6 For I delight in loyalty rather than sacrifice, And in the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.”
Seldom have I seen such a glaring contrast between Bible commentators in their approach to a particular portion of scripture as I found as I read different ones on the opening verses of Hosea 6.
Just look back for a moment at the end of chapter 5 and be reminded that God has declared that for their sin and rebellion and unwillingness to repent, He will be like a lion to Ephraim and a young lion to the house of Judah, and tear them both apart and then go away, until they acknowledge their guilt and seek His face.
He ends saying, ‘In their affliction they will earnestly seek Me’.
Let me add an interesting side note here in reference to God declaring that He will go away and return to His place.
As I have done my own research for this study one source I use pointed out that in the writings that come out of the time of the captivity, they all refer to God exclusively as ‘the God of heaven’. None say ‘the God of Israel’ or ‘the God of Jerusalem’ or any other reference indicating a sense that He is near. He said that He would withdraw from them until they acknowledge their guilt, and these writers were apparently acutely aware of His distance from them in this respect.
So I go to one commentator and he says that what we have been given in chapter 6:1-3 is what the people will say in their contrition and their repentance and their faith in a good and loving God.
When they say, ‘He will revive us after two days; He will raise us up on the third day that we may live before Him’ they are expressing trust that He will not allow their suffering to be long, but will quickly relieve them in their distress and be their champion.
Another one says that the first three verses of chapter six are a call from Hosea to the people; an encouragement, if you will, to come and turn to the Lord and receive His healing mercies.
So I go to another guy, and he says that no, these first three verses really belong to chapter six and the things that come next indicate that they are only continuing in their insincerity and their penchant for taking God’s goodness for granted.
I tend to believe he is right. Let’s dive on in and let me show you why.
SOMETHING IS MISSING
If you read verses 1-3 of chapter 6 and think like a detective, you may begin with a line that you may have read in mystery novels or seen on television detective programs, saying, ‘I’m not sure what I’m looking for, but I’ll know when I see it’. Then you might employ another tactic and ask, ‘Isn’t there something that should be here but is not?’
Let’s read the verses.
“Come, let us return to the LORD. For He has torn us, but He will heal us; He has wounded us, but He will bandage us. 2 “He will revive us after two days; He will raise us up on the third day, That we may live before Him. 3 “So let us know, let us press on to know the LORD. His going forth is as certain as the dawn; And He will come to us like the rain, like the spring rain watering the earth.”
I think that in order to find the thing we are looking for in the text; the thing we will recognize when we see it; we first need to figure out what is missing.
We’ve already been given a clue. In fact, I read it for you in my opening statements. It is to be found back in the end of chapter 5.
God has declared through the prophet that He will ruin their physical circumstances to match their spiritual ruin, and then He will withdraw Himself from them until a certain thing happens.
It is there, again, in verse 15. “Until they acknowledge their guilt, and seek My face; in their affliction they will earnestly seek Me”.
Is there an acknowledgement of guilt to be found anywhere in the first three verses of chapter 6? Not even one.
Is there an earnest seeking of His face? No, there is not.
We will talk about what is to be found there in a few minutes. First, let’s consider what is not found there.
The word is ‘repentance’
Acknowledgement of guilt is what God calls for before He can help; before men can approach Him to any degree at all.
This is a point that is largely ignored in modern evangelical Christianity because it is an unpopular notion; that people are accountable to a holy God and have fallen short.
The focus has turned from desiring to see men and woman given new birth from above and being radically changed in that they become new creatures in Christ, to desiring to see them coming into the church in swarms and droves because bigger is better and ‘more’ equals success.
You aren’t going to get that if your message begins with a confrontation of their sinfulness and a need for repentance. And leaving the unsaved and unchurched alone for a moment, let’s just open our eyes to the pathetic condition of those ensconced in the church whose lives are a mess! They are torn apart, they have no sense of the closeness of God in their life, and they are being told day after day, week after week that they need to claim God’s promises and have faith that He will pull them through.
This is what is going on in Hosea 6:1-3
Have you ever seen those little promise books? The little pocket books in which someone has researched all the verses of the Bible that contain a promise from God and they’ve categorized them and put them in this book, and if you buy it and carry it around in your pocket or purse and pull it out once or twice a day and read some promises you’ll be helped.
I hate those things. First of all, just by nature of the format many of these promises from the Bible are taken out of context and presented as meaning something they do not. Secondly, there is implied in it an offer of fulfillment of peoples’ fleshly desires and perceived needs with no call to self-examination and no requirement for repentance.
God calls for acknowledgement of guilt, even in the life of the believer. It is what Jesus meant when He washed His disciples’ feet and told them, “He who has bathed needs only to wash his feet…” in John 13:10.
Now there is much more to teach from the context of that passage in John 13, but what He meant by that statement is that the believer’s sins have been washed away forever by the cleansing blood of Christ, but that since we are still in the flesh and in this world there is an on-going sanctification; an on-going cleansing from sin in our daily walk. Our feet have to be washed.
He said that if anyone would come after Him they would first have to take up their daily promise book and follow. Right? NO! He called for the daily taking up of a cross. Death to self. Then follow.
That message is missing in very much of what we are hearing and reading in 21st century Christendom, and it is missing from Hosea 6:1-3.
SOMETHING IS DISCOVERED
Now the good detective, having discerned what is missing, now perceives that the thing to be found in the absence of what is not found, is presumption.
They presume upon God with their bold declarations that are diametrically opposite of His revelation of Himself; making Him into a god of their own vain imaginations, who hasn’t the stomach to carry through with what He has declared.
“He has torn us, but He will heal us; He has wounded us, but He will bandage us”
Ow! The punishment hurts, Daddy. Make it all better
God said, “I will go away and return to My place until they acknowledge their guilt and seek My face”
Now I know that they use the right words here. They talk of returning to Him, they talk of knowing Him, they even talk of diligence. They say, “Let us press on to know the Lord”.
But we have already established the glaring absence of repentance, and Christians, when your approach to God is devoid of an acute awareness of His holiness and your sinfulness, thinking you’re ok on your own steam and there is nothing for which you need come to Him in a spirit of repentance and contrition, then all your altar gifts and your good intentions and your carefully-chosen religious words are garbage!
The people go on to depersonalize God by likening Him to the spring rain that comes down with annual regularity and freshens the earth. He is dependable in a mindless, routine sort of way; the way we just expect at a certain time of year the snow is going to melt and the trees begin to bud and the flowers bloom and the rain come down to green everything up.
Yeah. He’ll be like that. Because “His going forth is as certain as the dawn”
Not so. Can’t help ya. Until there is acknowledgement of guilt.
THE RESPONSE
The response the people get to their lack of repentance and their presumption brings to my mind Paul’s declaration to the Galatian church in chapter 6 verses 7 and 8 of his letter to them.
“Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, this he will also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life.”
That comes to mind, I say, because with all their flowery speech and hollow declarations of piety and devotion God’s immediate response comes across with a sort of ‘who do you think you’re kidding’ tone.
“What shall I do with you, O Ephraim? What shall I do with you, O Judah?”
Notice: Ephraim, reference to the northern kingdom, and Judah, the southern.
And you can kind of get the picture of a father who is standing in the kitchen with his teenager, who has been caught sneaking in at 3 in the morning and when confronted has rattled off some obviously practiced cock-n-bull story to excuse their tardiness. The kid finally peters to an end and stares and the floor or a lamp or just about anything to avoid his father’s gaze, and the father, who has listened to all this folderol in silence, just shakes his head and says, “What am I going to do with you? You have consistently disobeyed the set curfew for being home at night, you have ignored my warnings about the company you’ve been keeping, you have already been in trouble with the police on several occasions, yet you go on as though you can’t be touched, as though you’ve done nothing wrong, as though because I’m your dad I’m going to just wink at your delinquency and turn a blind eye to your bad behavior and there will be no consequences to suffer at all”.
Then just to make it abundantly clear to them that they have not pulled the wool over His eyes, He goes on…
“For your loyalty is like a morning cloud and like the dew which goes away early.”
Many years ago I had occasion to spend a few days in a condominium at the beach, in a little place called Rio Del Mar, California, just south of San Jose.
The first morning I was there I got up and opened my curtains expecting to see a beautiful view of the ocean, just one block away. Since I was on a second floor I could look over the small shops that lined the other side of the street I was on, and see the beach and the Pacific Ocean beyond.
I was surprised, when I opened the curtains, that I was not only unable to see the ocean, I could barely make out the shops across the street, for the morning fog had blanketed the coastline.
So I closed the curtains and wondered if my entire little vacation time was going to be spent more in a climate like one in which I might be more likely to be accosted by Jack the Ripper than Maynard the beachcomber.
Then I went to get some cereal and remembered that I hadn’t bought milk the night before, so I put on my jeans and my sweater and trudged down to a little stop-n-go store on the corner.
When I entered the store I looked around for the cooler, spotted it right away and grabbed a small container of milk out of it and turned toward the cashier’s counter. For my second surprise of the morning, there was a young lady working the cash register in a bikini. Not a very big bikini.
As I placed the milk on the counter she smiled brightly and greeted me, and said conversationally, “It’s going to get warm today, isn’t it?”
Now, as someone who at the time was acclimated to the usual Summer heat of 110 degrees in California’s central valley, and thinking that the current 68 degrees of damp fogginess was no indication that it was ever going to be warm again, I wanted to express my doubts to her about her prediction and perhaps her sanity. But to be polite and not wanting to come off too obvious as an ignorant tourist, I agreed with her and left with my milk, eventually finding my way to a building that seemed to be the right color, and finally the door that took me back to the safety and comfort of my condo.
Well, I had two bowls of cereal and made a cup of coffee, and with a fed stomach and having warmed up a bit I decided to venture another look out into the fog. For my third surprise of the morning, in the time it had taken for me to eat breakfast that thick grey blanket had lifted and what I now saw out my window was a blue ocean, clear sky, and people beginning to wander out to the sand with their blankets and towels and chairs and drink coolers and all the other paraphernalia that goes with a sunny day at the beach.
That little bikini-clad girl in the little shop on the beach, who was a native to the area and familiar with the type of weather that comes in and out like the ocean’s tide, knew from experience that 68 degrees at 7:30 in the morning was a good indication that it was going to be a great day, and that within a very short time the fog was going to be gone and the day was going to be beautiful. The thick, damp cold didn’t fool her for a moment.
God said the people’s show of loyalty was like a morning fog. It might have been laid on so thick it seemed almost palpable, but with a little bit of heat and in the light of day it would vanish like the mist it was.
So the dad in the kitchen says something like, “Don’t spit on my back and tell me it’s raining”, which is an old line that is usually more vulgar than that, but I de-vulgarize it for the present circumstances…
…and he proceeds to list for his wayward child the penalties he will now have to endure for his folly, as God does in verse 5.
“Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, this will he also reap”!
I want to spend the remainder of our time today focusing on verse 6.
“For I delight in loyalty rather than sacrifice, And in the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.”
Back in verse 3 they have vainly challenged one another with the empty invitation, “…let us know, let us press on to know the Lord”
But hasn’t He already declared in chapter 5 verse 4 that they do not know Him?
“…let God be found true, though every man be found a liar…” Rom 3:4
These people are possessed by a spirit of harlotry! They are held captive to their habits and their evil deeds!
“This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil.” Jn 3:19
They weren’t going to fool God with their phony display of piety! They weren’t fooling anyone but themselves!
You and I aren’t drawing closer to God when we put on a show of diligence and emotion and churchiness while ignoring His warnings and refusing His call to repentance.
THE DELIGHT
Well the dad in the kitchen loves his child in spite of it all.
He might have to discipline but if he is a good father he will reaffirm his love so the child might not despair but might find repentance and turn his act around.
This is what we see of God, not only here but running through the whole of scripture.
“I delight”. There is something that God delights in. He finds pleasure; it pleases Him; He finds favor with it.
What, in the midst of all this rebuke and prediction of the horror of a withdrawn God, are we given to offer hope as well as instruction?
It is amazing how many ways this word ‘loyalty’ in the NASB is translated in other versions. Loving-kindness. Goodness. Steadfast love. Mercy. Kindness.
I think if we put them all together in a sort of word soup and stewed them down to their base elements in order to find out what it is there that God is saying delights Him, we’d come up with ‘genuine goodness’.
He wants genuineness. Realness. Specifically, real and genuine concern and kindness toward man and genuine loyalty toward God. Real religion. Faith accompanied by works.
Someone said “Faith alone saves, but faith that saves is not alone; it issues in good works”.
That is where your religion will be exposed to be true or false, friends. It is not in what you put in the offering basket. It is not in how long you’ve taught Sunday School or served on the church board or any of those things.
It is also not something you did today or yesterday. You’ve heard me quote this before, A person is not who they were the last time you saw them; they are the person they have been to you over the entire duration of your relationship.
Christian, your religion is shown to be true or false by the loyalty to God and goodness to people that you have either demonstrated over the long haul, or that has been manifestly absent from your daily lifestyle as long as people have known you.
You either is or you ain’t. Do not be deceived, God is not mocked. And in the end you’ll find that you won’t have people fooled for long either.
Well, finally, God says, “…and in the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.”
Here is the first article of faith of the Apathetic Agnostic Church. They actually have 3 articles of faith, each more ridiculous than the one before, so I just share the first here.
1. The existence of a Supreme Being is unknown and unknowable
“To believe in the existence of a god is an act of faith. To believe in the nonexistence of a god is likewise an act of faith. There is no evidence that there is a Supreme Being nor is there evidence there is not a Supreme Being. Faith is not knowledge. We can only state with assurance that we do not know.”
God declares here that He can be known. Not only that, but He delights in it. He takes Godly pleasure in revealing Himself to people and in people who come to Him for revelation.
Furthermore, we have confirmation from the Holy Spirit through the Apostle that God has placed a general knowledge of Himself in the heart of every man and woman.
“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, 19 because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. 20 For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.”
Those who call themselves ‘atheist’ or ‘agnostic’ are simply silly-minded fools who have chosen to suppress the truth within themselves so they might continue in their sin unchecked.
But here were people who knew that there was a God, and that He was the God of their fathers, who brought them up out of the land of Egypt and gave them this land.
Their lack of knowledge was not an ignorance of His existence. It was neglect. It was a deliberate turning away and ignoring Him and His word through His servants.
It is the very fact of His divine revelation and His express desire from Adam and Eve in the garden to have intimate, significant fellowship with those created in His image that justifies His wrath against those who audaciously refuse to pursue personal knowledge of Him.
He even brings Adam into His argument against them, here in verse 7 of chapter 6; the very next verse.
“But like Adam they have transgressed the covenant.” What is the worst sin they have committed? It is the same as the first man’s sin. They have broken faith with the Creator and rejected His fellowship.
Yet intrinsic to His declaration of verse 6 is an invitation. “I delight in the knowledge of God”
Christian, it is the very fact that God can be known, that makes it our solemn duty to diligently seek His face; to make it the highest priority of our life, to know Him better.
He called for two things at the end of chapter 5. We spent a large portion of this sermon talking of the first. Acknowledgement of guilt. But it is that acknowledgement that opens the way for the second… “and seek My face”.
God did not save us from our sin only as a rescue mission. Like the Navy Seal who pulls you out of the raging ocean and sets you safely on shore, then goes back to his work and you never see him again.
He saved us from our sin so we could know Him.
“This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.” Jn 17:3
The day is fixed and coming when every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of the Father. When that happens many will be admitting for the first time the knowledge they have suppressed in their unrighteousness.
It is the everlasting privilege of the people who are called by His name, who have repented of sin and put their faith in the death and resurrection of His Son, to know and be known by God in significant, intimate personal relationship. He can be known, He delights in being known, and we can never come to the end of Him.
