The prophets were in the habit of appealing to the past history of Israel as a nation when they would urge the people to repent of present sin, and would encourage them to seek Divine favor and acceptance. Certainly the records of the past proved that only in returning and in rest had the people ever been saved, and that when they had turned elsewhere than to Jehovah they had only met with disappointment and misery.
I. THE VANITY AND INSUFFICIENCY OF ALL EARTHLY HELPERS.
1. As Israel, when seeking help and deliverance from the deities of the heathen, ever found such a refuge vain, so will all men who look elsewhere than to the Most High experience certain and bitter disappointment. "The idols of the heathen have ears, but they hear not... they that make them are like unto them; so is every one that trusteth in them."
2. Even the best-intentioned of human friends and counselors are powerless to aid and save. The lesson has to be learned afresh by every generation that the help of man is vain. "It is better to trust in the Lord than to put your confidence in princes."
II. THE SOLE SUFFICIENCY OF GOD AS A MIGHTY SAVIOR.
1. He has wisdom to devise appropriate means of deliverance. Many an instance in Israel's history might have been quoted, in order to produce this conviction. And we, as Christians, have the one supreme evidence of God's infinite wisdom in the provision of spiritual and eternal salvation in the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, in whom is the wisdom as well as the power of God.
2. The heavenly King has the disposition to deliver. Salvation is not only his prerogative; it is his delight. Mercy and compassion animate him in his treatment of the children of men. "God so loved the world," etc. There is no pity like Divine pity.
3. For an all-sufficient authority and efficacious power to rescue man from sin and death we must look above. The Eternal is "mighty to save." And in appointing his Son to be the Savior, he has laid help upon One who is mighty -
"So strong to deliver,
So good to redeem,
The weakest believer
That hangs upon him." T.
As the morning cloud...early dew... as the chaff... as the smoke out of the chimney.
Homilist.
I. IT IS DECEPTIVE. "Like the morning cloud." In Palestine and countries of the same latitude, dense clouds often appear in the morning, cover the heavens, and promise fertilising showers that never come. A life without moral goodness is necessarily deceptive. It deceives itself and deceives others. How many lives seem full of promise! But they result in nothing but disappointment.II. IT IS EVANESCENT. "The early dew that passeth away." In such latitudes too, the copious dews that sparkle on the hedges and the fields soon evaporate and disappear. The millions that make up this generation are only as dewdrops, sparkling for an hour and then lost and gone.
III. IT IS WORTHLESS. Like chaff stowed away from the threshing-floor. Chaff, empty, dead, destined to rot. How empty the life of an ungodly man!
IV. IT IS OFFENSIVE. "As the smoke out of the chimney." The ancient houses of Palestine were without chimneys: the smoke filled the houses, and smoke is a nuisance. A corrupt life is evermore offensive to the moral sense of mankind. To what conscience is falsehood, selfishness, carnality, meanness and such elements that make up the character of the wicked at all pleasing? To none.
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People
HoseaPlaces
Egypt,
SamariaTopics
Acknowledge, Beside, Besides, Egypt, Except, Hast, None, Save, Savior, Saviour, YetOutline
1. Ephraim's glory vanishes.4. God's anger.9. God's mercy.15. The judgment of Samaria.Dictionary of Bible Themes
Hosea 13:4 1315 God, as redeemer
1320 God, as Saviour
1513 Trinity, mission of
6659 freedom, acts in OT
Hosea 13:4-6
8763 forgetting
Library
Destruction and Help
'O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself; but in Me is thine help.'--HOSEA xiii. 9 (A.V.). 'It is thy destruction, O Israel, that thou art against Me, against thy Help' (R.V.). These words are obscure by reason of their brevity. Literally they might be rendered, 'Thy destruction for, in, or against Me; in, or against thy Help.' Obviously, some words must be supplied to bring out any sense. Our Authorised Version has chosen the supplement 'is,' which fails to observe the second occurrence with 'thy …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy ScriptureLetter xxxvi (Circa A. D. 1131) to the Same Hildebert, who had not yet Acknowledged the Lord Innocent as Pope.
To the Same Hildebert, Who Had Not Yet Acknowledged the Lord Innocent as Pope. He exhorts him to recognise Innocent, now an exile in France, owing to the schism of Peter Leonis, as the rightful Pontiff. To the great prelate, most exalted in renown, Hildebert, by the grace of God Archbishop of Tours, Bernard, called Abbot of Clairvaux, sends greeting, and prays that he may walk in the Spirit, and spiritually discern all things. 1. To address you in the words of the prophet, Consolation is hid from …
Saint Bernard of Clairvaux—Some Letters of Saint Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux
The Joyous Return
"When God's right arm is bared for war, And thunders clothe his cloudy car." e'en then he stays his uplifted hand, reins in the steeds of vengeance, and holds communion with grace; "for his mercy endureth for ever," and "judgment is his strange work." To use another figure: the whole book of Hosea is like a great trial wherein witnesses have appeared against the accused, and the arguments and excuses of the guilty have been answered and baffled. All has been heard for them, and much, very much against …
Charles Haddon Spurgeon—Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 37: 1891
"For if Ye Live after the Flesh, Ye Shall Die; but if Ye through the Spirit do Mortify the Deeds of the Body, Ye Shall Live.
Rom. viii. s 13, 14.--"For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die; but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live. For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God." The life and being of many things consists in union,--separate them, and they remain not the same, or they lose their virtue. It is much more thus in Christianity, the power and life of it consists in the union of these things that God hath conjoined, so that if any man pretend to …
Hugh Binning—The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning
How a Private Man must Begin the Morning with Piety.
As soon as ever thou awakest in the morning, keep the door of thy heart fast shut, that no earthly thought may enter, before that God come in first; and let him, before all others, have the first place there. So all evil thoughts either will not dare to come in, or shall the easier be kept out; and the heart will more savour of piety and godliness all the day after; but if thy heart be not, at thy first waking, filled with some meditations of God and his word, and dressed, like the lamp in the tabernacle …
Lewis Bayly—The Practice of Piety
What the Scriptures Principally Teach: the Ruin and Recovery of Man. Faith and Love Towards Christ.
2 Tim. i. 13.--"Hold fast the form of sound words, which thou hast heard of me, in faith and love which is in Christ Jesus." Here is the sum of religion. Here you have a compend of the doctrine of the Scriptures. All divine truths may be reduced to these two heads,--faith and love; what we ought to believe, and what we ought to do. This is all the Scriptures teach, and this is all we have to learn. What have we to know, but what God hath revealed of himself to us? And what have we to do, but what …
Hugh Binning—The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning
Thoughts Upon Striving to Enter at the Strait Gate.
AS certainly as we are here now, it is not long but we shall all be in another World, either in a World of Happiness, or else in a World of Misery, or if you will, either in Heaven or in Hell. For these are the two only places which all Mankind from the beginning of the World to the end of it, must live in for evermore, some in the one, some in the other, according to their carriage and behaviour here; and therefore it is worth the while to take a view and prospect now and then of both these places, …
William Beveridge—Private Thoughts Upon a Christian Life
The Knowledge of God
'The Lord is a God of knowledge, and by him actions are weighed.' I Sam 2:2. Glorious things are spoken of God; he transcends our thoughts, and the praises of angels. God's glory lies chiefly in his attributes, which are the several beams by which the divine nature shines forth. Among other of his orient excellencies, this is not the least, The Lord is a God of knowledge; or as the Hebrew word is, A God of knowledges.' Through the bright mirror of his own essence, he has a full idea and cognisance …
Thomas Watson—A Body of Divinity
The Quotation in Matt. Ii. 6.
Several interpreters, Paulus especially, have asserted that the interpretation of Micah which is here given, was that of the Sanhedrim only, and not of the Evangelist, who merely recorded what happened and was said. But this assertion is at once refuted when we consider the object which Matthew has in view in his entire representation of the early life of Jesus. His object in recording the early life of Jesus is not like that of Luke, viz., to communicate historical information to his readers. …
Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg—Christology of the Old Testament
Hosea
The book of Hosea divides naturally into two parts: i.-iii. and iv.-xiv., the former relatively clear and connected, the latter unusually disjointed and obscure. The difference is so unmistakable that i.-iii. have usually been assigned to the period before the death of Jeroboam II, and iv.-xiv. to the anarchic period which succeeded. Certainly Hosea's prophetic career began before the end of Jeroboam's reign, as he predicts the fall of the reigning dynasty, i. 4, which practically ended with Jeroboam's …
John Edgar McFadyen—Introduction to the Old Testament
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