Hosea 7:9 Strangers have devoured his strength, and he knows it not: yes, gray hairs are here and there on him, yet he knows not. Take the text — I. LITERALLY. 1. Grey hairs excite our admiration. Beautiful arrangement of Providence — that old age should be spent in sitting still and taking life easily. The first years of a man's life are spent in weakness. Why? That he may prepare himself — physically, mentally, morally, and spiritually — for the life that lies before him. So also the last years. Age resembles childhood as sunset resembles sunrise. 2. Grey hairs are matter for gratitude. Life is like a table-land: many die in descending the slope from birth to the age of thirty; many more in walking along the level plain from thirty to fifty; few live to descend the slope on the other side. 3. Grey hairs are matter for serious contemplation. "It is an awful pity," said Sir Thomas Smith, Queen Elizabeth's Secretary of State, "that so few men know for what purpose they came into the world until they are ready to go out of it." 4. Grey hairs are matter for searching of heart. Opportunities wasted: the final opportunity almost gone. II. FIGURATIVELY. The folly of neglecting life's warnings. 1. We ought not to need special warnings. (1) Reason speaks to us. We know that as surely as night crones after day and autumn follows summer, so death follows life and eternity time. (2) Observation and experience speak to us. The noise of weeping is in palace and hovel: old and young, good and evil, fair and frail go in steady procession to the grave. (3) Revelation warns us that it is appointed unto man once to die, etc. 2. Yet the gradualness of life's transitions renders these special messengers acceptable. And experience proves them necessary. "Our clock," says Carlyle, "strikes when there is a change from hour to hour; but no hammer in the horologue of time peals through the universe when there is a change from era to era." The transitions of our lives from one stage to the next are wrought in similar silence. They are hardly perceptible. And yet — to-day, to-morrow, and the next day, and in all its vivid reality, the sea of glass and the eternal shore will burst upon us. In view of the gradualness of this progress to eternity, and the certainty of our destiny, we may be grateful for the reminder of grey hairs. 3. The angels of God come to us with silent footsteps. Grey hairs are "the first faint streaks of the morning"; but then, what will that morning mean to us? III. SPIRITUALLY. A neglected Bible, listlessness in prayer, coldness towards the Master, indifference towards sin, the shunning of Christian companionships, carelessness as to attendance at the house of God, callousness as to the eternal welfare of others, — these are grey hairs that appear upon us, but we neither notice them, nor the fearful declension of which they tell. One day I met a man of eighty. I said: "My friend, will you not truss the Saviour?" "No, no," he answered; "I'm too old, too old!" The very next day I met a youth of sixteen. "My friend," I said again, "will you not trust the Saviour?" "No, no," he answered; "I'm too young, too young!" And betwixt that "too old" and that "too young" we all go dancing to our everlasting doom. What a strain on the mercy of God! (F. W. Boreham). Parallel Verses KJV: Strangers have devoured his strength, and he knoweth it not: yea, gray hairs are here and there upon him, yet he knoweth not. |
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