Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2046
Delivered on Lord’s Day Morning, September 30, 1888
“I will ransom them from the power of the grave; I will redeem them from death: O death, I will be your plagues; O grave, I will be your destruction: repentance shall be hid from My eyes.” Hosea 13:14.
This verse stands in the midst of a long line of threats. Like a rock of mercy, it rises in the midst of a sea of wrath. Hence many critics have felt bound to see in it a continuation of threat. I am quite content to accept the united authority of the Authorized and the Revised Versions, and to believe that the mind of the Holy Spirit is fairly expressed in the grand old Bible of our fathers. I regard our text as a promise overflowing with delight.
While it does stand as a rock apart, this gracious Word is far from being the only one in the book of the Prophet Ho-sea. In the torrent bed of this Prophet’s denunciations we find dust of the gold of promise. Hosea, in his style is jerky and abrupt—he says exactly what you do not think he is going to say. The Holy Spirit, speaking through him, interjects promises in the midst of threats, in wrath remembering mercy. If any should think that this passage is exceptional, let them read the rest of Hosea’s prophecy. Let them pause for a minute over the eleventh chapter, resting at the eighth verse—
“How shall I give you up, Ephraim? How shall I deliver you, Israel? How shall I make you as Admah? How shall I set you as Zeboim? My heart is turned within Me, My repentings are kindled together. I will not execute the fierceness of my anger, I will not return to destroy Ephraim, for I am God and not man.” Where was ever greater tenderness than this? When you get to the twelfth chapter, at the ninth verse, a still small voice is heard in the midst of the thunder—“I that am the Lord your God from the land of Egypt will yet make you to dwell in tabernacles, as in the days of the solemn
feast.”
The fourteenth chapter is all of love and mercy—“O Israel, return unto the Lord your God. For you have fallen by your iniquity. Take with you words and turn to the Lord: say unto Him, Take away all iniquity and receive us graciously: so will we render the calves of our lips.” Hear the gracious Word, verse four—“I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely: for My anger is turned away from him.” So that our text, in its Christian interpretation, is not contrary to the general method of this prophecy. To find it here is very surprising. But it is after the manner of the Holy Spirit, when speaking by the Prophet Hosea.
Israel was coming to its very worst. The people were to be carried to Babylon and from there to be scattered to the ends of the earth. Yet the Lord, in His great love, lets them know that this was not to be a final and entire destruction. He would not utterly cast away the people whom He did foreknow, nor allow death to hold them in bondage forever. He would open their graves and bring them out and make them to know Jehovah. Therefore, He drops in this Word of promise when it was least expected.
I. I shall ask you this morning, first, to CONSIDER THE FACT WHICH IS HERE USED AS A FIGURE. The resurrection of the dead is here employed as a figure of that which the Lord was about to do for His people. At one time salvation from sin is called a creation and creation is a fact. Here it is resurrection from the dead and that also is sure to be accomplished in due time—we have the first fruits of it already. Brethren, there will be a special resurrection for those who are in Christ Jesus. “There shall be a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and unjust.”
But for the members of the body of Christ there is a resurrection from among the dead. These are the many that sleep in the dust of the earth who shall awake to everlasting life (Daniel 12:2). They rise because they are one with Christ in His resurrection. His resurrection is the proof and the guarantee that they also shall rise in the day of His appearing. “If Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin. But the Spirit is life because of righteousness” (Rom. 8:10). Their bodies, which were redeemed as truly as their souls, is left during this life under mortgage to nature.
Therefore they suffer pain and weakness and ultimate death and decay—but their bodies, I say, being a part of the purchase of the precious blood, shall be raised again from the dead. That which is sown in weakness shall be raised in power. That which is covered with dishonor by the very fact of death and decay shall be raised in splendor, made like unto the glorious body of Christ. This is no poetic fiction but a literal matter of fact, even as was the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. We hear our Redeemer say, “Your brother shall rise again,” and we accept it literally. Our dear ones whom we have laid in the grave shall come again from the land of the enemy. Concerning ourselves, also, we believe, as we just sang—