Bible Commentaries

THE JUDGMENT OF GOD’S ANGER

‘I will be unto them as a lion.’

Hosea 13:7

I. Apostasy from Jehovah, which appears here also as Israel’s chief sin, brought death upon them: they died (Hosea 13:1).—This conception sounds the depths of the subject. Outwardly regarded, they lived long, even after they gave themselves up to the worship of Baal (just like a fruitful tree, Hosea 13:15), but in truth inwardly they were dead. For true life consists in union with Jehovah: idols can give no life. Israel owed its life to Jehovah alone (Hosea 13:4). Therefore (Hosea 13:9): ‘It has destroyed thee that thou hast been against Me, thy Help.’ What God had done for Israel from the beginning is here again (Hosea 13:4-5) made prominent, and the deliverance from Egypt with the leading through the desert appear again as the fundamental act of mercy, for through them Israel became ‘living.’ Their present conduct towards God was a base and ungrateful ignoring of those deeds in the presumption of a prosperity which they owed to their God (Hosea 13:6). A people who are inwardly dead cannot long outwardly survive. That God Whom they had forgotten, and from Whom they had turned away would and must at last show them that He had not forgotten them (Hosea 13:12) by destroying them without sparing. This is indeed the only means of bringing them to life. For that and that alone is designed by God in their case. This must ever be kept in view if we are to understand the threatenings aright, which are reproduced here in a peculiarly intensified form (Hosea 13:7-8, Hosea 13:12 to chap. Hosea 14:1). But how true and striking is such a description seen to be, when we remember that this Divine judgment is executed by the invasion of a foreign conqueror! With what can his attack be better compared than with the attack of devouring beasts, or, after another image, with a scorching wind that destroys everything in its course? How often has that been repeated in the history of the nations!

II. The whole (temporal) kingdom was a Divine system of punishment and chastening.—At the request of the people, He granted them a king, but with the expression of His displeasure at their desire because it proceeded from unbelief and vanity, and with the declaration that they would lose their freedom by its realisation. But, at the same time, this kingdom of Israel might become a blessing if it with its king would obey God. Nay, God, by establishing the throne of David in Zion, even connected the most precious promises with this kingdom, if the king were entirely one with God and should gather about him a nation obedient to God. But the people with their king followed more and more decidedly a course opposed to God by separating (in the kingdom of the Ten Tribes) from the house with which God had connected his promises, and so forsaking the king which God had given them, they must therefore be punished by having this self-erected kingdom taken away, and the punishment is all the greater that they shall never return to a state of freedom, but must lie under the much viler bondage of foreign rulers, until they return to the king whom God had promised to raise up from the House of David.

Illustration

‘So far can the love of God be changed into wrath that He, to Whom it were easy to save, does not do so, but delivers over to death and destruction, nay, even, as it were, invokes the powers of destruction to execute His wrath, without His repenting or recalling His purpose. Even in this God has assuredly purposes of salvation. He punishes so severely only to open the eyes, when and since all other means have failed.’

THE CONQUEROR OF DEATH

‘O death, I will be thy plagues; O grave, I will be thy destruction: repentance shall be hid from Mine eyes.’

Hosea 13:14

This passage read from the prophet Hosea may well serve as the motto for the whole series of the Old Testament Lessons of this day. Egypt and Pharaoh are the types of sin, of its power, and of its kingdom. Of sin, from which none but God can deliver us. Of its sufferings, from which none but God can release us. Of death and of him that hath the power of death, whom none but God can overthrow. When, therefore, as on this day, we have been reading of the plagues of Egypt, we look upon them not only as part of the predetermined history through which God intended His people to have to pass, but as something more. We look upon them as intended to be a prophecy beforehand—in other words, a type—of the future deliverance of God’s people hereafter to be wrought out by one like unto Moses, though far greater. Two Sundays ago we had to draw out in detail the points in which Joseph, in his character and in his history, was a type of Christ. We then pointed out how Joseph begins the great series of personal types of Christ. The fact is that from that time forwards the whole history of the Covenant people becomes laden with double meaning. It is history, because it actually happened. It is prophecy as well, because God’s Providence so arranged it as to represent beforehand that far greater history of what the Redeemer of the world was to do for man in the days of His Incarnation. We, looking back upon it with the Gospel in our hands, see how everything fits, or dovetails, each into each.

I. And, seeing this, we have the surest possible confirmation of the fact of all having been arranged by God from the very first.—When people doubt about the truth of the Bible or any part of it, it shows that they have not studied it as a whole. Read one part of the Bible only, and I can understand your being puzzled by it, just as you may be if you only read part of any other book. Cut a letter in half and you can make but poor sense of either portion. But take the two parts together and you see the meaning. I may go even further than this. I believe I may say that we cannot even yet fully understand all that lies hid in the Old Testament histories, because Christ’s work is not even yet quite finished. Evil is not yet fully overthrown. Death and he that hath the power of death are not yet cast into the abyss. There is doubtless many a type yet unfulfilled in this very history of the Plagues of Egypt which we are reading to-day, which yet waits for its complete fulfilment until Christ shall come again and finish the work which He has begun. The verse I have read as a text links the two together. In it Hosea looks back to the Plagues of Egypt. In it Hosea looks forward to what the Plagues of Egypt tell of. And with the two together in his mind he recites the great utterance of Christ so full of hope to the Christian—

‘O death, I will be thy plagues:

O grave, I will be thy destruction:

Repentance shall be hid from Mine eyes.’

Already death has lost its sting: already the grave has lost its victory: but this is not to be all. Hereafter they shall not only be despoiled of their terrors, but they shall be themselves the victims of His righteous anger when the Day of the Lord shall be fully come, and the types of the Egypt history be finally fulfilled.

II. So the Plagues of Egypt are something more than a mere history; just as the life of Joseph is more than a mere biography.—The history of the Exodus is a type of Christ’s Redemption in all its points. It is a type of His Cross and Passion. It is a type of how His people come by the benefits of His Cross. It is a type of His Sacraments. But the history of the Deliverance is more also. It stretches out into the future, and it speaks to us of the final overthrow of all evil, the final destruction of the powers of evil, as well as of our rescue from their present tyranny. This we do not see yet. At present Christ’s people are rescued from the dominion of sin, but sin and Satan are yet active and have still power to vex us and to tempt us. They are not yet destroyed, though their power is weakened and restrained. It is our own fault if we give way to them, because Christ has overcome them, and gives us the strength to do so, too, if we will. But there is more to come. There is yet to come the utter destruction of the ringleader of God’s enemies, and this we are plainly taught to look for, both in the New Testament and in the Old, and we never see it so clearly as when we read both the Old and the New together.

III. Let us look now for a few moments into the teaching of these types and how they ought to affect our minds.—The main lesson is that a day shall surely come when the Plagues of Egypt shall have their final counterpart, and the spiritual Israel—i.e. the Militant Church of Christ—shall see His enemies dead and destroyed, as the Israelites saw theirs dead on the Red Sea shore. That time shall surely come. In the words of our text the Lord says, ‘Repentance shall be hid from Mine eyes.’ That is—there shall be no change in My purposes. Repentance means ‘change of purpose.’ The declaration of the text involves this—that, however long it may be before the final fulfilment, the fulfilment shall surely come. Delay involves no change in the Divine intention. At last it will be seen that one and the same purpose has been in the Divine mind all along.

How ought this to affect us? Clearly it ought to add cheerfulness and vigour to our faith, and to our endurance of whatever trials we endure in our Christian warfare. Every Christian professes to believe in the final triumph of good and the overthrow of evil. Every Christian professes to believe that the day is coming when he shall be no more tempted to sin, no longer vexed by the evil that troubles him in society and in the world, as well as in himself. We all profess this. How many of us really believe it? It is comparatively easy to put up with inconveniences and troubles when we see the end of them. When we know how long they are to last we take them quietly. They do not affect our spirits or destroy our cheerfulness, or our activity. We go about our day’s work just the same as if the inconvenience had no existence, because, as we say, we see the end of it. That is—we really believe it is soon to have an end, as well as merely profess to believe it, and, therefore, it has no power over us. What Christian can say this as to his Christian life and Christian duty? What is the day’s work of the Christian? Is it not his continual strife against temptation, and the continual effort to grow better and holier? Now this is a work which requires all the energies of the soul. Think how much there is to make a man despond, if he has not this spirit of Divine hope. There is, first, our own weakness, weakness of soul for good, weakness of mind and conscience to see what is wise and right, weakness of body for going through the duties which devolve upon us. There is, next, the evil around us. The evils in society which we are bound to protest and witness against. The inconsistencies in good men. The hostility of bad men. The rooted antipathy of the world which at all times seems ready to destroy the Church, and to stamp out our efforts for good. Pharaoh is very strong. Yes, but it is only for a time. How soon the end shall come we know not, but come it shall. Look at the plagues of Egypt, and see how, at the proper time, not only the Pharaohs of this world, but the powers of hell themselves, shall be plagued as Egypt was by the hand of God, and plagued finally, plagued so that they shall rise up no more. Let the Christian’s hope be firm, and let him persevere rejoicingly unto the end. The troubles of the world, wars, embarrassments, political complications, all these things are God’s judgments upon sin. They are not things which ought to afflict the righteous. In all these clouds the Christian ought to see the Rainbow of Hope. They are the plagues of Egypt, not the woes of the righteous. As the Israelites were kept harmless through the plagues of Egypt, so shall the Christian be through the troubles of the world. And whenever the end draws nigh we are distinctly told that these things shall multiply exceedingly. So then, if in any way the time seem gloomy, or dark days of evil seem to be coming on, we should remember that the plagues of Egypt did but usher in the great deliverance of the Exodus, and that in the darkest hour the people of God had light in their dwellings. The Word of Christ repeats the lesson when He depicted the terrible events of the close of the Christian Dispensation, and added the words of hope and cheerfulness: ‘Then lift up your heads, for your Redemption draweth nigh.’

—Amen.