Homilist Hosea 8:3 Israel has cast off the thing that is good: the enemy shall pursue him. I. THE ABANDONMENT OF GOOD. "Israel hath rejected what is good." The good here is the true worship of the true God. 1. True, Worship is "the good thing" for man. It is good not only because God requires it, but because it is the necessary condition of spiritual life, growth, harmony, and blessedness. 2. This "good thing" man sometimes abandons. Moral mind has the power of abandoning the highest good. 3. The abandonment of this "good thing" imperils the soul. Moral good is the only effective safeguard of the spirit; when this is given up, or "cast off," all the gates of the soul are thrown open to tormenting fiends. II. THE CONSEQUENT PURSUIT OF EVIL. "Set up kings, but not by Me." Reference is to Jeroboam and his successors. From kings of their own making came the setting up of the idolatrous calf-worship. So they went wrong in their politics and in their religion. Let a man go wrong in his relations to God, and he will go wrong in all his relations, secular and spiritual, There is nothing in connection with the human race of such transcendent importance as worship. The religious element is the strongest of all elements, and men must have a god of some sort, and their god will fashion their character and determine their destiny. (Homilist.) Parallel Verses KJV: Israel hath cast off the thing that is good: the enemy shall pursue him.WEB: Israel has cast off that which is good. The enemy will pursue him. |
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