Well, this morning, after a bit of a pause, we return to our consideration of the prophecy of Hosea. Hosea, if you would turn to Hosea chapter 6, we'll pick up our reading at chapter 5, verse 8, and read through 6, verse 6. When we ended right before the holiday season, the Advent season, we considered together verses 1, 2, and 3 of chapter 6. Kind of took them by themselves, these verses, apart from the rest here. And now today we somewhat repeat that. So I'm going to test your memory a little bit. But we consider them also within the context of the verses that follow. Now, Hosea, you recall, is indeed a prophecy of judgment. A prophecy in which the Lord through Hosea lays before the people a picture of their covenant unfaithfulness. And he pictures it very vividly for them that they are an adulterous wife through Hosea's marriage to Gomer, the prostitute. Very much Israel is deserving of punishment. And that judgment is seen all throughout the prophecy as we've begun to see and we will continue to see. But also, it is a picture of love and the mercy of God. The deep love and mercy of God. And that God pursues His wife. And that He calls her to repentance. He promises her forgiveness. So in a general way, we can say that in Hosea, we see on the one hand, we see both the depths of man, our sin and misery and wickedness. But at the same time, we see the height of God's grace. and His mercy and His love. So with that, we will pick up our reading at verse 8 of chapter 5 and considering the first six verses of chapter 6. Hear now the Word of God. Sound the trumpet in Gibeah, the horn in Ramah. Raise the battle cry in Beth-Avon. Lead on, O Benjamin. Ephraim will be laid waste on the day of reckoning. Among the tribes of Israel, I proclaim what is certain. Judah's leaders are like those who move boundary stones. I will pour out my wrath on them like a flood of water. Ephraim is oppressed, trampled in judgment, intent on pursuing idols. I am like a moth to Ephraim, like rot to the people of Judah. When Ephraim saw his sickness and Judah his sores, then Ephraim turned to Assyria and sent to the great king for help. But He is not able to cure you, not able to heal your sores. For I will be like a lion to Ephraim, like a great lion to Judah. I will tear them to pieces and go away. I will carry them off with no one to rescue them. Then I will go back to my place until they admit their guilt, and they will seek my face. In their misery, they will earnestly seek me. Come, let us return to the Lord. He has torn us to pieces, but He will heal us. He has injured us, but He will bind up our wounds. After two days, He will revive us. On the third day, He will restore us, that we may live in His presence. Let us acknowledge the Lord. Let us press on to acknowledge Him. As surely as the sun rises, He will appear. He will come to us like the winter rains, like the spring rains that water the earth. What can I do with you, Ephraim? What can I do with you, Judah? Your love is like the morning mist, like the early dew that disappears. Therefore I cut you in pieces with my prophets. I killed you with the words of my mouth. My judgments flash like lightning upon you. For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgement of God, rather than burnt offerings. May God indeed add His blessing to the reading, the preaching, and the hearing of His Word. A beloved in the Lord Jesus Christ, rejection hurts. I believe we probably can all identify with that. Rejection hurts. Whether you're simply trying to get someone's attention or just trying to do something nice for another person, It hurts when you are ignored or simply dismissed as if who you are and what you have to offer is meaningless. It's treated as meaningless. It troubles us. It grieves us. And it really comes down to a problem of an attitude of disloyalty on the part of the one who does the rejecting. And that's what God was dealing with with Israel. loyalty, and rejection that grieved him. And through Hosea's marriage to Gomer, the prostitute, and the children's names that the Lord commanded him to give to those children, the Lord gave Israel indeed a visible picture of the condition of their covenantal relationship with him and also a picture of his response to that relationship. Israel was unfaithful, disloyal, and had rejected him. And God would disown her. God would show no mercy upon her. And ever since chapter 4, we know that the prophet Hosea has been prosecuting, we might say, the covenant of the Lord. He has been, as it were, in a court of law, a prosecuting attorney against the Israelites. Laying out the evidence against them. Condemning Israel for breaking the covenant. And making it clear that both the people and the priests with them were all guilty. And making it clear that the Lord was to judge and to punish them severely. And we see that very vividly at the end of chapter 5. But we notice also that the Lord was bringing that slowly, slowly. He was bringing destruction like dry rot. Yet we might also say mercifully. He didn't wipe them out in a flash. He's bringing us slowly with the hope and the desire that they repent and return to the Lord. But they don't. They turn to Assyria. A nation that was powerful among the nations of the earth at that time. But a nation that was helpless to save and to heal Israel against the Lord who would come against them like a lion. But only, as we see in verse 15 of chapter 5, in extreme misery, when they see that they can receive help from no place else where they finally return to the Lord. This is the context of our text this morning. Our text, which in a way introduces chapters 6 through 11, which is a longer, more detailed account of both Israel's religious apostasy and moral corruption, along with the judgment that was to fall on the people, all of that which was introduced in chapters 4 and 5. But to bridge chapters 4 and 5 with 6 through 11, we find this text. And here with this text, chapter 6, verses 1 through 6, we must see that God speaks to Israel from his heart. God speaks to Israel from his heart, first of all, calling for true repentance. And secondly, lamenting the present reality. First, calling for true repentance. Again, we've considered this already, verses 1, 2, and 3. We considered it, we considered the loving heart of God. So now, once again, somewhat in summary fashion, God speaks to Israel from his heart, calling for true repentance. Hosea, you may recall, we said, is speaking on behalf of the people in these three verses. Let me read them again. Come, let us return to the Lord. He has torn us to pieces, but He will heal us. He has injured us, but He will bind up our wounds. After two days, He will revive us. On the third day, He will restore us, that we may live in His presence. Let us acknowledge the Lord. Let us press on to acknowledge Him. As surely as the sun rises, He will appear. He will come to us like the winter rains, like the spring rains that water the earth. Again, I believe Hosea is speaking here on behalf of the people. He is appealing to them with words that ought to have been their own. He's laying before them the hoped-for response to God's lion-like judgment. And as he is calling for true repentance, that true repentance includes an acknowledgement, acknowledging the truth of oneself, which includes a confession of sin, Come, let us return. Let us abandon. Let us give up. Let us turn away from the course that we are presently on and go completely the very opposite direction. A simple confession that they had forsaken, that they had indeed turned away from God and His covenant. But the truth of oneself also includes, then, a recognition of what one deserves. He has torn. He has injured. Now, that's not a complaint there. It's a statement of fact. He has done this. Why? Because we have turned away from Him. We deserve it. And along with a confession of sin and a recognition of what one deserves, there is an admission of need. Staying with Hosea's colorful language, the need is for healing and for bandages. And there's only one who can give that, and that is the covenant God. Very simply, true repentance includes an acknowledgement of the truth of oneself. my sinful plight, my dire circumstance, that I am dead in sin and there's absolutely nothing that I can do about it. I need another. And therefore, true repentance also includes acknowledging the truth of God, as Hosea does here. He is God alone. Let us acknowledge Him. Let us know Him by faith. Understanding that He is God, there is none other. Understanding that He is sovereign over all things. Understanding that He alone is holy and righteous and pure and that He will not share His glory with another. Understanding that sin is an offense to Him. He hates it. He will not put up with it. It must be dealt with. It must be punished. Understanding that sin separates one from God. And therefore, the truth of God includes acknowledging that it is His right alone to punish those same words. He has torn. He has injured. As if to say that's His right. He is the offended one. He simply remains faithful to His word. But then also it is His power alone to save. And Hosea makes clear that He will. And therefore, true repentance not only includes an acknowledgement of one's self and an acknowledgement of the truth of God, but it also trusts in God. Hosea's confidence in these verses is of the rescue and the life that God would give. He trusted in God to forgive. He will heal. He will bind. That's God's desire. Ezekiel makes that clear in Ezekiel 18, verse 23. The Lord says, Do I take any pleasure in the death of the wicked, declares the Sovereign Lord? Rather, am I not pleased when they turn from their ways and live? He desires to forgive. David, in Psalm 103, when he says, Forget not all his benefits. The very first one, he forgives all your sins. And he says a bit later in that same psalm that God removes our sins as far as the east is from the west. Those same sins that barred us from His presence, separated us from Him. He removes them as far as the east is from the west. And instead He makes His people fit to come into His very presence clothed in the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ. True faith trusts in God to forgive and also to restore. The exile that was coming to come upon Israel pointed to separation from God. It pointed, really, to death. And the release from exile that is promised pointed to new life in fellowship with God. New life that desires to live in God's presence. That's what Hosea says. Let us return and live in God's presence. The child of God desires to live in God's presence under His protecting hand. Wanting to know Him more and more by His Word through the power of the Holy Spirit. Being amazed by who He is and what He has done for you and me. And for what He continues to do. Delighting to live in His presence and desiring to live in His presence. Delighting in His rules for living. His rules that preserve me. And as well, desiring to make Him known to others who need Him just as desperately as I need Him. And notice, Hosea was confident that he will do it. The second part of verse 3, As surely as the sun rises, He will appear. He will come to us like the winter rains, like the spring rains that water the earth. Now that's colorful language, but you may recall it's a beautiful picture of the certainty of the Lord coming to the aid of His repentant people. Just as certainly as the sun rises every morning to usher in a new day. It is regular. It is certain. Even our weather forecasters can tell us pretty much the minute that the sun is going to rise and set again. And then also the picture of the winter and the spring rains. You remember the early rains that helped to make the hard, dry ground plowable and plantable and the latter rains that increased the crop almost daily up until that bountiful harvest. A beautiful picture that points to the certainty of the life that God gives. As the psalmist says in Psalm 91, he will call upon me and I will answer him with long life will I satisfy him and show him my salvation. Beloved, this is God's promise. It is God's promise to all who heed his call to repent of their sins and turn to him with heartfelt and genuine repentance and faith. God's promise to David. God's promise to you and me. And the beauty is that he has already proven his sincerity by sending his son Jesus Christ who has taken all of the sin and the shame of all those who believe he took it upon himself and he opened the way through himself to return to the Father and his promise as the apostle John says is if we confess our sins he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness that is God's gracious promise from his heart to you and me and that was God's gracious promise from his heart to Israel through Hosea which really is amazing after all of their rejection of him over and over and over again throughout their history but it's also amazing for you and me isn't it after the ways in which we reject him even in our daily lives yet today but sadly israel didn't hear it for some reason it seems they couldn't hear it and so god speaks from his heart again secondly lamenting the present reality oh wonder what a wonderful gracious promise but what a sad present reality and that present reality is seen in vanishing love. Notice verse 4. What can I do with you, Ephraim? What can I do with you, Judah? Your love is like the morning mist, like the early dew that disappears. Their vanishing love is introduced with such disturbing questions from God Himself. What can I do with you? And notice not just Ephraim, which is Israel, but also Judah. Judah wasn't quite as far of falling down the path yet as Israel was, but she was well on her way. What can I do with you? God struggled like a parent whose love requires that he or she punish a disobedient child. But the nature of these questions is that they are not questions of confusion as if God is saying, I'm beside myself. I really don't know what to do. Help me out here. No. Well, God knows. He knew what to do. His covenant love required punishment. These aren't questions of confusion, but they were questions of love. Questions of love from a broken heart. Because again, God's true desire is life. Ezekiel, the first time we read it in chapter 18, The Lord poses it as questions. But in chapter 33, he says it again, this time as more of a statement of fact. Say to them, as surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live. As surely as I live, I desire that they live. And the Lord's questions here through Hosea are similar to his question through Isaiah in chapter 5 of that prophecy. What more could have been done for my vineyard than I have done for it? He says, I dug it out. I cleared away the stones. I planted the choicest vines. I built a watchtower. What more? And the repetition of these questions in our text points to the severity of the situation. It reflects the agony and the hopelessness of the situation. Every tactic of reform had failed. In prosperity, you recall, they ignored and deserted him, as chapter 4 points out. In trouble, they turned somewhere else for help, to Assyria, as we read. God's disturbing questions points out Israel's vanishing love, which is also seen in Israel's disappointing commitment. Your love is like the morning mist. It's like the early dew. Now on the surface, that morning mist talk and that early dew talk, that may seem a little bit pleasant. It may seem kind of refreshing. I think back to the winter wonderland that I grew up in, in northwest Iowa. And in the freezing cold of January, you wake up some mornings and if the sun is out a little bit already, or it's light in the sky, you see the frost on the branches of the bushes and on the trees, and you see it glistening off the rooftops. Maybe some light fog. It really is quite beautiful. Cold, but beautiful. But then the sun comes out. There's a little bit of heat. It's gone. It vanishes before your very eyes because it's paper thin, as it were. For Israel, in a land that depended on predictable rain and persistent dew, what a powerful image of what Israel was lacking. What a contrast between God's steadfast love, which was substantial and real and dependable, like the sun and the winter and spring rain, and a contrast with Israel's love, which was nothing but lip service, that had no value or benefit. It simply did not exist. There should have been a love flowing deep from the heart, the kind of love that exists between the closest of relationships, between husband and wife, between parents and children. A kind that includes loyalty and faithfulness to the other, that is expressed in self-sacrificial deeds of kindness and obedience to the other. Thus, this should have been Israel's love to their covenant God because of their entire history with Him and all that He had done for them. At the very least, they should have had a sense of an obligation to Him. But instead, Israel rejected the covenant of God. Israel became a law unto themselves and that carried over into social injustice among her own people. They treated the poor and the weak terribly. There was absolutely no love. And God was grieved as His people whom He had taken for His very own who were to reflect His image of love. They looked nothing like Him. And His lament shows that the present reality was also evidenced by ignored instruction. Verse 5, Therefore I cut you in pieces with My prophets. I killed you with the words of My mouth. My judgments flashed like lightning upon you. Terrible words. But very simply, beloved, Israel, the instruction had been given. God sent His prophets, He sent them to minister to His people, to warn them, to admonish them, to encourage them, to teach them. God's revelation was clear. His warnings of punishment were clear. He sent His prophets to mold and to shape His people by the Word of God, to cut them. The idea there is to dig out or to hew out, as the language the Bible used, A well or a pillar or a stone. To cut them into shape, we might say. The instruction had been given. But the instruction had been ignored. They treated the prophets badly. We know that Elijah and Elisha and Amos and Jeremiah and Isaiah, just to mention a few, were treated with contempt. And as they treated the prophets of God with contempt, they treated the Word of God with contempt. Also visibly, you may remember Jehoiakim, king of Judah, as he was reading the word of God that was penned by Jeremiah, he cut it into strips and he threw it into the fire. Mankind always seems to want to pick and choose what parts of God's word he will or will not abide by. The instruction had been given, it was ignored, and Israel was without excuse. The prophets communicated God's will clearly, and Israel could never blame their coming judgment on the unfortunate course of national events or on the evil desires of wicked kings. They could never look anywhere beyond themselves, and God's judgment would be like lightning, clearly seen as something that was just, as something that they deserved. And beloved, we too have the Word of God. We have the Word of God, we have His law of love that is meant to mold us and shape us. And the Word of God is clear that those who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ will be saved. But those who reject Him, the Bible says, one day He will say to them, depart from me, I never knew you. We have the very own Word of God, His law of love. Does it affect us? Does it have an effect on us? It must. As those who profess their faith, as David has this morning, as those whose hearts have been transformed by the Holy Spirit of God for Jesus' sake, it must affect us. The believer's desire is to be fashioned after God's will. Sometimes God's Word is harsh. It doesn't always make us feel good. And that's because it exposes the sin in our lives. It exposes our compromise with the world. It cuts down deep. But yet we are to come to the Word of God in humility. Come to sit under the preaching of the Word of God, desiring and expecting to be chiseled and cut and molded and shaped and polished. And there's no excuse. God's Word tells the truth. It's not meant to have it your way or to have it my way. but to have it God's way. Israel ignored God's instruction and therefore their present reality was witnessed in empty sacrifices. Verse 6, For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgement of God rather than burnt offerings. Maybe you recognize those words as well as being words of Samuel to King Saul in 1 Samuel 15. Saul had indeed gone out and defeated the Amalekites as God had commanded him to do, But unlike God had commanded him to do, he kept some of the best, the best animals, and so forth. God said, destroy it all. And he tried to justify it by saying, yeah, but I'm going to give them to God. I'm going to sacrifice them to the Lord. Samuel says, to obey is better than sacrifice. The simple act of sacrifice all by itself is nothing. There's much more to it. There's the heart of the matter. And Jesus said to the Pharisees these words of Hosea two times recorded in Matthew. If they only understood, He says, the words, I desire mercy, not sacrifice. Israel had empty sacrifices. Empty in the sense that they were filled with perversion. Now the Lord through Hosea was not saying that the sacrifices were unimportant. God had prescribed them. But Israel's definition of the sacrifices was wrong. It had become terribly distorted. It was downright wrong. The sacrifices were meant to be the ultimate expression of one's relationship to God. But Israel instead turned the sacrifices into a magical thing like the heathen nations that obligated God to bless them. If we sacrifice, then we get good things from God. Or if we give Him enough of them, then He will forgive us. Their faulty definition of the sacrifices made their covenant God like the gods of the nations. Just pay dues to Him and everything is going to be okay. You have nothing to worry about. They were offered with the wrong attitude and motive of heart. They were filled with perversion. yet void of what pleases God. God desires mercy, steadfast love, and an acknowledgement of God, knowing God by faith, understanding the truth of Him and His Word, being devoted to knowing and conforming to God's will eagerly and freely, trusting in the Lord with all your heart and leading not on your own understanding. And all of that then translates into mercy, Steadfast love for God above all and our neighbor as ourself. You see, a sacrifice all by itself without the proper heart motive was empty, it was meaningless. Instead, it was to be an indication of what was in the heart. A knowledge of God, of His holiness, and of oneself and sinfulness, and the need for another. A heart filled with repentance and confession and love and gratitude. And that too to be reflected in giving oneself in response to the love and mercy of God. You remember Paul's prescription, faith, hope, and love, but the greatest of these is love. Someone has said, faith makes man throw himself into the arms of God. Hope makes him look always to God, but love makes him look like God. Beloved, all of this points to the nature and the work of Christ's sacrifice. God is grieved by sin. Yours and mine. He hates it. It must be dealt with. And one day, those who reject His clear gospel message that there is a Savior, that there is a sacrifice for sin, that there is forgiveness, they will be without excuse. Yet, beloved, because of his great love for us while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. You see, those disturbing questions. What can I do with you? We're for you and me, too, about us. What can I do with you? That's how bad the situation is with you and me, in and of ourselves. But God answered that question. He knew exactly what to do. He says, this I have done. And His name is Jesus. I have sent my Son. He has shed His blood for your sin. And in Him, you are free. And His sacrifice, beloved, He made out of love. Love for his Father and those he came to save. And that love was demonstrated in a perfect life, lived in obedience to the law of God. It was demonstrated in that he willingly gave himself, he laid down his life without complaint. Instead, with loyal and faithful love that filled his heart. His sacrifice was both a sacrifice of justice and of mercy. He understood the justice of God, the holiness of God. He understood the sin of man, and He alone brings the two together. His sacrifice was done out of perfect love for both, and our benefit is that those who truly repent of their sins and look to Him, to His sacrifice, and believe will be saved. And we are restored to everlasting fellowship with God. That's God's promise, and that promise, and that sign of God's promise, boys and girls, that was put on David this morning. That promise is just as sure as Christ lives. And this also points to the believer's transformation. You see, it informs how we live by faith in Jesus Christ. We are called to live sacrificially. We read about the obligations in that forum this morning. Sacrificial living flows from knowing God by faith and His salvation through Christ so rich and undeserved. we too have an obligation to God for Jesus' sake. It's an obligation of joy to love, to serve, and to live in response to His great love poured out on us. Sacrificial living includes giving ourselves in love for God above all in our worship. It's not just coming to church that it's all about. Just to sit here for an hour or two. But it's what's in the heart. And sacrificing ourselves in worship, not just for an hour or two, but the entire day for Him. And it includes sacrificing a portion of our income, that which He has first graciously, richly given to us, back to Him. To be used in His service here on this earth. And ultimately giving ourselves in love for God above all. sacrificing our lives in obedience to His will, not in fulfilling our own selfish wills. And all of this, you see, not to earn His favor. It's not a check-off list. As we check off this duty and that when I've done it, I'm okay. And now I get something from God. No. But in response to what He has already done. And we are called to give ourselves, too, in love for our neighbor, family, church, nation, and world. yet resting only in Christ's perfect and finished work which alone saves. Not resting in our imperfect and unfinished and often undone work, but only in Jesus Christ alone. What can I do with you? Oh, He has done it through Jesus Christ. And praise God, beloved, for His loving heart, that though we rejected Him and we continue to reject Him day by day, He pursued us and He captured us by His grace alone and He will never let us go. Amen. Let's pray together. Father, once again, as we bow humbly before You, how could it be that we could stand any other way but to be amazed by Your grace and that which You have done for us. Indeed, Father, we need to be reminded of our desperate and hopeless situation. We need to be reminded of how terribly we had offended You by our sin. We need to be reminded of all that. Because only then can we understand the joy of what you have done for us. And we praise you, Father, indeed, for your loving kindness, which is so good and free. And help us one and all as those called by your Spirit to live in the joy of that comfort day by day, moment by moment, from this day forward and forevermore. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.