'I will give her ... the valley of Achor for a door of
hope.'--HOSEA II. 15.
The Prophet Hosea is remarkable for the frequent use which he makes of
events in the former history of his people. Their past seems to him a
mirror in which they may read their future. He believes that 'which is
to be hath already been,' the great principles of the divine government
living on through all the ages, and issuing in similar acts when the
circumstances are similar. So he foretells that there will yet be once
more a captivity and a bondage, that the old story of the wilderness
will be repeated once more. In that wilderness God will speak to the
heart of Israel. Its barrenness shall be changed into the fruitfulness
of vineyards, where the purpling clusters hang ripe for the thirsty
travellers. And not only will the sorrows that He sends thus become
sources of refreshment, but the gloomy gorge through which they
journey--the valley of Achor--will be a door of hope.
One word is enough to explain the allusion. You remember that after the
capture of Jericho by Joshua, the people were baffled in their first
attempt to press up through the narrow defile that led from the plain of
Jordan to the highlands of Canaan. Their defeat was caused by the
covetousness of Achan, who for the sake of some miserable spoil which he
found in a tent, broke God's laws, and drew down shame on Israel's ranks
When the swift, terrible punishment on him had purged the camp, victory
again followed their assault, and Achan lying stiff and stark below his
cairn, they pressed on up the glen to their task of conquest. The rugged
valley, where that defeat and that sharp act of justice took place, was
named in memory thereof, the valley of _Achor_, that is, _trouble_; and
our Prophet's promise is that as then, so for all future ages, the
complicity of God's people with an evil world will work weakness and
defeat, but that, if they will be taught by their trouble and will purge
themselves of the accursed thing, then the disasters will make a way for
hope to come to them again. The figure which conveys this is very
expressive. The narrow gorge stretches before us, with its dark
overhanging cliffs that almost shut out the sky; the path is rough and
set with sharp pebbles; it is narrow, winding, steep; often it seems to
be barred by some huge rock that juts across it, and there is barely
room for the broken ledge yielding slippery footing between the beetling
crag above and the steep slope beneath that dips so quickly to the black
torrent below. All is gloomy, damp, hard; and if we look upwards the
glen becomes more savage as it rises, and armed foes hold the very
throat of the pass. But, however long, however barren, however rugged,
however black, however trackless, we may see if we will, a bright form
descending the rocky way with radiant eyes and calm lips, God's
messenger, Hope; and the rough rocks are like the doorway through which
she comes near to us in our weary struggle. For us all, dear friends, it
is true. In all our difficulties and sorrows, be they great or small; in
our business perplexities; in the losses that rob our homes of their
light; in the petty annoyances that diffuse their irritation through so
much of our days; it is within our power to turn them all into occasions
for a firmer grasp of God, and so to make them openings by which a
happier hope may flow into our souls.
But the promise, like all God's promises, has its well-defined
conditions. Achan has to be killed and put safe out of the way first, or
no shining Hope will stand out against the black walls of the defile.
The tastes which knit us to the perishable world, the yearnings for
Babylonish garments and wedges of gold, must be coerced and subdued.
Swift, sharp, unrelenting justice must be done on the lust of the flesh,
and the lust of the eye, and the pride of life, if our trials are ever
to become _doors of hope._ There is no natural tendency in the mere fact
of sorrow and pain to make God's love more discernible, or to make our
hope any firmer. All depends on how we use the trial, or as I say--first
stone Achan, and then hope!
So, the trouble which detaches us from earth gives us new hope.
Sometimes the effect of our sorrows and annoyances and difficulties is
to rivet us more firmly to earth. The eye has a curious power, which
they call persistence of vision, of retaining the impression made upon
it, and therefore of seeming to see the object for a definite time after
it has really been withdrawn. If you whirl a bit of blazing stick round,
you will see a circle of fire though there is only a point moving
rapidly in the circle. The eye has its memory like the soul. And the
soul has its power of persistence like the eye, and that power is
sometimes kindled into activity by the fact of loss. We often see our
departed joys, and gaze upon them all the more eagerly for their
departure. The loss of dear ones should stamp their image on our hearts,
and set it as in a golden glory. But it sometimes does more than that;
it sometimes makes us put the present with its duties impatiently away
from us. Vain regret, absorbed brooding over what is gone, a sorrow kept
gaping long after it should have been healed, like a grave-mound off
which desperate love has pulled turf and flowers, in the vain attempt to
clasp the cold hand below--in a word, the trouble that does not withdraw
us from the present will never be a door of hope, but rather a grim gate
for despair to come in at.
The trouble which knits us to God gives us new hope. That bright form
which comes down the narrow valley is His messenger and herald--sent
before His face. All the light of hope is the reflection on our hearts
of the light of God. Her silver beams, which shed quietness over the
darkness of earth, come only from that great Sun. If our hope is to grow
out of our sorrow, it must be because our sorrow drives us to God. It is
only when we by faith stand in His grace, and live in the conscious
fellowship of peace with Him, that we rejoice in hope. If we would see
Hope drawing near to us, we must fix our eyes not on Jericho that lies
behind among its palm-trees, though it has memories of conquests, and
attractions of fertility and repose, nor on the corpse that lies below
that pile of stones, nor on the narrow way and the strong enemy in front
there; but higher up, on the blue sky that spreads peaceful above the
highest summits of the pass, and from the heavens we shall see the angel
coming to us. Sorrow forsakes its own nature, and leads in its own
opposite, when sorrow helps us to see God. It clears away the thick
trees, and lets the sunlight into the forest shades, and then in time
corn will grow. Hope is but the brightness that goes before God's face,
and if we would see it we must look at Him.
The trouble which we bear rightly with God's help, gives new hope. If we
have made our sorrow an occasion for learning, by living experience,
somewhat more of His exquisitely varied and ever ready power to aid and
bless, then it will teach us firmer confidence in these inexhaustible
resources which we have thus once more proved, 'Tribulation worketh
patience, and patience experience, and experience hope.' That is the
order. You cannot put patience and experience into a parenthesis, and
omitting them, bring hope out of tribulation. But if, in my sorrow, I
have been able to keep quiet because I have had hold of God's hand, and
if in that unstruggling submission I have found that from His hand I
have been upheld, and had strength above mine own infused into me, then
my memory will give the threads with which Hope weaves her bright web. I
build upon two things--God's unchangeableness, and His help already
received; and upon these strong foundations I may wisely and safely
rear a palace of Hope, which shall never prove a castle in the air. The
past, when it is God's past, is the surest pledge for the future.
Because He has been with us in six troubles, therefore we may be sure
that in seven He will not forsake us. I said that the light of hope was
the brightness from the face of God. I may say again, that the light of
hope which fills our sky is like that which, on happy summer nights,
lives till morning in the calm west, and with its colourless, tranquil
beauty, tells of a yesterday of unclouded splendour, and prophesies a
to-morrow yet more abundant. The glow from a sun that is set, the
experience of past deliverances, is the truest light of hope to light
our way through the night of life.
One of the psalms gives us, in different form, a metaphor and a promise
substantially the same as that of this text. 'Blessed are the men who,
passing through the valley of weeping, make it a well.' They gather
their tears, as it were, into the cisterns by the wayside, and draw
refreshment and strength from their very sorrows, and then, when thus we
in our wise husbandry have irrigated the soil with the gathered results
of our sorrows, the heavens bend over us, and weep their gracious tears,
and 'the rain also covereth it with blessings.' No chastisement for the
present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous; nevertheless, afterward it
yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness.'
Then, dear friends, let us set ourselves with our loins girt to the
road. Never mind how hard it may be to climb. The slope of the valley of
trouble is ever upwards. Never mind how dark is the shadow of death
which stretches athwart it. If there were no sun there would be no
shadow; presently the sun will be right overhead, and there will be no
shadow then. Never mind how black it may look ahead, or how frowning the
rocks. From between their narrowest gorge you may see, if you will, the
guide whom God has sent you, and that Angel of Hope will light up all
the darkness, and will only fade away when she is lost in the sevenfold
brightness of that upper land, whereof our 'God Himself is Sun and
Moon'--the true Canaan, to whose everlasting mountains the steep way of
life has climbed at last through valleys of trouble, and of weeping, and
of the shadow of death.
'LET HIM ALONE'
'Ephraim is joined to idols: let him alone.'--HOSEA iv. 17.
The tribe of Ephraim was the most important member of the kingdom of
Israel; consequently its name was not unnaturally sometimes used in a
wider application for the whole of the kingdom, of which it was the
principal part. Being the 'predominant partner,' its name was used alone
for that of the whole firm, just as in our own empire, we often say
'England,' meaning thereby the three kingdoms: England, Scotland, and
Ireland. So 'Ephraim' here does not mean the single tribe, but the whole
kingdom of Israel.
Now Hosea himself was a Northerner, a subject of that kingdom; and its
iniquities and idolatries weighed heavily on his heart, and were ripped
up and brought to light with burning eloquence in his prophecies. The
words of my text have often, and terribly, been misunderstood. And I
wish now to try to bring out their true meaning and bearing. They have a
message for us quite as much as they had for the people who originally
received them.
I. I must begin by explaining what, in my judgment, this text does not
mean.
First, it is not what it is often taken to be, a threatening of God's
abandoning of the idolatrous nation. I dare say we have all heard grim
sermons from this text, which have taken that view of it, and have tried
to frighten men into believing now, by telling them that, perhaps, if
they do not, God will never move on their hearts, or deal with them any
more, but withdraw His grace, and leave them to insensibility. There is
not a word of that sort in the text. Plainly enough it is not so, for
this vehement utterance of the Prophet is not a declaration as to God,
and what He is going to do, but it is a commandment to some men, telling
them what _they_ are to do. 'Let him alone' does not mean the same thing
as '_I_ will let him alone'; and if people had only read with a little
more care, they would have been delivered from perpetrating a libel on
the divine loving-kindness and forbearance.
It is clear enough, too, that such a meaning as that which has been
forced upon the words of my text, and is the common use of it, I
believe, in many evangelical circles, cannot be its real meaning,
because the very fact that Hosea was prophesying to call Ephraim from
his sin showed that God had _not_ let Ephraim alone, but was wooing him
by His prophet, and seeking to win him back by the words of his mouth.
God was doing all that He could do, rising early and sending His
messenger and calling to Ephraim: 'Turn ye! Turn ye! why will ye die?'
For Hosea, in the very act of pleading with Israel on God's behalf, to
have declared that God had abandoned it, and ceased to plead, would have
been a palpable absurdity and contradiction.
But beyond considerations of the context, other reasons conclusively
negative such an interpretation of this text. I, for my part, do not
believe that there are any bounds or end to God's forbearing pleading
with men in this life. I take, as true, the great words of the old
Psalm, in their simplest sense--'His mercy endureth for ever'; and I
fall back upon the other words which a penitent had learned to be true
by reflecting on the greatness of his own sin: 'With Him are multitudes
of redemptions'; and I turn from psalmists and prophets to the Master
who showed us God's heart, and knew what He spake when He laid it down
as the law and the measure of human forgiveness which was moulded upon
the pattern of the divine, that it should be 'seventy times seven'--the
multiplication of both the perfect numbers into themselves--than which
there can be no grander expression for absolute innumerableness and
unfailing continuance.
No, no! men may say to God, 'Speak no more to us'; or they may get so
far away from Him, as that they only hear God's pleading voice, dim and
faint, like a voice in a dream. But surely the history of His
progressive revelation shows us that, rather than such abandonment of
the worst, the law of the divine dealing is that the deafer the man, the
more piercing the voice beseeching and warning. The attraction of
gravitation decreases as distance increases, but the further away we are
from Him, the stronger is the attraction which issues from Him, and
would draw us to Himself.
Clear away, then, altogether out of your minds any notion that there is
here declared what, in my judgment, is not declared anywhere in the
Bible, and never occurs in the divine dealings with men. Be sure that He
never ceases to seek to draw the most obstinate, idolatrous, and
rebellious heart to Himself. That divine charity 'suffereth long, and is
kind' ... 'hopeth all things, and beareth all things.'
Again, let me point out that the words of my text do not enjoin the
cessation of the efforts of Christian people for the recovery of the
most deeply sunken in sin. 'Let him alone' is a commandment, and it is a
commandment to God's Church, but it is not a commandment to despair of
any that they may be brought into the fold, or to give up efforts to
that end. If our Father in heaven never ceases to bear in His heart His
prodigal children, it does not become those prodigals, who have come
back, to think that any of their brethren are too far away to be drawn
by their loving proclamation of the Father's heart of love.
_There_ is the glory of our Gospel, that, taking far sadder, graver
views of what sin and alienation from God are, than the world's
philosophers and philanthropists do, it surpasses them just as much as
in the superb confidence with which it sets itself to the cure of the
disease as in the unflinching clearness with which it diagnoses the
disease as fatal, if it be not dealt with by the all-healing Gospel. All
other methods for the restoration and elevation of mankind are compelled
to recognise that there is an obstinate residuum that will not and
cannot be reached by their efforts. It used to be said that some old
cannon-balls, that had been brought from some of the battlefields of the
Peninsula, resisted all attempts to melt them down; so there are
'cannon-balls,' as it were, amongst the obstinate evil-doers, and the
degraded and 'dangerous' classes, which mark the despair of our modern
reformers and civilisers and elevators, for no fire in their furnaces
can melt down their hardness. No; but there is the furnace of the Lord
in Jerusalem, and the fire of God in Zion, which can melt them down, and
has done so a hundred and a thousand times, and is as able to do it
again to-day as it ever was. Despair of no human soul. That boundless
confidence in the power of the Gospel is the duty of the Christian
Church. 'The damsel is not dead, but sleepeth!' They laughed Him to
scorn, knowing that she was dead. But He put out His hand, and said unto
her '_Talitha cumi_, I say unto thee, Arise!' When we stand on one side
of the bed with your social reformers on the other, and say 'The damsel
is not dead, but sleepeth,' they laugh us to scorn, and bid us try our
Gospel upon these people in our slums, or on those heathens in the New
Hebrides. We have the right to answer, 'We have tried it, and man after
man, and woman after woman have risen from the sick-bed, like Peter's
wife's mother; and the fever has left them, and they have ministered
unto Him. There are no people in the world about whom Christians need
despair, none that Christ's Gospel cannot redeem. Whatever my text
means, it does not mean cowardly and unbelieving doubt as to the power
of the Gospel on the most degraded and sinful.
II. So, the text enjoins on the Christian Church separation from an
idolatrous world.
'Ephraim is joined to idols.' Do you 'let him alone.' Now, there has
been much harm done by misreading the force of the injunction of
separation from the world. There is a great deal of union and
association with the most godless people in our circle, which is
inevitable. Family bonds, business connections, civic obligations--all
these require that the Church shall not withdraw from the world. There
is the wide common ground of Politics and Art and Literature, and a
hundred other interests, on which it does Christian men no good, and the
world much harm, if the former withdraw to themselves, and on the plea
of superior sanctity, leave these great departments of interest and
influence to be occupied only by non-Christians.
Then, besides these thoughts of necessary union and association upon
common ground, there is the other consideration that absolute separation
would defeat the very purpose for which Christian people are here. 'Ye
are the salt of the earth,' said Christ. Yes, and if you keep the meat
on one plate and the salt on another, what good will the salt be? It has
to be rubbed in particle by particle, and brought into contact over all
the surface, and down into the depths of the meat that it is to preserve
from putrefaction. And no Christian churches or individuals do their
duty, and fulfil their function on earth, unless they are thus closely
associated and intermingled with the world that they should be trying to
leaven and save. A cloistered solitude, or a proud standing apart from
the ordinary movements of the community, or a neglect, on the plea of
our higher duties, of the duties of the citizen of a free country--these
are not the ways to fulfil the exhortation of my text. 'Let the dead
bury their dead,' said Christ; but He did not mean that His Church was
to stand apart from the world, and let it go its own way. It is a bad
thing for both when little Christian côteries gather themselves
together, and talk about their own goodness and religion, and leave the
world to perish. Clotted blood is death; circulated, it is life.
But, whilst all this is perfectly true--and there are associations that
we must not break if we are to do our work as Christian people--it is
also true that it is possible, in the closest unions with men who do not
share our faith, to do the same thing that they are doing, with a
difference which separates us from them, even whilst we are united with
them. They tell us that, however dense any material substance may seem
to be, there is always a film of air between contiguous particles. And
there should be a film between us and our Christless friends and
companions and partners, not perceptible perhaps to a superficial
observer, but most real. If we do our common work as a religious duty,
and in the exercise of all our daily occupations 'set the Lord always
before' us, however closely we may be associated with people who do not
so live, they will know the difference; never fear! And you will know
the difference, and will not be identified with them, but separate in a
wholesome fashion from them.
And, dear brethren, if I may go a step further, I would venture to say
that it seems to me that our Christian communities want few things more
in this day than the reiteration of the old saying, 'Have no fellowship
with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.' There
is so much in this time to break down the separation between him that
believeth in Christ and him that doth not; narrowness has come to be
thought such an enormous wickedness, and liberality is so lauded by all
sorts of superficial people, that Christian men need to be summoned back
to their standard. 'Being let go, they went to their own company'--there
is a natural affinity which should, and will, if our faith is vital,
draw us to those who, on the gravest and solemnest things, have the same
thoughts, the same hopes, the same faith. I do not urge you, God knows,
to be bigoted and narrow, and shut yourselves up in your faith, and
leave the world to go to the devil; but I do not wish, either, that
Christian people should fling themselves into the arms and nestle in the
hearts of persons who do not share with them 'like precious faith.'
I am sure that there are many Christian people, old and young, who are
suffering in their religious life because they are neglecting this
commandment of my text. 'Let him alone.' There can be no deep affection,
and, most of all--if I may venture on such ground--no wedded love worth
the name, where there is not unanimity in regard to the deepest matters.
It does not say much for the religion of a professing Christian who
finds his heart's friends and his chosen companions in people that have
no sympathy with the religion which he professes. It does not say much
for you if it is so with you, for the Christian, whom you like least, is
nearer you in the depths of your true self than is the non-Christian
whom you love most.
Be sure, too, that if we mix ourselves up with Ephraim, we shall find
ourselves grovelling beside him before his idols ere long. Godlessness
is infectious. Many a young woman, a professing Christian, has married a
godless man in the fond hope that she might win him. It is a great deal
more frequently the case that he perverts her than that she converts
him. Do not let us knit ourselves in these close bonds with the
worshippers of idols, lest we 'learn their ways, and get a snare into
our souls.' 'Be not unequally yoked with unbelievers. What fellowship
hath light with darkness? Wherefore, come out from among them and be ye
separate, saith the Lord. Touch not the unclean thing, and I will be a
Father unto you, and ye shall be My sons and My daughters.'
'PHYSICIANS OF NO VALUE'
'When Ephralm 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 v. 13
(R.V.).
The long tragedy which ended in the destruction of the Northern Kingdom
by Assyrian invasion was already beginning to develop in Hosea's time.
The mistaken politics of the kings of Israel led them to seek an ally
where they should have dreaded an enemy. As Hosea puts 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.