Hosea 11:1

CONTENTS

We have here a most gracious account of divine love; and a most melancholy account of human ingratitude. There is much of the Lord Jesus Christ and his gospel in this Chapter.

Hosea 11:1

Though I am free to confess, that what is here said may every Word of it be applied to the calling Israel out of Egypt; yet, as we have the authority of an infallible Expositor, Matthew 2:15, to assure us that what is here said of the call of God's Son out of Egypt, expressly referred to the Lord Jesus Christ; I hesitate not to consider the whole of Israel's history, as to this event in Egypt, merely typical of Christ, and would wish to lose sight of everything that is said of that history, any further than as it may serve to show how important the call of God's beloved Son from Egypt was, which the Lord thought proper to have represented in figure so many ages before. Here the history of Israel's call from Egypt becomes interesting, very highly so, and we do well to keep it in remembrance, and to make use of it for this end. But we sadly overrate anything, and everything, if we lose sight of Christ in the type, or place the one with the other on the same ground. When Israel was a child, then I loved him, saith Jehovah? When was this? Not surely in the beginning of forming the Church, when coming out of Egypt. When was it then? Not in the first giving the Covenant to Abraham, or the promise to Adam, that the seed of the Woman should bruise the serpent's head. It was long before this! Yea, it was before the foundation of the world. It was at that period in eternity, if any angel of light had a being to count it, when as Jesus himself saith, in the character of Wisdom Mediator, the Lord possessed me in the beginning of his ways, before his works of old; when, as the Lord saith, I was set up from everlasting. Proverbs 8:22 to end. Considered in this light, and what follows is most blessed indeed, the Lord Jesus graciously condescends to take the name of his people; and as graciously allows his people to call themselves after him. See Isaiah 49:3; Ephesians 3:14. He is declared to be the Son of God with power by his resurrection from the dead. Romans 1:4. And they are said to be sons of God by adoption and grace. John 1:12. And if Jesus be called out of Egypt; so are they, by sovereign grace, called out of the Egypt of a fallen bondage nature, and shown thereby to be beloved in Christ by the Father, as the Father hath loved Christ, as God-man-Mediator. John 17:23. Precious Lord Jesus! how blessed it is to behold thee in all thy pre-eminency!