Bible Commentaries

‘PHYSICIANS OF NO VALUE’

‘When Ephraim saw his sickness, and Judah saw his wound, then went Ephraim to Assyria, and sent to king Jareb: but he is not able to heal you, neither shall he cure you of your wound.’

Hosea 5:13 (R.V.)

As Hosea put it in figurative fashion, Ephraim’s discovery of his ‘sickness’ sent him in the vain quest for help to the apparent source of the ‘sickness,’ that is to Assyria, whose king in the text is described by a name which is not his real name, but is a significant epithet, as the margin puts it, ‘a king that should contend’; and who, of course, was not able to heal nor to cure the wounds which he had inflicted. Ephraim’s suicidal folly is but one illustration of a universal madness which drives men to seek for the healing of their misery, and the alleviation of their discomfort, in the repetition of the very acts which brought these about. The attempt to get relief in such a fashion, of course, fails; for as the verse before our text emphatically proclaims, it is God Who has been ‘as a moth unto Ephraim,’ gnawing away his strength: and it is only He Who can heal, since in reality it is He, and not the quarrelsome king of Assyria, Who has inflicted the sickness.

Thus understood, the text carries wide lessons, and may serve us as a starting-point for considering man’s discovery of his ‘sickness,’ man’s mad way of seeking healing, God’s way of giving it.

I. First, then, man’s discovery of his sickness.—The question may well be urged on those so terribly numerous amongst us, whose very unconsciousness of their true condition is the most fatal symptom of their fatal disease. What is the worth of a peace which is only secured by ignoring realities, and which can be shattered into fragments by anything that compels a man to see himself as he is? In such a fool’s paradise thousands of us live. ‘Use and wont,’ the continual occupation with the trifles of our daily lives, the fleeting satisfactions of our animal nature, the shallow wisdom which bids us ‘let sleeping dogs lie,’ all conspire to mask, to many consciences, their unrest and their sin. We abstain from lifting the curtain behind which the serpent lies coiled in our hearts, because we dread to see its loathly length, and to rouse it to lift its malignant head, and to strike with its forked tongue. But sooner or later—may it not be too late!—we shall be set face to face with the dark recess, and discover the foul reptile that has all the while been coiled there.

II. Man’s mad way of seeking healing.—Can there be a more absurd course of action than that recorded in our text? ‘When Ephraim saw his sickness, then went Ephraim to Assyria.’ The northern kingdom sought for the healing of their national calamities, from the very cause of their national calamities, and in repetition of their national sin. A hopeful policy, and one which speedily ended in the only possible result! But that insanity was but a sample of the infatuation which besets us all. When we are conscious of our unrest, we are not all tempted to seek to conceal it with what has made it! Take examples from the grosser forms of animal indulgence. The drunkard’s vulgar proverb recommending ‘a hair of the dog that bit you,’ is but a coarse expression of a common fault. He is wretched until ‘another glass’ steadies, for a moment, his trembling hand, and gives a brief stimulus to his nerves. They say that the Styrian peasants, who habitually eat large quantities of arsenic, show symptoms of poison if they leave it off suddenly. These are but samples, in the physical region, of a tendency which runs through all life, and leads men to drown thought by plunging into the thick of the worldly absorptions that really cause their unrest. The least persistent of men is strangely obstinate in his adherence to old ways, in spite of all experience of their crooked slipperiness. We wonder at the peasants who have their cottages and vineyards on the slopes of Vesuvius, and who build them, and plant them, over and over again after each destructive eruption. The tragedy of Israel is repeated in many of our lives; and the summing up of the abortive efforts of one of its kings to recover power by following the gods that had betrayed him, might be the epitaph of the infatuated men who see their sickness and seek to heal it by renewed devotion to the idols who occasioned it: ‘They were the ruin of him and of all Israel.’ The experience of the woman who had ‘spent all her living on physicians, and was nothing the better, but rather the worse,’ sums up the sad story of many a life.

But, again, the sense of sin sometimes seeks to conceal itself by repetition of sin. When the dormant snake begins to stir, it is lulled to sleep again by absorption of occupations, or by an obstinate refusal to look inwards, and often by plunging once more into the sin which has brought about the sickness. To seek thus for ease from the stings of conscience, is like trying to silence a buzzing in the head by standing beside Niagara thundering in our ears. They used to beat the drums when a martyr died, in order to drown his testimony; and so foolish men seek to silence the voice of conscience by letting passions shout their loudest. It needs no words to demonstrate the incurable folly of such conduct; but, alas, it takes many words far stronger than mine to press home the folly upon men. The condition of such a half-awakened conscience is very critical if it is soothed by any means by which it is weakened and its possessor worsened. In the sickness of the soul homœopathic treatment is a delusion. Ephraim may go to Assyria, but there is no healing of him there.

III. God’s way of giving true healing.—Ephraim thought that, because the wounds were inflicted by Assyria, it was the source to which to apply for bandages and balm. If it had realised that Assyria was but the battle-axe wherewith the hand of God struck it, it would have learned that from God alone could come healing and health. The true issue of Ephraim’s sickness would have been the penitent cry, ‘Come, let us return to the Lord our God, for He hath smitten, and He will bind us up.’ It is in the consciousness of loving nearness to Him that all our unrest is soothed, and the heaving ocean in our hearts becomes as a summer’s sea and ‘birds of peace sit brooding on the charmed waves.’ It is in that same consciousness that conscience ceases to condemn, and loses its sting. The prophet from whom our text is taken ends his wonderful ministry, that had been full of fiery denunciations and dark prophecies, with words that are only surpassed in their tenderness and the outpouring of the heart of God, by the fuller revelation in Jesus Christ. The Divine answer which he was commissioned to bring to the penitent Israel—‘I will heal their backslidings, I will love them freely; if Mine anger is turned away from Me’—is, in all its wealth of forgiving love, but an imperfect prophecy of the great Physician, from the hem of Whose garment flowed out power to one who ‘had spent all her living on physicians and could not be healed of any,’ and Who confirmed to her the power which she had thought to steal from Him unawares, by the gracious words which bound her to Him for ever—‘Daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace.’

THE CONFESSION OF SIN

‘I will go and return to My place, till they acknowledge their offence, and seek My face: in their affliction they will seek Me early.’

Hosea 5:15

It is the picture of a father dealing with a child who has not yet owned his fault. The father has been trying to persuade the child, but the child will not confess. Then the father says, ‘I will try another way, “I will go and return to my place, till they acknowledge their offence, and seek my face”; my absence will be sure to bring with it sorrow and trouble: and “in their affliction they will seek me early.”’ And then it is beautiful to link on the next verse. It is almost a pity that it has been thrown into another chapter. The absence has brought the affliction, and the affliction has brought confession: ‘Come, and let us return unto the Lord: for He hath torn, and He will heal us; He hath smitten, and He will bind us up.’ We often feel as if God was gone away from us. May it not be that there is just that difference, that distinct boundary line between absence and presence—‘till they shall acknowledge their offence’? And may not that affliction which has visited you, have come upon this very errand, to say, ‘Confess, confess that secret sin, which is keeping God away from you’? Confess your sins. Let us consider how this confession is to be made.

I. Confess in humiliation.—Confession is to God, and it should be done with the deepest and most careful humiliation. Whatever can help to humiliation, do it. God requires that the relation with Himself which has been interrupted and reversed by your sin, should be re-adjusted. You must go very low down into the dust, and God must go up very high. The one will not do without the other. As self goes down, Christ must go up; and as Christ goes up, self must go down. Put yourself, really and simply, at the very lowest—down into the dust—that is the essence of confession.

II. Particularise your sins.—To the same end, let your confession to God particularise. Be very minute—as minute, let your confession be, as you can possibly make it. Mention all the little things. Make them stand out in bold relief. It is the sum of confession. Generally, persons are ready enough to confess many, nay, most of their sins—but there is one which they do not like to speak of, even when they are speaking to God. Now, your confession will be nothing at all if you only reach to that. There are a great many good suggestions and rules about confession in the Book of Leviticus: ‘And it shall be, when he shall be guilty in one of these things, that he shall confess that he hath sinned in that thing’—‘that thing.’ That thing do you lay out before God in all its parts—the guilty omissions which went before it—the wrong motives—the secret feelings—the aggravating circumstances, the special acts—the guilty pleasure—the resistance of the Spirit, the grievings of conscience—the miserable consequences.

III. Accept the punishment.—When you confess sin, always do it as one who is accepting punishment. Open your breast to take punishment. Feel and say, ‘Lord, I am here—no punishment can be too heavy for me.’ But, O Father, ‘mercifully look upon our infirmities, and for the glory of Thy name, turn from us all those evils that we most righteously have deserved.’ ‘O Lord, correct me, but with judgment; not in Thine anger, lest Thou bring me to nothing.’

IV. Lay the sin upon the altar.—And at the same moment realise, and do not doubt, that you are laying your sin upon the true altar, the Lord Jesus Christ. As you speak the self-demeaning words, and as you feel the heaviest convictions, believe that you are laying all upon the head of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who shall carry all that is there laid on Him, up, far, far away into a land, not inhabited, where they shall be seen and mentioned no more.

V. Make some act of devotion.—Then go and try to embody that confession, and give it all the force and substance you can, by some holy act—some self-denying labour of love—some gift of God—some special act of devotion.

But true confession to God will always be accompanied with, and will always produce, the wish to make some confession to man. If you have ever stolen anything—restore it. If you have told a lie, acknowledge it. If you have done anything that can hurt anybody’s feelings, or anybody’s soul, go and make what amends you can. You owe it to that man, you owe it to your own soul. It will be good evidence to all men of the reality of your faith and love.

—Rev. Jas. Vaughan.

Illustration

‘When men begin to complain more of their sins than of their afflictions, there begin to be some hopes of them. And this is that which God requires of us when we are under His correcting hand, that we own ourselves to be in fault, and to be justly corrected.’