Hosea 8:5-14

The Calf of Samaria

Hos 8:5-14

"Thy calf, O Samaria, hath cast thee off; mine anger is kindled against them: bow long will it be ere they attain to innocency?" ( Hos 8:5 ).

The history of this calf is recorded in the early books of Scripture, and is referred to again and again in the course of the revelation. "They made a calf in Horeb, and worshipped the molten image"; "The king took counsel, and made two calves of gold, and said unto them, It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem; behold thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt. And he set the one in Beth-el, and the other put he in Dan." As Israel had cast off God, or good, in abhorrence, so the calf had cast off Israel as a thing that was detested. So it must be with all the idols made by men's hands. The history of idolatry is a history of failure. We need not go to heathen forms, or pagan ceremonies, or plunge into the darkness of savage life, in order to know what is meant by idolatry, for we ourselves daily practise it; and even in the midst of our spiritual worship there may be a subtle action operating upon the heart, seeking to seduce it into false trust and homage. It is marvellous that men learn so little from the history of their own race; it is still more marvellous that a man seems to learn next to nothing from the development of his own consciousness. We have seen money take wings unto itself and flee away; we have seen attractive forms wither and decay; we have seen the strongest associations of friendship dissolved or turned into positive enmities; we have observed how health is sapped, and how the strongest man but delays for a moment or two the accomplishment of his journey to the tomb; yet we go on worshipping at false altars and soliciting help from false sources, as if there were no history behind us to tell us the truth, to remind us of our errors, and to point the most useful morals. It should be regarded as the simplest truism in philosophy that only he who worships the true God can offer true worship; yet because God is invisible, or supposedly distant from us, we seize the seen, and the near, and the apparently strong, and offer bribes to things temporal. The heart must be cleansed of all this false trust, and be led in simple, humble, childlike trustfulness to cast itself upon the living God, caring only for pureness, and leaving all consequences in the hands of him who is the righteous Judge, and who never can confound the good with the bad.

When God speaks of his anger being kindled against sinners, he condescends to use a human form of speech, that he may make his meaning the more clear. God is not the victim of his passions; he simply adopts human forms that he may penetrate into our human understanding, and give men some faint conception at least of his spirit and attitude towards all things evil. Society must punish the evildoer. Society does not become angry in the sense in which an individual may become passionate; yet society must burn with a holy indignation if it would rightly treat the practice of evil. The dignity of the divine anger is guaranteed by the dignity of the divine nature. It is not an ebullition of passion; it is the expression of an eternal and sensitive righteousness. The Lord asks a remarkable question at the conclusion of this verse, "How long will it be ere they attain to innocency?" The expression is elliptical. We are accustomed to such expressions in the Bible; for example: "Him that hath an high look, and a proud heart, I cannot" we can easily perceive what word should be filled in here: the Hebrew reads literally "I cannot," we ourselves supply the word "suffer." Again, "New moons and sabbaths, I cannot" that is all the Hebrew says, but in saying so little it seems to say more than if the sentence had been rhetorically rounded; it is as if the speaker had turned away in an attitude of deprecation with an expression of abhorrence upon his face and in his whole posture, leaving his meaning to be put into formal words by those who saw his action and heard his tone. The meaning of the question would seem to be this: What madness on the part of these people, that, though I create for them a place of repentance, although I make a standing-ground for them before me, they will not endure to return to health of soul; they reject not only a law, but a gospel; not only an ordinance, but a Cross; not only obedience, but pardon. This is one of the mysteries of the moral nature of man. As an intellectual proposition it is incredible; if it had not been proved by human experience it would have been scouted by human speculation.

"For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind: it hath no stalk: the bud shall yield no meal: if so be it yield, the strangers shall swallow it up" ( Hos 8:7 ).

This was proved by the whole history of the people. The calf of Samaria was broken to pieces. There were indeed two calves, but as they represented one and the same thing they were called as one the calf, not the calves; the calf once worshipped was broken in pieces, and was treated as so many chips or fragments for the purpose of kindling a fire. We say we shall reap what we have sown; but we must not omit from the reaping the element of increase. We reap, it may be, of the quality which we have sown, but we certainly reap with an awful increase. Men who sow the wind do not only reap the wind, they reap the whirlwind, literally, a mighty whirlwind. Nor do they garner the whirlwind as men might garner a crop; the whirlwind is not theirs, they rather themselves belong to the whirlwind, they are blown away by it, they are as chaff before its violence, when they cry their voice is not heard, because of the answering tempest; when they put forth their hands in prayer they are carried away violently as those who have no helper. "Be not deceived, God is not mocked; for whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap." The apostle, even in this passage, does not omit the element of increase, for he adds, "He that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption" that is to say, he shall not only reap flesh, body, or dust, he shall reap each and all of them in its vilest form. There is a tone of contempt in the description which is given in this verse, "It hath no stalk;" although it looked well, yet there was no column of strength, there was nothing abiding; much was promised, but nothing came of all the promise; the seed should not send forth the corn with the ear; there should be no meal, there should be no satisfaction of hunger. The whole process is thus one of failure, disappointment, and mockery. The sinner is going to have a great harvest, and behold when he puts forth his sickle to reap he cuts down but handfuls of darkness! The sinner says he will make a universe of his own; he will construct it on his own pattern; he will govern it by his own laws; he will fill it with his own spirit; he will turn it to his own account; and behold the boaster is overthrown, and he lies down in humiliation and shame at the feet of the living God whose sovereignty he denied. All this is true, appearances to the contrary notwithstanding. "I have seen the wicked in great power, and spreading himself like a green bay tree. Yet he passed away, and, lo, he was not: yea, I sought him, but he could not be found." "The arms of the wicked shall be broken: but the Lord upholdeth the righteous." "The triumphing of the wicked is short, and the joy of the hypocrite but for a moment." Alas, all these great truths are proclaimed until they become so familiar as to lose much of their spiritual emphasis and accent. We are accustomed to this judicial thunder. For a time it would appear as if the enemy of souls were stronger than the Redeemer, for though we know the right we pursue the wrong, and although we confess in theological terms our errors, our sins, our shortcomings, and all our infirmities, we yet take our lives into our own hands as if we were invested with omnipotence.

"Because Ephraim hath made many altars to sin, altars shall be unto him to sin" ( Hos 8:11 ).

The Lord will not permit the plural form of any word which he has consecrated. The word "altar" is right, but the word "altars" is wrong. The word "temple" is permitted, but when Israel buildeth "temples" he offends against God. Ephraim became busily religious. It was not enough for Ephraim to have an altar; he must have an altar everywhere! Thus his very religion became irreligious. His piety became practical atheism. Ephraim tried to do what men are in every age attempting to make up for the complete, solemn, grand, overwhelming idea of God by the creation of an endless number of petty and distracting details; hence we have creeds, standards, dogmas, forms, tests of orthodoxy, and other altars innumerable and unnameable. We should not pluralise God's singularity. We must not attempt to complicate that which God has made strikingly simple; so simple that a child-mind can approach it and comprehend it. The altars which Ephraim built were to be unto him as occasions of sin. Where Ephraim meant to pray he was to find a new temptation created by his own evil genius. We are led astray by our own craftiness. Our theological wisdom often becomes the means of our practical impiety. We turn religion into a scheme, a plan, a philosophy, something which human genius can create, invent, administer, overrule, patronise, and thus we drag down an idea which ought to be infinitely transcendent within the limits of our own understanding, and within the influence of our own humiliating patronage. The time will come when men will be ashamed of their formal mechanism and creeds which they intended to be as altars and final tests of religious correctness. Let us beware of our inventions, for they come out of a heart that is not right; let us beware of our formal orthodoxies, for they may be the offspring of a cleverness that is itself perverted. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord; there is one Lord, one faith, one baptism; there is one Mediator between God and man, the Man Christ Jesus. God always insists upon the singular number; there is only one Name given under heaven amongst men whereby we must be saved; there is one cross, one atonement, one priesthood, one revelation, one baptism of the Eternal Spirit. To split up the unity into diversity, and to find multiplicity in what was intended to be simplicity, is a temptation to which the human heart is constantly exposed; it brings its own stings and pains; it leads to confusion, humiliation, and disgrace.

"I have written to him the great things of my law, but they were counted as a strange thing" ( Hos 8:12 ).

A very notable word is this word "written." It is everything to have definite law put down in definite expression, and to have it written, so that it can be made matter of immediate and final reference. The term is the more important that the grammar may be so altered as to give the present instead of the perfect tense; then the statement will read, "I write to him the great things of my law." By "great things" understand manifold things; God had written again and again; he had repeated his law in every possible form; it was written in history and psalm, as well as in statute and in precept. The law itself never altered, though the form of its presentation underwent various changes. The words of the law were not as old as Moses; they were in their moral claim no older than the child who at that moment was listening to them. This is the peculiarity of eternal truth. It is not a time-quantity. It is old, yet new; it is from everlasting, yet it is the marching order of this day. Being the Word of God, it cannot be changed as to its spirit and substance; it can only change verbally or temporarily; the seed is eternal, the blossom and the fruitage may often take upon themselves the climate of the age which is passing over them. Being written, the people could not plead the excuse of ignorance. Apart from a written law, the people might have complained that they had no authoritative moral standard to which to appeal. Hence the use of the Bible. The Bible is full of laws, hints, suggestions, initial views of providence and life; the wise teacher is always able to appeal to the law and to the testimony, not as to mere letters, but as to letters symbolic of all comprehensive and ever-enduring principles. We are not to degrade the Bible into a charm or the emblem of a superstition; we are not to make an idol of its mere letter; our business is to search the Scriptures, penetrate the Scriptures, lay bare the inner meaning of the Scriptures, so that we may find the very mind and heart of God in all their revelations. Nor could the people plead insufficiency, for the commandment of the Lord is exceeding broad. The law was written manifoldly; for it touched upon every point; it covered the whole expanse and need of life; nothing was left to the mere invention of men; even conscience was not called upon to perform any trick or miracle in order to eke out the insufficient law of heaven. All that was necessary for moral inspiration and moral guidance was laid down explicitly in Holy Scripture, then known by the name of law. Seeing that the people could plead neither ignorance nor insufficiency, the interesting question arises, What then did they plead? The answer is given in the latter part of the verse, "They were counted as a strange thing." The meaning here is hardly patent. The people were now to make out that the law had become foreign to them; it was a foreign yoke, a foreign bond, a foreign language. But more than this may be involved. The people regarded the law as a thing outworn out of keeping with the spirit of the age well enough for the time and the circumstances. This is precisely the danger to which the Bible is exposed now. It is acknowledged to be a very wonderful book, to contain many amazing and glorious truths, and indeed to be for the time of its production the marvel of the world. But people resist the idea of its being imposed upon them as a binding law. They say it belonged to another people; it is foreign to them; it is a "strange thing"; they are willing to admire it as a literary wonder, quite a phenomenon, and to give unto it honours due to ancient excellence. But on no account must it now be made a living thing, a living voice, a living law! Those who are under the Gospel profess that they have entered into liberty from the law; that liberty is often a liberty to sin rather than to be more noble and more morally beautiful. Great dangers lie around this line of thinking. God protests that he has not written the Bible as a thing of ancient times, but that he is writing it now, writing it every day, writing it as a direct message to every soul. We lose everything when we lose the modernness of the Bible. It may be perfectly true that man cannot live by rules a thousand years old; but in the case of the Bible the rule is not a day old in any sense that divests it of immediate dignity and claim and pertinence; it is the last utterance of God; the breath with which he uttered it is still warm upon the ear of the listener.

"They sacrifice flesh for the sacrifices of mine offerings, and eat it; but the Lord accepteth them not; now will he remember their iniquity, and visit their sins: they shall return to Egypt" ( Hos 8:13 ).

The point to be noted here is that the people in offering their sacrifices supposed themselves to be giving gifts unto God. They were the victims of what is now a popular sophism, namely, that worshippers are always giving. The people in the days of Hosea regarded their offerings as so many donations, which showed their liberality; and yet they felt those offerings to be taxations, penalties. They gloried in their sacrifices as if they were conferring some honour or obligation upon God. The Lord on his part denounced them, would not accept them; he remembered the iniquity of those who sacrificed, and visited their sins upon them. What they meant, or should have meant, as a sacrifice, became nothing but mere "flesh" under their impious hands; the sacrifice was not offered in the proper spirit, and therefore it was never transmuted into a holy and acceptable offering. It is the same with our prayers. When we pray perfunctorily, pray in mere words, pray only formally, as if we were doing a duty which we would gladly escape, then our words, how eloquent soever they may be from a rhetorical point of view, are never sublimated into prayer, and never find their way to heaven; they are words, words only, empty letters, carrying no magnetism of the soul, no fire of the heart, and they fall back upon the listener, not as answers, but as reproaches. The people in the days of the prophets actually ate the flesh which they offered as sacrifices. They thus profited by what appeared to be an act of benevolence, an act of worship, or an act of giving. Here was an instance of making religion an investment, a profitable speculation; giving away with one hand, and taking back with the other. What was the upshot of all this in the days of the prophet? His answer is, "They shall return to Egypt." They were not to return to Egypt again of their own mind; that had been distinctly forbidden by God, But there was a threatening which their souls might have heard to the effect that if they disobeyed the Lord, he would bring them back to Egypt, by the way whereof he spake unto them, Thou shalt see it no more again. Remember that though we may tamper with our religion, may build many altars, and offer sacrifices either in a spirit of grudging, or in a spirit of investment, God's law carries within itself inevitable and appalling penalties.

"For Israel hath forgotten his Maker, and buildeth temples; and Judah hath multiplied fenced cities: but I will send a fire upon his cities, and it shall devour the palaces thereof" ( Hos 8:14 ).

Israel had not only forgotten the law, but had forgotten the Lawgiver. Israel had not surrendered some highly spiritual or metaphysical religion had not abandoned some finely-spun and hardly intelligible theory but had actually forgotten his Maker, and had supposed himself to be made by his own hands. To such abasement may the mind of man come! First the mind surrenders a doctrinal position; then it gives up a practical duty; then it denies a moral obligation; then it dismisses God from the higher ranges of thought; and finally the mind forgets that it ever had a Maker at all! This is the downward path; this is the infinite incline! Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall. Men do not generally give up their religion as a whole, instantly, furiously, and ostentatiously; little by little it slips from them, a line at a time, a point in a day, but the end of the process is depletion, famine, death. In the use of the word "temples" we come again upon the thought which we found in connection with the word "altars" in the eleventh verse. God had commanded one temple to be built, namely, that at Jerusalem, so that to add to the number of temples were itself a sin. Thus we are brought back to the doctrine that there may be an irreligious religion, an impious piety, a fussy and too energetic devotion that soon brings itself to the level of mere superstition. God charged the sin of idolatry upon Ephraim and the sin of self-confidence upon Judah. All this was done under the pretence of being excessively religious. God will tear away our vain disguises, and show us that in spite of an action that almost rose to the degree of violence we were in heart far away from himself, corrupting the simplicity of his law, and complicating the direct demands of his truth. God is consistent with himself when he says he will send a fire upon the cities that should devour the palaces thereof. Israel and Judah had forgotten their Maker, but God would not forget them. There comes a time in the history of the human soul when, nothing but vengeance can be understood. There is an hour in which the Gospel is no Gospel; its charm is gone because it cannot be appreciated by the deaf ear and the hardened heart; there is a time when music itself becomes but a knell of judgment. Against all such apostasy we are warned in faithful and tender language, under every possible form of expression, so that if by any means God may reach our souls, and arrest them in their downward career. If we will not listen to love we shall feel the sting of fire. If we will persist in building palaces for ourselves when God has made a house for us, the fire shall leap upon our palaces, and utterly devour all their strength and beauty.

Prayer

Saviour of the world, we bless thee for the Cross. We can never understand it, but we can feel its love. We need the Cross; all we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned every one to his own way. There can be but one hope for us, and that hope we find in the Cross of Christ. God forbid that we should trust aught else; God forbid that we should glory in aught else. We are not ashamed of the gospel of Christ; it suits the heart, it meets the agony of the spirit with healing, it saves the soul. We cannot find a light in the midnight of our self-accusation; there is no light in ourselves, there is no light in men, for we are all in one condemnation. There is a Light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world; there is a Light above the brightness of the sun upon the Cross; to that Cross we look night and day evermore, and to that Cross no loving heart ever looked in vain. May thy Word be precious to us; always an old word, yet always new; always an eternal thought, always an immediate message. Lord, evermore give us this bread: if a man eat of this bread he shall hunger no more: Lord, in thine house there is bread enough and to spare, why should men perish with hunger? Feed the souls that love thee, and bring back the souls that are far away, that they may fill the vacant places at their Father's table. Pity the poor, the weak, the wandering; pity those who have none to pity them; help the helpless; lead the blind by a way that they know not; and thus in all the providence of the day, and in the history of all time, magnify thyself, thou Son of man, thou Son of God. Amen.