Hosea 13:5-8 The Prosperous Man's Reminder

NO. 1441
DELIVERED ON LORD’S-DAY MORNING, OCTOBER 27TH, 1878,
BY C. H. SPURGEON,
AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

“I did know thee in the wilderness, in the land of great drought. According to their pasture, so were they filled; they were filled, and their heart was exalted; therefore have they forgotten me. Therefore I will be unto them as a lion: as a leopard by the way will I observe them: I will meet them as a bear that is bereaved of her whelps, and will rend the caul of their heart, and there will I devour them like a lion: the wild beast shall tear them.”-Hosea 13:5-8.

OUR text will lead me at this time to speak upon the perils of prosperity, and as those who are prospering in worldly circumstances make up a comparatively slender portion of any congregation the sermon must mainly aim at a small class. Still it is my duty to speak to these for every word of scriptural warning should have its tongue in a complete ministry, and every condition of soul must be duly met by a watchful pastor. May the Holy Spirit enable me to make full proof of my ministry by declaring the whole counsel of God to all characters. Suffer me, however, to observe that, if the subject should seem to take a narrow range, it is in your power to alter it very rapidly; for, while those who are prospering will kindly take note of the voice of God’s word to themselves, those of you who are not prospering may be profited by becoming the more contented with your lowly lot, since it will be plain to you that had you succeeded in life you might have fallen into the sins denounced in our text. It may be that you would never have known the holy joy and sacred peace which you now possess if you had been allowed to climb to those heights of wealth which you have longed to reach. God who knows your frame knew that you were not able to bear the trial of prosperity, and therefore he has kept you where you are,-more safe and more happy, though less enriched.

Another class of persons may have enjoyed fair weather in times past, but now a cloud has come over them and they are troubled. Possibly they may be taught by our discourse to say each one to himself, “God has taken me not so much out of the sunlight as out of the furnace. He saw that evils were generated by my success which would have caused me solemn injury, .and so he has removed me out of their reach. He has transplanted me out of the glare of the sunlight and set me in a place more shaded but more suited to my spiritual growth. There may also be some present who are eagerly aspiring after great things, and these may learn a lesson of sobriety. A desire to rise is laudable, but the winged horse needs to be well bitted and reined lest it fly away with its rider. Some spirits are dissatisfied with moderate success; they pine to reach the front ranks, and to climb to the high places of the earth. Ambition has become the star of their life, perhaps, I had better say-the will-o’-the-wisp of their folly. Let them learn from this morning’s word that all is not gold that glitters, that outward prosperity doth not make men truly prosper, and that there is a way of growing rich without being rich towards God. I would lay a cool hand upon a fevered brow, and remind the ardent youth that a man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth.

Another word remains to be said before I proceed further: Hosea speaks of Ephraim, or Israel, the kingdom of the ten tribes, and we may profitably view that people as a type of ourselves. Israel represents the church, and yet not altogether the true spiritual church of God. They were not all Israel that were of Israel, for they were a seed according to the flesh, and hence they were a mixed multitude, and represent rather the professing Christian world than the elect Christian church. Now, I must take the text as I find it, and use it for those to whom it can fairly be applied, namely, general Christendom, the nominal people of God. For this reason the lines of distinction this morning between God’s regenerated people and mere professors will be but faintly drawn in my address. It must be so, for I shall be speaking upon a truth which relates to a mixed people: and you must be the more careful in self-examination, so that each one may take home that which belongs to him. I speak to all Israel this morning, whether they be of Israel in spirit or not: to all the professing people of God, to all who meet with them at any time for public worship, or are numbered with them by general repute. “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear,” and may the Holy Spirit bless the hearing.

And now to our discourse.

I. The first subject suggested by the text is Memories Of Adversity.

The Lord says to many of us, “I did know thee in the wilderness, in the land of great drought.” Carefully consider this by taking a review of the past. Have you risen in the world? Have your circumstances changed? Or have you been raised up from a sick bed, or delivered from depths of anxiety? Are you now happily circumstanced, abounding in good things, and blessed with the temporal favor of God? I ask you to look back upon the way by which the Lord’s hand has led you. Look back upon your early trials and the mercy which sustained you under them. To some of the prosperous their early difficulties were very severe, comparable even to the great drought of the wilderness. They were so unhappy and so bereft of all comfort that it may be said of them that they sought water and there was none, and their tongue failed for thirst. Thirst is one of the most terrible ills that can happen to men, and such were the wants and anxieties of many a man’s early days: they rendered existence misery, and life itself a perpetual death. The children of Israel went three days without water: they came to wells where they expected to drink, and found them brackish, so that they could not drink of them. Do not many of the Lord’s people remember when things were very scant with them, when even the necessities of life were scarcely to be had, when they sought to friends for help but were disappointed? They were driven to their wits’ end, their little store began to run out, and they counted out their last few pence almost as men sell their lives. Ah, those were wilderness days indeed! So, also, were those weeks which we spent upon a bed of sickness, when at night we cried, “Would God it were morning,” and when daylight came the garish sun fatigued us, and we wished it were evening that we might sleep again. Perhaps neither of these were our particular trial, but we were distracted with many cares,, and knew not on whom to depend for advice; we could not see our way; the thread of our life was a tangled skein, and we were sore perplexed in the attempt to unravel it. Often we held our poor head with both our hands, and felt as if we should lose our reason if fresh distractions assailed us. It was a land of great drought, a wilderness infested with serpents and scorpions. Do not let us forget that we traversed that desert road. Surely it is not difficult for us to refresh our memories upon that subject, for we usually retain a vivid recollection of our sorrows, and that vivid recollection I would now make use of to cause the past to live again before you.

The good point about those times was the fact that you did think of God. Why, then you went to him for every meal, and depended upon him from hour to hour as much as the Israelites depended upon him for the daily manna. The crust was hard but it was sweet, for the Lord gave it. Do you not recollect when everything in business seemed as if it must go to pieces: one large house failed on the one side, and another firm tottered at the other; your own case was hazardous, it seemed the turn of a hair whether you would be bankrupt or not? Ah, you remember it now, and you acknowledge that then you turned to God in real earnest, for you had nowhere else to turn. What times of prayer you had then! How sweet was that passage of Scripture which came like a prophecy to your heart! How you prized the prayers of God’s people who cried to the Lord for you! Or was it sickness which tried you? Ah, then you remember how you turned your face to the wall, and like Hezekiah you sought the Lord with tears, pleading to be raised up again. The bitterness of pain made you cry, “My Father, help, strengthen, and relieve me.” Those were times when you felt that you could not live without God. If there had been no God to go to you would have been driven to desperation. So though you knew him not as you would wish to know him, yet there was a God to you just as there was a God to Israel when the chosen tribes went through the wilderness and saw his glorious marchings in the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by might.

God was manifest to your spirit then; ay, and what is better, he knew you. How beautiful are the words, “I did know thee in the wilderness, in the land of great drought.” He was not ashamed to acknowledge you then, and to have dealings with you. Those poor prayers of yours, which you would not have prayed at all if it had not been for your stern necessity, were, nevertheless, answered by him, and he heard you, and comforted you in a very wonderful way. Looking back you can see how he delivered you. It is true no manna dropped from heaven, yet your daily bread was given and you wondered, and felt as thankful as if it had fallen from the skies. It is true no rock of flint gave forth a stream for you to drink, and yet help came from people from whom you expected it as little as you would hope to see a fountain leap from a flinty rock. Somehow by the hand of the Lord you were sustained in trouble, and ultimately delivered out of it. The scene is marvellous in retrospect, and unless you believed that God’s hand was in it, it would remain to you a perfect riddle; you feel that the only way of explaining your life is to believe in the everlasting hand of the Almighty. He succoured you, and your losses turned to gains. The burden which you thought would crush you was readily carried. The draught which was thought to be deadly turned out to be medicinal. You have now left the famine of the wilderness for plenty and ease; you have all that heart can wish, and your mouth is satisfied with good things; do not, however, forget for a moment how the Lord did know you in the wilderness, in the land of great drought.

Looking back upon that time, you see nothing that you can now boast of, because it was not so much that you did know God as that he did know you. You did pray and did believe after a sort, but it was very poor praying and very weak believing, yet the mercy of the Lord was great, and he did know you. He knew your whereabouts, he knew your temptations, he knew your weaknesses, he knew your wants; ay, and he knew how to meet the time of your need to the very tick of the clock. If he had waited five minutes later in relieving you it would have been too late, but he was punctual in his tenderness. He never is before his time: he never is too late. He helped you marvellously, though you were ready to faint at one time, and at other times were fall of worldliness, murmuring, and rebellion. In looking back you feel compelled to say, “He knew me in the land of drought, but as for me even then I walked not faithfully before him, but there were wanderings of heart, even as in the case of Israel, who made a calf at Horeb and bowed before it, defiling even that holy place, the mountain of the Lord, where Jehovah had revealed himself.”

The Lord knew us, blessed be his name, when we were in a desert land, in the howling wilderness, and his knowledge showed itself in practical help. Now, brethren and sisters, have you forgotten the lovingkindness of the Lord in the cloudy and dark day? If you have, he has not. Often in Scripture the Lord speaks of Israel’s early days. He says, “I remember thee, the love of thine espousals when thou wentest after me into the wilderness:” as much as to say, “I recollect you when you were a young Christian, and how you were willing to suffer the loss of all things for my name’s sake. I remember when you were poor and blessed my name for every morsel of bread which I gave you. I recollect when you lived in the poor little cottage in the back street, and how you cried unto me for help in your deep poverty, and praised me with tears standing in your eyes when your bread and your water were handed out to you.” The Lord remembers a thousand things which we forget. The receiver seldom remembers the gift so long as the giver does. Ingratitude is a grievous fault, but it is sadly common, and forgetfulness grows out of it. Yet it seems inevitable that the doer of kindness should have a better memory than the receiver of it. Our children forget what we did for them when they were little; but the mother cannot fail to remember all she suffered for her babe, neither does she forget the anxiety and care with which in her tenderness she brought her child through its varied sicknesses. The Lord remembers all that he has done for us, and he now by the word of his servant recalls it to our thoughts, saying, “I did know thee in the wilderness, in the land of great drought.” Now, therefore, let us remember it also.

Assuredly to have received special mercy from God in time of sorrow should bind us with cords of gratitude. Do we not feel the force of the obligation? I will not delay you even with a word upon that subject, because your pure minds need but to be stirred up by way of remembrance, and you will be filled with thankfulness to the Lord, who helped you so graciously. Should it not also lead us to great humility when we recollect what we were? How dare we be proud?-we whom God lifted from the dunghill? He made David a king, but he reminded him of the time when he followed the ewes great with young, to pick up their lambs, like any other common shepherd boy. What if he did become great in Israel, yet once the sum total of his possessions was a staff, a wallet, and a sling, Some of us had no more when we began life. This should make us humble, and it will be well to mingle the humility and the gratitude together, and sing like Hannah of old: “The Lord maketh poor, and maketh rich: he bringeth low, and lifteth up. He raiseth up the poor out of the dust, and lifteth up the beggar from the dunghill, to set them among princes, and to make them inherit the throne of glory: for the pillars of the earth are the Lord’s, and he hath set the world upon them.”

All this I bring before you now, my brethren, and I could wish that, as with the wand of a magician, I could make the past march before your very eyes. Then were the days of scanty bread but abundant thankfulness; of few changes of raiment, but many cries unto the Lord, of little gold but much grace, of small incomes but large outgoings of praise and zeal. Then you drank not the wine of indulgence, nor anointed yourselves with the oil of luxury, but yet the Lord knew you, and made your spirit glad. Necessity often drove you to your knees in prayer, and prompt answers turned your hearts to praise, and thus your soul was refreshed. Let it not now be said, “Of the rock that begat thee thou art unmindful, and hast forgotten God that formed thee.”

II. We must now enter upon a sadder subject, and, with the memories of adversity fresh upon us, consider The Tendencies Of Prosperity. I hope, beloved friends, that many of you have, through divine grace, proved superior to these tendencies, and have been able to swim against the stream: if so, you will beyond all others be aware that such tendencies exist, for you have had to resist them with no small effort. I fear, on the other hand, that I should be a flatterer if I professed to hope that all of you have so escaped. In so large a number of professed Christians as we have here, we dare not hope that all have escaped unhurt from the furnace of worldly prosperity. At least the smell of the fire lingers upon some of us. Let us with much searching of heart look to the text, and then judge ourselves; and the more so if Providence has dealt bountifully with us.

We read in our text, “According to their pasture, so were they filled;” that is to say, the Israelites became earthly-minded. They were filled according to their pasture, and not according to their God. They satisfied themselves with temporal good, and asked for nothing more. They lived upon their possessions, not above them. They made a God of their goods; they filled their desires and their affections with the good things of this life, and knew nothing of the fullness of God. They entered into Canaan, where they ate the fat and drank the sweet, and there they settled down, content without the higher blessings of grace. They did not want their God now, for now they were neither dependent on the manna nor on the stream which leaped from the rock. If God had been their pasture it would have been well to have been filled according to their pasture; but foolishly they tried to live on bread alone, and the word of God was despised. Alas, this is an evil into which many fall. They increase in riches and they set their hearts upon them.

Permit me, dear friends, to recall your hearts to your first love, and to the highest and best things. Know you not that God usually gives. the most of earthly wealth to those for whom he has no love? Those who are masters of earth’s treasures are seldom the favourites of heaven. It is a wonder when an Ethiopian treasurer is baptized, or a Joseph of Arimathea confesses himself a disciple of Jesus. Gold and the gospel usually go two different ways. Those who roll in wealth seldom rest in God. How many among the princes of the earth are also heirs of heaven? Is it not true that not many of the great men after the flesh are chosen? Worldly possessions are evidently lightly esteemed of God, for he gives little of them to his children, and the most of them he shoots out at the feet of worldlings, as men cast husks in plenty into the trough for swine. Do not, therefore, set a high price on that which the Lord lightly esteems. Your Lord and Master had none of the world’s goods, Jesus had not where to lay his head; do not, therefore, covet what he despised.

Remember, again, that the quality of earthly things is very inferior, and altogether unworthy of the love of an immortal soul. What is there in broad acres to satisfy the heart? What is there in bonds, and mortgages, amid debentures, and gold, and silver to stay a soul when it fainteth, or to make a spirit rejoice when it is heavy? Earthly gear hath its uses, advantages, and benefits, otherwise we could not ask you to be thankful for it. Wealth is a thing to be grateful for, since it may be turned to admirable account for God’s glory, but the tendency will be for you to think too much of it, and if you do I would remind you that you are coming down from the position which a Christian ought to occupy, and are acting like a man of the world who has his portion in this life. A child of God should continually say, “Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee.” It will never do for you to dote upon your property. What! are you going to dethrone your God, and set up wealth in his place? Then in what do you differ from the Israelites, who bowed before a calf of gold, and said, “These be thy gods, O Israel”? Far be it from us to sin in that fashion, but let us love the Lord for his mercies, and the more we have of them the more let us be devoted to his fear.

Recollect, again, that earthly things ought not to be too highly esteemed, for they may vanish from our sight. How many instances of this have happened around us of late! The Lord have pity upon the many who have had grievously to suffer by the misconduct of others. Truly in their case riches have taken to themselves wings, and those who ought to have held the birds have been among the first to cause their flight. Hundreds were yesterday in comfortable circumstances, and are to-day deprived of all, and know not where the matter will end. You perhaps say, “The like could not happen to me. I have no shares in a bank. My liabilities are all limited; I cannot lose my property.” How do you know? No man till his last hour is beyond the reach of those calamities which are common to men. There was never a garment yet which moth could not eat, or time devour; nor is there gold or silver in human coffer which the thief could not steal somehow or other, despite iron safes, legal documents, sound investments, and experienced prudence. Riches are but as the mist of the morning, or the smoke from the chimney. They will certainly perish in the using, take care that you do not perish with them.

Once more, recollect that even if wealth does not fly away you may soon lose all power to enjoy it. What is the value of a thousand a year to a man who is paralysed? To one who lies upon his back from morning till night, of what use is the park and the estate which he cannot see? To one who has to be confined to his chamber, of what avail is it that he has the means of travelling round the world? The Lord can take away from a man his taste, and of what use are his dainties? his eyesight, and of what value are his works of art? his hearing, and of what avail are the daughters of music? The Lord can leave us the apparent blessing, and yet the soul of it may have gone with the power to enjoy it. Moreover, how soon must you leave these temporal comforts! The day must come when you must bid farewell to house and garden, and children and friends, and all that you possess, and “Earth to earth, dust to dust, ashes to ashes,” must be the end of you as well as of the poorest man that ever begged his bread. Do not, therefore, set your heart upon these toys, nor let your mind be filled by them, for if you do you have already met with one of the most serious of the evils which haunt a successful life.

The next peril is that of greediness, for, according to the text, these people were filled twice. “According to their pasture, so were they filled; they were filled.” Their fullness is twice mentioned. They were not satisfied with being filled; they must be filled again. What numbers of persons there are who, when they were in their low estate, thought if they could ever amass a certain sum they would be perfectly satisfied; but when they reached that point, they laughed at their own folly. “Oh,” they said, “if I might double, or treble, or multiply it tenfold, then I should reckon that I had enough of this world, and I would begin to think of eternal matters.” But even when they reach that tenfold height they are not one whit more content. Still they long for something more. They are like men who drink sea water to quench their thirst; they become more thirsty still. The danger of worldly wealth lies in this, that a man at last gets to be nothing better than an ox yoked to the plough, clogged with thick clay. Like a horse harnessed to a chariot, the more there is attached to such a man the heavier his toil. Instead of gaining greater enjoyment many a rich man only accumulates heavier care as his fortune increases. In the case of those in the text, they cared only for themselves; “they were filled,-they were filled.” They never thought of consecrating their substance to God. No, it was retained for filling themselves. They thought not of blessing the name of God for enabling them to get wealth, nor of making every mercy to be a wing upon which the grateful soul would soar on high. No, their whole mind was given to filling and being filled again. There was no living above it all, but they lived for it, they lived by it, and lived under it, like moles burrowing in the earth. “They were filled, they were filled.” Alas, for those who can be filled with this poor earth: they will have no portion in the world to come, for they have received their good things, and their turn will come to dwell with that rich man of whom our Lord spake, who went from faring sumptuously to suffering eternally.

What came next? They were filled, and their heart was exalted. This is that of which the Lord warned his people in Deuteronomy 8:12-14. “Lest when thou hast eaten and art full, and hast built goodly houses, and dwelt therein; and when thy herds and thy flocks multiply, and thy silver and thy gold is multiplied, and all that thou hast ms multiplied; then thine heart be lifted up, and thou forget the Lord thy God, which brought thee forth out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage.” As for those in our text, they were rich, and felt that they were somebodies. When they were in the wilderness, in the land of drought, their God was everything; but now they were filled, and they were swollen with self-importance. Their bags were full, their barns were bursting, their lands were far-reaching, and therefore they thought highly of themselves; as if a man could be measured by the rood, or reckoned up in pounds, shillings, and pence. “A man’s a man for a’ that,” said the homely poet, when he sang of those who have neither rank nor money. Many men are swollen by the meat they feed on, poisoned by their mercies, till they are bloated with arrogance, and begin to despise their fellows. Children of God whom they were once pleased to associate with are now “so very vulgar.” They despise those who are much better than themselves, more prayerful and more holy, and they leave their company to go into society; as if the children of God were not the best society under heaven. Alas, some professors choose their company not by rules of grace, but of pelf; the saints have not so much corn and wine and oil, nor can they ride so high a horse as the prosperous sinners, and therefore the base-born professor turns his back on them. Poor Lazarus, whom once they would have honored, now lies at their gate full of sores for dogs to lick. They value not the people of God for their character; but because they are poor they speak lightly of them.

When the deceitfulness of riches works its way there is no longer any walking humbly with God, nor simple dependence upon him. There is little or no prizing of grace, and seeking after it as for hid treasure, for are not the barns full, and is not that enough? And now the spiritual worship of God becomes too plain and commonplace, and something more pleasing to the eye, and to the flesh, must be sought after. The Israelite only saw the temple on certain days of the year, and then the main sight was a sacrifice, and so the great ones asked for something more pompous, more impressive to the eye: hence came the oxen set up at Daniel and Bethel, with services most pompous and performances most abundant. To-day, also, the simple worshippers of the unseen God carry on a worship which is too bare and unadorned, there is nothing aesthetic about it, and therefore the great ones must go off to the national religion, even as Ephraim did in the days of Jeroboam, for there they can have dainty dresses, fine music, the smell of incense, and all that can charm the taste. Besides, do not all the rest of the wealthy of the land go that way? Hence we see men forsake their former associates, having men’s persons in admiration because of advantage. Their hearts are exalted by their prosperity, and God and his people and his truth may all go. Better far that riches had never come near them. Examples are close at hand.

And what next? It is further written, “They have forgotten me.” Their God was forgotten, even him to whom they owed all things Ah, they would talk much about him in their humble days, when they met with those that thought upon his name, but now there is not a word for God. Then they spake often one to another, but now God is seldom mentioned, for he is not much known in fashionable society. The Lord Jesus is seldom spoken of, for how should the carpenter’s Son be the theme of polite conversation? I am not saying that this is the case with any one here present, but as this is the tendency of prosperity, I should not wonder if some of you are yielding to it. Therefore, arouse yourselves to escape the evil, no forget that God alone is fullness, and that outward possessions are emptiness apart from him. The tendency of the outward possession is to make us forget that it is only the shell, and God must be the kernel of all true comfort and delight. Prosperous men are apt to forget that they will find out very soon how much they need the Lord. While the prosperous man is looking over his accounts and storing up his gold he may dare to forget God, but when he comes to himself and repents of his worldliness he will have to creep to Jesus’ feet like the poorest servant on. his farm. If saved from his idolatry of money he will have to cry unto the Lord to manifest himself to him, even as he did when he could scarcely find himself with bread from day to day. It will not do, my brethren, for us to exalt ourselves and act as if we were independent of God, for our very being rests on his will, and we are nothings and nobodies after all. It would not do for the successful preacher to pride himself upon the number of his congregation or upon the power which he wields over men’s minds, for he is nothing but a poor sinner after all, spared through the compassion of God and pardoned through Jesus Christ, even as others. Humble gratitude is the only safe and right and happy condition of the mind in prosperity. Now, have you not seen, even if you have not felt it in yourself, that many persons who prosper in the world forsake religion altogether? While they were in humble circumstances one had hope of them, but now they seem quite out of reach of sanctifying influences. Have you not seen others grow cold and worldly? I will not ask if you have felt this declension in yourselves, but have you not noticed it in others? They used to be at every prayer meeting, but now they cannot find time: they worked hard in the Sunday-school, but now their energies are overtaxed with doing nothing. Now that they have much more opportunity of serving God, and more to serve him with than they ever had before, they do less than in their humbler times. Do you not know some-may it not he so with yourselves-who do not walk anything like so near to God now as they used to do? Barefooted they kept the way of the Lord, but in velvet slippers they go astray. Richer times have come for them, but they are not happier, because they are further off from God. Is not this very grievous, and will it not provoke the Lord?

I will put to you one question. Can you find in the Word of God one instance of a man of God who was injured by his troubles? Do they not all, like Job, come out of the furnace of affliction much profited thereby? Let me then ask another question. Is it not almost a rule with us, though it ought not to be, that our prosperity is our loss? David, when hunted like a partridge on the mountains, glorified the Lord his God; but David, when he abode in a palace, sinned again and again, so that the Holy Spirit draws a distinction between his earlier and his latter life, for it is written. of Jehoshaphat that he walked before the Lord in the first ways of his father David. Solomon, the wisest man that ever lived, was not proof against prosperity. He had all he could desire, and then his earthly loves stole away his heart. Take one case, which will give both sides of the matter. See Hezekiah with Sennacherib’s letter spreading it before the Lord in faith: he is then an example in history, a man of God to be envied for his prayer of faith. He is far fallen when his realm is at peace and his riches are multiplied, for he becomes vainglorious and displays to the Babylonian ambassadors all his treasures, and provokes the Lord his God. Brethren and sisters, I wish you great prosperity, but far more do I wish you great grace, that you may carry a full cup with a steady hand. There is need to pray for men who are going up hill, lest they fall upon their high places. In our low estate grace will surely be given, for the Lord pities us, but when we are rising we have double need to pray, for God resisteth the proud.

III. Under the third head we must consider Visitations Of Retribution. Ingratitude to God, of the kind I have described, is sure to bring with it, in the case of the believer, heavy chastisements, and in the case of the unbeliever, sure and overwhelming punishments.

Now please notice what the Lord says, “Therefore I will be unto them as a lion; as a leopard by the way will I observe them: I will meet them as a bear that is bereaved of her whelps, and will rend the caul of their heart, and there will I devour them like a lion: the wild beast shall tear them.” In the case of men who have prospered in this world and turned aside from God it often happens that fierce trials come upon them, such as are here described under the figure of a lion, a leopard, a bear, and a wild beast. In. the case of the Israelitish nation this prophecy was singularly fulfilled, for, according to the seventh chapter of the book of Daniel, nations comparable to the lion, the leopard, the bear, and the wild beast. namely the Babylonian, the Persian, the Greek, and the Roman empires all dealt with the Jews and brought them into subjection. I do not lay any stress upon that, as though I were interpreting prophecy, but it is very singular that those four beasts mentioned here should be the very four afterwards mentioned in the visions of Daniel. I rather take the metaphorical meaning. We are here taught that as God visited his people Israel with stroke upon stroke, and made his great wrath to be known, so has he often done against backsliding believers. God is a shepherd to his people to guard them from the lion, but when his people depart from him he himself becomes as a lion to them. I have seen rich professors with God against them. I have seen the man multiplying wealth, and multiplying sorrow. His sons have grown up to vice and profligacy, using their father’s wealth to indulge their passions, till the old man has been ready to tear his hair in anguish. His own children have been as lions to him. Have we never known such persons too, living entirely to themselves, become the victims of wretched manias which have made them believe themselves to be poor while surrounded with luxury? Such despondencies are worse than a bear robbed of her whelps. Have we not known millionaires haunted with the dread of sudden disaster, as though God would leap upon them like a leopard? Men have been struck down with depression of spirit, so that they could not rejoice in anything: they seemed to be torn by their own thoughts, as by wild beasts, and yet they had more than heart could wish. When the Lord had multiplied mercies around them they had not used them for his glory, but only filled themselves with them, and therefore the Lord visited them in anger for their selfish ingratitude. It is often a great mercy when God sends these heavy trials, for if they befall his own children, it is by such trials that he drives them home to himself; the lions roar them back to Christ, and the leopards and the bears drive them home to their old standing, so that they return unto their Savior, and Jesus is again precious to them.

But sometimes these wild beasts are of a spiritual character. Doubts, fears, horrors come forth from the Lord against the backsliders in heart. The Lord, who was all gentleness, and kindness, and love to them, now seems to have become their enemy. This is sadly the case with any of us when we forget God. We turn to his word, and it threatens us: we get to our knees, and we cannot pray; thoughts of our past sins haunt us; we have no peace with God, no rest day nor night: God lets loose all the wild beasts upon us, and we cannot escape, they tear and rend us. Ah, he knew us in the laud of drought, and then he multiplied our mercies; but we went away from him, and became cold of heart, and it is, therefore, no wonder that now he withdraws his consolations, and sends furious convictions to hunt us down. It is God’s way of saving us, making our very destructions to be the means of our salvation, by driving us out of ourselves. Our God will not suffer his people to build their nests here. You may be sure of that. We are not of the earth, neither will our heavenly Father suffer us to be filled with the earth. If he has ordained us to eternal life by Christ Jesus he will drive us out of the haunts of deadly selfishness by lions, by bears, by leopards, by wild beasts, or by some means or other, and he will fetch us to himself.

Did you notice one passage here in this threatening, where the Lord speaks of the trouble as coming terribly home to his people’s hearts? “I will rend the caul of their heart.” That is to say, he will rend that which encloses and shuts up their heart. When a man loves the world it shuts up his heart, blocks it all round, and leaves no room for God. It is a great blessing when God rends the caul of a man’s heart and opens it once again to the entrance of the truth. It is a sweet thing to have the heart opened as Lydia’s was, by the sacred latch-key of love; but when we forget God, and backslide, the keyhole is stuffed up, and the latch-key will not act. The heart suffers from fatty degeneration, until it might almost be said of the children of God even as of worldlings, “Their heart is as fat as grease.” There is no getting at them, no making them feel: they have but little life, little love, little zeal for God, therefore the Lord sends these lions, leopards and bears, and they rage and rend until at last they tear the caul of the heart. Then the man undergoes a death of despair; but what a mercy it is that the Lord raises him up by-and-by to the life of hope, even as a little further down in this chapter we read that precious word, “I will ransom them from the power of the grave; I will redeem them from death.” The Lord brings up his poor dead child again and gives him life and joy, and then he truly lives in the service of his Lord.

Now, sinners, if, after God has been very gracious to you, you will not learn the lesson of his love, but refuse Christ, you will be given up to destruction, and as for lions, leopards, bears, or worms that never die, and fires that never can be quenched, these are only faint emblems of the woe which will come upon you because you have refused the Lord. As for you who are believers, he will not utterly destroy you; but if you turn aside from him you will make a rod for yourselves, and let loose bears and lions which the Lord would have kept caged if you had walked near to him. “When a man’s ways please the Lord be maketh his enemies to be at peace with him;” so that the beasts of the field and the stones of the field are at league with the man that is living near to God. But if you walk contrary to him he will walk contrary to you, and he will call for his lions and beasts of prey, that they may trouble and molest you. He will give you water, that you die not for thirst, but it shall be the water of bitterness; and he will give you bread to eat, that you faint not, but it shall be mingled with ashes, till your soul shall abhor its ingratitude and turn unto the Lord.

If I had time I should have spoken upon a fourth head, but I can do no more than say that close upon the text there a — Intimations Of Mercy. See what intimations of mercy there are in the next verse. “O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself, but in me is thine help.” There is help for the wanderer, and help for the man who has grieved his God. Read also these words, with which the next chapter opens, and may the Holy Ghost help you to carry them out, “O Israel, return unto the Lord thy God; for thou hast fallen by thine iniquity. Take with you words, and turn to the Lord: say unto him, Take away all iniquity, and receive us graciously: so will we render the calves of our lips. I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely: for mine anger is turned away from him.” The Lord fulfill that word for Jesus’ sake. Amen.

Hosea 13:6: Forgetting God

NO. 2975
A SERMON PUBLISHED ON THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 15TH, 1906,
DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,
AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.
ON THURSDAY MORNING, SEP. 9TH, 1876.

“Therefore have they forgotten me.” — Hosea 13:6.

Our text reminds us that God does take notice of what men do, or of what they do not do. Here he complains, — and there is a kind of mournful plaintiveness about his words, — “Therefore have they forgotten me.” It is not a matter of indifference to God whether men remember him or not. It seemed to be a subject of surprise to David that God should think of man, for he wrote, “When I consider thy heavens, like work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars which thou hast ordained; what is man, that thou art mindful of him? “Yet God is mindful of man, and it grieves him that man is not mindful of him. It would not disturb our minds if one tiny emmet should forget or ignore us; yet we did not create it, and we have not the claims upon it that God has upon us. Yet, little though we are, and so insignificant that the emmet itself is a great thing in comparison with us if we reckon what we are in comparison with God, — it seems that he does want us to remember him, to think of him, and to trust, and love, and love him; and when we do not, he is vexed and grieved. At least, speaking after the manner of men, we are taught to believe that it pains him at his heart, so that he cries out by the mouth of his servant the prophet, “They have forgotten me, — their Maker, their best Friend, and their greatest Helper.”

I am afraid, dear friends, that the accusation in our text may be brought against a very large number of us. Certainly, it can be laid to the charge of all those who have lived without thinking of God, and who have never turned to him with repentance and faith, and who, consequently, are still strangers to him. How many such people there are, God alone can accurately compute; the great mass of our fellow-creatures would come under that category. But, worst of all, among the Lord’s own people there are, alas! some against whom this accusation can be brought. They have forgotten their God; — not absolutely, so as to be utterly and altogether like the thoughtless sinner, yet very sadly and grievously, so that God himself complains of them, “They have forgotten me.” For, mark you, if God observes what ordinary men do, much more does he take notice of what his own people do. An unkind word from a stranger may have a very slight effect upon us; but if such a word should come from the lips of one whom we love, it would cut us to the quick. We could put up with a thousand things from those who are mere acquaintances; but from a beloved child, or from the wife of our bosom, such a thing would be very hard to bear. Remember, O Christian, that ancient declaration, “The Lord thy God is a jealous God.” Because he loves us so much, he is in that very proportion jealous; for the greatest jealousy grows out of limitless love; and the Lord our God, who bought us with the heart’s blood of His dear Son, counts us so dear to him that a wandering thought in our mind becomes a crime against him, and the giving up of any part of our heart to love of the world, or of self, or sin, or Satan, or any other of his rivals, becomes to him a cause of grief and sadness. If there are any children of God here, — and I fear there may be many, — who have grown cold in heart, and who have wandered from the Lord, I hope the text will come like a lament from him who hung upon the cross of Calvary, “Therefore have they forgotten me. Therefore have they forgotten me.”

I. I am going to call your attention, first, to The Time When This Sin Was Committed. “Therefore,” says the Lord, “have they forgotten me.” When was that? If we ascertain that, we shall also find out when we ought to be most upon our guard against falling into a similar sin.

It appears, dear friends, to have been when the Israelites had come out of the wilderness into Canaan — when they had escaped from troubles, and had come into an easy condition, for so the context reads: “I did know thee in the wilderness, in the land of great drought. According to their pasture, so were they filled; they were filled, and their heart was exalted; therefore have they forgotten me.” It is a very sorrowful fact that, in this case, the greater God’s goodness was to his people, the less was their gratitude to him; just in proportion as he was kind to them, they were cold to him. These people had been delivered from excessive toil. In Egypt, they had been a nation of slaves; and in the wilderness, they had been for forty years pilgrims with weary feet. They seldom tarried long in any place, but backwards and forwards across that “waste howling wilderness” they marched almost continuously, and concerning all that time God says, “I did know thee in the wilderness.” He knew them, morning by morning, as the manna fell. He knew them when the quails came on swift wings to bring them flesh to eat. He knew them when the morning and evening lambs were offered in sacrifice for them, sinners as they were, all the while; they were in the wilderness, and he says, “I did know thee then.” So, brethren, it has happened to some men that, when they have had hard times, long hours, and stern labor, they have managed to be up in the morning early to get a quiet season of communion with God; and, though they scarcely could have been thought capable of doing it, for they worked so hard, yet they could find leisure to teach a few children in the Sunday-school, or to distribute tracts, or to speak a word for Christ at an open-air service. They had very hard bondage in their daily occupation; yet, whenever there was a week-night service, they always managed to get there. They were very apt to fall asleep when they sat down in the pew, out of sheer weariness because they had been toiling so hard during the day; still, they said that half a loaf was better than no bread, and they were glad to get a message from any of the Lord’s servants in those trying days.

But, dear friends, you remember that, in due time, the children of Israel came to Canaan. Then there was no more marching to and fro in the wilderness for them. They found houses built ready for them to occupy, and they could sit every man under his own vine, and under his own fig tree; and then it was that the Lord said, “They were filled, and their heart was exalted; therefore have they forgotten me.” It is just the same with the man who used to come to the house of God, Sabbath-days and week-nights, though he was sorely weary with his heavy work. He has what men call “an easy berth” now, and has very little to do; so, being no longer a poor galley-slave, tugging at the oar, you might have thought, that he would have given the more time to God’s service, and have become one of the most industrious Christians living; instead of which, he does not do as much now as he used to do with the legends of time which his hard toil allowed him. Ah, brethren! when you get into smooth and easy places, then is the time when you should be most anxious, lest of you, as of the Israelites, the Lord should have to say, “Therefore have they forgotten me. I would fain wish for every one of you that you may be able to earn your daily bread without any excessive labor. I would that every man, who has to toil beyond due and reasonable hours, were delivered from such semi-slavery; yet do I know that there are many who make an ill use of any leisure that they get, and some who are not nearly as fervent in the cause of God, now that they have leisure, as they used to be before they were so privileged.

These Israelites, also, were now delivered from the pressure of urgent want. At the very beginning of their wilderness journey, they had to go for three days without water. “And when they came to Marah, they could not drink of the waters of Marah, for they were bitter.” They cried to Moses, “What shall we drink?” and he cried to the Lord, and soon the bitter waters were made sweet. Before long, they had eaten up all that they had brought with them out of the land of Egypt, and they murmured again, and then the Lord gave them a daily supply of manna; their bread dropped from the sky morning by morning. But now that they have got into Canaan, that have broad fields that are very fruitful, they reap abundant harvest, their barns are full to bursting, and the hillsides are clad with vines, and olive trees, and fig trees, and all manner of dainties. Instead of having to gather one day’s food at a time, they have many months’ supplies laid up in store. Some of them became very rich; but, alas! it was of them that the Lord had to say, “According to their pasture, so were they filled; ....therefore have they forgotten me.” You must have, known or heard of men and women, who have loved the Lord when in poverty, — or, at least, who have seemed to do so, and who were very fervent and active while they had to look up to the Lord from day to day, and pray, “Give us this day our daily bread;” but, in the word of God’s providential dealings, they have been lifted up into another station in life. You would naturally have supposed that they would have loved the Lord more, and have done more for his cause, and laid themselves out with greater alacrity for his service; but, instead of that, it has been the very reverse with them. When they were financially poor, they were spiritually rich; but now that they are financially rich, they are spiritually poor. As they have gone up temporally, they have gone down spiritually. Their barn has become full, but their heart has become empty. Their wine press has overflowed, but the joy of the Lord has departed from them. It is a sad, sad thing wherever this happens; some of us know that it often happens. Let it not be so with any of you, beloved.

Then, again, these Israelites had become very self-indulgent. They enjoyed themselves, and lived only for pleasure; and they despised everybody who would not or could not do the same. Being “rich, and increased with goods,” they looked down upon those who were not rich; and, worse than that, they began to forget their God. O my brothers and sisters, I have often looked upon they who have been in sore trouble, and I have wished that, by some magic touch, I could lift the daughters of sorrow out of their sad state, but I have lived long enough to feel that, if I could do it, I would deliberately stay my hand until I had consulted with infinite wisdom to know whether it would be for their good or not. If it were in my power to lift the cross from every brother and every sister’s shoulders here, and to give all of you your heart’s desire, I would not do so, however much I might feel prompted to do it. As I see how often the plant, that bloomed in the shade, is burnt up in the sunshine, — and how some natures have never yielded the sweetest perfume except in grief’s sad dripping-well, — when I perceive that some of God’s saints never seem to honor him when they are lifted up into high places, — I feel that you and I had better be satisfied to let the Lord put his people wherever he pleases, and keep them on “short commons” sometimes, and even chasten them every morning, as the psalmist says was done to him. Perhaps, some of them, if the Lord did not make them cry every morning, would make themselves cry twice as much before night; and if he did not afflict them, they would very soon bring far worse afflictions upon themselves by falling into some great sin. I think I know the reason why God does not trust some of us with the bright eye and the elastic step which he bestows upon others. I think I can see why he does not give some of us more prominent positions in his Church, and greater influence amongst the works for him. I think I can tell why that sister is lame, and that brother is blind; why that one hangs her harp upon the willows, and that other toils amid continual poverty. It is because God will not risk all his ships on the roughest sea. He has constructed some of his vessels so that they can stand the storm, and these he sends away into the thick of the tempest; but his little ships he keeps nearer the shore. Some of his seamen see less of his wonders in the deep because they are not able to bear the sight as others can. I think it is so; and, certainly, this is true, — that seasons of prosperity, of any sort, are seasons of great trial to Christians. According to our text, it was at the time of their prosperity that the Israelites forgot their God.

II. Now, secondly, let me indicate The Progress Of This Evil Whenever It Happens To A Man.

It has happened that some men have lived all their lives forgetting God. It may be that some of you, who are here at this service, have never really thought of God, you have forgotten all about him. A gentleman was walking down a country road, one Sabbath morning, and he met a man with a cartload of hay; he was asked by the man who was driving the cart whether he had seen two lads on in front. “Yes,” said the gentleman, “I have, and I think they are the boys of a father with a short memory, are they not?” He said he did not know whether it was so or not, but they were his lads. “Well,” said the gentleman, “I thought that you were their father, and that you had a short memory, for you do not seem to have recollected that there is a text of Scripture which says, ’Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.’” That short memory concerning the Sabbath day affects a great many people concerning everything else that is good. Some of you, I fear, have such short memories that you have never even recollected the God who made you. You have eaten just as the cattle eat, and you have drunk as they drink; but you have never blessed the Giver of the unnumbered mercies that you have received, any more than the cattle have done. Some of you go on from morning to night without any recognition of God. There are hundreds of men who might be compared — as Rowland Hill did once compare them, — to hogs under an oak. “They eat the acorns,” said he, “but they never look up, and thank the oak.” They live in this world, and feed upon the bounties which God has provided for them, yet they have no thought of him. It is his air that they breathe, and it is by his power that they breathe-out air; they could not exist for a single moment if it were not for him; yet he is not in all their thoughts. If God were blotted out of the universe, — if such a thing could be, that he should no longer exist, but that they could still exist, they certainly would not be grieved; possibly, they would feel all the easier in their mind because there would be no judgment to come, and no punishment for all their ill-doing. Ah, my friend! you must be in a very bad plight if you think you can get on better without God than with him. If your boy were to say concerning you, “I wish I might never see my father again;” — if that little child, who eats at your table every day, whom you clothed but the other day with new garments, — if he were to say, “I never want to speak to my father again; I wish he were dead!” — there must be something radically wrong in that child, his morals must be thoroughly bad. Even if nobody has ever found him out in deceiving or lying, I am sure, from that one fact, that he is a bad boy. Now, my friend, even if I cannot point to any sinful act of yours, I am sure that there must be something very wrong with you if you have lived in this world all these years without thinking of God.

If I am invited to go and stay with a friend in the country, and I simply see his beautiful park and his fine gardens, and indoors I have all that I want in the way of refreshment during the day, and a comfortable bed at night, but my host never puts in an appearance, and I do not know whether he is anywhere about the premises, — I do not enjoy my visit. I came down to see him, so I cannot be content with seeing his park, and his gardens, and so on. I say to the servants, “Where is your master? I came down here to pay a visit to him, and I cannot find any pleasure here without I see him.” And, dear friends, I feel just like that with regard to my God. When I look at this beautiful world which he has made, — and it is a beautiful world, after all, let who will speak against it, — I always feel that I want to see him who made it. Even our lovely gardens, which seem to me to be a thousand times more beautiful than all the vineyards of the Continent, would give me no pleasure in looking at them unless I could always realize that God is there. The sea itself, — the wide and open sea, — what is it if there is no God to rule its waves, and to speak in its storms? I must see traces of God in everything that happens; but some of you have lived all this while, and God’s cry concerning you, — over hill and dale, up and down the street, in the house where you live, across the table at which you eat, and over the pillow on which you sleep, — is, “They have forgotten me. I have made them, and kept them alive, and blessed them in a thousand ways, yet they have forgotten me! — me, of whom they ought first to have thoughts, for it was essential with them that they should first have thought of me; and through not thinking of me they have bred within themselves all manner of evils.” O unconverted people, I wish you could put yourselves into God’s place for a few minutes, and just think how you would feel if others had treated you as you have treated him! Let the sharp arrows of conviction stick fast in your conscience as you realize that you have acted in a mean, dastardly, ungenerous, ungrateful way towards your God, — the tender, loving, gracious Creator, Preserver, and Friend of men.

But, now, turning to you Christian people, I want to ask of the progress of this evil in you. I will show you how it often works. When God prospers you in business, and takes away sickness, and removes cause of sorrow, it sometimes happens that the evil of forgetting God begins with an almost imperceptible alienation of heart from him. You do not notice it; you would be very grieved if you did; but your heart begins to grow cold, and the love to your Lord, that once burned in your soul, is not as fervent as it used to be, and this condition of spirit very speedily shows itself in increasing fondness for worldly things. To have riches may be a blessing to you; but for the riches to have you, must be a great curse to you. There are some, who have abundance of temporal things given to them, and they make a good use of them, so they may be thankful for them; but there are others, who are carried away by these temporal things, which thus become the source of all sorts of calamities. A man may have a fine house and a beautiful garden, and he may be thankful for them; so far, so good: but he may fall into the sin of making a heaven of that house and garden, and so they will be the cause of sin. He may be wealthy, and that will be a good thing if he uses his money aright; but, by-and-by, he may begin to feel that the one thing worth living for is to have money, and that will be an evil. If you have acquired a certain amount of money, and you feel that you are a person of importance simply because you have so much wealth, you are putting earthly things into the place which God alone should occupy. As old Master Brooks says, it is as when a husband, whose wife used to dote upon him, has given her rings, and chains, and other ornaments, and now that she has them, she dotes upon them, and forgets him. It is very sad when this is the case; and it is often so with some who profess to be the Lord’s. If we accept his gifts as tokens of love from him, and see him in them, than they are helpful, and not hurtful; but when we get thinking of them, and not of him, then they become mischievous to us.

This is an evil which continually grows; for this man, who is beginning to mind earthly things, keeps on indulging himself. He takes more of what he calls pleasure than he used to do; and, indulging himself thus, he gets into a wrong state for prayer, for searching the Bible, for attending the means of grace; and the more he enjoys this world, the less does he think of the next world. As the things that are seen eat like a canker into him, the things that are unseen seem to lose their power over him. If he still attends the place where he went aforetime to hear the gospel, he says that the minister does not preach as he used to do, and the singing is not as lively as it used to be. Other Christian people say that they cannot see any difference at all, but he can. You know, dear friends, what is very often the difference between one dinner and another. It is not the fault of the cook; it is the want of an appetite. Here are some brethren who have lost their spiritual appetite. They cannot eat this, and they cannot eat that, and they cannot eat the other. They have lost their appetite, that is the reason. “To the hungry soul every bitter thing is sweet,” says Solomon; but this man, who has prospered in the world, and has had much enjoyment in it, is now beginning to lose all relish even for those very spiritual things that were once the delight of his soul. So he begins to drop off coming to the house of God, and gradually declines, first a little in this way, and then in that. He has more money now than he used to have, so it takes him a longer time to count it. He has more business than he used to have, and it takes more time to look after it. He cannot come to week-night services; and if, on the Lord’s-day, for appearance sake, he does not cease going to the place of prayer, he carries his ledger with him in his carriage, — metaphorically, if not literally. There is many a man who comes into his pew with acres of land hanging to his boots; and there is many a woman who sits there in a fine new dress, — not only the one she has on, but the other one that is to be made up on Monday.

It is sad when worldly things then get into the soul, and come right into God’s house. Why, the preacher himself knows what it is to find a thousand distracting thoughts come to his mind while he is addressing you; and, therefore, he knows that they must come to your minds while you are listening to the Word of the Lord. Thus it happens that, in one thing after another, the love of God and his Word withers, and the love of the world grows. By-and-by, family prayer gets pushed into a corner, — very short, and not very sweet; and private prayer hardly knows where to find a place for the sole of its feet. Private prayer, as there are none but yourselves to note its observance, in a very convenient place for retrenchment. You want to save time, as you have so much to do, and therefore you snip off a piece here, and another piece there, and who but God is the wiser? You do not yourselves perceive any very great difference; for your conscience is getting seared. So, by degrees, a Christian, who is declining in spiritual things, gives up private prayer; — not altogether, perhaps, but the sweetness and the enjoyment of it depart as he trifles with it, instead of entering into the holy exercise with all his heart and soul.

In some professing Christians, this declension goes further still. At last, they give up all religious profession. I wonder whether there is any man here, who once declared, and probably believed, that he was a Christian, but who has now given up even the name of Christian. If so, my friend, one of two things is true concerning you, — either you never were converted at all, and so have been a mere professor; or else, if you ever were truly converted, you will have to come back again. As surely as ever the Lord looked upon you with an eye of love, you must come back to him; for, after he has once set his seal upon you, he cannot and will not let you go. Oh, that you would come back to him now! You will have to come back, poor wandering sheep, for you belong to the good Shepherd who will not lose one of his flock. Wayward as you are, he will have you with him; and if you will not come back to him when he calls you, he keeps some rough dogs that will worry you back; but back from the paths of sin you must come, and I pray God that you may come back right speedily, and so once more enjoy the blessings of peace with him. I sometimes pass persons, who used to sit in these pews, and who were, I thought, ardent Christians. Even now, some of them have respect for me; but I fear that they have none for my Master. If I get anywhere near them, they slink away, for fear I should speak to them. I wish they had as much anxiety about the grief they have caused my Lord as they have about any grief they may have caused me. May God grant, through his sovereign grace, that all of us, who have professed to be his, may be preserved, lest, — “When any turn from Zion’s way (Alas, what numbers do!)” — we also should turn away, as we shall certainly do unless his grace shall hold us fast!

III. Now, thirdly, and very briefly, a few words about The Peculiar Evil Of This Sad Condition: “They have forgotten me”

It is so grossly ungrateful that every Christian, who realizes that he is apt to slide into such a condition, should at once bestir himself, and watch against it. What! shall I love the Lord less because he gives me more? Shall I set the gifts, which his goodness bestows upon me, upon his throne, and let them be idols to deprive him of my heart’s love and worship? If I do this, surely I shall be worse than the brute beasts. God grant, dear brethren, that we may be ashamed of such a condition as this, and fly from it!

Remember that, if any of us do begin to set our hearts upon the things of this world, whatever we gain, we must be losers. The man who has scarcely a rag to cover him, but who delights in God, may be the beau ideal of a happy man; but the man who is robed in purple, and who calls an empire his own, but who has forgotten his God, is to me the model of misery mocked by majesty. God save you from being able to delight yourselves in anything but your God! May he put so much bitterness into every other cup that you will be compelled to take the cup of salvation, and calling upon the name of the Lord, to drink only of that! You will be dreadful and eternal losers, whatever else you gain, if you lose the Lord.

If you forget God, you who are indeed his children, — and I am speaking only to such people just now, — it must be a terrible thing for you to be led into a condition in which you forget your Heavenly Father. If there were a wife, who was very poor, but who, as long as she was poor, clung to her husband, and found all her delight in his love; but who, when they became rich, no longer cared for him, it would be wretched riches that could burn away her heart from him who ought to possess it all. If I love my brother, and find great comfort in fellowship with him, and I should suddenly get to be so great that I should not know my brother, what a miserable being I should be! Many a man does not know his own relations when he begins to get rich. He thinks he is somebody of importance, but really he is a big nobody, — a very great and dreadful nobody; and when a man, just because God prospers him, does not know Jesus Christ, his great elder Brother, and gets to be ashamed of mixing with God’s poor people who go to the little Ebenezer Chapel or of being seen with those poor commonplace sort of Christians who try to follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth, — he is a poor, poor specimen of a man, much less of a Christian man. God give us minds and hearts quickened by his grace, that will enable us to live above all such meanness as that!

A sad part of the wretchedness of this condition is that, it involves so much trifing with God. If we have forgotten God, dear brethren, we have forgotten the many deliverances we have had in the days that are past. We have forgotten the wiping away of our tears of sorrow. Worse still, we have forgotten the precious blood of Jesus, that spoke peace to our soul; and we have forgotten the Holy Ghost, who came into our hearts, and gave us joy and rest in Jesus Christ. And if we have forgotten God, we have forgotten his gracious promises which are yet to be fulfilled, and the glorious covenant of his grace, ordered in all things and sure, on which our hopes of heaven are based. We have also forgotten his claims upon us, — forgotten that we are his children, his beloved, his elect, his redeemed. We have forgotten as that, and we are living in such a condition that we are trifling even with his threatenings. He has threatened that he will chasten us, and we seem to make light of his threatenings, and to defy his chastisements. We must have got into a state that is piteous and lamentable to the last degree if we can live from day to day in forgetfulness of God.

IV. I will say no more about this sad decline, but finish my discourse by telling you How This Evil Can Be Cured.

If any of us, brethren and sisters in Christ, are suffering from this dreadful decline, it is a good help towards its being cured when we see the mischief of it. When a man has this sad condition pointed out to him, and the Spirit of God enables him to see it, that is a great help towards lifting him out of it. But I think that the best thing for us all to do is, just for the moment, to sink all differences, and not ask any questions about whether we are saints or sinners, — whether we ever did love the Lord, or whether we did not; and let us all go straight away to the cross, just as if we had never gone there before. By nature, and by practice too, we are all guilty, and we all deserve to be cast into hell, — the best of us as well as the worst. So, let us all go where the Savior carried the great load of sin upon himself, and bore the consequences, that he might set us free from it for ever. Let us look up to him, and, by faith, view the flowing of the blood from those many wounds that he received on our behalf. Let us look into that dear face of his, — the image of matchless misery and majesty combined; let us note the thorn-crown, and all the marks of ignominy and shame that cruel men put upon him. Let us hear him cry, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” and, as we see him die, let us believe in him again, or believe in him for the first time. My Savior, my Redeemer, wherever I may have wandered, I come back to thee. My soul believes in thee, trusts thee, hangs all her hopes for time and eternity upon thee; wilt thou not speak peace and pardon to my guilty spirit? Ah, if you come to him with such a confession and cry as this, you will get your love back again. The best place to get it back again is the place where it was born. It was born at the cross, and you will get it back again if you go to the cross, just as you went at the first, and stand there, with this as your soul’s confession of faith, —

“I the chief of sinners am,
But Jesus died for me.”

I cannot say more except just this, — if God is prospering you, keep very close to the cross. Do you not see that if, the richer you get, the oftener you go to the cross, it will be safe for you to be trusted with wealth? Take care to sanctify everything that God gives you by giving him his proper portion, and do not use your own portion till you have given him his. Then, if you look at every blessing as coming to you by the way of the cross, and say, “Jesus Christ has sent me this, for —

“’There’s ne’er a gift his hand bestows
But cost his heart a groan,’” —

if you receive everything as through him, and then desire to use everything for him, you may be as rich as the Rothschilds and yet you may be as gracious as the apostle Paul. You might have all the world given you, and yet, for all that, it would not hurt you. If you had as much of God as you had of gold, God would see that the gold was safe in your hands. He would trust us with prosperity if he saw that all our prosperity only bound us more closely and more completely to the cross of his dear Son. So, if any of you have forgotten him, conclude this evening’s service by coming to the cross; and, thus, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit shall get glory from you. May it be so, for Christ’s sake! Amen.

Hosea 13:9 Self-Destroyed, Yet Saved

NO. 2425
INTENDED FOR READING ON LORD’S-DAY, AUGUST 11TH 1 1895,
DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,
AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON,
ON THURSDAY EVENING, AUGUST 11TH, 1887.

“O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself; but in me is thine help.”-Hosea 13:9.

IT would be a very important subject for our meditation if we kept to the text, and thought upon its great truth,-that the ruin of man is altogether of himself, and the salvation of man is altogether of God. These two statements, I believe, comprehend the main points of a sound theology. There have been divisions in the Church over these points where there ought not to have been any. The Calvinist has said, and said right bravely, that salvation is of grace alone; and the Arminian has said, and said most truthfully, that damnation is of man’s will alone, and as the result of man’s sin, and of that only. Then they have fallen out with one another. The fact is, they had each one laid hold of a truth, and if they could have put their heads together, and accepted both truths, it might have been greatly for the advantage of the Church of Christ. These two doctrines are like tram lines that you can travel on with safety and comfort, these parallel lines-ruin, of man; restoration, of God: sin, of man’s will; salvation, of God’s will: reprobation, of man’s demerit; election, of God’s free and sovereign grace: the sinner lost in hell through himself alone, the saint lifted up to heaven wholly and alone by the power and grace of God.

Get those two truths thoroughly engraven upon your heart, and you will then hold comprehensively the great truths of Scripture. You will not need to crowd them into one narrow system of theology, but you will have a sort of duplicate system, which will contain, as far as the mind of man, being finite, can contain, the great truths revealed by the infinite God. I am not, however, at this time going so much into the doctrinal point as to try and make use of my text for practical soul-saving purposes.

You notice in this text, “O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself,” how God comes to close terms with men. He speaks, calling the persons addressed by name, “O Israel,” and then he uses a singular pronoun, “thou hast destroyed thyself.” It is something like Nelson’s way of fighting. When he came alongside the enemy, he brought his ship as close as ever he could, and then sent in a raking broadside from stem to stern. So does this text, it seems to get alongside of the man, puts its guns right close up to him, and then discharges its volley: “O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself.”

There is nothing said here that is at all flattering: “Thou hast destroyed thyself.” God bids a man look at himself as a blighted, blasted, ruined thing when he tells him that he is a self-destroyer. He has done it all; he has no need to ask, as Jesus did, “Who slew all these?” Thine own red right hand has done it, O thou guilty sinner, thou hast ruined thyself! See how plainly God speaks, how he lays judgment to the line, and righteousness to the plummet, and with his storm of hail sweeps away all refuges of lies: “O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself.”

But though he does not flatter, observe that the Lord does not conclude his address to the sinner by leaving him in despair, for the second part of the text is, “In me is thine help.” We should never so preach the law as to show only the naked sword of divine justice; the sweet invitations and promises of the gospel must come in after the dreadful verdict of judgment. Let the thunders roll, let the lightnings set the heavens on a blaze, but conclude not till some silver drops have fallen, and a shower of mercy has refreshed the thirsty earth. No; God will not have us preach alone the law and its terrors, but the gospel must also be brought into our message: “Thou hast destroyed thyself, O Israel: there is no concealing from thee that grim and terrible fact. But in me is thine help: there is no keeping back from thee that cheering and blessed information.” When these two things work together, breeding self-despair and hope in God, this is the way by which eternal life is wrought in the souls of men.

I am going to speak, then, of those two themes; and first, here is a sad fact: “O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself.” Secondly, here is a hopeful assurance: “In me is thine help;” and, ore I finish, I wish to notice, in the third place, an instructive warning, which is given by this text as you read it in the Revised Version: “It is thy destruction, O Israel, that thou art against me, against thy help.” It is a warning to men not to fight against their own salvation, or contend against the only Helper who can aid them to any purpose.

I. First, then, here is A Sad Fact: “O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself.”

Now, dear friends, I do believe that there is a message here to every one of us. The text speaks in tones of thunder to each unconverted person, and says, “O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself.” But if any child of God has lost his first love, his joy, his comfort, if he has become a backslider, if he has fallen into a sad, melancholy condition, he has done it himself, and the text tells him so, “O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself.” If there be about any of us that which we have to mourn over, by reason of an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God, the text puts its finger on the sore, and says, “Thou hast destroyed thyself; thou hast thyself done all this mischief.”

But, addressing myself mainly now to those who do not as yet know the Lord, I want you, dear friends, to notice that this sad fact stared Israel in the face: “O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself.” He could see it, he could feel it, he could not escape from knowing it; for this was the singular fact, that God himself seemed to have turned against him. I read you, just now, those seventh and eighth verses where God says, “I will be unto them as a lion: as a leopard by the way will I observe them: I will meet them as a bear that is bereaved of her whelps, and will rend the call of their heart, and there will I devour them like a lion: the wild beast shall tear them.’ It happens to some men, as it has happened to many who have come under my observation, that they have gone on pleasantly in sin for a time, till, on a sudden, the hand of God has gone out against them. They have been smitten with sickness,-those same strong young fellows, who never ailed anything, and who thought that they could indulge their passions to the utmost without fear, have been on a sudden laid low. Perhaps the hand of God has gone out against them in business. They were prospering, they added field to field, they could afford to spend money freely in various ways; but, by-and-by, the stream of business began to run low, and then to dry up altogether. What they attempted did not prosper however hard they labored. They rose up early, they sat up late, they ate the bread of carefulness; but all went amiss with them. Whatever they did seemed to have a light upon it. Truly God met them as a lion, and as a bear bereaved of her whelps.

At such a time as this, the man begins to see that there must be something wrong with him. He did not know it before; perhaps he even thought that his prosperity was a proof that God was not angry with him, and he went on from sin to sin, and said within himself, “Why, I do not suffer even as Christian people do! Surely, I must be right, after all, for I increase in riches, and my eyes stand out with fatness.” Oh, if thou art one of God’s chosen, there will come to thee a day of darkness in which thou shalt not see thy way along the road of sin! God will hedge up thy path with thorns, and dig deep ditches in thy way, and thou shalt stumble and fall, and then shalt thou say, “I perceive that something is amiss with me, I see that I am on the wrong track. Oh, how shall I escape, how shall T get into the right road?” I say again, when a man is in that condition, as Israel was in my text, then his sad state stares him in the face. You cannot convince the worldling that he is in evil case when he is living without God, and yet prospering. Oh, no; he is satisfied as long as he gets the things of this world; what cares he for the world to come? Therefore, one of the first means that God uses to arouse men from the dangerous slumber of their natural estate is himself to go to war with them, and to be like one who is cruel to them, that he may tear them away from themselves, and from their follies.

Notice, next, that while this grief stared them in the face, it was attributed to themselves, it lay at their own door: “O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself.” There is always hope for a man when he knows this and confesses this. The worst of it is that, by nature, we lay our ruin at anybody’s door but our own. “It was all the fault of our bringing up; how can we help it? It was God’s purpose, or it was the devil’s temptation.” We put the saddle anywhere but on the right horse; we will not accept this great and certain truth, “O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself.” Now, be you sure of this, O man, that the sin which will ruin you is your own sin. That for which you will suffer, that for which you do suffer now, is the sin which you yourself have committed, the evil which you have willfully committed.

There are some to whom this truth has a special reference. Let me see whether I can find them out. There are some of us who went into sin without any previous training whatever. Some of us were born of Christian parents, and our earliest days were spent in a holy circle. We heard no ill language, we saw no ill example, we cannot recollect anything that was wrong that crossed our path as children; yet we went astray from childhood unto youth, pursuing evil as eagerly as did the children of the vicious. Wherever this is the case, does not the text come home with great sharpness, “O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself”? You cannot say, “The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.” You have eaten the sour grapes yourselves, and set your own teeth on edge. Perhaps some here are the children of Christian ministers, and they know where they spent last night; I do not. Perhaps some here were borne and trained by mothers whose purity was most exemplary; but they themselves, though they never had an ill example, have plunged into sin as naturally as the young crocodile takes to the Nile. This is, with an emphasis, for a man to destroy himself.

So there are some, who are not the victims of temptation, but they have deliberately gone into sin. I feel great pity for some that, from their peculiar constitution, seem as if their very flesh led their soul into mischief; from their birth they appeared to have a tendency towards such and such evils. We do not excuse these guilty ones; but, at the same time, are they so blameworthy as others who, without any particular pressure from without or from within, nevertheless deliberately sin? Oh, my dear friends, if you can sit down, and look at sin coolly, and calculate and turn it over, and then, after weighing it in the scales, can go after it, then I must say, “O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself.” Yours was wanton, deliberate mischief; and who shall justify you before the bar of God at the great judgment day?

There are some who have to take a great deal of plotting and planning in order to be able to manage to sin at all. Their surroundings are such that they seem to be shielded and guarded against iniquities which are natural enough to others; they have to dodge the inspection of the household, they have to practice as many tricks to escape the eye of wife or daughter as the burglar does when he tries to break into the house at night. Now, what shall I say of such, who put all their wits to work to damn their souls, and are far more busy to ruin themselves than the greatest schemers and merchants are to a fortune? Yet there are many such, and of these we have to say emphatically, “O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself.”

Yes, and I have even seen them act thus against warnings given them with tears, warnings which have brought tears to their own eyes. They have pushed through the most loving obstacles downward to the pit as if resolved to perish, and they have sinned against enlightenment, for Mr. Conscience has flashed his bull’s-eye lantern in their eyes. They have stood for a time astonished at themselves, and have felt that they could not sin thus, yet they have soon said that they would, and they have pushed good Mr. Conscience on one side, and still pursued the downward track. Oh, this is terrible! When a man acts thus, we must say of him, “Thou hast destroyed thyself.”

Some will act thus distinctly against providence’s. When God has stepped in their path, and blocked them out of one sin, they have edged about, and gone to another; and when they could not effect their purpose, when it seemed as if the very earth and the stars in their courses would fight against them in their pursuit of sin, they have selected another road, as if to baffle the God of mercy, and destroy themselves whether he would let them do so or not. I am giving a terrible description, but I am painting sinners to the life; I know I am. There are some here who will recognize their own portraits if they have any eyes left: “O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself.”

Further, notice that, in the text, God himself remind8 the sinner of this sad fact? Ought he not to have known it without being told of it? Yes, he should. Might he not have discovered it by listening to the prophets who would have told him so? Assuredly he should. But God himself breaks through all reserve, and comes to this guilty sinner, and says to him, “O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself. See what has come of thine iniquity. Did I not tell thee it would be so? Look, and see for thyself. It is not a man like thyself who tells thee that it is so, but God who knows God who never exaggerates. He tells thee that thou hast destroyed thyself.” O my dear hearer, it may be that while I am speaking to you in truth and soberness about this weighty matter, God himself is speaking through my lips. Indeed, it is so; it is the Lord who says to thee, “Thou hast destroyed thyself; thou hast destroyed thine innocence, thou hast destroyed thy righteousness, thou hast destroyed thy tenderness, thou hast well-nigh destroyed thy conscience, thou hast destroyed thy hopes, thou hast destroyed thy best years, thou has destroyed thy usefulness, and now thou hast brought thyself to death’s dark door,-

“’Buried in sorrow and in sin.”

God himself can say no less than this to thee, “Thou hast destroyed thyself.” God who loves men, God the tender-hearted and the generous, God who says, “How can I give thee up?” even he is forced to give this solemn verdict, “O Israel, thou hast not only hurt thyself, and wounded thyself, but thou hast damned thyself, thou hast destroyed thyself, thou hast ruined thyself; thy last hope is put out, like the last flicker of the candle, and thou art left in the dark.”

It may be that some here will confess the truth of this fact. If so, bow your heads; solemnly bow bef