Hosea 6:1

Come, and let us return unto the Lord.

The characteristic marks of true penitence

These words are the expressions of that penitence which was excited in the Israelites by God’s departure from them, and by His grace that accompanied the affliction.

I. The characteristic marks of true penitence. It will always be attended by--

1. A sense of our departure from God. With unregenerate men the thought of being at a distance from God never distresses. As soon as the grace of repentance is given, men see that they are as sheep gone astray.

2. An acknowledgment of affliction as a just chastisement for sin. The impenitent heart murmurs and rebels under the Divine chastisements: the penitent “hears the rod, and Him that appointed it.”

3. A determination to return to God. When a man is once thoroughly awakened to a sense of his lost condition, he can no longer be contented with a formal round of duties. To hear of Christ, to seek Him, are from henceforth his chief desire, his supreme delight.

4. A desire that others should return to Him also. This is insisted on as characteristic of the great work that shall be accomplished in the latter day (Isaiah 2:3). The penitent feels it incumbent on him to labour for the salvation of others.

II. The grounds on which a penitent may take encouragement to return to God.

1. From a general view of God’s readiness to heal us.

2. From that particular discovery of it which we have in the wounds He has inflicted on us.

Apply--

1. To those who have deserted God.

2. To those who are deserted by God. (Skeletons of Sermons.)

Man’s highest social action

The prophet calls on those who had been smitten, or sent into exile, to put away all confidence in an arm of flesh, to renounce all idolatries.

I. That society is away from God. Not locally, of course: for the Great Spirit is with all and in all, but morally. Society is away from Him in its thoughts; away from Him in its sympathies; away from Him in its pursuits.

II. That estrangement from God is the source of all its trials. Because the prodigal left his father’s home he got reduced to the utmost infamy and wretchedness. Moral separation from God is ruin. Cut the branch from the root and it withers; the river from its source, and it dries up; the planet from the sun, and it rushes into ruin. Nothing will remove the evils under which society is groaning but a return unto God. Legislation, commerce, science, literature, art, none of these will help it much so long as it continues away from Him.

III. That return to him is a possible work. (Homilist.)

Luxury and ease

I. The fact of backsliding. Had there been no wandering from the Lord, there would have been no need of a return to Him. From passages in the histories of Solomon and David, as shewing how luxury and ease conduce to backsliding. Solomon would be now caned a child of God. He did start well. But the history of Solomon shows us that no amount of experience is in itself a safeguard. Whether young or old in the faith, we need the preserving grace of God from moment to moment. In Solomon’s case the affinity with Pharaoh, and marriage with his daughter, are like the first links in a long chain of backsliding. Is it not often the case that believers, even when apparently walking in the fear of the Lord, may be cherishing some secret sin or indulgence, which, like a seed concealed in the earth, finally germinates and blossoms forth into open backsliding! Solomon fell through self-indulgence. And the Christian who is self-indulgent, who makes the means entrusted to him by God minister to his love of luxury and desire for worldly pomp, is on the high road to idolatry. God did not leave Solomon undisturbed in his idolatry and self-indulgence. The record of David’s fall is given in 2 Samuel 11:1. Idleness is the parent of vice. Lurking lusts, encouraged by the quiet, creep out of their hiding-places, hold converse with the heart, and seek to drag him into all manner of sin. David fell before temptation, and set himself to commit further sin, in the hope of covering that already committed. This is almost invariably the case with the backslider.

II. God’s dealings with the backslider. “He hath torn--He hath smitten.” It is in mercy, and not in wrath, that God deals with His backsliding children. Punishment has for its object, the vindication of the authority of God as the moral Ruler. It is judicial as well as remedial. But its chief purpose is the backslider’s restoration.

III. A glimmer of faith on the part of the backslider. “He will heal us--He will bind us up.” In the heart of the backslider there lies hidden the germ of a God-given faith, like seeds in a mummy case.

IV. The goodly resolve. “Come, and let us return unto the Lord.” Some seek to heal their backslidings without dealing with God Himself. How are we to return? Through Jesus, the once crucified, the now risen and exalted One. (W. P. Lockhart.)

Signs of true penitence

I. Wherever there is true repentance, there will be a returning unto the Lord.

1. A true penitent will be sensible, not only of straying from God, which hath made a distance between God and him, but that his straying hath begotten an averseness, and turned his back upon God, so that he needs to return.

2. A penitent will have a deep sense, that all other courses he has essayed in his straying from God, are but vanity.

II. The ordinary forerunner of a time of mercy, is the Lord’s stirring up His people to seek Him. Here they are excited, and excite one another to this duty. “Come, and let us return,” and this is their temper in a time of love. (George Hutcheson.)

For He hath torn, and He will heal us.

He hath torn, and He will heal us

The philosophy of the Divine judgments is here most explicitly expounded. The motive of every Divine judgment, within the limits of this life, is mercy. We see but dimly what may lie beyond this life. Here, at any rate, the one constant patient aim of God, by every means of influence which He wields, is to bring men unto Himself. It is important to remember, what some schools of Christian thought have strangely forgotten, that God’s righteousness is not a righteousness which would be satisfied equally by the conversion, or by the punishment of a sinner. We cannot abstract the righteousness from the living person who is also the Father of that sinner; and who loves him with such tenderness that He is capable of even an infinite sacrifice, that that child may not die but live. God’s righteousness, God’s justice, God’s holiness, yearn for the restoration of the sinner to righteousness, quite as much as His mercy and His love. And through life they are spending all their arts and efforts to take him captive, and to bring him home. It is beginning to be fully recognised, in the physical sphere, that judgments are but rich blessings in disguise. There are indeed some dark passages of Scripture history which seem to contradict this principle: e.g., Pharaoh of the hardened heart. This cannot be fully explained, but it makes this terrible suggestion--what must be the doom of a heart that is hardened even against the Divine love? There is a growing hardness where the will is in it. The blow that is sent in mercy, if it fails to open the heart’s sealed portals, strikes down. The heart hardened against God, hardens itself further. And this is His law, and part of the solemn conditions of our life. But there,, is nothing on earth irreparable while “we can repent and turn unto the Lord; for He hath torn, and He win heal us.” There is absolutely nothing in the experience of the sinner, the sufferer, which God cannot transmute into joy. No calamity can long oppress the spirit which He wills to draw to the shield of His strength, and to rest on the bosom of His love. Or is the sorrow a remembrance of sin? With the word of forgiveness, the bitterness of the sorrow passes. God can forgive the iniquity of the sill IS it temptation? Believe that temptation is God’s benignant ordinance for the trial and assay of spirits. God has not left you untroubled. (J. Baldwin Brown, B. A.)

God’s time for mercy

1. When God’s time of mercy is come, He puts a mighty spirit of seeking into men.

2. A joint turning to God is very honourable to god. “Come, and let us return.”

3. Times of mercy are times of union.

4. True penitent hearts seek to get others to join with them.

5. In times of the greatest sufferings a truly penitent heart retains good thoughts of God.

6. a penitent heart is not a discouraged heart.

7. A repenting heart is not a discouraged, but a sustained heart. But we must not falsely encourage ourselves. Our hope is in God. (Jeremiah Burroughs.)

He hath smitten, and He will bind us up.--

Hope for a bleeding Church

The text may be considered as the language of a Church.

I. Smarting under recent chastisements.

1. Shew the sufferings of such a Church.

2. These sufferings are to be received as from the hand of God.

3. And regarded as chastisements of God for the sins of the Church.

II. Hoping for a speedy revival. That hope rests on the following grounds.

1. On the mingled exercises of mercy and judgment which characterise God’s government of His Church.

2. On the regard which God has to the honour of His name, and the success of His cause in the earth.

3. On the ground of the mediatorial prerogatives of the Son of God.

4. On the promised power and grace of the Holy Spirit.

III. Resolving upon immediate reformation. Let us give up the language of complaint and mutual recrimination, and substitute for it the voice of prayer. (T. Vasey.)

Hope in God’s mercy

The reason here given, why the Israelites could return safely and with sure confidence to God is, that they would acknowledge it as His office to heal after He has smitten, and to bring a remedy for the wounds which He has inflicted. The prophet means that God does not so punish men as to pour forth His wrath on them for their destruction; but that He intends, on the contrary, to promote their salvation, when He is severe in punishing their sins. The beginning of repentance is a sense of God’s mercy; when men are persuaded that God is ready to give pardon, they then begin to gather courage to repent; otherwise perverseness will ever increase in them. (John Calvin.)