BibleTools.info

As they called them, so they went from them - The prophet changes his tone, no longer speaking of that one first call of God to Israel as a whole, whereby He brought out Israel as one man, His one son; which one call he obeyed. Here he speaks of God‘s manifold calls to the people, throughout their whole history, which they as often disobeyed, and not disobeyed only, but went contrariwise. “They called them.” Whether God employed Moses, or the judges, or priests, or kings, or prophets, to call them, it was all one. Whenever or by whomsoever they were called, they turned away in the opposite direction, to serve their idols. They proportioned and fitted, as it were, their disobedience to God‘s long-suffering.: “Then chiefly they threw off obedience, despised their admonitions, and worked themselves up the more franticly to a zeal for the sin which they had begun.” “They,” God‘s messengers, “called; so,” in like manner, “they went away from them. They sacrificed unto Baalim,” i. e., their many Baals, in which they cherished idolatry, cruelty, and fleshly sin.: So “when Christ came and called them manifoldly, as in the great day of the feast, “If any man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink,” the more diligently He called them, the more diligently they went away from Him, and returned to their idols, to the love and possession of riches and houses and pleasures, for whose sake they despised the truth.”

When Israel were weak and helpless as children, foolish and froward as children, then God loved them; he bore them as the nurse does the sucking child, nourished them, and suffered their manners. All who are grown up, ought often to reflect upon the goodness of God to them in their childhood. He took care of them, took pains with them, not only as a father, or a tutor, but as a mother, or nurse. When they were in the wilderness, God showed them the way in which they should go, and bore them up, taking them by the arms. He taught them the way of his commandments by the ceremonial law given by Moses. He took them by the arms, to guide them, that they might not stray, and to hold them up, that they might not stumble and fall. God's spiritual Israel are all thus supported. It is God's work to draw poor souls to himself; and none can come to him except he draw them. With bands of love; this word signifies stronger cords than the former. He eased them of the burdens they had long groaned under. Israel is very ungrateful to God. God's counsels would have saved them, but their own counsels ruined them. They backslide; there is no hold of them, no stedfastness in them. They backslide from me, from God, the chief good. They are bent to backslide; they are ready to sin; they are forward to close with every temptation. Their hearts are fully set in them to do evil. Those only are truly happy, whom the Lord teaches by his Spirit, upholds by his power, and causes to walk in his ways. By his grace he takes away the love and dominion of sin, and creates a desire for the blessed feast of the gospel, that they may feed thereon, and live for ever.

“They kept not the covenant of God,
And refused to walk in His law.” 8T 276.1

Psalm 78:10. 8T 276

“The more the prophets called them, the more they went from them....
Yet I taught Ephraim to walk;
I took them on My arms;
But they knew not that I healed them.
I drew them with cords of a man, with bands of love....
My people are bent on backsliding from Me:
Though they call them to Him that is on high,
None at all will exalt Him.” 8T 276.2

Read in context »