HOSEAS 4 TO 6
HOSEAS 4 TO 6
When God has a controversy with His people, which He surely has at the present time, it will always be found to turn on the knowledge of Himself. His people were destroyed in Hosea’s time “for lack of knowledge”, or, more literally, “the knowledge”; that is, the specific knowledge referred to in verse 1. So how the knowledge of God is acquired becomes the most important matter for our consideration. It is evident that we cannot get it by pursuing idolatry; it was said, “their doings do not allow them to return unto their God”, verse 4. We can understand this, but it is said also, “They shall go with their flocks and with their herds to seek Jehovah; but they shall not find him: he hath withdrawn himself from them”, verse 6. He is not to be found on that line. People would often be prepared to make great sacrifices if they could thereby obtain the favour of God. But this prophet, and, indeed, the whole of Scripture, make plain that He can only be found through affliction, and through learning that there is no help anywhere else. The deepest affliction anyone can pass through is to be convicted of sin, and to learn that death is upon one. It is by the cutting off of all hope from any other quarter that men are brought to turn to God. But none of us accepts this very readily; we look in every other direction first. “When Ephraim saw his sickness, and Judah his sore, then went Ephraim to the Assyrian, and sent to king Jareb; but he was unable to heal you, nor hath he removed your sore”, verse 13. Assyria was at that time the dominant human power, and I believe he represents what is dominant at the present time. The great characteristic of the present day is confidence in the human mind. The religious element is still strong in Christendom, but the rationalistic or modernist element is stronger. The mass of people who think at all are modernists; they do not attach supreme authority to the Holy Scriptures, or look to them for the final settlement of every question. They prefer human thoughts. King Jareb, (meaning, He will contend), represents the contention of the human mind against the truth. The man of sin will be the great modernist; he will oppose and exalt himself against all called God or worshipped; man is to be supreme.
[p. 9] But the dealings of God go on, His tearing and smiting, until He is owned as the One who is dealing with us for blessing. He waits (verse 15) until trespass is owned, and His face sought in affliction. Then He gives assurance that He will heal and bind up; we have but to return to Him, and He will undertake for us. When we have reached this point, truth and mercy and the knowledge of God are beginning to come into the soul; chapter 6: 1. But there are yet two days of self-experience to come; “after two days will he revive us”. In God’s ways with Israel the law and the prophets came before Christ; they were a necessary preparation for Christ on account of the extreme unwillingness of man to appreciate grace. The law brought home to those under it the knowledge of sin and powerlessness; that was its divine intent. The prophets deepened this. “Therefore have I hewed them by the prophets; I have slain them by the words of my mouth; and my judgment goeth forth as the light”, chapter 6: 5. If people are slain they need to be brought up from the very place of death, and that is what we find here is done for them. “After two days will he revive us; on the third day he will raise us up, and we shall live before his face”, chapter 6:2. When Immanuel came in, light sprang up “to those sitting in the country and shadow of death”. There is no reviving until Christ comes in; they are preparatory exercises, but there is no reviving Godward until Christ is seen as bringing in all that God can delight in. The Pharisees objected to the Lord eating with tax-gatherers and sinners, and they objected to the disciples plucking ears of corn on the sabbath, but the Lord answered them on each of these occasions by telling them that they did not know Hosea 6: 6. “For I delight in loving-kindness, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt-offerings”. God’s delight is in what He can be for men, according to the thoughts of His own loving-kindness, and He has set this forth perfectly in Christ. The Pharisees did not revive in the appreciation of this; they utterly refused it. But the disciples revived in the blessedness of what they had found in Christ, the loving-kindness of God in living expression, taking account of all man’s misery and need, but meeting it all perfectly as God alone could meet it. Where the knowledge of God comes there is a true reviving; indeed, in New Testament language, the persons are born anew. But the third day seems to suggest something beyond revival; “on the third day he will raise us up, and we shall live before his face”. This gives the thought of being before God for His pleasure;
[p. 10] it is not only that He is for us, but we are for Him. Israel will yet be raised up to be in wifely relations with Jehovah, and to be sons of the living God. We anticipate them in this, and in a higher and heavenly way. For we not only walk in newness of life here, according to Romans, but we are raised with Christ through faith of the working of God who raised Him from among the dead, according to Colossians, and quickened together with Him so that we may live before God in association with Christ as risen with Him. All this belongs to our third day. The Spirit would support us in taking up this ground, for the end in view in deliverance is that we should take it up.
“And we shall know — we shall follow on to know Jehovah his going forth is assured as the morning dawn”. This means for us that we shall know the Son of God as He is to be known now. Jesus has gone forth as the morning dawn of an eternal day. It is an assured thing, for we have had it from His own lips. “Go to my brethren and say to them, I ascend to my Father, and your Father, and to my God, and your God”, John 20: 17. Let us not stop short of this; let us “follow on” to the full blessed thought of divine love — to know that the ascended One claims us as His brethren, to be with Him before the Father’s face in unclouded and eternal acceptance and relationship. And the Spirit is intimately connected with this, for He is here because Jesus is glorified; it is the ascended One who has shed Him forth. The Holy Spirit is here on Christ’s behalf; in a certain sense He represents Him here. And it is thus that Christ comes to us “as the rain, as the latter rain which watereth the earth”. The “latter rain” comes to bring the crop to maturity, and the Spirit of God is here for that purpose. It has reference to the perfecting of that work by which the full thought of God is developed in the spiritual affections and intelligence of the saints down here. This is what we are to follow on to know by divine grace and love. May we be intensely moved as we contemplate these precious realities!