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Hosea Chapter
Thirteen
Hosea 13
Chapter Contents
The abuse of God's favour leads to punishment. (1-8) A
promise of God's mercy. (9-16)
Commentary on Hosea 13:1-8
While Ephraim kept up a holy fear of God, and worshipped
Him in that fear, so long he was very considerable. When Ephraim forsook God,
and followed idolatry, he sunk. Let the men that sacrifice kiss the calves, in
token of their adoration of them, affection for them, and obedience to them;
but the Lord will not give his glory to another, and therefore all that worship
images shall be confounded. No solid, lasting comfort, is to be expected any
where but in God. God not only took care of the Israelites in the wilderness,
he put them in possession of Canaan, a good land; but worldly prosperity, when
it feeds men's pride, makes them forgetful of God. Therefore the Lord would
meet them in just vengeance, as the most terrible beast that inhabited their
forests. Abused goodness calls for greater severity.
Commentary on Hosea 13:9-16
Israel had destroyed himself by his rebellion; but he
could not save himself, his help was from the Lord only. This may well be
applied to the case of spiritual redemption, from that lost state into which
all have fallen by wilful sins. God often gives in displeasure what we sinfully
desire. It is the happiness of the saints, that, whether God gives or takes
away, all is in love. But it is the misery of the wicked, that, whether God
gives or takes away, it is all in wrath, nothing is comfortable. Except sinners
repent and believe the gospel, anguish will soon come upon them. The prophecy
of the ruin of Israel as a nation, also showed there would be a merciful and
powerful interposition of God, to save a remnant of them. Yet this was but a
shadow of the ransom of the true Israel, by the death, burial, and resurrection
of Christ. He will destroy death and the grave. The Lord would not repent of
his purpose and promise. Yet, in the mean time, Israel would be desolated for
her sins. Without fruitfulness in good works, springing from the Holy Spirit,
all other fruitfulness will be found as empty as the uncertain riches of the
world. The wrath of God will wither its branches, its sprigs shall be dried up,
it shall come to nothing. Woes, more terrible than any from the most cruel
warfare, shall fall on those who rebel against God. From such miseries, and
from sin, the cause of them, may the Lord deliver us.
── Matthew Henry《Concise Commentary on Hosea》
Hosea 13
Verse 1
[1] When
Ephraim spake trembling, he exalted himself in Israel; but when he offended in
Baal, he died.
Ephraim —
The ten tribes, of which Ephraim was the chief.
Spake trembling —
Humbled himself before God.
Exalted himself —
The kingdom flourished.
When he offended — So
soon as they sinned, taking Baal to be their God.
He died —
They lost their power and glory.
Verse 2
[2] And now they sin more and more, and have made them molten images of their
silver, and idols according to their own understanding, all of it the work of
the craftsmen: they say of them, Let the men that sacrifice kiss the calves.
Of them — Of
the idols.
Let the man —
Let all that bring their offerings to these idols, worship and adore, and shew
they do so by kissing the calves.
Verse 4
[4] Yet
I am the LORD thy God from the land of Egypt, and thou shalt know no god but
me: for there is no saviour beside me.
Thou shalt know — I
forbad thee to know any other God but me, in gratitude thou shouldest know no
other.
Verse 5
[5] I
did know thee in the wilderness, in the land of great drought.
I did know —
Owned, took care of, guided and supplied.
Verse 6
[6] According to their pasture, so were they filled; they were filled, and
their heart was exalted; therefore have they forgotten me.
Their pasture —
When they were come into Canaan, and had abundance of all things, they ran into
luxury.
Was exalted —
They grew proud.
Verse 7
[7]
Therefore I will be unto them as a lion: as a leopard by the way will I observe
them:
Observe them —
Watch for them, that I might be sure to take them.
Verse 8
[8] I
will meet them as a bear that is bereaved of her whelps, and will rend the caul
of their heart, and there will I devour them like a lion: the wild beast shall
tear them.
Rent —
First kill, then tear in pieces, and pull out the very heart.
Verse 10
[10] I
will be thy king: where is any other that may save thee in all thy cities? and
thy judges of whom thou saidst, Give me a king and princes?
Thy king — I
would have been thy king to govern and save thee, but thou refusedst me in
both: yet I will be thy king to punish thee.
Thy judges —
Where are they now? And princes - Necessary to assist the king.
Verse 11
[11] I
gave thee a king in mine anger, and took him away in my wrath.
A king —
Such as Shallum, Menahem, Pekah.
Verse 12
[12] The
iniquity of Ephraim is bound up; his sin is hid.
Is bound up — As
sins unpardoned; for to loose sins is to forgive, and to bind sins is to charge
them upon the sinner, Matthew 16:19.
Hid —
Not from God, but laid up with God against the day of recompense.
Verse 13
[13] The
sorrows of a travailing woman shall come upon him: he is an unwise son; for he
should not stay long in the place of the breaking forth of children.
The sorrows —
The punishment of his sins will overtake him suddenly, with great anguish.
An unwise son — A
foolish son, who endangers himself and his mother.
He should not stay — As
a child that sticks in the birth, so is Ephraim, one while will, another while
will not return to God; and thus dies under the delay.
Verse 14
[14] I
will ransom them from the power of the grave; I will redeem them from death: O
death, I will be thy plagues; O grave, I will be thy destruction: repentance
shall be hid from mine eyes.
Ransom — By
power and purchase, by the blood of the lamb of God, and by the power of his
Godhead.
Them —
That repent and believe.
From the grave — He
conquered the grave, and will at the great day of the resurrection open those
prison-doors, and bring us out in glory.
From death —
From the curse of the first death, and from the second death, which shall have
no power over us.
Thy plagues —
Thus I will destroy death. I will pull down those prison-walls, and bring out
all that are confined therein, the bad of whom I will remove into other
prisons, the good I will restore to glorious liberty.
Repentance shall be hid — I will never, as a man that repenteths, change my word and purpose,
saith the Lord. What a glorious promise is this, which is interposed in the
midst of all these judgments!
Verse 15
[15]
Though he be fruitful among his brethren, an east wind shall come, the wind of
the LORD shall come up from the wilderness, and his spring shall become dry,
and his fountain shall be dried up: he shall spoil the treasure of all pleasant
vessels.
He — Ephraim.
His brethren —
Either the rest of the tribes, or the nations who by league are become as his
brethren.
An east-wind — An
enemy as pernicious to his estate as the east-wind is to fruits.
Of the Lord — A
mighty enemy, called here the wind of the Lord, the usual superlative in
Hebrew.
The wilderness —
Which lay south-east from Canaan. The south-east winds in that country were of
all, most hot and blasting.
He — The Assyrian army.
Shall spoil —
Shall carry away all desirable vessels and furniture.
── John Wesley《Explanatory Notes on Hosea》
13 Chapter 13
Verses 1-16
Verse 1
When Ephraim spake trembling, he exalted himself in Israel; but
when he offended in Baal, he died.
Two conditions of Ephraim
“Spake trembling,” i.e., there was trembling. “Ephraim was
once very awful,” Bishop Hall says, “so as, while he spake, the rest of the
tribes were ready to tremble.” The prophet contrasts two conditions of Ephraim,
of prosperity and destruction. His prosperity he owed to the undeserved mercy
of God, who blessed him for Joseph’s sake; his destruction, to his own sin.
There is no period recorded when Ephraim spake tremblingly, i.e., in
humility. Pride was his characteristic, almost as soon as he had a separate
existence as a tribe. Under Joshua, it could not be called out, for Ephraim
gained honour, when Joshua, one of themselves became the captain of the Lord’s
people. Under the judges, their pride appeared. Yet God tried them, by giving
them their heart’s desire. They longed to be exalted, and He satisfied them, if
so be they would thus serve Him. They had the chief power, and were a terror to
Judah. But he abused the goodness of his God; his sin followed as a consequence
of God’s goodness to him. God raised him, and he offended. The alliance with a
king of Tyre and Sidon, which brought in the worship of Baal, was a part of the
worldly policy of the kings of Israel. The twenty-two years of Ahab’s reign
established the worship. The prophets of Baal became 450, the prophets of the
kindred idolatry of Ashtoreth, or Astarte, became 400; Baal had his one central
temple, large and magnificent, a rival of that of God. The prophet Elijah
thought the apostasy almost universal. (E. B. Pussy, D. D.)
The responsibility of those having authority and influence
When Ephraim spoke, there was trembling. There was a time when
Ephraim was very honourable among the tribes, when the very speaking of Ephraim
had great power, and took great impression upon whomsoever he spoke to.
1. It is an honour to have respect from others when we speak, to have
what we say received with reverence and respect, showing that it impresses the
hearts of others, and is not cast out as a vain and worthless thing. Let
children, servants, and all inferiors, learn to give due honour to those whom
God has set above them.
2. Those who are in place of power over others account it their
honour, not only that those under them should regard, but that they should
tremble at what they say. Man greatly delights to lift himself above others,
and to lord it imperiously over them.
3. The subjection of the hearts of men to those in authority is a
work of God, and God is to have the glory of it.
4. The meaner the beginnings of men are, the more imperious they
often prove when in power.
5. Sin will bring men’s honour down. Let men take heed of trusting
their former repute, for let them have done what they will heretofore, yet if
they depart from God, their honour will depart too. (Jeremiah Burroughs.)
God’s gifts dependent on man’s mood
s:--Over and over again Hosea denounces Ephraim for their
infatuated idolatry. All through the history idolatry, like a hideous disease,
disfigured the national life, but yet in varying degree. With their faith went
their strength, and in those days individual prophets or pious kings were
powerless to stem the wave of destruction that overwhelmed the land. The lesson
is for all time. “God matches His gifts to man’s believing.” They who tremble,
acknowledge their guilt before Him, are made strong. They who go after idolatry
are heavily punished or swept away. Idolatry has changed its symbols, but it
has not changed its nature. What are our own temptations to idolatry in England
at the end of the nineteenth century? One of our chief dangers is idolatry of
the visible. The difficulty of believing that love means something besides ministry
to the body and mind. But national benevolence and national progress will never
make up for national apostasy. Once lose hold on the unseen, once rest
satisfied with our good intentions, and we, as a nation, shall cease to carry
on our mission. For a nation to be true to itself is for it to be true to its
best. The national faith is the first thing to preserve. (W. R. Hutton, M.
A.)
Verse 2
They sin more and more.
Steps in apostasy
There is no stop in apostasy. Let men once apostatise from God,
there is no stop then; they cannot tell whither they may go, when once they
begin to roll down. Steps in an apostate’s departure from God are--
1. Some slight sin against knowledge, though never so little, for sin
of mere infirmity I cannot call apostasy; but if it be ever so little a sin
against knowledge, it breaks the bond of obedience. When you will venture to do
that which you know is against God, this bond of obedience being broken, no
marvel though you fall, and “sin more and more.”
2. Every act of sin tends to increase the habit. Corruption grows by
acting; as with grace, every act of grace extends grace in the heart of a man;
and the way to grow in grace is to act grace much; so that when you are acting
your grace, you do not only that which is your duty, but you are growing in
grace: so when you are acting of corruption, you are, not only doing that which
is evil, but you are increasing the tendency to it; and therefore every sin
that causes us to decline from God, makes us to go more and more from God.
3. Every sin against conscience weakens the work of conscience. The
authority of conscience will quickly be weakened when it is once broken; break
but off the yoke of conscience, and conscience will be weaker than it was
before. The first time a man sins against conscience, his conscience, having a
great deal of strength in it, mightily troubles him; but having had a flaw, as
it were, it grows weaker. Every sin does somewhat weaken conscience, and
therefore one that falls off from God will “sin more and more.”
4. A man loses his comfort in God according to the degree of his
departure from Him.
5. When one has sinned against God, holy duties become very
unsuitable to his soul. It is a more difficult thing to engage his heart in
them than before, and so he comes to neglect duties, and by neglecting them his
corruption grows.
6. The presence of God is terrible to an apostate. He cannot think of
God without some terror; before he would often think and speak of God, but now
he puts off the thoughts of God. It must needs be that he must wander up and
down even more and more, be as a Cain wandering away from the presence of God.
7. The thoughts of whatsoever might turn an apostate’s heart to God
are grievous to
him.
8. One sin cannot be maintained without another. As now, you find
when one man has done wrong to another, he knows not how to carry it out but by
doing him more wrong, to crush him if he can. And so there are many sins that have
other sins depending upon them. If a man be engaged in a business that is
sinful, in order that he may carry it on successfully, he must commit a great
many other sins, and so fall off more and more.
9. The pride of men’s hearts is such that they will attempt to
justify transgression. Men love to justify what they have done; when they have
sinned, they will grow more resolute and violent, that all people might think
that their hearts recoil not in the least.
10. When men have gone far in sin, they grow desperate. They little
hope ever to recover themselves, and therefore “sin more and more.”
11. God in His just judgment withdraws Himself from apostates.
12. God gives up apostates to their corruptions, and to the power of
the devil. Oh, stand with all your might against the beginning of sin; tremble,
and stop on the threshold! (Jeremiah Burroughs.)
Sinning more and more
1. The start in life is fair and promising.
2. There is a wish to be a man before the age of manhood has been
reached.
3. There is an aversion to religion, and an appetite for what is
evil.
4. There is indulgence in vicious habits.
5. There is the silencing of all the remonstrances of conscience.
6. There is the defiance of irreligion and immorality. (G. Brooks.)
And have made them molten
images of their silver, and idols according to their own understanding, all of
it the work of the craftsman.
Idols wholly human productions
The emphasis is where you would not expect it to be; it is upon
the words “all of it.” There is not one sacred spot in any idol; there is not
one faint signature of the living God upon anything that man has made with his
own hands to worship; it is as if eyes of fire had searched the idols through
and through, and as if the hands of critics had written their record, and reported
in these words: The idol is all base, all dross, all material; all of it is the
work of the hands of craftsmen. Men cannot step from the finite to the
infinite. A finite creature cannot make an infinite idol. Whatever is made is
less than the maker. If a man has made a god, he is greater than the god he has
made. To have genius and power to make it is to have another genius and power
equal to condemn it. Men get tired of what they halve made. Ambition may arise
and say, Make a better; then comes the displacement of the former god, amid
every sign and token of contempt. These words should be cried out poignantly,
bitterly, sarcastically. A man is standing before the idol, and he has gone
through it atom by atom, so to speak, lineament by lineament, and he says at
the end--“all of it” there is not one speck of heavenly gold in all this
handful of earthly rubbish. “They say of them, Let the men that sacrifice kiss
the calves.” It was said in Israel concerning the calves, “These be thy gods, O
Israel.” To kiss was in the ancient times a sign of homage, either human or
Divine. Men kissed their gods. When they could not kiss their gods, as, for
example, in the instance of the heavenly bodies, they kissed their fingers, and
waved their kissed hands to the objects of worship. The Divine Being does not
hesitate to accept this action, and give it its highest meaning, hence in the
Second Psalm there is one who says, “Kiss the Son, lest He be angry, and ye
perish from the way.” That man should have descended to kiss a god of his own
making is the consummation of weakness, and the very climax of ignorance and
blasphemy. All this happened in ancient times. That is true, but all this
happens letter for letter to-day. Man cannot get beyond the tether of his race.
It is man that is tethered; not a man, some man, a particular and dying man,
but humanity. We are all in one condemnation; the act of homage has not ceased,
the object of desire may have changed. Men live in circumstances, and are lost
in details, and therefore it is probable that they may imagine if they have
substituted some other object for the calves of Israel, therefore they have
left the old idolatry. That is not so. If a man be trusting to his own right
arm, he is as great an idolater as any that ever lived in Israel. Whoso says he
has money enough to keep out the difficulties of time, the slaves of want, and
therefore he need not concern himself with providence in any spiritual or
metaphysical sense, is as much an idolater as he who in uncivilised lands bows
down to stock or stone, or lifts eyes of wondering ignorance to the blue heavens that
he may fix them upon something of which he will make the image of a god. Yet
all these heathen practices admit of the highest applications. Let no man
reject nature, it is God’s handiwork; no craftsman made the sun; no hireling
servant set the stars in their places. If any poor heart, iii at ease, should
pick out some fair-faced star and say, Be thou god to me, it might be the
beginning of a higher religion, the truer and nobler faith. These are
mysteries, and are not to be spoken about scornfully. He does not know the
human heart who says to men who know no better, that idolatry is a sin. It was
a sin in Israel, because it involved backsliding from the true God; but find a
man in a savage land who has never heard of God or Christ, and to whom the
words, father, mother, brother, sister, carry no dew of blessing, no colour of
poetry, no suggestion of wider and eternal fellowships--find a man there
clinging to but a handful of mud in the expectation that there is something in
it that can help him, and it is no sin: it should be the business of those who
know better to, teach him better: let what he has seized be the alphabet out of
which to make words, and music, and wisdom. (Joseph Parker, D. D.)
The gold god
I was travelling recently with an old Jewish merchant, who
had commenced his career in a Western city fifty years ago, and who has been
accumulating money all these years until he is now a millionaire, though as hot
in the chase for the dollars as in his younger years. His whole thought and
being seemed absorbed in the matter of getting money. He told me his wife was
very different from himself; she was fond of music and books and art. “She came
to me the other day,” said he, “with a book on astronomy in her hands, and
said: ‘Jacob, there is going to be a new star; let me read to you about, it’”
“But,” said the old man, “I answered her by lifting both hands and exclaiming:
‘Don’t bother me, Rebecca! I care more about the price of overalls than about
all the stars in the sky.’” It seemed to me a striking illustration of the
power of the moneygetting instinct when given full sway in a man’s life to
drown out all desire for higher things. (A. Banks, D. D.)
Verse 3
As the morning cloud . . . early dew . . . as the chaff . . . as
the smoke out of the chimney.
The life of the wicked
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. (Homilist.)
Verses 5-9
I did know thee in the wilderness, in the land of great drought.
Wilderness-knowledge
God knows His people where nobody else will take any notice of
them. You do not know a man until you know him in the wilderness. There is but
little revelation of character in laughter. So long as a man is living in
rioting and wantonness, in great abundance and prosperity, having only to lift
his hand to command a regiment of servants, you cannot really tell what his
true quality is. Men show themselves in the darkness; men cry out of their
hearts when they are in distress; it is in the nighttime of life’s bitter
sorrows that men’s true quality is revealed. God never forsakes His people in
wilderness and in desert places; He is more God and Father to them there than
ever. No man knows God who only knows Him theologically. It is impossible to
read much about God; you must read the writing in your own heart The world is
within you; you carry the universe in your own bosom. Unless you have the
faculty and genius of introspection, and the power to read the small print that
is being daily typed upon your inmost life, you can never be scholars in the
sanctuary of Christ, you can never attain to high degrees of wisdom in the
school of heaven. Men seek God in the wilderness. The wilderness is the school
of discipline. In the Bible there lies one great desert land, and it is called
“that great and terrible wilderness.” There could not be two such in any globe;
there could not be a duplicate experience in any life. Some things can be done
only once; no man can be twice in Gethsemane; no man can be twice crucified.
There are acts in life which, having been accomplished, enable the sufferer to
say, The bitterness of death is passed; come what will now, it is but a day’s
march into heaven. (Joseph Parker, D. D.)
Known in time of distress
God knew Israel in the wilderness--
Observe--
1. Man’s wickedness strangely contrasts with God’s goodness; God knew
their sin and yet destroyed them not; they receive mercies, and yet sin.
2. It is a great mercy for God to know a man in time of distress.
This is God’s way. Men know in prosperity; but let us make God our friend, He
will be a friend otherwise than men win he.
3. We should not be dejected in times of trouble; that is the time
for God to know thee: be willing to follow God in any estate.
4. God’s knowing us in distress is a mighty engagement. Let us look
back to the times when we were in trouble.
5. Let us know God’s cause when it suffers, and know our brethren in
their sufferings.
6. God’s knowledge is operative and working; it does us good. Our
knowledge of God should be so too. To sin against our knowledge of God is evil,
but to sin against God’s knowledge of us is worse. (Jeremiah Burroughs.)
God present with His people in the wilderness
I. The low and
wilderness state of God’s people.
1. It refers to their spiritual wants, weaknesses, and troubles. In
their first convictions of sin. In their first, beginning to walk in the ways
of the Lord. In after temptations. In seasons of dejection.
2. To their temporal wants, weaknesses, and troubles. In poverty and
want; in pain and sickness; in the dangers of life.
II. What kind of
knowledge or notice is it that God takes of his people in that state?
1. It is with pity and compassion.
2. So as to manifest His love to them.
3. So as to bestow His comforts on them.
4. He grants His presence to them.
5. He affords them help.
III. Lay down the
proof and evidence of this.
1. The Word of the Lord often declares it.
2. God’s dealings with His people in all ages further confirm it, e.g.,
Jacob, Joseph, Moses, David, Jonah, Hezekiah, ancient Israel.
Application--
1. Let us be concerned to have this God for our God.
2. When in a wilderness state, let us trust in our God.
3. Remember God’s kindness in appearing for you.
4. Despise not those who are in a wilderness state, but “weep with
those who weep,” etc. (T. Hannam.)
Verse 6
According to their pasture, so were they filled . . . therefore
have they forgotten Me.
The conjunction of secular prosperity and spiritual perversity
Here are men in good physical circumstances, in rich pastures well
fed, getting thereby proud in heart and forgetful of their God.
I. It is a common
conjunction. Wealth in the sinful heart tends--
1. To promote self-indulgence- the pampering of appetites and the
gratification of sinful lusts.
2. To foster indolence. It weakens and generally destroys the motive
to industry.
II. It is an
incongruous conjunction. Secular prosperity ought to lead to spiritual
devotion.
1. The more temporal good we have, the more means we have for the
promotion of spiritual excellence. Property puts us in possession of a power to
procure books, leisure, teachers, and all other aids to spiritual improvement.
2. The more temporal good we have, the more motives we have for the
cultivation of spiritual excellence. The Bible urges the mercies of God as an
incentive to holy life: “We beseech you by the mercies of God,” etc.
3. The more temporal good we have, the more obligations we have for
the cultivation of spiritual improvement. Thus the incongruity of the
conjunction.
III. It is a sinful
conjunction. The curse of heaven is on it. It is sinful--
1. Because it is an abuse of God’s blessings.
2. It involves an infraction of God’s laws.
He has commanded us in everything, by prayer and supplication, to
make known our requests unto Him. (Homilist.)
Poisoned pastures
The grazing land was beautifully green, and appeared most
desirable for flocks and herds. A farmer turned his sheep into the meadow, but
after a short time some of them fell sick, and eventually all of them were
affected. No one could understand the reason, until it was discovered that a
flock of diseased sheep had previously occupied the field, the grass of which
had become tainted and the pasture poisoned. How careful all should be of the
books they read, the companionships they form, and the amusements in which they
indulge! Do they taint the mind and poison the soul? For according to their
pasture so is their life.
Verse 9
O Israel thou hast destroyed thyself; but in Me is thine help.
Man the self-destroyer, and God the Saviour
I. The lost state
of man, both by nature and by practice. Observe to whom the words were spoken.
Of His ancient people, the Lord, by His prophet, declares that “they had
destroyed themselves.” He had warned them, but they had despised His warnings;
He had threatened them, but they had made light of His threatenings; He had
reproved them, but they would have none of His reproof. Is it not so now with
God’s Israel, His Christian Church? Who is there whose account of sin is summed
up in birth-sin only? Who is there that is guilty of imputed guilt only? Who is
there that has only sinned in having the inclination to sin--the disposition to
break God’s commandments--the capability of doing wrong? We are sinners not
only by nature, but by practice. We have sinned in our thoughts. The very
principle of mind being corrupt, whatever arises therefrom must be corrupt
also. And what have our words been? Often insincere, flattering, proud,
corrupt, empty. Words lead on to actions. He cannot act aright who does not
first think aright.
II. The means of
his recovery and restoration. Can we save ourselves? Let any man try of
himself, and by his own unassisted strength, to think but one good and holy
thought, and he will find the question answered. Is there no hope? In Me is thy
help--in Me, the Almighty Father, the eternal Son, the Holy Spirit, the
Creator, the Redeemer, the Sanctifier, the Just, the Merciful, the Holy God. (W.
W. Champneys, M. A.)
The sinner his own destroyer
Our text gives the decision of God, who cannot be deceived,
and who cannot deceive. Men do not believe His declarations. They cast the
blame of their destruction from themselves upon God. Sometimes it is His decree
which constrains them: sometimes it is the withholding of His grace which
excuses them; sometimes it is the force of temptation and their own inability which
exempts them from blame. The destruction of impenitent sinners is procured by
themselves.
I. Establish this
truth by arguments.
1. Drawn from the attributes of God. Where would His justice, His
mercy, His veracity be, if He were the procuring cause of man’s destruction?
2. Drawn from the Word of God. What terms does it use when it speaks
of the nature of God? If God be to blame for the sinner’s perdition, all these
tender expostulations must be only a pompous display of unreal feelings. God
gives many unequivocal assurances that He would “have all men to be saved.” If
God is to blame, these assurances must be untrue.
3. Drawn from the conduct of God. Observe the way in which He has
acted towards our race in general, or toward each one of us in particular, and
we must be convinced that if we are lost, the blame of our perdition must rest
entirely on ourselves.
4. The sentiments of all believers establish this same truth.
5. The testimony of believers is corroborated by the confessions of
sinners them selves. Nevertheless, sinners object to this truth.
II. Answer the
objections.
1. From the decrees of God. This objection is drawn from a subject of
which we have very inadequate conceptions, and in which we soon get beyond our
depth.
2. The principle on which this objection is founded is not a just
one. It is that when two doctrines are affirmed in the Scripture, which to our
limited capacity appear irreconcileable, we are authorised to embrace the one
and reject the other. Show why this principle is unjust.
3. From the inability of man. It is said that God requires of men
certain duties which they cannot perform. But inability is of two kinds,
natural and moral. Natural inability consists in a defect of rational
faculties, bodily powers, or external advantages. Moral inability consists only
in the want of a proper disposition of heart to use our natural ability aright.
And this is the essence of sin. If the sinner lies under the first inability,
he is excusable; but if under the second, he is inexcusable. Moral inability is
viciousness of heart, and depravity of disposition. By reason of wilfully
cherishing this moral inability, you are inexcusable, you “destroy yourselves.”
(H. Kollock, D. D.)
The sinner’s self-destruction and only remedy
I. His
self-destruction. “O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself.”
1. That the ground of condemnation is personal character. The Bible
puts it nowhere else. “ If I had not come and spoken unto them they had not had
sin.” “Ye will not come to Me that ye may have eternal life.”
2. God governs every man as a free agent. He is left to choose
between good and evil. But God will not force his choice, not even to save him.
3. The provision of grace is ample for all who will accept it. None
are excluded from its scope. “Christ tasted death for every man.”
4. Life is tendered to you and urged upon you; the means of
enlightenment, of conversion and training for heaven are all in your hands.
II. The only
remedy--the only way to escape the eternal doom of the self-destroyer. “In Me
is thine help.” The sinner can destroy himself, but he cannot save himself.
Salvation from sin and death is all of grace. It is a supernatural provision
outside of and independent of human device and human merit. (J. M. Sherwood,
D. D.)
The cause of the destruction of impenitent sinners
Others cannot destroy us unless we contribute by our own
negligence to our own destruction. The Israelites ought to blame none
but themselves if judgments from heaven should overwhelm them, giving them up
to the Assyrians in this life, and to punishment after death. Here God
condescends to exonerate His conduct in regard to sinners by declaring that
they ought to take the whole blame of their oval destruction upon themselves.
The difficulties of this subject proceed either from our notion of the nature
of God; or of the nature of religion; or of the nature of man.
I. The nature of
God. As Creator and Author of every being that exists, and of everything that
results from their existence, God seems the only cause of the miseries of His
creatures. There are two ways in which we may satisfy ourselves on this
subject. One is, to obtain a complete idea of the decrees of God, and to
compare them so exactly with the dispositions of sinners, as to make it evident
by this comparison that sinners are not under a necessity of committing such
crimes, as cause their eternal destruction. The other is, to refer the subject
to the determination of a being of the most unsuspected knowledge and veracity,
whose testimony we may persuade ourselves is unexceptionable, and whose
declaration is an infallible oracle. The first of these ways is impracticable,
and always must remain so. Who can boast of knowing the whole arrangement, all
the extent and all the combinations, of the decrees of God? Try the second. The
question is whether, allowing the decrees of God, God doth any violence to
sinners, compelling them to commit sin? God Himself declares that none of His
decrees offer violence to His creatures; and their destruction can proceed from
none but themselves. He has given this answer in those pathetic expostulations,
in those powerful applications, and in those exhortations which He employs to
redeem the greatest sinners. He has given the answer by tender complaints
concerning the depravity of mankind; by express assurances that He would have
all men to be saved; and by such passages as the text, that there are no
difficulties insurmountable in our salvation, except such as we choose to seek
there.
II. The nature of
religion.
1. As to evangelical
morality--how clearly it is revealed. Heresy may attack our religious
mysteries, but propositions that concern moral virtues are placed in a light so
clear that nothing can diminish its brightness. Religion clearly requires a
magistrate to be equitable, and a subject obedient; a father tender, and a son
dutiful; a husband affectionate, and a wife faithful; a master gentle, and a
servant diligent; a pastor vigilant, and a flock teachable. Religion clearly
requires us to exercise moderation in prosperity and patience in adversity. Our
moral relations are regulated in a manner so clear, distinct, and intelligible
that we not only cannot invent any difficulties, but nobody hath ever pre
tended to invent any.
2. The next character of Christian morality is dignity of principle.
Why did God give us laws? Because He loves us, and would have us love Him. How
pleasant it is to submit to bonds which the love of God imposes on us.
3. Another character is the justice of its dominions. All its claims
are founded on justice and equity.
4. Another feature is a character of proportion.
5. Power of motive is another.
III. The nature of
man. There are implied four vague and erroneous notions of human depravity.
1. When we speak of our natural impotence to practise virtue we
confound it with an insurmountable necessity to commit the greatest crimes.
2. We confound the sure virtue that religion inspires with other
virtues, which constitution, education, and motives of worldly honour are
sufficient to enable us to practise.
3. We confound the natural depravity of a man born a pagan, and with
only the light of reason, with that of a Christian born and educated among
Christians, and amidst all the advantages of revelation.
4. We confound the condition of a man, to whom God hath given only
exterior revelation, with the conditions of him to whom God offers supernatural
aid to assist him against his natural frailty. (James Saurin.)
Pandora’s box; or, the cause of all evils and miseries
I should tremble to rehearse the text in your ears, if there were
not comfort in it as well as terror. You may discern in it a double glass; in
the one we may see our hurt, in the other our help. Israel is destroyed. Who
hath destroyed Israel? Why is Israel destroyed?
I. The accident to
the subject. “Destruction.” Destruction is opposed to construction, as
corruption to generation. In the text destruction is the pulling down of the
state, and downfall of the kingdom of Israel. All politic bodies are in some
sort subject to the condition of natural bodies. As these, so they, have their
beginning or birth, growth, perfection, state, decay, and dissolution. If the
state of kingdoms and monarchies is so fickle, what folly, or rather madness,
is it for any private man to dream of perpetuities and certainties! To compose
the seeming difference between God’s promises to Israel and His threats against
Israel, we must distinguish divers kinds of promises made to Israel, and divers
Israels to whom the promises may appertain.
II. The subject of
this accident. Israel may signify, properly, either the whole posterity of
Jacob, or the Ten Tribes which were sent from Rehoboam; figuratively the
spiritual kingdom of Christ over the elect. There is a threefold Israel.
1. According to the flesh only.
2. According to the spirit only.
3. According to the flesh and spirit.
Some of the promises are absolute, some conditional, some
temporal, some spiritual.
III. The cause of
this accident in this subject. Praise God, O Israel, for thy former prosperity,
but now thank thyself for thy imminent desolation. Are not all mixed bodies
corrupted on the disagreement of elements, and the elements themselves by the
strife of contrary qualities within them Are not all metals defaced with their
own rust? God is the cause of our woe, and we are the cause of our woe. God
punisheth us, and we punish ourselves.
1. Let us then confess our sins to be the fuel of God’s wrath, and
the fountain of all our miseries.
2. Let us compose ourselves to endure that with patience which we
have brought upon ourselves.
3. Let us forsake our beloved sins; let repentance be our practice,
and a speedy reformation our instruction, so God s judgments shall not be our
destruction. (D. Featley, D. D.)
Israel self-destroyed
The Gospel of our salvation serveth at once to humble and
to exalt us. Like certain medicines for the body, it first opens: and searches
the wounds which it is intended to heal. The former of these operations is as
necessary as the latter, though far from being so pleasing. It is much wiser
for us to submit to all the pain which a reflection upon our past conduct may
now occasion to us, than to shut our eyes against real danger.
I. Israel is in a
state of destruction and misery. Consider this charge with regard to all
mankind. If the misery is real, it must be felt. It may be felt, however, and
yet not be acknowledged. Men are often ashamed to confess their real feelings
on this subject. Can it be denied that man is in a state of wretchedness and
destruction?
II. He is himself
the author of his own destruction. He hath himself entirely to blame for all
the misery which hath come upon him. Sin has brought the curse upon this lower
world. “The soul that sinneth it shall die” is an irreversible decree of the
Divine government. As long as a man continues a sinner, he must be miserable in
the very nature of things. To bring the matter a little nearer us, let each of
us put the question to his own breast, Canst thou plead exemption from that
general corruption which hath universally affected the human race? (James
French.)
Sin a universal disease
With us all the occasional derangements to which persons of the
strongest health are liable teach every one the importance of knowing
particularly of his own bodily constitution. But why is all this wisdom
bestowed on the body, and disregarded in the corresponding case of our
spiritual sickness? Every man bears the seed of spiritual disease in his inward
frame. How important that he should understand his own symptoms. To brave
refection, to despise precautions, to neglect predispositions, to shut his eyes
to growing disease, to refuse proper remedies, where the life of the soul is
concerned, is no less a blind folly and a fatal rashness in the case of the
soul than in that of the body. Are not sins diseases--fatal diseases, if they
lead to death? The text is addressed, in the first instance, to a whole people,
personified or spoken to as an individual person. In Israel is typified all
mankind, for all are concluded under sin, all are guilty before God. Sin is
surely the symptom of fatal disorder in the soul, for it is God’s revelation
that no sin on God s earth is forgiven without blood shed for it; and that
there shall in no wise enter heaven anything that defileth--no sin, small or
great, unconfessed, unforsaken, unforgiven. Where there is sin on the
conscience, whether known or unknown, that soul has destroyed itself. Where is
the soul that has not some time sinned? And where is the conscience that has
washed out that stain for itself? And what is the washing that can take the
stain of a sin out of an immaterial soul? We do not speak now of open vice and
wickedness. We do not address the conscience that is seared with red-hot iron.
There are sins which are not so gross, which lie so deep that they may long
remain unseen; not so hateful to men, and yet as dangerous to the soul; for the
root of dislike to God and enmity to godly things very often lies hidden among
such secret forms of sins. How much real godliness of heart do the generality
of professing Christians exhibit? Can there be a more fatal disorder of the
soul than formality, indifference, hypocrisy, profession without practice,
lip-service without heart-service? If you have enmities and cherish hatred, if
you love idle gossip and carelessly utter slander, etc. etc., you must admit
that these are fatal symptoms of something miserably wrong in the soul. It is a
sure sign that persons have “destroyed themselves” when they have no hearts to
praise God. Sin is not only the commission of particular stated offences; it is
the state of the heart, it is being without a sufficient love, a sufficient
liking, for God’s goodness, and having more liking for things. Sin is the
transgression of the law. And this is the law--to love my neighbour as myself.
But ii we have destroyed ourselves, is there no hope, is there no help? Few
words will suffice to disclose that mighty remedy which is in our God alone.
“In Me is thy help.” (Brereton E. Dwarris, M. A.)
The sinner his own destroyer
Self-destruction is a crime of awful and unparalleled turpitude. A
few facts will make this clear beyond a peradventure.
I. No man is
destroyed in hell for ever simply because he is a sinner. All have sinned, and
all would inevitably perish had not Omnipotent Love intervened to prevent it.
The sinner that dies at last, dies not because he is a sinner, but because
being a sinner he refused the pardon and grace offered.
II. A free and full
salvation has been wrought out and is proffered to every sinner. The physician
is at hand. There is “balm in Gilead” to heal sin’s dreadful malady.
III. God wants long
and graciously to welcome the sinner back to life. He restrains His anger. He
affords every opportunity. He sends forth His messenger.
IV. God puts no
hindrances in the sinner’s way, imposes no restraint on the free exercise of
his will.
V. Every
impossible inducement is held out, an amazing system of means and agencies is
put in force, to morally constrain him to obey and live; so that, if he
destroys his soul at last, it can only be by personally resisting and
overcoming the combined efforts of God and man to prevent it! (J. M.
Sherwood, D. D.)
Self-destruction,--God salvation
There is no more mournful spectacle in history than that of a
nation concerning which thins has to be said, “Thou hast destroyed thyself.” It
is bad enough when a nation is destroyed by other powers. But there is
something sadder, if our eyes were only opened to see it. The sadder spectacle
is that of the human soul of whom it can be truthfully said, “O Israel, thou
hast destroyed thyself.” It is bad enough to be destroyed by Satan; but it is
worst of all to feel that we ourselves are the instruments of our own ruin.
There is a whole multitude of different kinds of powers which are brought to
bear upon the ungodly man for his ruin. But no existing force can ruin the human
soul unless it is false to its own interests. As long as man is true to
himself, and therefore true to his God, so long is he invincible. But let that
man once turn his back upon that Being from whom he has derived his origin, and
on whom he is wholly dependent, then the man is paralysed and stripped of all
moral power. Why do I desire to bring the accusation of the text home? Because
there is a tendency in the human heart to lay the blame of its own sins on
somebody else, and pre-eminently on God Himself. Do not let us try and throw
off the blame from our own shoulders on to God. The blame must ever be ours,
and because the blame is ours, therefore the pain is ours. Some shift the blame
on to God by misrepresenting application of His foreknowledge. Because God
foresees a thing, He does not make us perform it. The fact that God foreknows
arises from the fact that God inhabits eternity, and that we live in time. The
vaster region in which God lives and moves encloses that smaller and more
restricted region in which we live. As soon as you think God interferes with
your own moral freedom, you may turn round and lay the blame of your sin upon
God; but so long as God constitutes you a free, responsible agent, do not add
to your other sins the sin of blasphemy, by making the everlasting God the
source of the sin which has disgraced your life. How does Christ “help” us? He
stoops to the very sepulchre where we are lying, and lifts the poor corpse
right up from the very jaws of destruction by the power of His own
resurrection. He infuses into our lifeless nature a new vitality, which comes
from Himself; and triumphing over our foe, He exclaims: “I will ransom them
from the power of the grave; I will redeem them from death.” (W. Hay Aitken,
M. A.)
The sinner self-destroyed
As regards the race of Israel, the prophet’s statement is
self-evident. The national ruin of the chosen race was clearly due to national
disobedience. But is not man in all eases the author of his own perdition? That
it was so with our first parent admits of no doubt. His ruin was chargeable
solely on him self. Is man a self-destroyer? Consider this question--
I. In its relation
to the nature of God. We cannot comprehend God. Between the Creator and the
creature there is an immeasurable distance. If God foreknows that this or-that
man will finally perish, how can it be affirmed that he destroys himself? In
reply we ask, Does the foreknowledge of God as to any particular action imply
that He is the Agent? All that can be said is that God permits these
actions to be wrought. We must not confound what God foreknows with what God
appoints. The future punishment of the wicked is represented in God’s Word as
the product of sin,--sin the grain sown, punishment the harvest to be reaped.
If, then, the sin is the sinner’s own, and the punishment is the legitimate
product of the sin, is not the conclusion just, that it is the man him self who
commits the sin who destroys himself! Suppose that the decrees of God are
apparently inconsistent with the doctrine that man destroys himself. There are
two methods by which the question might be set at rest. One is through our
being made fully acquainted with all those decrees, in all their relations to
time and to eternity. But this method is inapplicable in our case, for we have
not the capacity to comprehend the decrees of God. The other is our accepting
the assurance that the purposes of God are not at variance with our personal
responsibility. Life and death are before us, and we can choose. Therefore
man’s undoing must be of himself. God’s decrees we cannot comprehend, His
invitations we can
II. The question in
its relation to the proposals of the Gospel. Some have attempted to show that
the requirements of the Gospel are in effect the main hindrances to its
acceptance. They are so rigid and unyielding, that practically they operate as
a barrier to our embracing the proposals of mercy which the Gospel brings. With
the requirements of the Gospel it is certainly no easy matter to comply. No man
can comply with them in his own strength. But we must remember that the Gospel
is of God. It is the plan which infinite wisdom contrived, and shall feeble man
presume to say that the wisdom of Jehovah has erred? Bear in mind that the
precepts of the Gospel are framed for the happiness and well-being of mankind;
and note how carefully the Gospel adapts itself to our moral constitution in
the appeal which it makes to those motives which have the most power to
influence human con duct. It may, however, be further objected, that there is such
an inherent weakness and depravity in human nature that practically it is
impossible to attain to the standard of obedience which the Gospel demands.
Least of all will this plea serve. We fully admit the depravity of human
nature. But bear in mind the nature has been redeemed. The Son of God has taken
our nature into union with the Divine, that He might redeem and sanctify and
save it. Say not, then, that it is the nature of man which makes it impossible
for him to be saved. The nature has been redeemed, and the redemption would be
incomplete if it left any man in this life beyond the reach of being saved. If
there had been no interposition in behalf of the fallen; if mankind had been
allowed to multiply, and no movement on the part of God had been set on foot
for their deliverance, there might then have been ground for the excuse. There
is, how ever, nothing in the nature of God, nothing in the proposals of the
Gospel, nothing in the moral nature of men, to render salvation impossible. (R.
Bickersteth, D. D.)
Israel’s relief from God
“In Me is thy help.” That is--
Help in God for sinners
When sinners are seeking salvation it is very important that they
should know where to find it. There is no subject on which men are so likely to
err as the subject of salvation. Nowhere else does the heart exert such an
influence over the mind. Men have “carnal minds which are at enmity with God.”
Men do not “seek first the kingdom of God,” putting eternity before time. Since
unregenerate men are so apt to be dissatisfied with the rules of God everywhere
else, we might expect them to be dissatisfied with the plan of salvation, and
make many mistakes when they are seeking to be saved. Sinners are apt to lose
sight of the essential truth of the text. God says, “In Me is thy help.” The
meaning of this is unlimited. The sinner’s only help is in God. He cannot help
himself. He will never have a heart that is right with God, he will never be
reconciled to Him, he will never be a new creature in Christ Jesus without
God’s help. The first proof of this is found in the language of the Bible. The
second is found in the nature of the unrenewed heart. The third proof of the
necessity of Divine influence is found in the inefficiency of all other
influences. The fourth in the inefficacy of all motives. You may not always be
sensible of your resistance; but the reason is, that you consider these things
so little, and examine your own hearts and lives so little, that you remain in
almost entire ignorance of yourselves. Many of you are waiting for stronger
motives. Sinners do persuade themselves, and they are able to persuade
themselves, that some stronger, more powerful motives would influence them to
turn to God. Motives do not convert men. Your help is in God, not in motives.
Practical improvement and profitable direction from this doctrine.
1. The folly of those who seek salvation in themselves. It is all
very true that the sinner who seeks salvation must strive against sin, shun
temptation, deny himself, guard well his heart, or he will not be saved. But
when he relies upon himself and not on God, when he seeks to help himself
instead of seeking help from God, he is leaning on a broken reed. Man must
depend, and work while he depends.
2. The reason why so many of those who are awakened to a sense of
Divine things, and begin to seek salvation, never attain it. They wish to take
themselves out of the hands of God.
3. We learn why sinners who are making some attempts to be saved
sometimes continue so long in affliction and trouble before they find peace
with God.
4. We learn what is the great struggle of the sinner in coming to
salvation. It is to give his wicked heart to God.
5. Sinners when awakened are often doing, or attempting to do,
something directly contrary to what they suppose.
6. They are often guilty of resisting the Holy Spirit.
7. Sinners are their own destroyers. (J. S. Spencer, D. D.)
Man’s destruction, of himself; his salvation, of God
To understand things in their causes, and to trace them back from
their first causes into their principles, has always been deemed the highest
kind of knowledge. However agreeable and entertaining this kind of knowledge
may be, it is not always the most needful and useful. We are now in a world of
action, rather than of science. And usually we have more to do with the reality than with the
philosophy. But in regard to our destruction and salvation, it is absolutely
necessary that we should know the causes, in order that we may be enabled
properly to levy the praise and the blame. God must not incur the infamy of our
destruction, and we must not usurp the glory of our salvation. Two propositions
are derivable from the text.
I. Man’s
destruction of himself. What is this destruction? It is not a temporal loss;
not the loss of the body, but the loss of the soul. Not the loss of its
physical being and faculties, but the loss of its well-being and its happiness
and its hope. At whose door is the blame to be laid? We make five appeals.
1. We appeal to the cause of your continuance in the state in which
you are. Ii it were so, that you were not accessory to your own depraved and
mortal state, surely you are accountable for your continuance in it. God has
provided a fountain for sin and uncleanness open and free always; but if you
love your pollution better than cleansing, your destruction will be of
yourselves.
2. To the nature of Christianity. If in the Gospel call any had been
overlooked, you might fear that you were in the number. If hard conditions and
meritorious qualifications were required to be performed and possessed, you
might despair. If the truths of Christianity were hard to be understood, you
might complain of ignorance. If these benefits were sold at a high price, you
might complain of poverty. If these duties were to require for their performance
a power that was nowhere to be found, or was unattainable by you, you might
complain of weakness. If upon making trial you could not succeed, if upon
praying you were refused, you might then complain of the providence and the
grace of God: but what can you complain of now?
3. We appeal to experience.
Your experience: the experience of a sinner, the experience of the true
penitent. The true penitent is not only awakened, he is enlightened; and in
God’s light he sees light.
4. To the Divine testimony. Let us defer at once to a Being whose
judgment is always according to truth. Ask God whether we are compelled to sin,
and whether, if we perish, the blame will be our own?
5. To the proceedings of the last day. Then every one must give
account of himself to God. What will you do when He rises up, and when He
judges? The hour cometh when “every mouth will be stopped, and all the world
shall be found guilty before God,” whatever they now allege in their own
defence or extenuation.
II. Our salvation
is of God, Sinners of themselves cannot repair the con sequences of their
transgressions. The reason why so many think of being their own saviours is,
because they have such defective views of their fallen state itself, and
because they have never seriously and earnestly made the trial of their
supposed ability to deliver themselves. God’s help is--
1. The most gracious in its source. Whence did this scheme arise?
Compulsion is out of the question. But may not merit have some influence? Alas
I all our desert is on the other side. Has desire had no influence? Why, the
scheme was not only formed, it was accomplished too, long before we had any
being. “According to His mercy, He saved us.”
2. The most wonderful in its procurement. Not only is the agency
entirely the Lord’s, but He accomplishes the thing in a way the most peculiar.
God does not save us by the mere volition of His will, or a mere exertion of
His power. We see the “Word made flesh and dwelling among us,” and suffering
for sin, “the just for the unjust.”
3. The most suitable in its supply. Is light adapted to the eye? Is
melody adapted to the ear? Is food adapted to the taste? So correspond the
blessings of the Gospel with all our wants and woes and weak nesses. Here is
wisdom for the ignorant, pardon for the offending, renovation for the depraved,
strength for the weak, riches for the poor; a sun if you are in darkness, a
shield if you are in danger.
4. The most perfect in its efficiency. He who “speaks in
righteousness is mighty to save.”
5. The most extensive and accessible. None of you are excluded unless
you exclude yourselves. This subject should preach--
Moral self-destruction
If a man is lost he has only himself to blame. It is told of some
poor heathens that, to please their god, they put themselves to death in the
following way. They took a little boat, went out into the deep water, then took
a little vessel in their hand, put it over the boat, filled it with water, and
then poured the water into the boat. So they went on and on; the boat kept
filling and filling, presently it began to tremble, and then sank, and thus
they died. This is just what the sinner does. He goes on in sin for a month.
What is he doing? He is putting water into the boat. He goes on for a year. He
is putting water into the boat. He goes on yet longer. Take care! Take care!
The boat is filling. The sinner is filling it. Stop! or it may sink for ever. (Thomas
Jones.)
What man has to give thanks for
One thing of which the Lord casts the entire blame upon His
creatures, and another thing of which He takes the entire glory to Himself.
I. Man hath to
thank himself for his own destruction. That man is, by nature, in a destroyed
and ruined state is too clear to be denied. Men do indeed try hard to soften
down the fact. They strive to put the fairest face they can upon their
situation and their prospects. Whatever other charges man is open to,
self-hatred surely is not one of them. Yet man is said to be a self-destroyer.
Both these things are true--man is a self-lover, and man is a self-destroyer. In
proof see this. We have turned our backs on our best friend. We have rushed
into the arms of our worst enemy. We have done, with our eyes open, things of
which we have been perfectly well aware, that they work the death of the poor
soul. And he is of all self-murderers the most determined who, having inflicted
the wound, will not let it be bound up.
II. Sinners have to
thank God for the work of the salvation. In this work man has no part or lot.
What a humbling truth! Why cannot we help and save ourselves? Because we have
reduced ourselves so low. The words of the text mean: I am qualified to help
you. There is in Me all the sufficiency your case requires.” Nor is it a help
up only which the Saviour offers, but a help forward. (A. Roberts, M. A.)
Man his own destroyer; God alone his Saviour
Whatever changes may be made by time, we are sure of one thing,
that our God changeth not, and that the principles involved in His counsels and
threatenings, in His warnings and promises and invitations, are immutable and
everlasting as Himself.
I. Self-destruction
is possible to us men; even the destruction of the highest, noblest, and
Divinest part of our nature. Man, too, is the only being upon the earth to whom
self-destruction is really possible; the being whose capacities are the noblest
has the power of self-injury. A man cannot put out his life, but he can blight
and blast all that is bright and blessed, happy and holy in his nature and
life.
II. The only power
by which we can destroy ourselves is the power of sinning. Sin does its work
most rapidly and completely. Sinning darkens the understanding, impairs the
judgment, makes a man a fool, disorders the imagination, deadens the best
susceptibilities of the heart, and sears the conscience. It enslaves the will,
and prevents peace of mind. It depraves the whole spiritual nature. And sinning
is the breach of God’s law of love. God takes notice of every breach of His
law.
III. Every finally
destroyed man is self-destroyed. God will not destroy a man except as punishment
for sin. The devil cannot permanently hurt you, excerpt as you combine with him
to hurt yourselves. Two things are certain. The sin which finally destroys men
is sin for which they are responsible. And the sin which inflicts most injury
is the sin which men love, and which, because they love, they think lightly of.
IV. The
self-destroyed may be saved from destruction. “In Me is thy help”--thy
deliverance, thy salvation.
1. A man cannot save himself. All that he can do for himself is to
submit to be saved. At first all men try to save themselves.
2. No fellow-man can save the sinner. God never sends a man to His
priest; He invites the man to Himself.
3. Think of the encouragement to return to God. While God is speaking
to you of salvation, you may have it. Self-destruction by sinning is the
natural order. Salvation does not come in any natural order, but as the result
of an extraordinary provision on the part of God. If after God has spoken to
you, you be finally destroyed, your destruction will be self-destruction--wilful,
inexcusable, and unbearable. (Samuel Martin.)
Sinners are self-destroyers, but salvation is of God
I. Sin is a most
destructive evil. Sin is the grand disturber of the world. It disturbs the
conscience, families, churches, cities, and nations.
II. Sinners are
self-destroyers. It will be found that the blame is all our own, that there is
an obstinate persistence is sin against the remonstrances of conscience and the
admonitions of God.
III. There is
salvation in Jesus Christ, even
for self-destroying sinners. There is sufficient help for every purpose of our
salvation. There is grace abounding for the greatest sinners. (G. Burder.)
The moral ruin and recovery of man
I. Man’s ruin is
of himself. Many believe that God is in some way the author of evil. This is
impiously false. God is not the author of man’s ruin. Being the first cause of
all good, and independent, He is good, and only good. Satan is not the author
of man’s ruin. He cannot force the will nor constrain the mind to sin without
concurrence and consent on our part, and in the concurrence and consent
consists the sin that causes our ruin.
II. Man’s recovery
is of God. “In Me is thine help.” The doctrine here is, that the salvation of
man is of the grace of God. “By grace ye are saved.” He delivers us from the
evils which involve our ruin. The guilt of conscience, the defilement of the
heart, the disorder of the faculties, the dominion of the passions, the bondage
of sin. He restores to us the blessings that involve our happiness. (D.V. Phillips)
How sin destroys
One of the most famous pictures in the world is the Last Supper by
Leonardo da Vinci. Jesus sits at the table with His twelve disciples. It is
said that the artist sought long for a model for the Saviour. He wanted a young
man of pure holy look. At length his attention was fixed on a chorister in the
cathedral named Pietro Bandinelli. This young man had a very noble face and a
devout demeanour. Leonardo used him as a model in painting the face of the
Master. Soon after this Pietro went to Rome to study music. There he fell among
evil companions and was led to drink, and then into all manner of debasing
sins. Year after year the painter went on with his picture. All the apostles
were now painted save one--Judas, the traitor. Da Vinci went from place to
place, looking for some debased man who would be suitable as a model. He was
walking one day on the streets of Milan, watching the faces of evil men he
chanced to meet, when his eyes fell on one who seemed to have in his features
the character he sought. He was a miserable unclean beggar, wearing rags, with
villainous look. The man sat as the artist’s model for Judas. After the face
was painted Da Vinci learned that the man who sat for him was his old friend
Pierre Bandinelli, the same who had sat a few years before as the model for the
Master. Wickedness had debased the beautiful life into hideous deformity. Sin
distorts, deforms, and destroys the human soul. It drags it down from its
greatness until it grovels in the dust. In Me is thy help.
Help for all:--The first thing that a man does after waking up
to his sinful condition, is to try to help himself. How are we to come to moral
and spiritual health? As long as the heart is wrong the life will be wrong.
I. God is willing
to help us by giving us the holy spirit to show us just the position we occupy.
What is the use of conviction? Without it, a man does not want Christ and His
salvation. The Holy Spirit coming into the heart, a man wakes up to see his
true state.
II. God is ready to
help us, by giving us repentance. There is a great difference between seeing my
sin and turning from it. Conviction and conversion are not the same thing.
III. God is willing
to help us, by enabling
us to exercise faith in christ. The most exhausting work to which I ever put
the energies of my soul was to believe in Christ. Indeed, it is so great an
undertaking that no man can accomplish it of himself.
IV. God is willing
to help us, by giving us the pardon and peace of the gospel. He can save you. (T.
De Witt Talmage, D. D.)
Man’s destruction and God’s restoration
I. Consider the
destruction of sin.
1. Adam ruined himself and all his children by sin (Romans 5:19; Romans 5:21).
2. We have destroyed ourselves by actual transgression (Romans 3:23).
3. The intellect or understanding is ruined (Jeremiah 8:7).
4. The will is become a rebellious faculty (Romans 8:7).
5. The conscience is rendered past feeling (1 Timothy 4:2; 1 Timothy 4:6).
6. The passions and affections of the soul are equally defiled (1 John 2:16).
7. He is destroyed both in body and soul, but for Christ (Psalms 9:17).
II. Christ is our
salvation and help.
1. Christ is the true light (Malachi 4:2).
2. He shines in our hearts and understandings (Psalms 36:9).
3. He restores to us an enlightened conscience (Hebrews 10:22).
4. The soul is now sensible of the least transgression (2 Corinthians 1:12).
5. He strengthens our memories to retain Divine things (John 14:26).
6. He rectifies and restores all our affections (Psalms 73:25).
7. Provision is made for the everlasting life of the Church (John 6:37).
8. He is our help in delivering us from the wrath to come (John 14:3).
III. The
improvement.
1. This help is omnipotent in its energy (1 Corinthians 1:24).
2. It is prompt in its manifestation (Isaiah 59:19).
3. It is always successful in its undertakings (Colossians 2:15).
4. It will not admit of any co-operation in the work (Ephesians 2:8-9).
5. It is unceasing in its application (Isaiah 41:17). (T. B. Baker.)
Man self-destroyed, but not self-saved
That man is a fallen and ruined creature is generally
acknowledged. The moral condition of the world is a certain demonstration of
this distressing truth. It is confirmed by the unrighteous propensities, by the
vices of character, and by the aberrations from virtuous conduct which are
exhibited more or less frequently even in the best of men. Man does not impute
his ruin to himself; and yet, for the most part, he expects his recovery from
himself. The first of these errors blinds him to the necessity of
repentance; the second prevents the exercise of faith.
I. Man’s ruin is
from himself alone. Our first father sinned voluntarily. But is it our fault
that our natures are depraved If the fault be not yours, it must be imputed to
God, or to the tempter, or to Adam. The first would be no less impious than
absurd. The second cannot be entertained. Satan cannot constrain. The fault
must lie between Adam and yourselves. And you cannot separate yourselves from him.
I. Adam was the
head and representative of the entire human race. The consequences of Adam’s
sin are witnessed in all his posterity. They all sin, invariably; they all die,
invariably. Do you complain that, instead of giving man a general law, God entered
into special covenant with him? Then you complain of that which is, in fact,
the strongest argument of Divine goodness and condescension; for a law contains
no promise. But a covenant holds out the certain prospect of a recompense in
case of fidelity. Would it have been better that the fate of the human race
should not have been entrusted to the hands of one? It is not only a fact that
we are implicated in the first sin, but that fact is demonstrably consistent
with the righteousness and goodness of God. Instead of evading the charge, we
are called upon to confess its truth.
2. Men have universally followed in the footsteps of the first
transgression, and have thus made it their own. The original act is not
repudiated and disavowed, but is repeated and imitated. There has never been
one individual exception. All have sinned, are sinning every day and every
hour. Every individual gives ample ground for his own condemnation.
3. Down to the present day the sins of men are committed of their own
free will, and without any external restraint. Consult your own reason. Do you
not feel that you are free? You are not conscious of any foreign force, or of
the pressure of inevitable necessity. It is true that you are tempted; but the
tempter can employ no compulsion. Since men sin willingly and by choice, they
cannot be exculpated.
4. Men have added to the guilt of a single act of disobedience an
immense multitude and variety of new transgressions, clustering about it from
age to age; so that it stands not alone, but is only the first, and yet not the
worst, of all sins. It is difficult to conceive how they could have done more
to appropriate Adam’s guilt The torrents of iniquity have been deepening and
widening from generation to generation.
5. Men choose to abide in their present depraved condition, though a
method of recovery is proposed to them in the Gospel. This is the crowning
evidence which ought to produce conviction. No sooner was the guilt incurred
than redeeming mercy was proclaimed; and how has that proclamation been treated
by the world? On the ground of all these considerations, we insist that all
transgressed in Adam, and have, in point of fact, made themselves partakers of
his sin. Man is the author of his own ruin. The recognition of this truth is
necessary to excite repentance, without which there can be no escape from
perdition. Whom else can the sinner accuse? Will he lay the blame upon God,
because He endued man with a free will? That liberty of choice is the glory of
human nature. Or because He subjected man to a test, in token of the homage due
to His supremacy? Or because He did not render man immutable in holiness from
the very first? Will you quarrel with the permission of evil? Would you lay the
fault upon the tempter? Or upon Adam? Vain evasions all!
II. Man’s recovery
is from God. This truth meets the second delusion of man. He looks generally to
himself for salvation. Four considerations will set this truth in a clear and
convincing light.
1. Man wants a proper sense of his own condition and danger, and
therefore he never will (even if he could) take the very first step towards his
own recovery. There is no adequate motive. If it had been left to man, the
least effort never would have been put forth to recover the friendship of God,
and to restore His lost image in the soul.
2. Man has lost all his love of righteousness, and, therefore, never
would have sought recovery of his own accord. There is a great deal of virtue
in the world, but whence is it derived? Take away all that has been wrought for
the morals of mankind by the indirect influence of religion,, and how much will
be left? There is not to be found, anywhere in the world, any hatred of sin as
sin, nor love of righteousness as righteousness, except in the man renewed and
sanctified by the Spirit of God, and by the blood of Christ. If a righteous and
holy God had not seen and pitied the want of righteousness in man, that want
had never been perceived, never lamented; and, for this cause, there could have
been no salvation.
3. Man has no means of satisfying the justice of God for his sins;
and, therefore, even if willing, he could not be the author of his own
recovery.
1. Some satisfaction is necessary.
2. Man has none to offer which can be acceptable.
3. He has not that moral strength which is necessary to the renewal
of his heart and the amendment of his life; and, therefore, he cannot be the
author of his own recovery.
God alone can awaken the soul to a conviction of danger, implant
in it a love of holiness, provide the means of reconciliation, and by the
influence of His Holy Spirit renew the heart, the character, and the life.
Salvation belongeth unto the Lord.”(Daniel Katterns.)
Religious unreality
I have long been convinced that many of our opinions and
practices of these days differ enormously from the simple Gospel which Christ
preached. I see but little hope for the re-animation of the true Christian
ideal until God in His mercy raises up amongst us some prophet like Savonarola
or Luther, or John Wesley, or some saint like St. Paul, or St. Francis, who is
a saint indeed. Nothing is easier than to forget that religion means a good
mind and a good life. Give me righteousness and not talk, conduct and not
opinions, character and not ceremonies, love and not shams.
I. Doctrine and
practice. In every religion there must be doctrine and practice. Christ came to
show us that God’s will is our sanctification. The age, the nation, and the
Church, supremely need this lesson. “Get sincerity. Simplify your lives,
simplify your religion; return to the simplicity which is in Christ Jesus.
Whatever our belief may be, whatever our worship may be, unless we keep
innocency, and do the thing that is right, we have missed the one thing, and
only thing, which will bring any human being peace at the last.”
II. The bridge of
life. There is on every side of us a false life, and on every side of us a sham
religion. There is open to us all a blessed life and a real religion.
Christianity in nearly all of us produces fruits so crude, so scant, so
hunger-bitten, as to be little better than a store of Levitism or a godless
heathenism. Christianity smitten through and through with the curse and the
blight of our unreality,--that is the reason why it makes such little way, and
is losing its hold of the masses of the population. Yet let us not despair. God
judges not as man judges.
III. Help in God.
Life is short. There is nothing which the world, tile flesh, or the devil can
offer us which is not profoundly unsatisfying. Yet God who giveth more grace,
can deliver us from that fraud or subtlety of the devil or man, which is the
only final irremediable curse of our mortal lives. He can give us holiness; He
can give us peace; He can give us happiness in Him. There m nothing to complain
of in life, but only in ourselves, who pervert, and dwarf, and degrade, and
poison it; and so God ever calls to us, and pleads with us through His Son, our
Lord. “O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself; but in Me is thy help.” (Dean
Farrar.)
Christ, the sinner’s refuge
These words bring before us two subjects--man’s state by nature:
and his restoration by God.
I. We have
destroyed ourselves. Most men, though self-destroyers in a spiritual sense, yet
appear to be quite unconscious of it. By many sin is thought to be a thing
quite harmless, altogether innocuous; but a more dangerous or poisonous reptile
does not exist. You must be judged by the rigorous demands of the law of God,
and that law requires obedience, in thought, word, and deed, and that without
the smallest deviation. You cannot discharge the debt you owe to this law. You
are in this respect helpless, hopeless, remediless.
II. We cannot help
ourselves. Our own obedience to the law cannot possibly justify, and
consequently cannot save us. This fact the Scriptures declare. Some say, but God
is merciful. Will He show mercy at the expense of justice? He delights in mercy
when His justice is satisfied.
III. When and how
does God become the sinner’s help? When the sinner believes on Christ to
salvation. He could not obey the law perfectly, so as to be justified thereby,
but when he believes in the Saviour, Jesus becomes to him justification. He
could offer no sacrifice to God for his sins. Jesus is to the believer an
all-sufficient sacrifice. The sinner could not redeem his soul from death. Jesus
becomes to the believer “wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and
redemption.” (G. M’Clelland, A. B.)
Man’s ruin and God’s remedy
These words are prophetic of the great disasters and that awful
ruin which came upon God’s chosen people, when the Assyrian led them into
captivity, and desolated their land with fire and sword. They were spoken in a
time of comparative security, when the cities of Israel were teeming with
inhabitants, and the broad harvest fields were offering their rich reward to
the labour of the husbandman. Amid the glitter and promise of material
civilisation, God had discerned and denounced the real tendencies of this
rebellious people. He declares that the ruin should be the natural consummation
of the nation’s progress, that they should be self-destroyed by the simple
operation of the principles which they had adopted, and the institutions which
they had founded. This brief address proclaims the solemn truth, that as he
stands amid the bounties of God’s providence and the natural arrangements of
the world, man is continually perverting them from their Divine intent, and
thereby bringing ruin upon his highest interests; and the only remedy for his
abuse of mercies and disarrangement of established order is found in the
constant interposition of Jehovah’s arm in the processes of nature, providence,
and grace. Our subject then is, the destructive tendency of human progress, and
the remedy supplied by God to counteract the ruin. A weakness of the present
age is the temper in which men are wont to glorify its institutions, its
achievements, and its progress. As if by general consent the nineteenth century
has been established upon a throne of honour, and around it have gathered the
high priests of science and the leaders of opinion, to proclaim its successes
and its destiny. But the object of all this idolatry is no less a shadow and a
deceit than is that crowned and jewelled mortal whose life is flowing on to
death, while his flatterers are extolling his immortality.
I. The natural
progress of man in the world is a steady lapse towards corruption and
destruction. In spite of the arts, institutions, and triumphs of civilisation,
the natural development of the race is a descent towards misrule, oppression,
anarchy, and ruin. Reason, revelation, and history make this evident.
1. Consider the nature of the ideas of civilisation and progress as
they are held by men, and as they operate in the world. That there is a “law of
progress” in relation to man’s material interests cannot be overlooked, and ought
not to be denied. On behalf of his various needs, man is a ceaseless worker.
Thus there is progress in the art of living, in mechanical inventions, in the
range of the fine arts, and the scope of great enterprises, and in the
fellowship of nations. One age profits by the mistakes and successes of those
which have preceded it. Great results are produced, dazzling to the eye, and
flattering to the pride of man. But when this process is closely surveyed, and
its real tendencies are accurately noted, what is it more or better than a
reconstruction of the tower of Babel, in which railroad iron, and telegraphic
wires, and social comforts, are substituted for asphaltic brick, and the fine
arts for the builder’s lofty plan, but the intent of which is equally with that
of the ancient enterprise, to exalt man upon the earth, and screen him from the
scrutiny of God! Expand it, modify it, or disguise it as you will, the fact
remains that a process of development which rests upon these ideas and aims at
these results is rotten to the core, and from it there can only spring
corruption. In material prosperity we have the real end of progress, so far as
it is sought by any human institutions, and in this there cannot be a single
element of conservative effect, or a single principle of enduring force.
2. This view is confirmed by the lessons of history. “History” is
philosophy teaching by examples. In the light of the solid facts of history we
learn the real tendencies of that refinement and civilisation of which those
who see things in the present only, are so prone to boast. Every nation that
has culminated in such a civilisation as has been described, has found thereto
the elements of its decay and ruin. Illustrate from Egypt, Assyria, Babylon,
Persia, Rome, India, Ottoman Empire, States of Italy, South American Republics,
etc.
3. Refer to our own land, and the influence of our own institutions.
We have received a goodly heritage. Our institutions were founded in the hatred
of oppression and the love of right. The broad Atlantic rolls between us and
the corruptions which have vitiated the older nations of the world. But what has been the
direction of our progress Has there been ascent or descent in the march of
empire? It is true that, in our national career, we have gained in territory,
and increased in revenue, and advanced in culture and refinement, but amid all
this the primal vigour and intensity of the nation’s life has wasted.
Republicanism does not check depravity. Consider the fierce partisanship of
politics, the strife of interests between different sections of the Union, the
corruption of our legislators, the apologies for oppression, the insecurity of
our cities, our eagerness in the pursuit of wealth for its own sake, the
recklessness of our expenditure, and the fearful increase of crimes of darkest
hue, and you cannot but acknowledge the general tendency towards license and
corruption.
II. Amid these
destructive tendencies there is hope for man in the helping hand of God. God is continually
averting perils, reconstructing ruined institutions, and infusing new life into
the organisms which man has corrupted. Among the vivid creations of the
Scandinavian mythology there is one which represents Life under the similitude
of a Tree. Igdrasil, the ash-tree of existence, has its roots deep down in the
very kingdom of death. At its base sit the three Fates, who water these roots
from the sacred well, while its trunk mounts high towards heaven, and its
branches spread into every land. Its boughs are the histories of nations. Its
rustle is the sound of human life, swelling onward from of old. It grows there
in spite of death below, and storms above, the true emblem of man’s life and
progress, by means of the forces through which God sustains him in the midst of
moral evil. Out of the very elements of death He is evolving a progressive
revelation which will change the tendencies of the race: The process by which
this is being accomplished is not natural, as men understand the laws of
nature. It is a process of miraculous effect, and supremely glorious to the
grace of God. The formal statement of this Divine method we find only in the
Word of God. It is by implanting living ideas of truth and righteousness, and
by renewing sinful human hearts in the Divine likeness, that man’s ruin is
turned aside. In the spiritual influences of the Gospel lies the help which His
Word has
promised, and which His hand affords. Christianity is the one power of real
progress in the world. Christianity saves the world from corruption and
destruction. By it society would be truly civilised, the State be reared on the
great principles of righteousness, and the highest welfare of the world be
secured by a prosperity which should be at once material and spiritual,
temporal and eternal. (R. R. Booth.)
Men’s misery from themselves--the remedy in God
In the history of the Jewish race are set forth the waywardness
and the misery of men under alienation from God. In the mingled tenderness and
severity of its treatment, we have a representative instance of the general
dealings of providence regarding the disobedient and rebellious. The kingdom of
the Ten Tribes had fallen upon evil times. Their sufferings were no doubt
judicial--the awarded judgments of the Supreme Ruler; but they were likewise
the natural and inevitable consequences of their conduct. These are equally
true propositions, that no evil is from God, and that all good is from Him.
Help and deliverance upon repentance and amendment are precisely as much in the
course of things as is suffering after sin.
I. The first
proposition. “We have destroyed ourselves.”
1. By the immediate effect of sin. When once holiness departs from
the soul, life itself departs, in its highest sense. The destruction
attributable to sin is brought upon us by ourselves. No constraint was laid on
man’s will. St. James gives the whole history and progress of iniquity in the
heart, in his first chapter. God is so far from being the cause or author of
sin, that He has, by an infinity of methods, endeavoured to draw us away from
it; and is, on the contrary, the giver of every gift tending to life and
holiness. As little can we excuse ourselves by alleging any fatal necessity;
there can be no such constraining power, independent of the Divine purposes.
2. By incurring the punishment and misery due to sin. It is an
eternal law that misery follows transgression; and that law is God’s law; but
His it would not be, were it not founded in justice and benevolence, the
essential basis of His holy character; and not in any despotic exercise of bare
authority. In this consideration we discover the inconvenience of looking on
the means and instruments of the punishment of reprobate sinners, as belonging
wholly to a place, and got likewise to a state. There is positive punishment;
but the loss of our original privileges, which may be called the negative part
of punishment, is not of much less fearful character. It is the state of
degradation and ruin, into which, while here on earth, the sinner plunges
himself. By the practice of habitual sin, the activity of the conscience is at
length suspended, the eye of the understanding is closed, the ear is shut, the
heart is hardened, the Holy Spirit retires. But if God withdraws His grace, He
must not be thought the cause of the destruction. We “quench” the Spirit--we
expel, we drive Him away, when we pollute His temple with sin. The Word of God
confirms the fact that the destruction of those who perish is from themselves;
and is a thing wholly alien from the intention and desire of the Almighty. This
is implied in the precepts and commandments, wherewith Scripture abounds. The
same is expressly urged in persuasions, exhortations, entreaties,
remonstrances, and reproaches.
II. The second
proposition. “In Me is thy help.” Emphasis is put on the word “Me.” It is pointedly
exclusive. Can a conscience pierced by guilt be healed by indulgences that will
heap upon it more guilt Is it in the power of pleasure effectually to banish
remorse? If we have “destroyed ourselves,”--if we have burdened our
consciences, corrupted our hearts, ruined our peace, there is but one source
whence the remedy is to be obtained; but it is a source deeper than our
unworthiness, more abundant than the sins of the whole world; a source ever
present and ready to send forth its healing waters. It is the bosom of God.
Whatever our distress, God has the power to help. He is almighty, and can do
all things; unless the will of the creature be obstinately opposed to His will
and influences. And in Him is willingness to help. And He has provided the requisite
means and methods of help. They are ever within the reach of those who need and
will apply them. His help is never too late, never ineffectual. No case is
without hope, if there be repentance. If the destructive workings are but
little advanced, God’s help may arrest its progress. Should it, unhappily, have
proceeded so far as to have corrupted our hearts and seared our consciences, He
can convert, restore, and renew us. (R. Gattermole, B. D.)
Destroyed sinners finding help in God
God’s eye sees at once all events, past, present, and future.
Hence He saw Israel labouring under the woes which He had threatened. He saw
them scattered and peeled and eating abundantly of the fruit of their own
devices, and He tells them that the blame was all their own. Israel, in coming
under the stroke of Divine vengeance, fell a victim to her own rebellion and
obstinacy. Yet God did not cease to pity them. God had first threatened Israel.
Then He views her as overwhelmed by His judgments. He blames her for having
brought them upon herself. He laments over her. He opens anew the door of hope,
by declaring “in Me is thine help.”
I. The means by
which sinners destroy themselves.
1. They do so by departing from God, whose favour is their only
safety. Apart from God there is no security for man. The world may pretend to
throw over him the shield of its protection, but it will prove as the spider’s
web before the wrath of offended heaven. The favour of God is a strong tower,
to which the righteous run and are safe. But unregenerate men have turned their
backs upon this hiding-place and rock of defence. They are utterly destitute of
an asylum as long as they disregard the favour of God. And this destitution is
chargeable wholly on themselves; because God has graciously used all kinds of
agencies in order to influence them.
2. By indulging in sin, which is ruinous in its very nature. We argue
the nature of a thing from its uniform effects. If we find sin always pouring
forth streams of misery, we say it is ruinous in its very nature. Wherever sin
has trod with unholy foot, there misery in some form and degree has been
spreading its withering and deadly influences. Test sin by what it did to the
Lord Jesus. See what it has done to man as a race. It has scattered desolation,
mourning, and woe, over the face of the whole earth.
3. By exposing themselves to the destructive judgments of God. God
has armed Himself against sin with righteous but fearful judgments. Many of
these overtake the sinner during his earthly career. All the miseries which
come upon men in time are only the first-fruits of the abundant harvest of
wrath, which those shall reap who continue to sow to the flesh.
4. By refusing to obey the Gospel, which brings the only remedy for
their miseries. Notwithstanding all His wrath against sin, God has set before
sinners an open door of escape from its guilt and consequences. The sinner can
close this door against himself by rejecting the Gospel of God’s Son. And there
is no other way of escape than that God has provided. Sometimes the sinner sets
himself to work out a righteousness of his own. Sometimes he comes after the
Lord has arisen and shut to the door.
II. Where help is
found for us in God. There are many quarters in the Divine character to which
we need not look for help. None is to be found in His absolute holiness; or His
absolute justice; or His absolute power; or His absolute and general mercy.
1. There is help for us in the gracious mercy, of God. By this we
mean His free and undeserved compassion, exercising itself through Christ for
the deliverance of lost sinners. Christ has removed all obstacles arising from
the absolute holiness and justice, and the general mercy of God. Hence comes to
us--along the channel Christ provided--the forgiving and sanctifying mercy of God.
2. There is help for us in the gracious power of God. God’s power, in
Christ, is the strong arm sent down from above to draw the sinner from the
depths of sin and misery. It is the mighty energy by which his heart is
changed, his nature reversed, and by which he is drawn to the Saviour. It is
the mighty rod by which God breaks the power of sin in the believer. It is the
storehouse out of which God gives the believer strength to perform the duties
assigned to him. It is the house of defence in which the believer may obtain
protection from every calamity.
3. There is help in the gracious faithfulness of God, whose promises
are so numerous and so varied as to suit all our wants and circumstances. The
ground on which a man may lay hold on these promises is the faithfulness of God
in Christ.
4. In short, there is help for us in the all-sufficiency of God.
Learn how lamentable it is that we should have destroyed ourselves. And what
reason we have for praising God with all our hearts. If God had not said, “In
Me is thy help,” where would we have been? (A. Ross, M. A.)
In God is our help
This gracious declaration of the blessed God involves two truths.
I. That in God is
our only help, and that we have no other means of deliverance but in Him. That
aversion from God which constitutes our guilt and misery, prompts us to seek
relief anywhere else, rather than from Him. That might be prudent, if any
dependence could be placed in those refuges which we rely on. That God is our
only help is obvious from the circumstance of His having interposed on our
behalf. Infinite wisdom can do nothing unnecessary. We could not by any means
accomplish our own deliverance. Reason and conscience tell us that no future
repentance, though we were disposed to repent, can atone for the guilt of a
single transgression. And we do not want to repent; we are unwilling to return
to our allegiance, or to be reconciled to our offended Judge. Some say that,
under the Gospel, the demands of the moral law are abridged, and that it is now
satisfied with a sincere, though imperfect obedience. Can this be true? The
fact is that we can do nothing towards relieving ourselves from that
destruction and misery in which we are involved by sin. It is not in our power,
though we were willing; and we are not willing, although it were in our power.
It is impossible that our circumstances should be retrieved by any other means
than those which God Himself hath appointed.
II. God is an
all-sufficient help, both able and willing to bring us relief. It may be said,
Is not God almighty, so that He can do whatsoever He pleaseth? Yes, He is able
to effect any natural act whatever. But our circumstances are such that
something else than mere power is necessary to bring us relief. The power of
God cannot act in opposition to His other perfections. God is not only
powerful, but just and holy. A plan must be devised by which all His
perfections may be illustrated at once. God must be just, though man should
perish. What circumstances render the scheme of redemption, which God hath
wrought for us by Jesus Christ, fully sufficient for all the purposes of our
salvation? Consider the dignity of the person of the Redeemer and His
resurrection. His death was not more necessary to atone for our sins than His
resurrection to apply the redemption He had purchased to the souls of His
people. He hath not only begun, but completed the work of redemption. (James
French.)
God’s help for the sinner
Well, there are those in this audience who not only feel they have
a sinful nature, but that they are helpless. I congratulate you, I am glad of
it that you feel you are helpless. You say, “That isn’t brotherly; that isn’t
humane.” Well, I say that in the same spirit in which Lady Huntingdon said it
to a man who exclaimed, “I am a lost man.” She said, “I am glad of it.” He
said, “That’s a most unkind remark.” “Ah!” she said, “I am glad of it. Because
you must first feel you are lost before you win salvation.” And so if there are
those here who not only know that they have a sinful nature, but that they are
helpless, I congratulate you. For now comes the clarion voice of my text--it
comes like ten thousand thunders bursting from the throne, “In Me is thy help.”
Verse 11
I gave thee a king in Mine anger, and took him away in My wrath.
Saul
The Israelites seem to have asked for a king from an unthankful
caprice and waywardness. The ill conduct of Samuel’s sons was the occasion, an
“evil heart of unbelief” was the cause. To punish them, God gave them a king
“after their own heart.” There is, in true religion, a sameness, an absence of
hue and brilliancy, in the eyes of the natural man. Samuel had too much of
primitive simplicity about him to please the Israelites; they felt they were
behind the world, and clamoured to be put on a level with the heathen. Saul had
much to recommend him to minds thus greedy of the dust of the earth. He was
brave, daring, resolute; gifted, too, with strength of body as well as of mind.
Both his virtues and his faults were such as became an Eastern monarch, and
were adapted to secure the fear and submission of his subjects. Samuel’s
conduct in the national emergency is far above human praise. Personally
qualified Saul was for a time a prosperous king. But from the beginning the
prophet’s voice is raised both against the people and king in warnings and
rebukes, which are omens of his destined destruction, according to the text.
Here, then, a question may be raised--Why was Saul thus marked for vengeance
from the beginning? The question leads to a deeper inspection of his character.
The first duty of every man is the fear of God--a reverence for His Word, a
love of Him, and a desire to obey Him. Now Saul lacked “his one thing.” He was
never under the abiding influence of religion, however he might be at times
moved and softened. What nature made him, that he remained, without
improvement; with virtues which had no value, because they required no effort,
and implied the influence of no principle. There was a deadness to all
considerations not connected with the present world. It is his habit to treat
prophet and priest with a coldness, to say the least, which seems to argue some
great internal defect. We have no reason to believe, from the after history, that
the Divine gift at his anointing left any religious effect on his mind. The
immediate occasion of his rejection was his failing under a specific trial of
his obedience, as set before him at the very time he was anointed. There was no
professed or intentional irreverence in Saul’s conduct. He outwardly respected
the Mosaic ritual. But he was indifferent, and cared for none of these things.
From the time of Saul’s disobedience in the matter of Amalek, Samuel came no
more to see Saul, whose season of probation was over. He finishes his bad
history by an open act of apostasy from the God of Israel. He consulted the
sorceress at Endor. Unbelief and wilfulness are the wretched characteristics of
Saul’s history--an ear deaf to the plainest commands, a heart hardened against
the most gracious influences. (J. H. Newman, B. D.)
A gift of God’s anger
You were so set upon it, that you would have a king; if you will,
take him, saith God, and take him with all that shall follow after. So that it
was (as one speaks) rather from an angry God than from an entreated one. Saul
and Jeroboam were both given in anger.
1. God may have a hand in things wherein men sin exceedingly.
2. Things that are evil may yet have present success.
3. God’s gifts are not always in love. Take heed of immoderate
desires for any worldly thing.
I. How we may know
that what god gives is in anger, not in love. It is a very hard thing to
convince men, if they have their desires satisfied, that it is rather from
anger than love. Men are so well pleased with the satisfying of their desires
that they can be very hardly convinced but that God intends good to them in it
1. When you desire a gift, rather than God in it. When your desires
are for the gift rather than the Giver, you can have no comfort that there is
love in it.
2. When our desires are immoderate and violent.
3. When God grants men their desires before the due time. They have
what they would have, but they have it not in God’s time.
4. When God grants us what we would have, but without the blessing.
He grants the thing, but takes away the blessing of the thing, He takes away
the comfort and satisfaction of it. “They shall eat, but they shall not be
satisfied.”
5. When that which we desire is merely to satisfy our lusts. We do
not desire such and such things that by them we may be fitted for the service
of God.
6. When men are so eager that they care not whether the gift comes
from a reconciled or a provoked God; it is all one to them (Numbers 11:1-35.).
7. When God regards not our preparation for a mercy. Carnal hearts
take no great care themselves of it. Let me have it, say they, our fitness
matters not. It is your sin and wickedness not to regard the preparation of
your hearts for what you have, and it is God’s judgment to give it to you
before you are pre pared. A gracious heart, when it would have a mercy, is as
careful to get the heart prepared for the mercy as to obtain it.
8. When we rest on the means we use, and seek not God by prayer.
9. When God gives us our desires, but not a sanctified use of them.
When God gives you the shell, but not the kernel, surely it is not in love. All
the good things that wicked men have, are but shells without kernels.
10. When a secret curse attends what we have.
11. When we regard not what becomes of others, so we have our wants
satisfied.
12. When God, in satisfying our desires, makes way for some judgment.
13. When men are greedy of things to the disregard of results; when
they would have their desires satisfied in a foolish way, never minding what
inconveniences may follow, but merely looking to their present comfort.
14. When men seek to have their desires satisfied, merely because they
love change.
15. When our desires of further mercies make us forget former
mercies.
16. When men desire new things out of mistrust of God.
17. If we seek to attain our desires by unlawful means. (Jeremiah
Burroughs.)
Answers to improper prayers
The flying fish, says the fable, had originally no wings, but
being of an ambitious and discontented temper she repined at being always
confined to the water, and wished to soar into the air. “If I could fly like
the birds,” said she, “I should not only see more of the beauties of nature,
but I should be able to escape from those fish which are continually pursuing
me, and which render my life miserable.” She therefore petitioned Jupiter for a
pair of wings, and immediately she perceived her fins to expand. They suddenly
grew to the length of her whole body, and became at the same time so strong as
to do the office of a pinion. She was at first much pleased with her new
powers, and looked with an air of disdain on all her former companions; but she
soon perceived herself exposed to new dangers. While flying in the air she was
incessantly pursued by the tropic bird and the albatross, and when for safety
she dropped into the water, she was so fatigued with her flight that she was
less able than ever to escape from her old enemies the fish. Finding herself
more unhappy than before, she now begged of Jupiter to recall his present; but
Jupiter said to her, “When I gave you your wings I well knew that they would
prove a curse; but your proud and restless disposition deserved this
disappointment. Now, therefore, what you begged as a favour keep as a
punishment.” (Evenings at Home.)
Verse 14
I will ransom them from the power of the grave.
For Easter morning
For long ages,, it must have almost seemed as if God had forgotten
His challenge. Death reigned from Adam to Moses”; from Moses to David, who
“died and was buried”; and from David to Christ. One of the earliest chapters
of the Bible (Genesis 5:1-32.) is a cemetery of the old
world; and in the case of each the monotonous announcement follows, “and he
died.” The generations of mankind spring smiling and beautiful on mother earth,
like the clover crops of successive years, as if to defy or with their charms
to fascinate the tyrant reaper. But all to no avail. There were only two
exceptions to the dread monotony of death--the rapture of Enoch, and the
ascension of Elijah; they were like the early crocus or aconite, which announces
the coming of the spring. All the rest died. At last He came in human
form who had been fore-announced as death’s death, the destined fulfiller of
the promise of paradise. At least He will not succumb. He will not see death!
Or if they meet, before one glance of His eyes, “which are as a flame of fire,”
surely death will wane as the moon when smitten by sunlight! But contrary to
all that we might have thought, it was not so. He, too, the Prince of Life,
having entered the lists with the fell tyrant, allowed Himself to be led as a
lamb to the slaughter. And it might have seemed therefore that none, not even
God, could break the thrall of death. Such was the appearance; but not the
fact. We are reminded of the old Greek story that when the city of Athens was
doomed to supply each year a tribute of youths and maidens to the monster of
Crete, the here Theseus embarked with the crew, and accompanied the victims
that he might beard the dreadful ogre in his den, sad slaying him, for ever
free his native city from the burden under which it groaned. So Christ through
death abolished death, and “destroyed him that had the power of death, that is
the devil, and delivered those who through fear of death were all their
lifetime subject to bondage.” Here was fulfilled the Divine announcement, “O
death, I will be thy plagues.” Nor is this all. In the last vision vouchsafed
to man of the ascended Christ, the keys of death are said to hang at His
girdle, and He has the power to shut so that none can open, and to open so that
none can shut. Nor is even this all. The day is not far distant when all His
saints “that are in their graves shall hear His voice, and shall come forth”;
then shall be fulfilled the saying that is written, “Death is swallowed up in
victory.” Nor is even this all. The world of men is to participate in the
resurrection power of death’s victor. “As in Adam all die, even so in Christ
shall all be made alive.” They shall come from the ages before the flood; from
the foot of the pyramids, where the slaves of the Pharaohs mingled their dust
with the bricks they made; from the earliest scenes of life, and from the
latest; from the most enlightened races of mankind, and the most degraded; from
the most warlike and the most peaceful tribes; cathedral vaults shall split and
give up their contents; Marathon, Austerlitz, and Waterloo shall add their
contributions; the sea shall give return of the harvest sown through the
centuries. Nor is this all. All enemies are to be put beneath His feet. The
last enemy to be destroyed by Emmanuel shall be death itself. In what its
destruction shall consist we do not know; except that in that world which the
King who sits upon
the throne shall create, we are told, “There shall be no more death.” No
funeral cortege shall wind its way over the golden pavement. How gloriously
then will God realise the words that glisten before our eyes this Easter
morning! Already in the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ from the dead we
see that the empire of death is doomed. But, in the meanwhile, is there no
comfort for us who are compelled to live in the valley shadowed by death? There
is, because He goes beside us; and the Psalmist, who had spoken of Him in the
third person, addresses Him in the second as that shadow comes nearer: “He restoreth
my soul; Thou art with me.” And if this should not be the case, and we were
doomed to go down, each alone, to die, yet even then we need not be without
solace. Death is abolished! The wasp struck its sting into the Cross of the
dying Lord, and lost it there, and is now stingless for ever. The poison fang
of the viper has been extracted; Goliath beheaded by his own sword. The teeth
of the lion have been drawn. (F. B. Meyer, B. A.)
The paean of victory over the last enemy
These words of mercy are found amidst words of judgment. In wrath
God remembers mercy. Ephraim had been sentenced to temporal ruin, but now God
speaks of their eternal redemption. Who has not painful associations with the
grave! Death is a reaper whose sickle leaves not one sheaf ungathered. How
blessed the thought that the gracious Lord Jesus hath entered upon the scene,
to become the champion of His trusting people, and the subduer of their
enemies. The word “ransom” signifies to rescue by the payment of a price. To
“redeem” denotes the right of the nearest kinsman to acquire a thing for
himself by the payment of a price. Both words describe what the holy Jesus has
done. How may Christ be said to be the plague of death?
1. By the full discoveries He made concerning it.
2. In many of the miracles which He performed.
3. He is the death of death by His own death and resurrection. These
were the chief means and instruments of His illustrious triumph.
4. By extending to His people all the benefits of His own death and
resurrection. Neither in dying nor in living does He stand alone. He appears as
the representative of others, and the fruits of His sufferings and sacrifice He
imparts to every believer.
5. “By raising all His people from their graves. This is the first
resurrection: blessed is he that hath part in the first resurrection. (A.
Clayton Thiselton.)
O death, I will be
thy plagues.
The ruin of death
By these words the prophet distinctly sets forth the power of God,
and magnificently extols it, lest men should think that there is no way open to
Him to save, when no hope according to the judgment of the flesh appears. Hence
the prophet says, Though men are now dead, there is nothing to prevent God to
quicken them. How so? For He is “the ruin of death, and the excision of the
grave,”--that is, “Though death should swallow up all men, though the grave
should consume them, yet God is superior to both death and the grave, for He
can slay death, for He can abolish the grave.” We learn from this passage that
when men perish God still continues like Himself, and that neither His power,
by which He is mighty to save the world, is extinguished, nor His purpose
changed, so as not to be always ready to help; but that the obstinacy of men
rejects the grace which has been provided, and which God willingly and
bountifully offers. This is one thing. We may secondly learn, that the power of
God is not to be measured by our rule; were we lost a hundred times, let God be
still regarded as a Saviour. Should, then, despair at any time so cast us down
that we cannot lay hold on any of God’s promises, let this passage come to our
minds, which says that God is the excision of death and the destruction of the
grave. “But death is nigh to us; what, then, can we hope for any more?” This is
to say, that God is not superior to death; but when death claims so much power
over men, how much more power has God over death itself? Let us then feel
assured that God is the destruction of death, which means that death can no
more destroy; that is, that death is deprived of that power by which men are
naturally destroyed; and that though we may lie in the grave, God is yet the
excision of the grave itself. Many interpreters, thinking this passage to be
quoted by Paul, have explained what is here said of Christ, and have in many
respects erred. They have said first, that God promises redemption here with
out any condition; but we see that the design of the prophet was far different.
(John Calvin.)
Death the plague of sinners, and Christ the plague of death
There is no form of death more terrible than what is termed plague
or pestilence, which are the names commonly given to any distemper that is
peculiarly malignant and deadly in its character, and wide-spreading, or as the
phrase is, epidemic in its progress. In the Hebrew language, destruction was
another name for the grave, and is sometimes found joined with hell, when that
word signifies the separate state of departed souls.
I. Death is the
plague of the sinner. A plague denotes anything that is troublesome and
vexatious. The idea of death is
to the sinner a perpetual source of uneasiness and pain. The
sting of death is sin; and therefore the sting, the torment, the curse of a
sinful life is death.
1. Contemplate death in connection with its forerunners. By which is
meant everything of suffering and sorrow. These all tell us of death’s
approach.
2. View death in its attendants. What is death but just the grand
unfathomed mystery of wonder and depth and fear which lies under life from its
beginning to its close? The anticipated terror of death is dot its only
attendant. It is accompanied with pain, the pain of separation and the pain of
disease.
3. View death in its consequences. Its future and final consequences.
(About which we say much, and know little.)
II. Christ is the
plague of death. Where philosophy does nothing, and infidelity worse than
nothing, Christianity steps in and does everything. The Lord Jesus has well
earned to Himself this most expressive designation, “the pestilences of death.”
1. Christ showed Himself the plague of death, by the full discoveries
He made and the clear instructions He delivered regarding it. Until He appeared
a thick cloud rested on the state of the dead. As the Sun of Righteousness, He
dissipated the clouds which hung over the tomb, He poured a flood of light on
the regions beyond it, He disclosed futurity in all its bliss and in all its
woes.
2. Christ showed Himself the plague of death in many of the miracles
He performed. Are disease and wretched ness “the concomitants of death”? It was
His daily work of mercy to make distress vanish, and to chase away misery. But
not satisfied with giving repeated checks to death’s ministers, He trampled on
the grim monster himself. See cases of raising the little maid, the widow’s
son, and Lazarus.
3. Christ showed Himself the plague of death by His own death and
resurrection. These were the chief means and instruments of His illustrious
triumph.
4. Christ has proved Himself, and will yet prove Himself, the plague
of death, by extending to His people all the benefits of His own death and
resurrection. Neither in dying nor in living does He stand alone; He appears as
the representative of others, and the fruits of His every toil and suffering
and sacrifice He imparts to His believing and beloved people. (N. Morrew, A.
M.)
The great conqueror of the world conquered
Primarily, these words apply to God’s restoration of Israel from
Assyria--partially and in times yet future, fully from all the lands of their
present long-continued dispersion and political death.
1. Here is the great conqueror called the “death and the grave.” What
a conqueror is death!
2. Here is the great conqueror of the world conquered. Who? “I am the
resurrection and the life, whoso believeth in Me shall never die.” How has He
conquered death? Not by weakening his power or arresting his progress, for he
is as mighty and active as ever, but by stripping him of his terror. (Homilist.)
The Saviour’s final conquest
Our text is not all solemnity; it also Wakens within the
mind emotions of deep and heartfelt joy.
I. The time is
coming when the ravages of death shall be for ever ended. Death is always at
work. He is never tired. And all alike are seized by him as his victims. The
ravages of death! How the mind sinks in despondency as it contemplates what
death has done! And the ravages are sometimes sudden. Then, how blessed is the
assurance that the time is coming when the promise of the text shall be
fulfilled.
II. Then all the
design of the atonement will be fulfilled. When Adam sinned he flung over the
sunshine and joy of God’s world the shadow of the tomb. When Jesus entered the
world He came to dissipate that shadow, and bring back sunshine and joy by
bringing life and immortality to light. The design of the atonement is to be
fulfilled; it is not altogether fulfilled yet.
III. Then the gloomy
associations of the grave will be all forgotten. Now it is not possible to
think of the grave without gloomy thoughts. But that grave shall one day be
destroyed, and all its sad memories shall be blotted out.
IV. When these
words are fulfilled the whole family of God will be reunited for ever. The
family of God is scattered now. Part is triumphant in heaven, and part is still
militant upon earth. We shall all meet again, where partings are for ever
unknown. (W. Meynell Whittemore, S. C. L.)
Christ, the Conqueror of death
This is bold and striking language. Death has ever shown himself
to be no respecter of persons. The wide extent of death’s dominion is so
universally admitted that it were a waste of time to adduce any argument in its
proof. In order to the right understanding of this passage we must have regard
to the early history of man. During the whole period of the Old Testament
history intimations were given of a coming Saviour, and every promise, as well
as every type, had reference to the blessings of His kingdom. There is
something peculiarly striking in the language here employed. Never does death
appear in a more terrific form than when, by plague or pestilence, thousands
are swept away as in a moment. Under whatever aspect death is presented to our
notice in the sacred Volume, it is associated with sin; it appears as its
result: It is sin that arms death with all its poison, and renders it so truly
dreadful, What is it that gives to sin its condemning power? “The strength of
sin is the law.” “Sin is the transgression of the law.” Then, how has the Son
of God achieved the victory predicted in our text? For the accomplishment of
man’s redemption the Son of God assumed the form of humanity, endured the
Cross, and rose again from the dead. For us there is a bright and glorious
prospect of final triumph over the darkness and desolation of the grave. (E.
Pizey, B. A.)
Life reappearing after death
There are mountain streams which, after flowing a little way in a
broken current, are lost to sight. But far down the mountain they reappear, no
longer tossed and restless, but peaceful as they flow toward the sea. So our
restless lives roll in rocky channels but a little way on earth; but beyond the
grave they too will reappear, realising all the peace and joy of Christ, and
thus flow on for ever. For since Christ has risen again, all who believe in Him
have the certainty of an endless life in His presence. (S. S. Chronicle.)
The land beyond the mist of death
An untaught Englishman, standing at Dover when a mist lies
over the Channel, might think an endless ocean was before him. When it lifts a
resident tells him that what he sees is not merely France, but Europe and Asia.
The intervening sea, though lashed by storms, is but a little thing. There was
a mist hanging over the Straits of Death, and people thought them a shoreless
ocean; Jesus lifted the mist, and men saw there was a boundless continent on
the other side. (Christian World.)
Verse 15
An east wind shall come.
Reverses of fortune in human life
This and the following verse set forth the devastation and
destruction of the kingdom of the ten tribes which was to precede the
deliverance promised in that which precedes.
I. Reverses in
human fortune are sometimes very striking. Ephraim was “fruitful among his
brethren.” The very name signifies fruitful ness. Its territory was most
fertile; its people the most numerous.
1. Its riches would give way to poverty. Ephraim was at once a rich
and a populous tribe; but see the change predicted: “His spring shall become
dry He shall spoil the treasure of all pleasant vessels.” The enemy would
invade the country, impoverish husbandry, check merchandise.
2. Its populousness would give way to paucity. The enemy would reduce
its numbers, and almost depopulate it. Such reverses are frequent. They teach
us to hold all worldly good with a light hand, and to settle our interests on
the good that is permanent.
II. Reverses are
generally brought about by secondary instrumentality. Nations, communities, and
individuals may always trace their calamities to certain natural causes. This
should teach us to study natural laws, and to be diligent in checking all
elements inimical to human progress.
III. Reverses are
under the direction of god. The change in the fortunes of Ephraim was under the
superintendence of the Almighty. Both true philosophy and religion teach us to
trace all the events of life to God. Learn to acquiesce in His dispensations,
and to look to Him for all that is good. (Homilist.)
──《The Biblical Illustrator》