Ephraim will be laid waste on the day of rebuke. Among the tribes of Israel I proclaim what is certain. Sermons
Blow ye the cornet in Gibeah, and the trumpet in Ramah: cry aloud at Beth-aven, after thee, O Benjamin. The prophet in vision sees Divine judgment coming on the rebellious nation, and commands an alarm to be given of the approach of the enemy. Gileah ( Joshua 18:28) and Ramah (Joshua 18:25) were two elevated places in the tribe of Benjamin, and were well adapted for signals on account of their lofty elevation. The introduction of these particular towns, which did not belong to the tribe of Israel, but to Judah, is intended to indicate that the enemy had already conquered the ten tribes, and had advanced to that on the border of Judah. The idea of the passage is - Give an earnest warning of the judgment about to break on the people, sound the alarm, and startle the population, The subject suggested is that of an earnest ministry. Notice - I. THE NATURE OF AN EARNEST MINISTRY. "Cry aloud." Let the whole soul go forth in the work. Let us not mistake the nature of earnestness. It is not noise. Ignorant people imagine that the minister who makes the greatest noise, roars and raves the most in the pulpit, or parades his doings most in journals and reports, is the earnest man. "A celebrated preacher, distinguished for the eloquence of his pulpit preparations, exclaimed on his death-bed, 'Speak not to me of my sermons. Alas! I was fiddling whilst Rome was burning.'" It is not frightening people. Often he who is the most successful by graphic and impassioned descriptions of the judgment day and hell fires, in terrifying men, is considered the most earnest. This is a mistake - a popular and fatal mistake. It is not bustle. He who is always on the "go," whose limbs are always on the stretch, into this house and that house, into this meeting and that, who is never at rest, men are always disposed to regard as an earnest man. Genuine earnestness is foreign to all these things. It has nothing in it of the noise and rattle of the fussy brook; it is like the deep stream rolling its current silently, resistlessly, and without pause. An earnest ministry is living. It is not mere preaching or service, occasional or even systematic; it is the influence of the whole man. It is the "Word" made flesh; so permeating the whole man that every word, act, and expression are as the blasts of a Divine trumpet, rousing sinners to a sense of their moral danger. Such a ministry is a matter of necessity. The Divine thing in the man becomes irrepressible, it breaks out as sunbeams through the clouds: "Woe is unto me if I preach not the gospel." Such a ministry is constant. It is not a professional service; it is as regular as the functions of life; it is a thing that is "in season and out of season" - in shops and in sanctuaries, on hearths as well as in pulpits. Such a ministry is mighty. Men can stand before the most thunderous words and violent attitudinizations, but they cannot stand before such a ministry as this; they are before it as snow before the sun. "Oh! let all the soul within you
For the truth's sake go abroad!
Strike! let every nerve and sinew
Tell on ages - tell for God." II. THE NEED OF AN EARNEST MINISTRY. Why was the "comet" to be now blown in Gibeah, and the" trumpet" in Ramah? Because there was danger. The moral danger to which souls around us are exposed is great. There is the danger of losing, not existence, but all that makes existence worth having - love, hope, power, friendship, etc. "To be carnally minded is death." It is near. It is not the danger of an invading army heard in the distance. The enemy has entered the soul, and the work of devastating has commenced. It is increasing. The condition of the unregenerate soul gets worse and worse every hour. Brothers, let us be earnest in our work, always "abounding in the work of the Lord!" "Time is earnest, passing by;
Death is earnest, drawing nigh;
Life is earnest; when 'tis o'er
Thou returnest nevermore." D.T. Ephraim shall be desolate in the day of rebuke. "Desolate" may be reckoned with energetic adjectives. It was another form of the word that the prophet used; it was a substantive, colder than ice, hollower than the wind: Ephraim shall be a desolation. Here we come from the descriptive word into the concrete term — a desolation; a word which carries its own limitations and qualifications. You cannot amend the word, you cannot enlarge it, you can add nothing to its cheerlessness; desolation admits of no companion term; it must be felt to be understood. There have been times when the house was a desolation; there was no light in the windows; though they stood squarely south, and looked right at the sun at mid-day, yet they caught no light; there was silence in the house; no sound; the fire crackled and spluttered, and spent itself in vain explosions, but there was no poetry in all the way of the flame, there was no picture of home in all the blank shining of the hollow tongues of fire that licked the grate, but said nothing, yet only hinted that the place was empty; bed and cot and favourite fireside, all vacant, and the very grandeur of the house an aggravation of its vacancy. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. Why is God so wrathful? Is this an arbitrary vengeance? Doth He delight to show His omnipotence, and to chastise the insects of a day because He is almighty? Never. There is always a moral reason, — "The princes of Judah were like them that remove the bound." God has always been jealous of the landmark. God is honest; would His Church were also honest! God will not live in the house until the false weights and scales be taken out of it; God will not tabernacle with men whilst they are pinching the poor of one little inch of the yard length; He will trouble the house with a great moan of wind, until the balances be right; then He will say, You may now pray. And every sentence will be an answer. From the beginning we have seen that God would have the landmark respected. Here are the princes of Judah, thieves. It must be an awful thing to rob the poor as they were robbed by the great in all ages. It must be an infinitely difficult thing for a prince to be honest; it is an almost impossible thing for a rich man to be really honest. The Lord is the defender of the poor. We cannot understand how, but there is in history, taking it in great breadths, a spirit that reclaims what has been taken unrighteously, that punishes the men who trifle with landmarks and boundaries, and old family fences, God rebukes the rich; God never blesses human greediness. Judge not by appearances, or by narrow instances; take in cycles of time, great spans of history, and see how the slow moving but sure moving spirit of providence readjusts and reclaims, and finally establishes according to the law of honesty and righteousness.() People Benjamin, Hosea, Israelites, JarebPlaces Assyria, Beth-aven, Gibeah, Mizpah, Ramah, TaborTopics Declare, Desolate, Desolation, Ephraim, E'phraim, Laid, Proclaim, Punishment, Rebuke, Reckoning, Reproof, Sure, Surely, Tribes, WasteOutline 1. The judgments of God are denounced against the priests, people, and princes, 9. both of Israel and Judah, for their manifold sins.15. An intimation is given of mercy on their repentance.Dictionary of Bible Themes Hosea 5:9 5979 waste Library 'Physicians of no Value'
'When Ephralm saw his sickness, and Judah saw his wound, then went Ephraim to Assyria, and sent to king Jareb: but he is not able to heal you, neither shall he cure you of your wound.'--HOSEA v. 13 (R.V.). The long tragedy which ended in the destruction of the Northern Kingdom by Assyrian invasion was already beginning to develop in Hosea's time. The mistaken politics of the kings of Israel led them to seek an ally where they should have dreaded an enemy. As Hosea puts it in figurative fashion, Ephraim's …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy ScriptureAn Obscured vision
(Preached at the opening of the Winona Lake Bible Conference.) TEXT: "Where there is no vision, the people perish."--Proverbs 29:18. It is not altogether an easy matter to secure a text for such an occasion as this; not because the texts are so few in number but rather because they are so many, for one has only to turn over the pages of the Bible in the most casual way to find them facing him at every reading. Feeling the need of advice for such a time as this, I asked a number of my friends who …
J. Wilbur Chapman—And Judas Iscariot The Call and Feast of Levi
"And He went forth again by the seaside; and all the multitude resorted unto Him, and He taught them. And as He passed by, He saw Levi the son of Alphaeus sitting at the place of toll, and He saith unto him, Follow Me. And he arose and followed Him. And it came to pass, that He was sitting at meat in his house, and many publicans and sinners sat down with Jesus and His disciples: for there were many, and they followed Him. And the scribes of the Pharisees, when they saw that He was eating with the …
G. A. Chadwick—The Gospel of St. Mark That None Should Enter on a Place of Government who Practise not in Life what they have Learnt by Study.
There are some also who investigate spiritual precepts with cunning care, but what they penetrate with their understanding they trample on in their lives: all at once they teach the things which not by practice but by study they have learnt; and what in words they preach by their manners they impugn. Whence it comes to pass that when the shepherd walks through steep places, the flock follows to the precipice. Hence it is that the Lord through the prophet complains of the contemptible knowledge …
Leo the Great—Writings of Leo the Great Ramah. Ramathaim Zophim. Gibeah.
There was a certain Ramah, in the tribe of Benjamin, Joshua 18:25, and that within sight of Jerusalem, as it seems, Judges 19:13; where it is named with Gibeah:--and elsewhere, Hosea 5:8; which towns were not much distant. See 1 Samuel 22:6; "Saul sat in Gibeah, under a grove in Ramah." Here the Gemarists trifle: "Whence is it (say they) that Ramah is placed near Gibea? To hint to you, that the speech of Samuel of Ramah was the cause, why Saul remained two years and a half in Gibeah." They blindly …
John Lightfoot—From the Talmud and Hebraica Ripe for Gathering
'Thus hath the Lord God shewed unto me: and behold a basket of summer fruit. 2. And He said, Amos, what seest thou? And I said, A basket of summer fruit. Then said the Lord unto me, The end is come upon My people of Israel; I will not again pass by them any more. 3. And the songs of the temple shall be howlings in that day, saith the Lord God: there shall be many dead bodies in every place; they shall cast them forth with silence. 4. Hear this, O ye that swallow up the needy, even to make the poor …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture Meditations for the Sick.
Whilst thy sickness remains, use often, for thy comfort, these few meditations, taken from the ends wherefore God sendeth afflictions to his children. Those are ten. 1. That by afflictions God may not only correct our sins past, but also work in us a deeper loathing of our natural corruptions, and so prevent us from falling into many other sins, which otherwise we would commit; like a good father, who suffers his tender babe to scorch his finger in a candle, that he may the rather learn to beware …
Lewis Bayly—The Practice of Piety Of Civil Government.
OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT. This chapter consists of two principal heads,--I. General discourse on the necessity, dignity, and use of Civil Government, in opposition to the frantic proceedings of the Anabaptists, sec. 1-3. II. A special exposition of the three leading parts of which Civil Government consists, sec. 4-32. The first part treats of the function of Magistrates, whose authority and calling is proved, sec. 4-7. Next, the three Forms of civil government are added, sec. 8. Thirdly, Consideration …
John Calvin—The Institutes of the Christian Religion That the Employing Of, and Associating with the Malignant Party, According as is Contained in the Public Resolutions, is Sinful and Unlawful.
That The Employing Of, And Associating With The Malignant Party, According As Is Contained In The Public Resolutions, Is Sinful And Unlawful. If there be in the land a malignant party of power and policy, and the exceptions contained in the Act of Levy do comprehend but few of that party, then there need be no more difficulty to prove, that the present public resolutions and proceedings do import an association and conjunction with a malignant party, than to gather a conclusion from clear premises. …
Hugh Binning—The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning The Arguments Usually Alleged in Support of Free Will Refuted.
1. Absurd fictions of opponents first refuted, and then certain passages of Scripture explained. Answer by a negative. Confirmation of the answer. 2. Another absurdity of Aristotle and Pelagius. Answer by a distinction. Answer fortified by passages from Augustine, and supported by the authority of an Apostle. 3. Third absurdity borrowed from the words of Chrysostom. Answer by a negative. 4. Fourth absurdity urged of old by the Pelagians. Answer from the works of Augustine. Illustrated by the testimony …
John Calvin—The Institutes of the Christian Religion 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 Links Hosea 5:9 NIVHosea 5:9 NLTHosea 5:9 ESVHosea 5:9 NASBHosea 5:9 KJV
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