Hosea 1

Hosea 1:4

In executing God’s judgments on the family of Ahab, 2 Kings ix. x. Jehu only aimed at gratifying his own ambition and cruelty; and therefore his conduct is justly punished, as murder, upon his own family, and the throne of Israel taken from them

REFLECTIONS UPON CHAP. I.—God can easily preserve his ministers in the very worst of times, and make them steadily to serve him either in honour or dishonour. And it becomes them to use very diversified methods, in order to convince hardened sinners, and warn them to flee from the wrath which is to come. God sovereignly destroys the instruments of his wrath when his work with them is finished. And there is no warding off the strokes of his vengeance. They who depart from him weaken, and bring certain ruin on, themselves. If God’s mercy be once taken from men, they are irrecoverably miserable. And they who in works deny God may expect to be disowned by him at last. But our salvation is solely owing to his sovereign grace. And if we cleave to God in a day of defection he will save us in a day of trouble. Thrice happy are they who, adopted into his family, have Jesus for their spiritual Head, and go up from this world to their heavenly rest. Happy are the apostolic and millennial periods, and especially that of the last judgment, in which multitudes of Jews and Gentiles shall follow after him as the Head of his redeemed church