at St. Jude’s Prayer Meeting (12th July, 1926),
by the late Rev. N. CAMERON.
“O Israel, return unto the Lord thy God; for thou hast fallen by thine 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” (Hos. xiv. 1-2).
WE have in this prophecy many things concerning the confusion of the cause of Christ in the days of Hosea and how low the Jews had fallen. You find in the 2nd chapter
the Prophet exhorting them to turn unto the Lord on account of the fact that they had departed from Him. You find it written there: “Plead with your mother. Plead, for she is not my wife.” That means that He was married to the Church and that He is jealous of how the Church in the world will appear, how she appears in the light of law and gospel. But you find that there was no use in the prophet pleading; for further on it is said: “Ephraim is joined to his idols. Let him alone.” But you see although God told Hosea to let Ephraim alone, God did not leave him alone, for if God leaves sinners alone, they are undone.
In the beginning of this chapter he admonishes them for the last time to return to the Lord their God, for He was their God still in Covenant: “Return unto the Lord thy God, for thou hast fallen by thine iniquity” and he also advises them how they are to turn: “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.”
First, I desire to notice here that there is no other hope for any sinner, but the hope that is set before us in returning to God, for the sinner will continue to go on in his own way, and there must be a returning or eternal ruin. A returning from all the ways of sin, religiously and morally, for there is such a thing as a returning that God does not approve of, for He says: “If thou return at all, return to Me”—not just a forsaking of this and that thing—an outward reformation, though that is good in itself, it will not save a soul. He advises them here then that if they return at all to return unto Him, and He points out that He was still their God: “Return unto the Lord thy God;” that is an extraordinary thing that the great God of eternity is the God of all men. Though they may forsake Him, He is still their God and they are accountable to Him. It is only the work of a madman to think, far less to say, that they do not believe in God. The first thing that should be considered by every child of Adam
is that it is by man’s own iniquity that he fell, and that it is by iniquity men are falling deeper and deeper every day. Adam sinned against God and fell, and, oh! what a great fall it was. Alas! what the day of Judgment will reveal as regards the fall of Adam. There is a great deal in the world to-day to be seen of it, but very, very little in comparison with what will be seen when the heavens shall be no more and the earth and the works that are therein shall be burned up, and you will see then some standing on the left hand and some on the right. Oh, the awful fall of man by his iniquity. That day will reveal the particular sins of each individual, for we are told that God will give each according to their deeds. That is one of the thorns that we are kicking against, viz., that we are fallen in Adam, but it is hard to kick against the pricks. We are denying it to-day, but Euclid never gave a demonstration clearer than the men of this generation are giving that they fell in Adam wholesale and along with that they are under the burden of their own iniquity which they commit daily. It will all have to meet them one day and He advises the people here to lay it to heart here in the world—for everyone must do so here or hereafter. God has no delight in the death of the wicked and He calls men to consider their iniquity, which was the cause of their committing such sins in the world.
It is a different thing altogether to hear this and for one not to say anything against it (as may be the case where one has been brought up from infancy under the preaching of the pure gospel) than for a sinner truly realising that he has fallen by his own iniquity, and that he cannot blame Adam or any other person but he must take the guilt of his ruin upon his own head, and to confess as the poor prodigal did: “I have sinned against heaven and in thy sight.” Others sinned but they did not realise it, but here is one who realised that he had brought himself low indeed and he has come now to confess it. All who are saved are brought to confess that they are
fallen by their own iniquity. I do not say that that is true of everyone that professes to-day, it is only true of those who are saved.
When a sinner comes to see how he has fallen by his own iniquity and that he cannot restore himself to the state in which he was when God created him, he learns then the depravity of his fallen nature; he cannot undo it. Sin is an extraordinary thing, it can never be undone; God forgives it, but it will remain true that this man committed such and such sins against God, and you find that the redeemed Church had this confession in glory, though not to their condemnation there, singing: “Unto Him that loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood, and hath made us kings and priests unto God and His Father; to Him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.”
God convinces the sinner who is saved in this world that he has fallen and that he has brought himself so low, and many were brought to this that they thought that whoever would be saved, there was very little hope for them. There may be many that are prayerless but the sinner, who is convinced that he has fallen from God and who feels his accountability to God, feels his great need of prayer, and he also feels that he does not know how to begin and has to say as the Apostles said to their Lord: “Teach us to pray;” and have we not much need of that teaching.
We may repeat prayers like the Church of England, which they repeat every Sabbath, a series of prayers that their great-great-grandfathers put together and wrote down, and they just read them off their book from Sabbath to Sabbath. I am not speaking about the prayers themselves, but they are not prayers for you and me, and if God were to convince us, we would find such prayers of little use; but here God begins in this chapter as you would see a serious and godly mother trying to teach her little boy or girl to pray, putting the words into the mouth of the child; that is what God does here. I remember
long ago calling at a house in which there was a nice little boy and I began to teach him the prayer of the 51st Psalm; but his grandmother said to me that she did not believe in such a thing for the child could not understand and there was no value in prayer when the boy did not know what the words meant, he was too young yet. She was asked: “What proof have you that this boy will be much older than he is, and how do you know but he may have to appear before the Judge of Eternity before such a time as you think? and who knows but the Holy Spirit may bring him to a knowledge of the truth even at so early an age as He did in other cases?” Well, that little boy was in the grave in less than 6 months after that.
God says here: “Take with you words, and turn to the Lord” for their face was not towards God but to the world and sin. We are struck with the men in this generation when they pray, the first words they have are: “Our Father which art in heaven” and they may have been at the theatre or such places the night before, and still they begin with such words. It would be more like if they would start with the words of this prayer: “Take away all iniquity,” for until sin is removed it matters little what the sinner may have. If God does not pardon our sins, we are not right here and you will not be right in eternity. The first thing that is true then is that they have committed many sins against God, and that brings before me what a woman said to me about two years ago. She had been brought back from the very brink of the grave and when she got better, I spoke to her about her duty, and I asked her if she prayed, and she said: “Ah, do you know I cannot pray?” I asked her: “Do you deny that you have sinned?” “No,” she said. “Well, you sit down,” I said, “and begin at the first Commandment and follow on to the tenth and ask yourself about every Commandment—how often did I break this? and I assure you by the time you have reached the tenth, you will have a pretty long prayer to God.” If we were to
begin even with our mind to think how often we have transgressed God’s holy Law, I do not think we could be without words in prayer to the Lord asking Him to pardon our sins.
The same thing is true as regards the Gospel, for although sins against the Law are terrible, they are not so terrible as sins against the Gospel, for God has made a provision to save the guiltiest sinner under the Law, but He has made no provision for sinners who will continue despising and rejecting Christ. There is no other remedy for these. It is just like a man dying of a fatal disease to whom a prescription was given, which he was told if he would go according to the directions he would live, but the man would not take it; he refused to have it, so he must suffer the consequences, and that is the way with man; for God is setting before us a remedy—Christ and Him crucified, and it is by faith in Christ even without one good work that they are justified before God for “He justifies the ungodly who believe in Christ Jesus;” and whoever will despise that remedy there is no hope for such.
The sinner has to confess that there is iniquity there to begin with—iniquity to be taken away—“Take away all iniquity.” But how does he expect to be saved from it? Is it by his own merits? No! it is all of grace. It is of the free grace of God that He receives the sinner. Not at all on account of your prayers or your crying. No! There is plenty crying in eternal woe, but that will not merit anything, and there was plenty crying in this world too, but it never went further than that. The sinner must look to grace and the free mercy of God as his only hope now, and that mercy finding a way through the sufferings and death and resurrection and ascension into glory of the Eternal Son of God, and we are told that He never denied Him one thing and He never will. Man must turn his back upon everything he can do himself and look entirely to the grace of God and His delight in mercy, and although the poor sinner has nothing to confess but sin, sin and iniquity, and although he can do nothing and no one else
can help him, yet there is enough in God to meet his ruined condition, for the Lord is merciful and gracious and He will not keep His anger for ever towards those who depart and turn confessing their sins and loathing themselves for what they were and what they are, and who are looking to God in Christ as the only remedy now. “Receive us graciously; so will we render the calves of our lips.” These are the offerings, for although men would give all the calves and bulls they had in sacrifice to God, that will not avail anything, you could not give anything but what is His own. You cannot give God anything—all things are His, but He desires the fruit of the lips of men—the organ that He created Himself and that will be singing in glory. He will not be worshipped by any wooden instrument and, indeed, we would not allow any instrument to praise Him for us there, we would want to praise Him ourselves with our own lips and that from the heart. They were going to offer Him the fruit of their lips—they would praise God, as David said: “God’s mercies I will ever sing.” Others may be singing something else, vain songs and such like. You can sing of nothing but God’s mercies, and it was God Himself that put this in your lips and heart. They now go on to confess that man will not save them “Asshur shall not save us; we will not ride upon horses; neither will we say any more to the works of our hands; ye are our gods; for in thee the fatherless findeth mercy.”