Hosea 2:15

Hosea 2:15

This promise, like all God's promises, has its well-defined conditions. Achan has to be killed and put safe out of the way first, or no shining hope will stand out against the black walls of the defile. The tastes which knit us to the perishable world, the yearnings for Babylonish garments and wedges of gold, must be coerced and subdued. There is no natural tendency in the mere fact of sorrow and pain to make God's love more discernible, or to make our hope any firmer. All depends on how we use the trial; or, as I say: First stone Achan and then hope!

I. So the trouble which detaches us from earth gives us new hope. Vain regret, absorbed brooding over what is gone, a sorrow kept gaping long after it should have been healed, like a grave-mound off which desperate love has pulled turf and flowers in the vain attempt to clasp the cold hand below in a word, the trouble that does not withdraw us from the present will never be a door of hope, but rather a grim gate for despair to come in at.

II. The trouble which knits us to God gives us new hope. That bright form which comes down the narrow valley is His messenger and herald sent before His face. All the light of hope is the reflection on our hearts of the light of God. If our hope is to grow out of our sorrow, it must be because our sorrow drives us to God.

III. The trouble which we bear rightly with God's help gives new hope. If we have made our sorrow an occasion for learning by living experience somewhat more of His exquisitely varied and ever-ready power to aid and bless, then it will teach us firmer confidence in these inexhaustible resources which we have thus once more proved. We build upon two things God's unchangeableness, and His help already received; and upon these strong foundations we may wisely and safely rear a palace of hope, which shall never prove a castle in the air.

A. Maclaren, Weekday Evening Addresses, p. 159.

References: Hosea 2:15. Homiletic Magazine,vol. x., p. 199; Bishop Lightfoot, Old Testament Outlines,p. 266. Hosea 2:19. B. Baker, Thursday Penny Pulpit,vol. iii., p. 139. Hosea 2:23. Spurgeon, My Sermon Notes: Ecclesiastes to Malachi,p. 309. Hosea 3:1. Ibid., Morning by Morning,p. 35.Hosea 3:4; Hosea 3:5. S. Leathes, Good Words,1874, p. 226. Hosea 3:5. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xv., No. 888. Hosea 4:6. C. J. Vaughan, Memorials of Harrow Sundays,p. 56.