HOSEA 11
To read this prophecy rightly we must keep in mind that the background of it all is the love of Jehovah for His people. That love found touching expression in the pathetic and sorrowful utterances of this book with regard to His unfaithful people. “But they like Adam have transgressed the covenant” (chapter 6:7);
[p. 11] they had departed from a blessed relation in which they once stood. Ephraim had mixed himself with the peoples, and become “a cake not turned”, chapter 7: 8. He was not Self-judged; the fire had never acted properly upon him; there was nothing in his inward state to keep him from the influence of the world. So that strangers had devoured his strength without his being aware of it, and grey hairs marked his decay, but he knew it not. He was “like a silly dove without heart”, verse 11. The result is that such “become among nations as a vessel wherein is no pleasure”, chapter 8: 8. The “manifold things” of God’s law “are counted as a strange thing”, verse 12. No wonder there was a call to such persons to “break up your fallow ground; for it is time to seek Jehovah, till he come and rain righteousness upon you”, chapter 10: 12.
Much of this is as applicable today as it was in Hosea’s time! And God feels it as intensely today as He did then because it is all the result of turning away from His love. He reminds Israel in the chapter now before us that from the beginning He had loved them; chapter 11: 1. “When Israel was a child”, when all was infantile and undeveloped on their side, God loved them as in the place of son to Him. “And I it was that taught Ephraim to walk, He took them upon his arms”, verse 3. What tender paternal solicitude there was on Jehovah’s part as He upheld them in all their feebleness, and taught them to walk in the wilderness in subjection to Him, and to be dependent every day for all the goodness that came to them from Him! As Paul so touchingly says, “For a time of about forty years he nursed them in the desert”, Acts 13: 18. And yet all that time “they knew not that I healed them”. He was acting in love, but they did not recognise it; they were even openly idolatrous. Still in spite of all that, He did not cease to love them, and He provided a faithful witness of His love in His servant Moses. It was to Moses, and by Moses to the people, that Jehovah made known His purpose to deliver them. It was Moses who “celebrated the passover and the sprinkling of the blood, that the destroyer of the first-born might not touch them”. Moses was the mediator of the covenant, and when the people proved unfaithful to it he interceded for them, and was willing to be blotted out of Jehovah’s book for them. We may learn, particularly from the book of Deuteronomy, how imbued he was with Jehovah’s thoughts concerning His people. Moses was not only a type of Christ, but he was personally characterised by the Spirit of Christ, even as we read, “But the man Moses was very meek, above all men that were upon the face of the earth”, Numbers 12: 3.
All this had its part in, “I drew them with bands of a man, with cords of love”, chapter 11: 4. God was pleased to have a man who was nearer to Him than any prophet (see Numbers 12: 6 - 8), that His people might be drawn into the thoughts of His love as known by and expressed in that man. Of course, it was Christ who was set forth, for it is by Him that God draws in love. The greatest wonder of all is that Jehovah has become Man that He might be near to men in His love, telling out what is in His own heart, not only by doing good and healing all that were oppressed by the devil, but by taking upon His own spirit the full weight of everything that pressed upon man by reason of sin, finally becoming a sacrifice for sin, and bearing our sins in His own body on the tree, and tasting death for us so that the reality and depth of the love of God to men might be manifested and known. God in this way is drawing men “with bands of a man, with cords of love”. It is His pleasure to be known by men as acting for them in this wondrous way of love. The One who died upon the cross is now the living Mediator of the love of God to men, and He is ever serving in love as interceding on high. In Him as the glorified One are perfectly set forth the place and acceptance in which the love of God would have men to be before His face. Man is in heaven in the most blessed acceptance with God, and the great proposal of the glad tidings is that through the love of God men may have Christ as their righteousness, and be accepted in Him the Beloved. By the bands of that blessed glorified Man God is drawing men into the knowledge of Himself as revealed in love. All the past and present unfaithfulness of the church has not altered the love of God. Men have turned away from it, but the drawing continues. “And I, if I be lifted up out of the earth, will draw all to me”, John 12: 32. Christ is not repelling but attracting, and the fact that He speaks of “bands” and “cords” shows that He intends to bind men firmly to Him as the One in whom the love of God is expressed. That love cannot be found anywhere else, but its fulness can be found there: “the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord”. It is there for an unfaithful people as well as for a perishing world. If we respond to the drawing, the love that draws undertakes everything for us. God knows everything that there is on our side, and on the side of an unfaithful church, but He says, ‘I am drawing you by the Man in whom I have revealed My love so that you may find out [p. 13] that everything on your side is an opportunity for My love’. It was always so really, whether it was a naked sinner in Eden, or toiling slaves in Egypt, or idolatrous Israel, or self-righteous Jews, or poor Gentiles without God in the world; God made Himself known as acting in love so that the ruined creature might turn to Him in that blessed character, and be blessed in knowing Him. And now the whole truth of what God is for man has come out in the Man of His delight, the Son of His love. There will never again be such drawing as there is today; the glory of God is in the face of Jesus, and it is infinitely favourable to men. Some of us have known a little of its attractiveness; may we know it in an ever increasing way!
But then we need to know the love of God not only in its attractiveness, but in its liberating power. Naturally we find ourselves unable to appropriate the blessed things which divine love has provided for us. We have to learn how He c n liberate us to feed upon those things. “And I was to them as they that take off the yoke on their jaws, and I gently caused them to eat”, verse 4. How much that is strikingly suggestive is bound up in this statement! For the passover lamb and the unleavened bread which accompanied it, the quails, the manna, the peace-offerings, the priests’ portion in the offerings, the old corn of the land, had a place in what Israel was caused to eat. We may say this, or read it over, in one sentence, but if we consider all that it speaks of typically how immense it is!
Then, again, the wilderness experience was “that he might make thee know that man doth not live by bread alone, but by everything that goeth out of the mouth of Jehovah doth man live”, Deuteronomy 8:3. This is exceedingly comprehensive, for the “word” or “commandment” of Jehovah is often, literally, “mouth”; this is so particularly in the book of Numbers, which is the wilderness book. What goes out of God’s “mouth” is thus made very personal to Him; it is a very direct communication, and He would have us to live by it. If this was so in Old Testament times, as it surely was, how much more now when the Son has spoken personally on earth, and we have in the epistles what is really divine speaking from heaven. It is all to be fed upon, and God in His love would “gently” cause us to eat this wondrous spiritual food; we do so by the blessed liberating action of His love. We have observed before that this book is intended to bring about liberty in the affections of God’s people, and liberty to “eat” is very essential to this. For what goes out of God’s mouth will, in some way or other, speak of His love. Even if it is rebuke or correction, love is behind it. In the gospels every word speaks of divine love, and so in the epistles. Satan does not care what we go on with, what we feed on, if he can divert us from feeding on the love of divine Persons, but we can have as much of that love as we want. It is, in one sense, left to us to assess how much will satisfy us; we may make it our food and our drink.