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‘Ephraim is a cake not turned.’
Hos_7:8
We have an example here. ‘Ephraim is a cake not turned’ is a voice for the million. The character represented in this figure is legible to all. As the cake not turned is a compound not equable, as it is both underdone and overdone, clammy in part and blistered in part, so it denotes a type of character at once distempered and untempered, a character that lacks unity, that is spoiled by defect and damaged by excess, an inconsistent whole upon which, whichever way you view it, the result is marred.
I. The grounds of this impeachment.—Note a few of the more important.
(1) The first we see in the eighth verse taken as a whole: Ephraim has missed the grand practical design of religion, which is entire separation unto God.
There are many unturned cakes to-day from the same cause—many persons who seek, like Ephraim, to combine in themselves contradictory qualities.
(2) A second ground for this impeachment is seen in the indisposition of Ephraim to look to God, to call upon Him, to count on Him as the grand unit of power against the enemy. There is a vein of extreme pathos in Jehovah’s plaint, Hos_7:7, ‘There is none among them that calleth upon Me’; and in Hos_7:11 He adds, ‘They call to Egypt; they go to Assyria.’ These Ephraimites kept their religion for ceremonies and state occasions; it was not an everyday working religion. It was to them a kind of etiquette; it was not to them a practical stay and support. They had a notional knowledge of God, but they did not seek after an experimental knowledge of Him.
The man to whom God is a notion, even though it be a venerated notion and not a practical resource, is the same, an unturned cake. We are not to be unmanned by trouble; still less are we to make an arm of flesh our trust. No; we are to turn the cake. We are to meet emergency by trust, and danger by faith.
(3) Another ground of Ephraim’s impeachment was pride. We see this in Hos_7:10 : ‘The pride of Israel testifieth to His face.’ Now, pride is always a one-sided and, therefore, spiritually false thing. Pride is based on fleshly comparison. No one could be proud who saw himself in the Divine light.
(4) A still further ground of Ephraim’s impeachment lay in their licentious and inordinate use of temporal things. Heated by wine, they were carried, in various directions, into intemperate excess. There is no harm that you take your dinner with a relish, that you enjoy what God gives. But if in these outward things your soul’s essential gratification is found, then you are an unturned cake. There is a possibility of ruining the cake through self-indulgence. If Paul stood in awe of such a catastrophe, no less should we. Cultivate delight in the Lord, that sordid appetite may be kept in check with inflexible rein.
II. The teachings that underlie Ephraim’s impeachment.—These teachings strongly emphasise:—
(1) The need of a proper balance of character.
(2) Once more, the teachings in question strongly emphasise the need of a proper balance of truth.
(3) In conclusion, the general drift of the whole subject suggests to our mind the need of a correspondence between what Christ has done for us and what He is doing in us by His Spirit. To be well baked we need the Cross of Christ translated into experience.
Illustration
‘It is the specimen of many. Into one side of him the penetrating leaven, the transforming fire, has not carried the force of grace. As an old Puritan puts it: “Their cake is dough: it will never serve for bread at God’s board.” ’