Hosea 4:1-6

The Lord's Controversy

Hos 4:1-6

"Hear the word of the Lord, ye children of Israel: for the Lord hath a controversy with the inhabitants of the land, because there is no truth, nor mercy, nor knowledge of God in the land" ( Hos 4:1 ).

It was a wonderful thing to try to conceive supposing it to be merely an act of the imagination what God would say if he condescended to use human speech. Who can find words fit for the lips of such a God as is described in Holy Scripture? We have been so accustomed to read words said to have been uttered by God that our familiarity has deprived us of a good deal of rich profit that would have arisen from a deep consideration of the inquiry, What words are worthy of the lips of such a God as is portrayed in the Bible? There are gods for whom we could find words too good; we would not allow their livid lips to touch some of our words; they would spoil them. They are mean gods images that are nailed to their own timber; idols that are stained into the plaster of the wall; frescoed divinities, imaginary deities, who revel and riot and practise wickedness in their cloudy residences. There are words of ours we would not allow them to touch as father, mother, child, home, love, purity, honour; if they ventured to touch one of these words, and turn it to their own uses, we should say, Stop, thief! Our inquiry relates to the kind of God, the quality of deity, that is indicated in the Bible. Who can find words for such a God? Who can make him speak in fit eloquence? It must be dignified, lofty without measure; yet it must have in it a mystery of condescension, a touch of familiarity, a home colour that will not affright even the eyes of children.

This question of inspiration is a much larger one than comes within the four corners of any mechanical theory. Here is a God, real or invented; if invented, a greater wonder than if he is real. Invented by whom? Here is a choice of words that cannot be amended. Men may try to elevate and refine this language, and they confessedly fail. Even when they want to speak their mother tongue they come back to the old Bible; when they want to touch the heart most deeply, and bring it to humiliation and tears of sympathy and heroic act, they go to the uninspired man-made Bible for their eloquence. Can this be so? The heart has its rights here as well as the intellect; the natural and cultivated instincts have their claim as well as the pedantic critical faculty. Man is not all finger, he is not all mere criticism; he has within him, and as necessary parts of him, soul, feeling, sympathy, conscious need, a wondrous other deeper self that is sure of the spiritual, the supernatural, the angelic, the divine. The Bible is full of "the word of the Lord," and the claim of prophet, major and minor, is, Hear it! We are brought, as it were, together in this conversation, namely, God and man. Here is no mysterious attempt to mediate between the speaker and the hearer, as who should say, I only, selected functionary of heaven, have heard God speak, and I will tell you what he has said to me, and you must not go further than myself; you must finish your inquiry with my personality; my priestly authority must begin and end the limit of the interview. There is no such intolerable impiety and senselessness in the Scripture. The great word is, "He that hath ears to hear, let him hear." Know your election to this apostleship of hearing by the sensitiveness of your ears. There are ears that hear nothing, eyes that see nothing, hearts that understand nothing; he who has the faculty has the election, and is chosen of God to hear the word immediately and directly, and to answer it with many prayers and rivers of tears.

What is announced by the prophet after this bold appeal to human attention? "The Lord hath a controversy with the inhabitants of the land." All controversy does not lie between man and man; it is not an affair of words, it is not a contention of rival claims, or a collision of competitive ambitions; when we have adjusted and settled all our little uproars by some method of arbitration the world is still not at rest; there is an unsettled claim, there is a plea that cannot be easily silenced. We may try to stifle the utterance of that plea, but at unexpected times the plea reasserts itself with aggravated poignancy. What are these broader and grander contentions that trouble our history, and will not let us find rest on the pillows of our compromises? They are God's challenges, appeals, scrutinies, and judgments. There are religious questions to settle before the world can be tranquillised. This fact is not realised by many students of history. They do not touch the reality of the cases because they deal with policies, covenants, commercial treaties, social relationships, and the like; as if the world were complete in itself, and had no relation to the highest court; as if the world were self-existing, forgetting that it hangs upon the hands of God. We cannot settle questions by coming to an understanding amongst ourselves. Nothing is right until we have acquainted ourselves with God through his Son Jesus Christ, the Priest of the universe, and have realised peace through the Cross. After that all adjustments become easy. Why is it that even human contentions are difficult of settlement? Simply because they lack atmosphere. What is meant by the term "atmosphere" in this connection? Spirit. The actions themselves are square, well cut, cleverly arranged, and the policy drawn with a skilled hand, away to its last iota; but the atmosphere of good feeling, high reason, noble philanthropy, Christianised humanity is wanting, and for lack of spiritual atmosphere our mechanisms cannot cohere; they fall to pieces, and require continual rebuilding that they may perpetrate the trick of continual dissolution. Realise God's action, divine providence, the ghostly ministry; and remember that right is a word which is not to be defined by other words, but is to be realised after communion with the eternal righteousness.

Why has God a controversy? The reason is self-commending and self-vindicating. "Because there is no truth, nor mercy, nor knowledge of God in the land." We can subject this charge to the test of facts; here we are upon ground which admits the claim and the function of reason and criticism. God will have a controversy so long as truth is wanting; he will have every wall built plomb; if the wall is not plomb it must come down; the sun will not have it; the stars are annoyed by it; it is a cripple that might be healed and will not, therefore it must be torn to pieces; every star that swings itself around the eternal centre is offended by things that will not bear the test of geometry. God will not have truthlessness, falsity, painted falsity worst of all, for the paint is lost upon it, and the money that paints it might have been given to the poor. God will have all things square, upright, real, good through and through, as good under the cloak as above it, and round about it, and until that is brought about he will have a controversy with the land and with the individual, and with the house and with the business; and when you have piled your money millions high, yet there is at the heart of it a thief; he will tear it down, he will throw it away, and he will leave you to find out the reason of this act of deprivation and scattering. Think; consider; do not play the fool. God will not rest his criticism at the point of truth only; he says there is no "mercy." In the Hebrew this word "mercy" is a full word; it involves and necessitates everything that is of the nature of love, pity, kindness, brotherly fellowship, philanthropic obligation; it is not a condescending act, as who shall say, I will have mercy upon you, exercising a prerogative almost divine; it is a word that means natural love, spiritual love, real, true, self-sacrificial love. God notices the absence of this; he will not let the earth alone; he will drown it, he will burn it, he will utterly wreck it, and then he will put the pieces all together again, and start afresh. God cannot be at rest whilst there is an unhealed hand in all his universe. The universe was not built as a cripple house. So long as one tongue is silent something is wrong; so long as one act of mercy, pity, love, compassion, tenderness is not done, the anthem cannot be sung in all the infinite breadth and grandeur of its meaning. What a wondrous man he Was who invented this God! We are to infer therefore that God will cease the trouble on the return of truth, mercy, and spiritual knowledge. A mechanical consolation is impossible; only a spiritual revolution and settlement will determine the harmony and tranquillity of the universe.

Thus far, however, the charge may be said to be negative,

"No truth, nor mercy, nor knowledge of God." ( Hos 4:1 ).

But the impeachment now assumes a positive aspect:

'By swearing, and lying, and killing, and stealing, and committing adultery, they break out, and blood toucheth blood" ( Hos 4:2 ).

We cannot tell the meaning of this in English. In the language in which Hosea wrote these are known as nouns of action; they have nothing abstract or merely suggestive or memorial about them; they are solid actions, as who should say, Turn where you may you will meet swearing, lying, killing, stealing, and the like. The image is awfully concrete. You are not dealing with lying only, but with visible, actual, bare-faced lies; lying has come out of its abstract retirements and gradations of approach, and stands there a concrete effrontery. Well might God have a trouble with the land. The land cannot rest in merely negative impiety. We cannot be agnostics only. The negative prepares for the positive. Where there is no truth the lie will certainly come in and say: Here is an open place where I can build my black house, and invent my next imposture. Where there is no love, no pity, no mercy, cruelty and oppression can come in and say: Here I will whet my axe, and trim the edge of my sword, that I may go out tomorrow and slay and desolate the world. A man cannot rest at not going to church; it is impossible to remain at the point of saying, We will not read the Bible. That "not," that dreary, desolate negative, becomes an opportunity for the display of all evil ministries and mischievous actions. Take care how you begin the deprivation of the soul. To deplete the mind is to invite ignorance and make it welcome. The Lord, therefore, is himself exercising pity in the very act of delivering this judgment, for he says, "They break out" the action is that of violence; a wicked, malignant, determined trespasser, who will not stop at bounds and lines, but who will outrage all moral limitations, "and blood toucheth blood"; literally bloods touch bloods; and God never made this green earth for any such spectacle. He made the earth for flowers and fruits; he started the world himself with a garden, and he meant that garden to grow until it covered every inch of the responsive land. When therefore blood touches blood, when war goes forth to desolate the nations of the earth, and when through exercise of cruelty and wrong and injustice the whole social fabric bleeds from head to foot, God says he will controvert the case, and plague the doers of the wrong.

"Therefore shall the land mourn, and everyone that dwelleth therein shall languish, with the beasts of the field, and with the fowls of heaven; yea, the fishes of the sea also shall be taken away" ( Hos 4:3 ).

The bad man not only spoils his spiritual relations, he spoils the whole earth; the fishes of the sea are uneasy because the altar has been thrown down; the birds of the air, once so clear of voice, so tender and expressive in note, are choked and stifled because the sanctuary is violated and the Cross is abandoned by scornful hearts; the earth that brought forth autumnally will bring forth no more; she will not feed the beasts that have spoiled her. Behind all mysteries there is an explanation. There is nothing profound in the suggestion of certain scientific men who say, Do not blame God for bad harvests. After all that suggestion is not so awfully profound. When we first heard it we thought it was marvellous; we have lived to see that there is nothing in it. Bad harvests may, after all, under some circumstances have to be accounted for religiously. We are inclined to think that there may be quite as much wisdom on the one side as on the other, and that, after all, the religious suggestion may have in it the more force of reason. The Bible never hesitates to connect the earth and the heaven, the facts of history with the government of God's throne. It is easy to deny all this; but denial is not a necessary expression and proof of supernatural genius. We may be cheated by the denials of other men. The more positive the denial the more positive should be the assertion; and the more positive the assertion the more exemplary and beautiful should be the life by which that assertion is repeated and sustained.

Perhaps some kindly soul will intervene and endeavour to reconcile God in this matter, but such a suggestion is anticipated and repudiated. "Yet let no man strive, nor reprove another." By this word the Lord means: This is more than a merely human contention; do not let any man arise and suppose that he can daub this wall effectively or usefully, for he has only untempered mortar at his disposal. This is a divine fight; in this battle it is God against godlessness. The discussion is universal. No man is fit to arbitrate as between the contention of God on the one hand, and the claim of human nature on the other. Human nature must be silent; it is human nature in its totality that is impeached. Where shall a mediator be found? Is there no daysman that may lay his hand upon both, and make a speech that shall represent the actuality of the case and issue in reconciliation and peace, pardon and heaven? Out of such necessities there arises a cry that if it could explain itself would mean the Cross.

The impeachment does not end here: "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge." This representation is cold; it is not the representation which the prophet made; there is a word omitted which gives accent and force to this impeachment. We should read, literally, "My people are destroyed for lack of the knowledge." There is only one knowledge worth acquiring. Away with information if it be made to take the place of inspiration. Information is useful within very narrow limits, for information is a changeable quantity changing by the very fact of enlargement and self-correction; but inspiration is the spirit, the genius that unites all things, interprets all things, and in a sense governs and directs all things. "My people are destroyed for lack of the knowledge," the one knowledge, the only knowledge worth having, the knowledge of God. The Bible is consistent in its claim; never does it lower its spiritual tone; not in one instance will it modify the claims and challenges of God. If God be not first, then there can be no settlement of the contention. With God at the right place, all other considerations and ministries and interactions assume their right relation and process. Who has not heard of the man who sold all his possessions that he might buy one with it, called a pearl of great price? Not that all the others represented in their totality the value of the one; when the one was obtained it was not merely a transference of value, it was an added treasure, a treasure beyond all price or arithmetical expression of superiority.

So with the knowledge of God. What a fool is he who knows everything but God! There are men who are so involved in getting scraps and fragments and little pieces of things together that they do not realise the totality of things. A man has a whole sack filled with little pieces of he does not know what, and he does not know what to make of it; he would be a comparatively happy man if he could part with that sack that is filled with little bits of things; he calls them phenomena, and does not get much comfort out of the word. It is possible so to use a microscope as to become its victim. There is a telescope as well as a microscope; there are stars as well as invisible insects. He who knows God knows the totality of the universe. He may be to a large extent ignorant of details; he may not have a microscope, he may not have a telescope, but he has that peculiar spiritual faculty which grasps the whole, and hears a solemn music in the march of the whole which is not heard by persons who take the organ to pieces that they may find where the music came from. Who would not give all he has for one sight of the invisible? Who would not consider all possessions worthless as compared with one face-to-face interview with God? Compared with that conference how small the debates of men, the collisions of human intellect, the uproar of social conflict and contention. We may belittle the very conception of knowing God. We are called upon to enter into a large conception of that fact, and the larger our conception of what is meant by knowing God, the more important will that knowledge become in actual reality. We do not know God who can only spell his name; we know nothing of God who have only heard of him; he only knows God who has lived with him; we live and move and have our being in God. Even this is insufficient, for there is needed one who can reveal God, in all the fulness of his character and being; the only Begotten of the Father, who dwelleth in the Father's bosom, he hath revealed him. Only Jesus Christ can tell us what God is. The Hebrew piled its epithets that it might scale the height of the divine abode, but Jesus operated in the other direction; instead of scaling his way to the unscalable infinite, he proceeded forth and came from God, and when he arrived, we called him God with us, God Incarnate, God the Son, God the Saviour. We need both the actions: we need a Hebrew in its sublimity that can only get to the clouds, and we need that universal language which comes down and speaks to old men and little children, wisest philosopher and unlettered peasant, in a mystery of simplicity that can be understood, but not explained, felt, but not accounted for, so that it shall be true that a man shall know God by his heart when he cannot comprehend him by his intellect.

Prayer

Almighty God, thine eye is upon us continually; there is not a word on our tongue, there is not a thought in our heart, but, lo! O Lord, thou knowest it altogether. Oftentimes dost thou cause us to exclaim in wonder, sometimes in terror, sometimes in joy, All things are naked and open to the eyes of him with whom we have to do. The eyes of the Lord run to and fro through the whole earth; the darkness and the light are both alike unto thee: how then shall we stand before thy judgment seat, in what guise shall we there appear? Thou dost tear away the clothing of the hypocrite; thou dost send a fire upon the simulations of men. Enable us always to remember that thine eye is upon us for good, and not for judgment only; thou shalt guide us with thine eye. The opening of thine eye upon our life shall be as the dawning of the day upon the earth that has long been hidden in darkness. The Lord grant unto us the assurance that his criticism is gracious, and that in judgment he seeks a way for his mercy. The law came by Moses, but grace and truth by Jesus Christ. We live in the Christian light; we assemble within the shadow of the Cross; we meet at the altar of propitiation. Jesus Christ loved us and gave himself for us the just for the unjust, and now thou art able to grant unto us justification through faith and the peace which comes of being right with God. Show us that we are still under law, but under the larger law of love, under the wider judgment of regulated liberty; and thus may we walk with dignity, steadfastness, patience, humbleness of mind, and all trust of heart, and at the last may we see that thou hast led us by a right way. The mountain was right and the valley, the cold wintry day and the bright summer flowery path, all was right; it was the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes. Amen.