Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2984
“Ephraim is like a silly dove without heart.” Hosea 7:11.
THE race of Ephraim is not extinct. Men are to this very day very much like what they were in the days of the Prophets. The same rebukes are still suitable, as well as the same comforts. As man has altered very little, if at all, in his outward bodily conformation, so has he not varied in the inner constitution—he is much the same today as he was in the time of Hosea. In this congregation, in the midst of the city of London, we have too large a company of those who are “like a silly dove without heart.”
To proceed at once with the text, I want you to notice four things. First—a saintly similitude. Secondly—a secret distinction. Thirdly—a severe description. And lastly, a serious consideration.
I. Here we have A SAINTLY SIMILITUDE—“Ephraim is like a dove!”
The people are not compared here to the eagle that soars aloft and scents its prey from afar, nor to the vulture which delights to gorge itself with carrion. They are not likened to any foul and unclean bird which was put aside under the Law of God, but the very figure which is constantly chosen to set forth the beauty of holiness, to describe the Believer, and to picture the whole Church—no, that very emblem by which we set forth Him who is Holiness, itself, God the Holy Spirit—that same comparison to a dove is here used to describe those who were without heart. “Ephraim is like a dove”—it is a saintly similitude.
Let me remind you that in all congregations there are those who are like doves, but not Christ’s doves, who never build their nests in the clefts of the rock, in the bosom of the Savior. They are like doves—you can never tell them from genuine Believers and, like doves, they are perfectly harmless. They do no mischief to others in all their lives. Track them, if you will, you will never find them in the alehouse. They sing not the song of the drunkard. No man ever lost anything in business by them. Men may have their pockets picked in the streets, but never by them. Persons may go staggering home under a wound, but that wound never comes from their hands—there is no uncleanness in their heart and no slander on their tongue—they are amiable, admirable. We might almost hold them up for examples of propriety. Alas, alas, that we have only to look withinto find that they are not what they seem!
Moreover, being like doves for harmlessness, they are also like them for loving good company. We find not the dove flying with a host of eagles, but it consorts with its own kind. Some of you are never happier than when you are either in the Tabernacle or else in some of the classes formed by various members of the congregation. You also find such a pleasant excitement in the Prayer Meeting that you are not absent from it except when you are prevented by business. You love being where God’s people go—their hymns are sweet to your ears. In their prayers you find some sort of comfort and in the ministry of the Word you take delight. You fly like a cloud and like doves to their windows, and it is a joy to us to see you do it. And yet it may be that although you know how to congregate like doves, you are simply “like a silly dove without heart.”
Moreover, these persons are still more like the dove in that they have the same meekness, apparently, as distinguishes the dove. They hear as God’s people hear and sit as His people sit. They are not skeptics. They never object to the exposition of the Doctrines to which they listen. They pick no holes in the preacher’s coat—they have no particular fault to find either with the style or the matter of his discourse. They decorously frequent the House of God and behave themselves in a seemly manner when there. No, more than that, they seem with meekness to receive the Word, though
they do not receive it as engrafted into their own hearts. They even receive it with joy when the Seed is scattered on them, but having no root in themselves, the good Seed comes to nothing. O my dear Hearers, it is a great subject for thanksgiving that so many of you are ready and willing to listen to the Word with deep and profound respect! But I do beseech you to remember that you may, in this, be like the dove, and yet, after all, you may be taken in the same net and destroyed with the same destruction as that which fell upon the Ephraimites who were “like a silly dove without heart!”
The dove, you know, is a clean feeder, and so we have many who get as far as that. They know the distinction between the precious and the vile—they will not feed on Law—they can only live on Grace. They have come to know the Doctrines of the Gospel and they feed on them—upon pure corn, well winnowed. You have only to bring in a little free will and straightway they know the chaff from the wheat and refuse to receive it! They cast it away as refuse metal which is of no value to them. But, while they have an orthodox head, they have a heterodox heart—while they know the Truth of God and feel it, yet it is still not the right kind of feeling—they have never so received it as to incorporate it into their very being. They have accepted it with the same sort of belief and in somewhat the same manner as Simon did in Samaria. But, after a while, when trouble and persecution shall come, and waxes too hot, they will turn aside.