Hosea 4:16

Israel slideth back as a backsliding heifer.

The evil and danger of backsliding

I. When we may be said to resemble a backsliding heifer.

1. When we will not draw in God’s yoke at all.

2. When we draw in it only by fits and starts.

3. When we grow weary of the yoke. Weary of performing our duties, exercising our graces, mortifying our lusts.

II. The evil and danger of such a state.

1. The evil of it. It is a contemning of God. It is a justifying of the wicked. It is a discouraging of the weak.

2. The danger of it. This is an iniquity which God marks with peculiar indignation. The first symptoms of declension lead, if not speedily mourned over and resisted, to utter apostasy. The misery that will be incurred by means of it will far exceed all that had been endured if no profession of religion had been ever made. Let these consequences be duly weighed, and nothing need be added to show the importance of “holding fast our profession without wavering.”

Improve the subject.

1. Assist you in ascertaining your state before God. Examine diligently the cause, the duration, and the effects of your backslidings.

2. Give a word of counsel to those in different states. Are you altogether backslidden from God? He invites you to return. Are you drawing in His yoke? Bless and adore your God, who has inclined and enabled you to do so. (O. Simeon, M. A.)

A backslider

It is a striking fact to which careful observers of the feathered tribe will bear witness, that no birds are able to fly backward. A bird may allow itself to fall backward by slowing its wings, until its weight overcomes their sustaining power, as a swallow will do from the eaves of a house. But the bird can do no other than fly forward, and but few with the rarest skill can stand still in the air. Now if mankind would only “consider the birds of the air “ in the way in which Christ enjoined, there would be considerably less backsliding than there is. Like the wings of the soaring eagle, the wings of faith were never intended for flying backward. A minister’s little girl and her playmate were talking about serious things. “Do you know what a backslider is?” she questioned. “Yes; it’s a person that used to be a Christian and isn’t,” said the playmate promptly. “But what do you s’pose makes them call them backsliders? Oh, that’s easy. You see, when people are good they go to church and sit up in front. When they get a little tired of being good they slide back a seat, and keep on sliding till they get clear back to the door. After awhile they slide clear out and never come to church at all.”

The stubborn heifer

What is a backsliding heifer? We do not know; there is no such creature. But read: “Israel acts stubbornly, like a heifer,” and the meaning is clear. The heifer will not go as its owner wants it to go. The heifer stands back when it ought to go forward; turns aside when it ought to move straight on; wriggles and twists, and, as it were, protests; and only by greater strength, or by the infliction of suffering, can the heifer be made to go to its destined place. The prophet, looking upon that heifer, now on the right, now on the left, now stooping, now throwing up its head in defiance, says, Such is Israel, such is Ephraim. The metaphor is full of suggestion, and full of high philosophy. Israel complained of limitation; Israel was chafed by the yoke; Israel resented the puncture of the goad. Israel said, “I want liberty, I do not want this moral bondage any longer; I do not want to be surrounded by commandments, I do not want to live in a cage of ten bars called the ten commandments of God; I want liberty; let me follow my reason, my instincts; let me obey myself.” The Lord said, “So be it. Thou shalt have liberty enough, but it shall be the liberty of a wilderness.” You can have liberty, but you will find no garden in it; if you want the garden, you must have the law. Let us take care how we trifle with law, obligation, responsibility, limitation. (Joseph Parker, D. D.)