THE DEPARTURE OF GOD
"I will go and return to My place, till they acknowledge their offence, and seek My face; in their Affliction they will seek Me earnestly."—Hosea 5:15
Jehovah is the Speaker. "I will go and return to My place, till they acknowledge their offence, and seek My face; in their affliction they will seek Me earnestly." In this chapter the prophet's special message was delivered to the priests, to the people, and to the king. It was a national word to Israel, but through the priests and the king, that is, the religious and the civil rulers. Its burden was that of national pollution, and consequent Divine judgment falling upon the nation.
The background is that of intense gloom. Israel is in rebellion against her God, and Judah is in danger. It is to be observed that twice over he linked Judah with Israel in what he had to say. In our previous article we were considering the word to Judah, which the prophet flung across the border-line between the southern and the northern kingdom, when he warned the southern nation against making any alliance with Israel, as he said, "Ephraim is joined to idols; let him alone."
Quite evidently Judah was not obedient to the warning. She had been entering into league with Israel, and seeking help from Assyria. There was a political arrangement between the northern and southern kingdoms in an attempt to save them from what they supposed to be impending calamity. In this message, then, while especially first addressed to the northern kingdom, the prophet twice included Judah in what he had to say. The historic background reveals terrible decadence in Israel and Judah. Hello world around us.
In view of this, the prophet was warning the nations of discipline in judgment, and the judgments predicted are progressive. Under figures of speech he describes two of them, and in definiteness of language the last. The first is found in verse twelve, "I am unto Ephraim as a moth"; the second in verse fourteen, "I will be unto Ephraim as a lion"; the last in verse fifteen, "I will go and return to My place."
The first judgment is described as that of the moth, that little insignificant insect, the moth, which nevertheless finds its way into the wealth of the East and destroys it. The second is referred to as that of the lion, rampant, angry, tearing, and rending. And then the last, the most terrific of all, God withdrawing Himself, "I will go and return to My place, till . . . "
The warning is a solemn one. There can be none more solemn. The moth is a terrible thing. The lion is a terrible thing. But when God withdraws Himself, it is the most terrible calamity that can take place.
Nevertheless, it is at once to be noticed that this solemn warning ends on a note which reveals the Divine heart and intention. The first part of the warning fills the heart with terror, "I will go and return to My place"; then comes the little word, the arresting word, "till," and in that little word "till” I discover the Divine heart. As we read it, and that which follows, we discover the Divine intention, "I will go and return to My place," but that is not My will, or My desire, or what I want; "till." Till what? "Till they acknowledge their offence, and seek My face." Then the Divine word sings the song not merely of hope, but of assurance, "In their affliction they will seek Me earnestly."
Thus we have the most solemn warning, and coupled with it a revelation of a method in the going, and a final word which unveils the heart of God. To those two matters, then, and in that sequence, let us give our attention. Let us consider the solemnity of this warning, the terrible calamity threatened; and then the method in which the warning was given, as it reveals the heart of God.
It is a strange word this, and a word that gives us pause, that God said to these people that He would leave them, that He would go, that He would withdraw Himself, that He would return unto His place.
Of course the language is, to use theological terminology, the language of anthropomorphism, God speaking under the figure of Himself as a man as departing and returning to His place. The meaning is perfectly simple in one way. It means that He Who has been present with them will withdraw from them. He declares that under the conditions obtaining He will go away.
In considering this warning, however, the limitation of the idea must of necessity be observed. There is a sense in which He is always present, whatever the wickedness, and whatever the rebellion. There is a sense in which His presence is never—and reverently let me say it—cannot be withdrawn. In the very nature of His Being that is so the actual presence is inescapable, the government of God is always active. His withdrawal does not mean that He is giving up His government. We must be very careful to understand these things. A startling illustration of the fact occurs in the later history, in the account of the night of carousal in the kingly halls of Belshazzar. We are all familiar with that story, dramatic and forceful, and flashing with revealing light. When Belshazzar, with a thousand of his lords, were drunk, when they had desecrated the vessels of the temple—which had been taken by them, and until then kept with a certain amount of sanctity—filling them with wine, and drinking from those very vessels until they were drunk, and their breath was consequently foul with drink and obscenity, there came the writing on the wall. "Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin." (Dan. 5:25) In Daniel's interpretation of that writing, these startling words were spoken to the king, "The God in Whose hand thy breath is, and Whose are all thy ways, hast thou not glorified." (Dan. 5:23) In a sense God had withdrawn Himself, and calamity was coming. In another sense He had not withdrawn Himself. "Thy breath," the breath of Belshazzar, foul with drink and obscenity, "the God in Whose hand thy breath is." There is a sense in which God is never distanced, nor can be. There is a sense in which His government never ceases, for even when He says, "I will withdraw Myself," He is still acting in government. He divorces Himself from the stench, with return always in His heart.
This is a truth which lies at the heart of all life, which we should never forget. No man can escape the government of God. No man does escape from the government of God. We speak about men being rebels, and rebellious they are, in revolt against high heaven, lifting the blasphemous fist of wickedness, and smiting God in the face with intent; but they never escape from His government. It is possible for me, in the mystery of my personality, to fling myself against the bosses on the shield of God; but if I do, He breaks me; He governs. It is possible for me to hide in penitence in the heart of God, and if I do, He heals me. But whether in law, or in grace, He governs. So also there are senses in which God is never withdrawn, for in Him we live and move and have our being. In His hand is our breath.
Then what does this mean? It is self-evident that it means He would withdraw Himself in guidance, leaving themselves as their own husband. He would leave them to follow their own bent, abandon them to their own elections, their own choices, and their own decisions; abandon them to the issue of those rebellions; withdraw Himself from interference, from those activities of His Grace, which, in spite of their sin, had so long stood to prevent the ultimate calamity and loss. He said, "I will go and return to M y place"; and so allow you to go all the way that you are travelling; I will raise no fresh barrier against you; "I will go and return to My place."
Such withdrawal is the ultimate and direst calamity that can ever overtake a nation or individual, any nation; a man, any man; for if God withdraw His interference, what have we lost? We have lost the principle of holiness, the certainty of absolute wisdom, sufficient strength for the accomplishment of anything worthwhile, and the bringing of it to finality, and we have lost love. Many homes are missing this ingredient and order. God goes to His own place.
If God withdraw Himself we may still attempt to set up standards of conduct by the consideration of circumstances, and they will break down; for unless the spirit of holiness breathe through our ethical standards, they perish. Illustrations of this abound in human history. They are obvious in our world today. When God withdraws Himself, then man has lost the true interpretation of holiness, and the only inspiration of holiness, and so the demand for holiness ceases. When God is withdrawn, men begin to declare that there is no such thing as holiness and set up their own standards. But, it may be objected, we have not heard men say that. But we have heard them say there is no such thing as sin; and if there is no such thing as sin, there is no such thing as holiness. We will not have this man to rule over us! When God is withdrawn, the very distinction between right and wrong has gone. Morality is rooted in religion and stated in His book. When once religion —using the word in its high and proper sense, as the binding of man to God, and the holding of man in right relationship with God—whenever religion has perished, morality withers and dies, becomes the sport of the comic papers, the butt of brilliant articles in magazines, the ridicule of the philosophers who are without God. Holiness is at a discount. "I will withdraw Myself." When God does that, the vision and the passion for holiness perish.
Again, wisdom is lost. That is almost unbelievable. The age boasts itself in its knowledge while revealing their ignorance. There is much wisdom which takes no account of God; but is it wisdom? Is knowledge ever wisdom when it shuts out of its calculation, at any point in human life, and in any consideration, the supreme factor? Can any activity of the human mind lead man towards the goal of human well-being, if God is eliminated? All such activity is of the essence of foolishness, better yet, it is madness of the most destructive type.
If God withdraws Himself, it is equally true that strength is withdrawn. There is a certain vitality of flesh and of mind, for a while; but if the spiritual center of life is dead, both the mental and the physical wither, or become atrophied in all their highest possibilities. Man cannot live by bread alone. (Matt. 4:4; Luke 4:4)
Finally, and most disastrously, if God withdraws Himself, love will perish. John was right when he said, "Love is of God." Much that is called love is self-centered, and so lacks the vital principle which is central to the love of God, and was the reason of that self-emptying which brought Him to Calvary for us. Love today has some loose interpretations and that is why marriages today are abundant. No daily talks with God and His truth as Adam did in the cool of the day.
If that is the nature of this judgment, consider it in its action. In the light of this prophecy, and in the light of all the Biblical revelation, and in the light of all human history, we are taught that God never leaves man until man has left Him. Or—and I am going to use very human language, because I know none other — God never leaves man until He has exhausted every method of discipline. First the moth, then the lion, and only when those fail, withdrawal of Himself. The moth, subtle, lacking in terror but weakening in strength and resulting in decay of virility. This is the act of God, intended to provoke man, in the consciousness of weakness, to a rediscovery of, and return to, the sources of strength. "I am unto Ephraim as a moth, and to the house of Judah as rottenness." The disaster was that Ephraim did become conscious of his weakness, but did not return to God; "When Ephraim saw his sickness, and Judah saw his wound, then went Ephraim to Assyria." The failure was with them. The purpose of the discipline of the moth was that of making the nation know its weakness that they might seek the sources of its strength, and it produced that effect—but they went to Assyria. Therefore the method of the moth was not enough.
Then, said God, I will take another method. I will become as a lion, and as a young lion to the house of Judah, "I, even I, will tear and go away; I will carry off, and there shall be none to deliver." The judgment of swift and sudden and terrific calamity followed. What for? Still, in order that the nation might be brought back to Him. Then, if this too fails, when every method of discipline intended to restore is exhausted, then the final and the terrific one is inevitable. God will withdraw; "I will return to My place." God leaves man only when there is no hope in the case, nothing to which He can appeal, no avenue of approac: when every point of contact is destroyed.
No man can accurately interpret his own age. Distance alone gives true perspective. Nevertheless, it is impossible to read these pages without seeing light, flashing here and there, upon present conditions. To look back over half a century is to find at least reasons for solemn consideration. Necessarily my thoughts are concerned with my own country, but I think they have application to the whole world’s nations also. Looking back now through the vista of these years, I am conscious of the method of the moth, the evidences of weakening in national character. And I do not see that there was a return to God. Then came those terrific years of the lion, and the young lion, of appalling calamity, and catastrophe. And then I wonder, and am uttering no final finding. Have these things brought us back to God? I am not answering the question, but if not, then we stand, nationally, in danger of this judgment of God; that He may leave us to our own courses.
Our very love of our nations, and our devotion to their highest welfare, must make us almost poignantly conscious of our peril, and must constrain us to prayer that this thing may not happen, that God may not withdraw Himself.
But do not forget this. He never does leave man until man has left Him. "God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself." (2 Cor. 5:19) He had never left the world. The world had left Him. There may be inexactitudes of terminology in our best hymns. We sing sometimes:
"My God is reconciled,
His pardoning voice I hear.
He owns me for His child,
I can no longer fear.
With confidence I now draw nigh
And Father, Abba, Father, cry."
I love that hymn. I shall undoubtedly sing it to the end of my pilgrimage, and perhaps beyond—but whenever I sing it, I think it a little differently in its first line: "My God is reconciled." The deeper truth is that I am reconciled to Him. He never turned His back upon man, except as man turned his back upon Him. He never gives man up, until something has taken place in the individual soul, or in the condition of the age, or in the national life, that has destroyed the possibility of contact. Said Jehovah, "I will go and return to My place." Why? Because Israel and Judah had left Him, in spite of every attempt to hold them. God never leaves man until man leaves Him. He employs various methods of discipline; every one of them intended to save us from our calamity, and bring us back, and hold us. But if there comes a moment when there is no response, then it is inevitable, not of His choice, but of our own selection, that He leave us.
But that is not all the text. I think if it were, I hardly dare talk about it. But it is not all. Even in that solemn and dread hour when, to Israel and Judah by the prophets Hosea and Isaiah, the case seemed so hopeless, that God withdrew Himself, He did so still with a note of hope. In all the other prophets we find the same principle. In Ezekiel, we find God withdrawing Himself from the temple and the people, but return and restoration are in view. When I read, "I will go and return to My place, till," like a flash that little word, equally simple in the language of which this is a translation, arrests thought in the presence of the terror, and the fact, using simple human language, that as God departs, He departs reluctantly, as though He said, I am going, but I do not want to go; I am going to My place, because you will have none of Me; but the door is open.
What infinite suggestions of compassion are in that little word "till"! I find it again in equally arresting setting in the New Testament. Let me read the words again. They are found in Matthew 23:37-39 "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, that killeth the prophets, and stoneth them that are sent unto her! How often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not! Behold, your house is left unto you desolate. For I say unto you, Ye shall not see Me henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord." He wants her back, His chosen ones mean so much more to Him than we give credit. Divorce would not be rampant in this world if our love was His love. Agape!!!
God on the page of the Old Testament, God on the page of the New, abandoning a nation, abandoning a city, abandoning a people, why? Because they would not have Him. I would have gathered your children as a hen gathers her brood beneath her wings—infinite and exquisite language, revealing the Motherhood of God—but ye would not; therefore "your house is left unto you desolate"; and there is a fine and caustic irony in it—your house, the temple. He had previously described it as "My Father's house," but at last He called it "your house," no longer God's house. As in the days of Hosea, Bethel, the House of God, had become Bethaven, the house of vanity. "Your house is left unto you desolate."
Is that all? Is doom the last word on the lips of Jesus? No! "Ye shall not see Me henceforth, till." The door is open. Oh, the gracious music, the infinite harmonies of that one little word "till." The warning ends on a note, revealing His willingness to return.
To return to Hosea. He tells them how He will come back. When will God come back? He said I will leave you, till. When will He return? Will He indeed come back again, the God continually refused, broken-hearted by the infidelity of His people? He is bound to leave them, by the necessity of holiness and of love. When will He come back? "Till they acknowledge their offence, and seek My face." First, when "they acknowledge their offence," that is, when they turn from their idols. And so, when they seek My face; that is, when they return to God. True repentance has two parts.
When Paul was writing his letter to the Thessalonians he described the whole of the Christian life by saying, "Ye turned to God from idols, to serve the living and true God, and to wait for His Son from heaven." From idols to God; from sin to God; from the fstupidity of the long rebellion, back to God. That is all. When man turns back to God, God turns back to man.
Thus the solemn warning ends on the note of hope, of the door that is not shut. I will go to My place; as though He said, But the door is open, it is on the latch. You can find Me if you want Me.
As a hen both gather her chickens beneath her wings! Till you acknowledge your offence and seek My face. When you do it, says God, the door is open. His judgments are terrible. They must be; but the moth and the lion are intended to save us. And if we will not learn by the discipline, by the insidious weakening of all our forces; and if we will not learn by the blood and muck and misery of war; it may be God will have to say, I will go to My place, and leave you, leave you to your own devices, leave you till the point of contact is created anew. That point of contact can be made so far as God is concerned when we say, We will confess our sin, put away our idols, and come back seeking the face of God. The judgment is inevitable, made necessary by the choices of man when he turns from God; but God leaves the door on the latch, and the light in the window!
In the first three verses of chapter six the prophet appeals to the people to return to and through that door left open. It is one of the most tender and beautiful appeals to be found in the Bible. In our next article we will return to it for fuller consideration. In this we close by reading it: "Come, and let us return unto Jehovah; for He hath torn, and He will heal us; He hath smitten, and He will bind us up. After two days will He revive us: on the third day He will raise us up, and we shall live before Him. And let us know, let us follow on to know Jehovah: His going forth is sure as the morning; and He will come unto us as the rain, as the latter rain that waters the earth." Does that sound familiar? Three is always a familiar number when you speak of the true God.
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