Hosea 10:15

So shall Bethel do unto you because of your great wickedness: in a morning shall the king of Israel utterly be cut off.

So shall Beth-el do unto you - i:e., your idolatrous calf at Bethel shall be the cause of a like calamity befalling you.

Because of your great wickedness - literally, the wickedness of your wickedness.

In a morning - i:e., speedily, as quickly as the dawn is put to flight by the rising sun (; ; , "Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh on the morning").

Shall the king of Israel utterly be cut off - Hoshea.

Remarks:

(1) When the visible Church, like Israel, "pours out" all its luxuriance in leaves of profession, or bears only unripe "fruit unto itself," not matured "fruit unto holiness and to God," it is nigh unto judgment. We should beware of letting our religion evaporate into 'empty' aspirations, desires, and transports, instead of producing the true and solid fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, meekness, and faith.

(2) Prosperity, wealth, health, and intellect are the gifts of God, bestowed on men that they may have the more power to glorify Him: but when they abuse these gifts to sin, they actually turn God God's gifts into weapons of offence against the gracious Giver; just as Israel, "according to the multitude of his fruit, increased his altars" to idols.

(3) They whose "heart is divided" between God and mammon "shall be found faulty" before God, and shall suffer accordingly. Israel thought to serve God and idols at once. But in fact they served only their idols, which they would not give up for the sake of God; and their sin became the very means of their punishment, the gold of their idols being the bait that tempted the invader (). So all who think to give their heart to any earthly idol, as ambition, wealth, or pleasure, and yet at the same time to serve God, shall, through their heart-idolatry and double-mindedness, lose both Him and their idol together, and, worst of all, shall lose their own selves, and be a cast-away.

(4) Israel, too late, discovered her fatal mistake in preferring an earthly king to God (). From Saul, their first king, to Jeroboam, the originator of the idolatrous calves, and from him to Hoshea, under whom the kingdom ceased, the people had almost a continual experience of how unavailing to them were the kings for whom they had rejected their God. But their groaning was for their suffering, not for their sin. Their heart was still unchanged. Such shall be the remorse of the lost-unavailing regrets and tormenting self-reproaches shall abound. The season of grace shall have then been sinned away, and there shall be no possibility of, or inclination to, repentance. Let all be wise, and repent ere it be too late.

(5) Israel's professions were but empty "words" (). She thought nothing of "swearing falsely." 'Covenants' violated by her were therefore the prepared "furrows" into which was cast, as the seed, the Divine "Judgment," destined to spring up in a crop of evil to her, deadly as the poisonous "hemlock." Israel was now no longer the people of Yahweh, but the people of the golden calf. For this they "mourned," while they were utterly unconcerned at having lost God, their true glory. Not even the miseries and desolation of their country caused them such regrets as their glided idol. So now, when men have once parted with God, their true glory, for any earthly objects of desire, if these be taken from them, the tendency of the unrenewed heart is to mourn, not for their sins, but for their heart-idols-not to long for reconciliation with God, but for the restoration of their objects of desire.

(6) That which was thought by Israel a master-stroke of policy for the permanent establishment of the kingdom of the ten tribes proved to be ultimately the source of its shame and overthrow (). For it was the golden calf, the fruit of state policy, that brought down God's vengeance both on it and its worshippers; that vengeance was executed by the Assyrian king as the Jareb, or Avenger in God's hand, of the insulted majesty of God. Then Israel's king, in complaisance to whom she had forsaken her heavenly King, passed away as the bubble upon the water. Separated from God, all seeming power is weakness, all apparent stability is fluctuating and perishing as the foam-`One moment white, then gone forever.' Let England beware of all complicity with Romish idolatry, on the false plea of state expediency. For idolatry in any form, whether veneration of images, adoration of the mass, or worship of mammon-another of our national temptations-is sure to make the greatest seeming stability to become frailty and transitoriness itself. The fear of God is the only true basis of solidity and permanence.

(7) A day of judgment is coming to all the ungodly, when they shall wish death rather than life. As Israel once trusted in the idolatrous high places as her protection, but in the end sought one only good from them-namely, that they should fall on her and save her by death from evils worse than death-so the earthly-minded, whose portion was this earth, shall at last long only that the earth and its mountains may entomb them, in order that they may, if possible, by death escape that second death which ever killeth but never destroyeth. Surely it is infinitely better for us now to pray to the Lord Jesus to "cover" our transgression with the blood of His atonement, than through neglect of this to have to cry to the mountains at last, "Fall on us, and cover us" (). Our prayer to Jesus, if offered in faith now, shall surely be heard; but prayer to the mountains then shall be in vain.

(8) How fearful must be men's guilt when the loving God is constrained by His own holiness to have a righteous satisfaction in their chastizement! (.) Once all Israel gathered together as one man at Gibeah, to vindicate God's justice against Benjamin; but now the ten tribes banded together, not against sin, but for sin. Therefore, God, in just retribution, was about to gather the Gentile peoples against His apostate people. Since the latter would not bow to God's mild blessed yoke, they were to be made to feel the galling yoke of the pagan, for whose ways they had forsaken the Lord's way. In harmony in nothing else, in Satan's service only do men bind themselves together as two oxen plowing under one team. Refusing God's "bands of love" (), they yet put shoulder to shoulder, and "draw iniquity with cords of vanity, and sin as it were with a cart rope" (). Oh that all would rather come to Jesus for refreshment, and take His yoke upon them, and they shall find His yoke truly "easy" and His "burden light" (Matthew 11:28).

(9) The way to "sow to ourselves for righteousness" () is first of all to make by faith "Christ the end of the law for righteousness" to us (). If we do so, ours is the gain, the profit is not to God (Job 22:2; Job 35:7). It is to ourselves that we sow; and it is "according to" His grace and "mercy" that we shall reap. The reward is altogether of grace, not debt. Then, too, even in this life, grace well used is rewarded gratuitously with more grace; for "out of Christ's fullness" believers "receive grace for (i:e., upon) grace" (). But in eternity especially we shall marvel at the amazing harvest of good which shall result from the apparently small seeds that we have sown in time.

Therefore, we must be ever diligent. Unlike earthly husbandry, the spiritual field is apt again and again to become fallow almost directly after it has been plowed and harrowed. Thus it is needed to "break up the fallow ground" afresh within the Church, by stirring up the decaying piety of her members: and also it is the Lord's own command that we break new ground by 'going' in person, or by deputy, and 'making disciples' of all pagan nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit (). Now is our "time for both works. "Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation" (). It is high time for unbelievers to seek diligently and perseveringly after righteousness 'until Christ by his Spirit come' to the heart as "the Lord our righteousness." It is high time for believers to be looking for the Lord's coming in person to reign in "righteousness," (Isaiah 11:4).

(10) They, on the contrary, who 'plow wickedness,' shall only 'reap iniquity' as their harvest. An awful harvest truly Israel experienced when Shalman, the Avenger, "in the day of battle dashed in pieces the mother upon her children" (). Let us beware of trusting, like her, 'in our own way,' or our own strength (). Only when we mistrust ourselves, and trust in the Lord and His righteousness alone are we safe, justified, and blessed.