hebrews 5:1-3). He is by nature guilty, sinful, polluted, helpless, like every other member of the congregation. If he be a true believer, he has been washed in the blood of Christ, and justified by the grace of God, and made a partaker of the Spirit, like other believers. He is exposed to temptations, and prone to backslidings, as they are. He must "fight the good fight of faith," just like others. 2. The principle applies to social relations. A minister does not cease to be a man when he becomes a minister. He is to be "one that ruleth well his own house" (l Timothy 3:4). Like other citizens, he ought to interest himself in politics. The cause of liberty and righteousness, the redress of wrongs, and the elevation of the masses, should be specially dear to him. He must not allow himself to seem an emasculated man, who either has no opinions on public questions, or is afraid to avow them. 3. The principle applies to business habits. The priest is to eat his bread "in the sweat of his face," like other men. Observation of his habits ought not to produce the impression that he is without any engrossing occupation. No man in the congregation should be busier. No other work makes so constant a demand upon all the best energies of human nature as the work of the Christian pastor. 4. The principle applies to the matter of his work itself. According to the spirit of New Testament teaching, no hard-and-fast line is to be drawn between the Christian ministry and other useful occupations. The pastor ministers to a higher part of man's nature than the merchant does; that is all. "Whatsoever ye do, in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus" (Colossians 3:17); that is the Christian law of work for all godly men alike. The life of the priesthood has no halo around it which does not belong to the life of the people. 5. The principle applies to spiritual privileges. The pastor enjoys the blessings of grace in common with the people - all of them, and no more. He has the same access to God which other Christian men and women have; no other access, and no nearer. He does not belong to a sacerdotal caste. He is in no respect a mediator. The special application of the term "priest," as denoting one who offers sacrifice, is not for the Christian pastor. In that sense the Lord Jesus Christ is the only Priest of the Church. The one respect in which the pastor is a "priest to God" is that in which, as Archbishop Leighton has put it, "all Christians are God's clergy." 6. The principle applies to the final account. It shall be "like people, like priest," at the day of judgment. His reward, like theirs, shall be in proportion to his diligence, efficiency, and success. And, contrariwise, the punishments inflicted for indolence shall be equally impartial. This is the very point of the text: "I will punish them for their ways, and reward them their doings." This general principle is so obvious, and so constantly enforced in the teaching of the New Testament, that it seems strange that it should ever have been contravened. Yet the subversion of it has been one of the most cherished errors of the Christian Church. Is not the denial of this principle the cornerstone of the Papacy? The Romish Church exalts one man, and one class of men, to absolute control over the consciences of their fellows. And does not the ritualism of our time at home involve the same error? Ritualism might be harmless if it meant only an ornate and beautiful service; but, meaning as it does a return to sacerdotalism, and the fettering of the spiritual liberty of the Christian people, it is full of deadly poison. Many communions, also, which are free from the temptations to clericalism in its grosser forms, are often in danger of separating those responsibilities, on the part of minister and people, which God has joined together. E.g. do not some minds harbor the notion that a higher standard of piety is appropriate for the pulpit than what is necessary for the pew? And are there not some popular amusements which it is thought quite lawful for other members of the Church to indulge in, but which a minister is expected to abstain from, under peril of being judged an unspiritual man? There is, however, no mention in the Bible of a broader and a narrower gauge of righteousness There, it is" like people, like priest." II. THERE IS A LIKENESS PRODUCED BY RECIPROCAL INFLUENCE. The relationship between pastor and people is a very sacred one. It is a union in which the one party does not absorb the other; rather, they tend to become filled with the same common life, and to be mutually assimilated in views, sentiments, and spiritual tone. We need not stay to speak of, the influence which the priest has upon the people. For the one direct end of the ministry is to move men to live for God and Christ. ]t is designed, through the power of the Holy Spirit, to influence the hearts and habits of the people, not only upon the Lord's day, but during every hour of their lives. In what remains we shall rather consider the influence; which the people exercise upon the priest, to mould his character as a man, and to affect his efficiency as a pastor. The text does not read, "Like priest, like people," although it is frequently misquoted so. It reads, "Like people, like priest;" and thus it invites us to view more especially the influence which the pew has upon the pulpit - an influence which is everywhere present, and which is very subtle and powerful. The priest springs from the people. He enters the ministry with his mind already largely molded by the intellectual and religious influences which obtain amongst them. He may be expected to reflect in his own character the prevalent spirit in relation to Divine things amidst which he has been brought up. A long barren period of spiritual indifference will inevitably give to the Church a race of sapless anti-evangelical ministers; but when, on the other hand, there is a general revival of religion, many earnest young men from among the new converts will be found devoting their lives to the work of spreading the knowledge of salvation. Again, this influence is greatly promoted in connection with the more democratic systems of Church government. The writer of this homily, as a Presbyterian, may be allowed to point out that in every free Presbyterian communion the sap of the Church's influence rises from the people through sessions and presbyteries to the supreme court; and so, peculiarly under this system, it is, "like people, like priest." 1. Sometimes ibis influence is for evil. Take, e.g., the sin of priestcraft itself. It is the corruption of the people, in the first instance, that makes this sin possible. Look at the case of the golden ox at Horeb (Exodus 32:1). Or take that of the golden calves at Bethel and Dan. Jeroboam was trading with the spiritual degradation of the ten tribes when he instituted his false gods and his false priests. The malign influence continued down to the time of Hosea, and by-and-by involved the northern kingdom in destruction. Meanwhile, too, the evil leaven was spreading into the yet surviving monarchy of Judah (Jeremiah 5:31). And thus is it still. Whenever the blood of religion runs cold, and opposition to the doctrines of grace prevails, the Church will seek out teachers after her own degenerate heart (2 Timothy 4:3). At such times the congregation desires to have a tacit understanding with the prophet that he is not to "use great plainness of speech" (Isaiah 30:10). Every true minister has sometimes to contend against the temptation to suppress unpalatable truth. It is little more than a generation since thousands of pulpits in the United States submitted to be muzzled regarding the wickedness of slavery; and since hundreds of ministers in the Southern States were laboring to prove that slavery was proper. In our own country, on the other hand, the warning voice of the pulpit in relation to the evil of the drinking customs is still a somewhat muffled one compared with what it has long been in New England. Finally, here, the priest's personal relations to his people are so intimate that their attitude towards him goes largely to affect even the moral tone and fiber of his character. If he submit to be continually petted, the danger is that all manliness will gradually ooze out of him, and that he will come to expect on all occasions different treatment from other men. But surely the Christian ministry ought to be the manliest of callings. The pastor should be one of the hardiest of the trees of grace, and not a mere greenhouse plant. He should desire no allowances to be made for him which are not made for men of other callings. The whole Church should take care that it is not her fault if he is not every inch a man. 2. But often the influence of the people upon the priest is good and honorable. A congregation whose conception of the ministry is formed as the result of the devout study of the New Testament, will look and pray for men in the pulpit who possess the tongue of fire, i.e. the power of the Holy Ghost; not the power to compose eloquent paragraphs and perorations, but power to arouse, convert, edify - power under which hearts will melt, and lives will begin anew. When conversions occur, the pastor preaches with an enlarged heart and prays with redoubled fervor, and his path seems bathed in sunshine. After all, too, it is the people, quite as much as the priests, who guard the orthodoxy, purity, liberties, and spiritual life of the Church. For it is they who constitute the body of Christ; the pastors are only the servants of the Church for Jesus' sake. CONCLUSION. 1. It is doubtless sometimes the fact that the priest and the people never become assimilated to each other at all. It was so, e.g., in the case of Hosea; in that of Jeremiah; in that of the Lord Jesus himself, during his earthly ministry. But what the text expresses is simply an ordinary tendency in connection with this sacred relationship. 2. Let our closing thought be this, that the obligation involved in the pastoral tie is a mutual one. If his Church responsibilities should weigh heavily upon the minister's heart, they should also press upon the conscience of each member. Both are responsible for the results of the tie. It is, "like people, like priest." - C.J. Parallel Verses KJV: And there shall be, like people, like priest: and I will punish them for their ways, and reward them their doings. |
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