HOSEA 12 (NOTES OF A READING)
[p. 400] HOSEA 12 (NOTES OF A READING)
CAC The reference to Jacob in this chapter is really remarkable as bringing out the great principles on which blessing is secured. I suppose they had been actually worked out in the history of Israel, especially of Jacob.
Last week we were referring to the faithfulness of God that remained unchanged in spite of all their unfaithfulness, the reason for it being, “For I am God, and not man”. It is a great bulwark to the soul to think of what God is. God’s reason for not giving up an unfaithful people is that God is God and not man. But there must be certain conditions brought about in the people, that are necessary, if they are to be in the good practically of the truth that God is their God. What comes out here is the sovereign work of God in the people of His election.
Ques Why are there such quick changes in the names in this chapter? We get Ephraim, Judah, Jacob and then Israel.
CAC It is important to notice the rapid transitions in this prophet, more perhaps than in any other. What helps us is to see the line of the Spirit of God, which is evidently to occupy us with Jacob, so that we might in the first place trace out the history of Jacob in our own souls. It is as if to say, ‘I want you to go over the history of Jacob yourselves’.
In the presentation of Jacob there is energy found with him, so that the first thing said of him is that he took his brother by the heel in the womb. It is prophetic instruction for us. It was the action from which he derived his name. We should all covet to have that name. It was an intimation that the elder was to be displaced by the younger, and that is a precious exercise in the soul of every saint. The elder stands for what is natural. That which is spiritual does not come first, but that which is natural; and afterward that which is spiritual. We are all here with intense desire to supplant what [p. 401] is of the flesh by what is of the Spirit. The point is there is intense energy with him.
Rem It is an instinct with him to go in for the blessing.
CAC At one time there was nothing present but the natural and fleshly. After God’s election a new principle came in, in which what was younger had power to displace what was elder. In Jacob it was purely of God’s election. It is nothing on our part, but God’s sovereignty that leads us to do what we never should do naturally. So that in God’s elect (Jacob is the great sample of God’s elect) their naughty, crooked ways show they are no better than anyone else. So he is a good example. Thus energy to displace what is natural and carnal is what first works in a soul in which God works. So there is an energy to break away from all that is fleshy and natural.
Rem He valued the inheritance.
CAC That showed that he was God’s elect. He had power to displace the elder, which developed into power with God. So it says, “In his strength he wrestled with God. Yea, he wrestled with the Angel, and prevailed; he wept, and made supplication unto him”. “In his strength he wrestled with God”. That is the second great element in the soul. Then there is positive power to prevail with God. This is just the converse of what we were looking at last week. He had to be reduced first, the hollow of his thigh touched. That is, the prominent thing in Genesis is that God wrestled with him. It says, “There wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day”. Jacob was so vigorous and stubborn he would not give in, and so are we. That is what happens to all of us; we are reduced to a helpless clinging to Him. We read of agonising in prayer — that is wrestling. We can read of it in the Scriptures, if we do not know much about it. It is what we read of Paul and Epaphras doing. He wrestled with God and prevailed. It is wonderful the remarkable strength in the man; he wrestled with God and secured what he wanted. And will any of us get on if we are not in earnest? This is not the gospel. There is no wrestling on the part of the sinner to [p. 402] get blessing from God. We try to prevent him being on that line, do we not? This taking up wrestling with God is most important. I think this represents the exercise of God’s elect.
Ques The Angel was Jehovah?
CAC The Angel was just Jehovah.
Ques Would not such earnestness be agreeable to God?
CAC Yes, very pleasing to God. God is very pleased with any person who is determined to get blessing from Him.
Rem It says we are to take the kingdom by force.
CAC The old saints used to speak of wrestling in prayer. We do not hear much of that now. Paul says “I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” in Ephesians 3: 14. There is an intensity of exercise we do not perhaps know much about.
Rem It says of Christ that “being in conflict he prayed more intently, and his sweat became as great drops of blood”.
CAC You see it in the very highest effect in the Lord Himself — the intensity of soul — anguish.
What a rebuke this is to a people having gone away from God! Your energy and wrestling, where are they? Look at your father. And people do not get anything by sitting still, and being fed with a spoon! There is a very great desire on the part of most of us for ministry, but we get things on our knees. When I have been asked sometimes whether I did not think we had had a good meeting, I have answered ‘I do not know’. How did it affect us? is the question. Did we go to our chambers and kneel down and weep before Him to get it? It is the only way to get it.
Jacob was at Bethel. I suppose it means he found God there, the blessed God that the people cared nothing about, so that they preferred idolatry to Him. But there was a man they knew by name who sought Him with an intensity of exercise that would not turn aside. And he found Him in His house. That is where we find God. The great instruction for him was to learn that Bethel was the house of God and to find that God talked to him. He “went up from him in the [p. 403] place where he had talked with him”, it says. That is, in the house of God there are personal communications from God. Well, that is a much greater reality today, I was going to say, than in Israel’s day. It is God made known in His house, in all the blessed revelation of what He is as made known in His Son. We know it to be a reality; we know He has talked to us. God has always contemplated from the beginning having a great multitude. Enoch speaks of “his holy myriads”. All the wonderful things God has before Him He would talk to us about, and particularly as gathered together in the assembly. All this has its point because the people have got altogether astray from it, and Jehovah is recalling an idolatrous and unfaithful people to what was from the beginning.
Ques “Jehovah is his memorial”, what does that mean?
CAC Is it not all that in which God delights to be known?
Rem We think of it usually as something to be remembered or appreciated.
CAC Its use in Scripture is not the usual meaning of the word. It is what sets forth the blessed revelation of God. “This is my name for ever, and this is my memorial unto all generations” (Exodus 3: 15).
Ques Has it a present bearing?
CAC I thought so. What a memorial the Lord has here as having brought Himself into the hearts of His people! Then there is the other side of the exercise brought out in Jacob serving. “Jacob fled into the country of Syria, and Israel served for a wife, and for a wife he kept sheep”.
Ques Why the change from Jacob to Israel?
CAC His dignified name is used when it is a question of serving for a wife. I think God has pictured in Jacob the whole course of His love to the children of Israel. In the principle of it we can bring it over into the assembly. It shows that God could only secure what He wanted in Israel on the line of serving. I think God had been serving Israel through the prophets all through their history and He had been serving them as sheep, so that they could come into the place of [p. 404] wife. The whole controversy was that God had been looking for wifely relations with His people, but they had been unfaithful. It has been carried out mediately through the prophets, as the service of the Lord is carried out by His servants mediately.
Ques Will you explain what you mean?
CAC Well, just as the service of Christ is carried out by means of vessels; that is, His great service to the assembly was carried out in the first place by the apostles. He did serve clearly, He is Head, but He carried it out by the apostles and gifts.
Jehovah had been serving them from Moses to Malachi, all through, with the desire to establish their wifely relationship with Himself. He is bringing them back to His own thoughts; it is the only thing to do in a day of departure. And that is the only thing to do now.
Think of the wonderful service that Christ has been rendering to the assembly for two thousand years! In Ephesians 4 we are told how the ascended Christ has been given gifts. The service of Christ is carried on by that means (cf. Ephesians 5: 26). And viewed as sheep we are always the subjects of service. Sheep are never required to do anything but feed, are they? So John 10 is a wonderful chapter as showing the precious service of Christ as Shepherd of the sheep.
Rem It says of Jacob’s service for Rachel that the years seemed as single days for the love that he bore her.
CAC Yes, that is just an expression of Jehovah’s love to Israel and it is just an expression of Christ’s love to the assembly. I believe the Lord is serving us now in love, but He wants a wife. In a certain sense He is not satisfied with sheep, He wants a wife. Sheep cannot enter into His thoughts.
Rem “I am the good shepherd; and I know those that are mine, and am known of those that are mine, as the Father knows me and I know the Father” (John 10: 14, 15).
CAC It is the knowledge of a kindred nature. Does that not underlie the thought of the wife? If we do not know [p. 405] the sheep relation, we shall not know the wife relation. At the present time the church has miserably failed to occupy the position of wife.
It is a wonderful picture here. First the exercise of supplanting the elder, then energy to seek God with intensity of exercise. When J.B.S. was once asked a question, he answered, ‘Did you ever spend a night in prayer about it?’ That pulls us up. When we think of how wonderful it is to know Him, are we content to show that we never have the energy to seek Him? Then we are qualified to enter into this thought of service, which has in view the securing of the wife. That is, all the service Christ is rendering now has in view the thought of a wife. How there are the great principles of blessing. There is remarkable instruction in it. It is the line that leads to the knowledge of God and the securing of a wife. It must all proceed on this line. It is good for us if we take it in.