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Hosea 6-7 What God Wants
Hosea chapter 6 and 7 we'll be reading both chapters.
Hear the word of the Lord.
Come let us return to the Lord for he has torn us that he may heal us. He has struck us down and he will bind us up after two days. He will revive us on the third day. He will raise us up that we may live before him.
Let us know let us press on to know the Lord his going out is sure as the dawn. He will come to us as the showers as the spring rains that water the earth. What shall I do with you? Are we from. What shall I do with you?
Oh Judah, your love is like a morning cloud like the dew that goes away early. Therefore I have hewn them by the prophets. I have slain them by the words of my mouth and my judgment goes forth as the light.
For I desire Steadfast love and not sacrifice the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings. But like Adam they transgressed the covenant there. They dealt faithlessly with me. Gilead is a city of evildoers.
Tracked with blood as robbers lie and wait for a man. So the priests ban together. They murder on this way to Shechem. They commit villainy in the house of Israel. I have seen a horrible thing. Ephraim's whoredom is there.
Israel is defiled. For you also Oh Judah harvest is appointed when I restore the fortunes of my people. When I would heal Israel the iniquity of Ephraim is revealed and the evil deeds of Samaria. For they deal falsely.
The thief breaks in and the bandits raid outside. But they do not consider that I remember all their evil. Now their deeds surround them. They are before my face by their evil. They make the king glad and the princes by their treachery.
They are all adulterers. They are like a heated oven. Whose Baker ceases to stir the fire from the kneading of the dough until it is leavened on the day of our king. The princes Became sick with the heat of wine.
He stretched out his hand with mockers for with hearts like an oven. They they approach their intrigue all night. Their anger smolders in the morning. It blazes like a flaming fire. All of them are hot as an oven and they devour their rulers.
All their kings have fallen and none of them calls upon me. Ephraim mixes himself with the people's. Ephraim is a cake not turned. Strangers devour his strength and he knows it not. Gray hairs are sprinkled upon him and he knows it not.
The pride of Israel testifies to his face. Yet they do not return to the Lord their God nor seek him for all this Ephraim is like a dove silly and without sense. Calling to Egypt going to Assyria as they go.
I will spread over them my net. I will bring them down like birds of the heavens. I will discipline discipline them according to the report made to their congregation. Woe to them for they have strayed from me.
Destruction to them for they have rebelled against me. I would redeem them, but they speak lies against me. They do not cry out to me from the heart, but they wail upon their beds for grain and wine. They gash themselves they rebel against me.
Although I trained and strengthened their arms yet. They devise evil against me. They return but not upward. They are like a treacherous bow. Their princes shall fall by the sword because of the insolence of their tongue.
This shall be their derision in the land of Egypt. May the Lord add his blessings to the reading of his Holy Word. Well, what does God want. Almost 20 years ago. There was a Mel Gibson movie released when we were in Singapore called what women want.
I went to see it because watching movies is what I did in Singapore that particular movie though I wasn't so Impressed by I. I remember about halfway through I wanted to go back to the ticket booth and ask for my money back.
You know if you're a restaurant you get a bad meal you can get your money back. You go to a theater and there's a bad movie. Can't you go ask? No, it doesn't work that way. Well, what did I want? Not to see this movie.
Just last year. They released what I guess is a sequel or a continuation of the same theme called what men want. I didn't bother to go see that one and no I wasn't so committed to the sermon that I was willing to inflict that movie.
On myself just for the research. The the premise at least behind the first one that I regrettably saw was that if you could know what people want. Then you can win their approval and their business make money.
There's also the assumption that for many people in the original women what they want isn't always so obvious. That they may not tell you exactly what they want that you have to discern it carefully like cracking a code.
But what about God? What does he want is what he want obvious or do you have to decipher some riddle? After all different religions tell people God wants different things. In Chinese traditional religion the gods that you really have to be most concerned about are your Ancestors like your great-grandfather or grandmother or further back.
You give them what they want what they want. Your dear your dead ancestors want is a lot like what your living ancestors want. They want to be remembered. They want to get tokens of your love and support like money and food and respect for their picture on the wall.
But what about that's the cultural religion really of China much more. So than say Buddhism of for formal religion like that, but what about? Among people here. What's the cultural religion of people around here?
What do you think most of the people? Around this area about in this country for that matter think that God wants. Some people have described the cultural religion in the United States as a moralistic Therapeutic deism that is God is moralistic as he wants you to be nice.
He wants you to be moral now. It's a moralism with very low standards these days. It's not like the Middle Ages where they had high standards gonna be a monk and a nun and flicked yourself today. It's like basically, you know, try not to be a mass murderer.
You're all right. Most of all you're supposed to be nice and first I saw a lady professor at a Baptist seminary described a prominent politician So prominent he trumps all the others as quote wicked because he had tweeted some rude insults at some critics.
Being not nice is in her point of view the epitome of Wickedness, so what does God want from us in? This Cultural religion is he wants us to be to be civil to be nice to be friendly pleasant people. What does he do for us?
He's.
Therapeutic that is he helps us feel good. He soothes our hurts so that we can be nice and moral people. He's deistic and that he's not closely involved with the world. He kind of standing back letting everything operate according to the laws of nature kind of like a clock maker.
Just lets the clock work on its own and letting us make our own decisions. Hopefully deciding that will be nice and moral right? You can't interfere with free will. Right ever seen Bruce Almighty that great work of theology.
You can't interfere with free will. What. What I find interesting about much evangelical talk on the church these days. Very different from the Puritans. I studied is that they seem to think God's left the church up to our own decisions.
Whatever we want to do whatever we want to make it to be there's almost no consideration About what God wants out of the church. The overwhelming assumption is that God is going to be pleased with our church activities.
No matter what we do as long as we're nice and moral, I guess. And again, it's moralism with low standards the question What does God want out of the church? Doesn't even seem to have occurred to many people who are leading and filling.
Many churches these days they seem to think that God is kind of like a nice considerate person, you know. Answering that common after-church question. Where do you want to go eat? You know. Whenever you want is fine, right?
That's why God is like, what do you want to do for church? God's like whatever you want to do is fine. Yeah, but what if God really does want some specific things? What if he's called us? to do what he wants and.
We can't.
Buy him off from that or distract him from that with the little religious things that we want when we think he wants what does God want and What does God get? We see that here in three major parts first what God calls us to second what God wants and third finally what God gets.
Though this passage is continuing out of the passage before it's really one continuous passage from beginning of chapter 4. We looked at last week there the Prophet Hosea response to the Lord at the end of chapter 5.
Where he declared the Lord declared that he's like a lion Returning to his lair after tearing apart his prey and now he's returning to his lair. He's leaving Israel returning to his place and tell the people confess their sin and seek God's face.
So then at the beginning of chapter 6 Hosea appeals to the Lord associating himself with Israel come. Let us let us Israelites return to the Lord or in other words repent. This is the same word return the same word as repent that is let's repent to the Lord.
Let's repent because the reason He has torn us Like that lion in the last couple of decades of the northern kingdom of Israel. They were torn apart by attacks from outside particularly by a Syria until they were finally destroyed in 721 BC though those were like wake-up calls before the final destruction.
There were a few decades of Attacks from outside. Hosea said we're wake-up calls to repent here the purpose of that that he may heal us. He has struck us down and he will bind us up now in the therapeutic religion in our culture today God doesn't strike down.
God doesn't tear. He only men's he only heals. He only binds up but the true God Does both he strikes down and he will bind up he will heal them if they repent but if they don't They don't remember chapter 1.
Then they are not my people. Remember in the first chapter we saw that there is an Israel that is not God's people that he doesn't have mercy on who are Scattered here. There is an Israel that he tears that he strikes down and then on the third day in verse 2 He raises third day sound familiar.
He raises him the true Israel in one man, he raises him up so that we The true Israel that he's harvested from the earth so that we might live before him by his resurrection. We are made right With the Lord with God our response to what God has done in Raising up the true Israel.
Jesus is to Seek to know the Lord because in verse 3 he will surely Come as surely as the Sun will rise tomorrow. You can be as certain as that of it. He's he's not a deist at God. He's not outside this world.
So pursue Knowing the Lord make knowing God your quest in life. Now last week I said some things that taken the wrong way could be misconstrued to denigrate.
Knowledge.
Knowing things knowing facts and terms and doctrines as though that's just got some people can take it. So it's just a distraction from from knowing the Lord now. It's true that knowing things By themselves just reading books or listening to lectures memorizing data of refining your terminology that can't guarantee That you'll know the Lord, but it's also true.
That there's something wrong.
You know with a Christian who isn't interested in growing in knowledge about God. You know people are destroyed. For a lack of knowledge. Not and lack of knowledge about God not just not just heart knowledge.
Intimacy but all kinds of knowledge. The the old dichotomy some people like to say, you know. The artificial separation between I got head knowledge and there's heart knowledge. I don't need the head knowledge.
I just I just have this relationship. That's all that's really nonsense. If you think about it. Now, what would you think of a young man? Who had met a young lady and it fell in love with her and desperately wanted a relationship with her and you ask him.
You know, what's your name? I don't know Where she live. I Haven't asked. What's she doing? Oh, please stop asking me these irrelevant head knowledge questions. I just wanted a heart knowledge. I just want a relationship.
No people don't think like that. If they they love someone or something. They want to know more about him or her or it true. Heart knowledge compels you to grow in In Head knowledge to learn more. The relationship spurs you want to want to know more.
More things more facts about the person. Aren't you interested to know? God's name. Aren't you interested to know why it's not Jehovah? For example, right? There's a whole sect out there that goes around telling people you don't have knowledge of God's name and we do and they're all wrong.
And you should know why they're wrong. Aren't you interested to know what he's done? What he's doing. What he said he will do. Well, this is why we have Sunday school to give you knowledge. If you're pursuing to knowing the Lord then we can help you to at least know what he's revealed to know.
What's true and what's false now?
Sure.
We can't guarantee that through that that you'll come to know the Lord that you'll be in an intimate relationship with him just because you Learn these facts, but we can offer you knowledge that you will want to know If you are indeed seeking to know the Lord.
So please take part in our Sunday school, even if for the time being it's just through online videos. After all the call to repent Here to turn to God is the call he says pursue Knowing him. What does God want?
The Apostle Paul said in Acts chapter 17 that God calls all people.
Everywhere.
To repent to turn from their self-seeking religion. All about therapy, you know for the traumas of life. They're trying to escape from maybe they're some miseries. They're experiencing God wants us to turn from such a shallow images of him that is almost treating God like he's a drug.
Turn from that and know him better than that. What does God want? Well, he tells us clearly really as clearly as he possibly can here in this passage in verses 4 to 6. He's called Israel to repent. But they're the natural Israel the one that's not really his people.
So we asked what shall I do with you? Oh Ephraim. Ephraim Israel the Northern Kingdom. Judah then he asked in the south says your love in verse 4. I think if it were written today, he'd probably put love in quotation marks.
It's here's the same key word by the way in verse verse 4. Hesed steadfast love talked about it last week here is used of what Israel was professing as steadfast covenant love for God. Your God says your Steadfast love your hesitant natural Israel, you know, they say they have love for the Lord.
They offer sacrifices to him they keep the sum of his law, but he says your Version of steadfast love is he says it's like a morning cloud in the desert. It's like dew. That just goes away early.
They.
They say they love the Lord. They might even repeat that the Shaw the Shema remember from Deuteronomy You shall love the Lord your God thought your heart and soul and strength. They might repeat it three times a day.
But they're quote love.
Evaporates.
Quickly, it's not Steadfast. It's burned away like morning fog is burned away by the Sun exposing what they call steadfast love for the Lord. Exposing that to their love for money. They think they got to pursue money more than pursue knowing God or exposing.
Their.
Professed love for the Lord. To their love for relationships or the love for sex or their passions for politics or whatever that so-called love for the Lord. It just evaporates with their love for the Lord is exposed to the heat of any of those things.
It just fizzles away like dew on a hot day. Your claims to love he's saying in verse 4 or her shallow. Just it disappears. So in verse 5 God says. I've sent you prophets to hew Them. In other words cut you down.
Cut them down to cut down all their flimsy excuses. God slew them. He says with the words of His mouth by what his prophets have said. Prophets like Hosea who come with the sword of the Spirit the Word of God hewing down Their sin.
His his word wasn't. Wasn't just soothing therapeutic nice. Pleasant words. Because it was a light that exposed the reality of their fake love. God did that. Because he wants them To really love him not with a shallow fake, you know love that evaporates every time it comes into contact with love for anything else.
What does God want? Well, he tells us exactly in verse 6 and often quoted verse.
For.
Because I was yeah, he's saying I slew you with harsh words from the prophets because I desire Steadfast love. Hesed the real thing this time not that shallow sentimentality that disappears before noon.
I.
Want.
Steadfast love and not sacrifice. I Want God says I want knowledge of God. So they are destroyed rather than burnt offerings. This is such an important passage than the Gospel of Matthew. Jesus quotes it twice on two different occasions.
Once in Matthew chapter 9 when Jesus was sitting in Matthew's house you know after having called him to be an apostle and then they had a party and Matthew called over all his tax collector friends and Sinners as people who didn't even try to keep the law and They came and they're sitting and they're eating with Jesus.
And the Pharisees who thought they were great scholars about God. They knew God right? They thought they knew all the facts about him. They had memorized it. They had studied they've been to school.
They scoffed.
Why does he even sinners? Jesus responded Probably. What is intentionally to offend them, you know. Go and learn. Implying that they didn't know anything about God. They hadn't even begun to learn about God.
Learn. Go and learn what this means. I desire mercy and not sacrifice. Second time Jesus said it in Matthew chapter 12 verse 7. Jesus the disciples had plucked some heads of grain on the Sabbath because they were hungry.
Just walk into a field. The Pharisees saw it and pounced. They broke on the law of the Sabbath. Well, they thought that God. Pharisees thought that God had wanted them the disciples to suffer hunger. That's what the God they thought they knew.
Wanted. But Jesus replied among other things. If you had known again, he gets right at their knowledge if you had known. If you had but you have it you don't know you had known what this means again implying that they don't have knowledge of God.
Desire mercy and not sacrifice. If they had known that You would not have condemned the guiltless Because of their lack of knowledge of God. They lacked mercy. They lacked steadfast love. They lacked also justice.
They condemned the guiltless That proved how fraudulent their religion was. What does God want? He wants you to love him in a way that makes you pursue knowing him and Have mercy on other people. How authentic is southern religion?
I? Think it's a great question probably impossible to answer accurately is it but is it for real? Is it about loving and knowing God because that would what a real What do you make some people like the word religion?
Whatever you want to call it the faith? That's what that would be what the real thing would be about knowing and loving God. Is that what it's about it has been about. That's the Bible belt, right? Surely you think it's authentic.
This is Bible belt. Actually, it only started to become the Bible belt during and after the Civil War before that the South was scorned By Christians as a spiritually dark place. Now the South fought the Civil War at least in part to keep slavery.
I won't bother proving that now, but it can be proven then after the Reconstruction. After the military occupation was lifted the South went back to oppressing black people segregating them that lasted for almost a century until A combination of Brown versus the Board of Education a Supreme Court ruling in the 1950s and the Civil Rights Act in the 1960s.
Ended it and yet still despite after all that white Southerners still if they couldn't oppress blacks Then they would try to separate from them. That's why this building was built in the 1970s now while all that was going on That's the backdrop the church was growing and Prospering it's growing by leaps and bounds.
Was that a real spiritual growth. Was that a real move of the Spirit? Growing his church. That's the question. Is it authentic? Religion is it about knowing and loving the Lord if so Wouldn't wouldn't it have produced?
Steadfast love knowledge of God.
Mercy.
My theory I don't know of any way you could possibly prove it But my theory is that the Civil War caused such an enormous trauma in the South, you know one out of every four White southern men were killed.
So kind of go you can go around good count one two, three four this one would be dead were killed and probably at least one out of the other remaining three were wounded many of them were amputees and most of the remainder were either eyewitnesses of that that terrible swift sword or were family members of Victims.
There was that caused such an enormous Trauma that it set off a flight to religion to the church For the therapy that it could provide for an escape a salve from the pain. Now few of those fleeing to religion for therapy Wanted to hear the Word of God Chewing down their sin His judgments.
They didn't want to hear about God's judgments Slaying their excuses for sin. It was after all about escape and This became so much a part of the spirituality that many of the church people even to this day Can't even see Can't even see what their religion what their faith has to do with mercy with how they treat their neighbors.
Now it's sure I I think That the Lord used that mass movement to the church To bring the gospel to many individuals who were sincerely Genuinely saved and really did love and seek to know the Lord. But I also think that much of the religion that grew up side by side with racial oppression without ever bothering to say a word against it That it is fraudulent.
What does God want. He wants steadfast love mercy justice for our neighbors not just high church attendance hymn sings and tithing. What God wants is steadfast love and us personally knowing him what God gets is often very different.
I desire.
The Lord says.
Mercy knowledge of God.
But they.
Instead instead of giving him what he wants in verse 7, but strong contrast in other words rather than giving him the steadfast love the pursuing of knowledge of him that he wants.
Give him transgression. Like Adam transgressed the covenant God made a covenant with Adam that if he will only do is not eat of this one tree. Then he could eat of the tree of life and live forever, but Adam broke the covenant.
He was unfaithful and so to Israel here just like Adam dealt faithlessly with the Lord. So these people were unfaithful you couldn't depend on them. They wouldn't keep their commitments. What God wants is steadfast love.
But what he gets is evildoers leaving a trail of blood behind their ambushes like robbers waiting to pounce. The so the priests use religion to steal to defraud the people out of what belongs to them.
What God wants is mercy. What he gets is murder. Villainy today abortion on demand. What he wants is faithfulness. What he gets is spirit. The spiritual adultery of compromise a Religion that's all about being nice and providing therapy for traumatized people.
He wants people who love him and so pursue. Knowing him. What he often gets is people who say they believe him but serve mammon. Believing that gaining wealth is the meaning of life and that God exists to help them get it or whose God is their belly.
Living for whatever appetite next they demand to be satisfied for food or for sex or for that next thrill for their ego. What does God want twice the Lord Jesus told the Pharisees the Bible scholars to go go and learn.
That he wants mercy and not sacrifice. What does God get? Here he has to dispense judgment. Harvest is appointed in verse 11 instead of a harvest of souls. Are of repentant people loving and knowing the Lord when he restores his true people his false ones instead.
Will get punishment instead of therapy instead of healing them instead of seeing them love him. He will he sees their sin in chapter 7 verse 1 there. Their iniquity is revealed exposed is revealed that they are false.
They're dishonest. They don't keep their word. Their themes break in he says in your house bandits are outside. So in other words everywhere. They are breaking all boundaries. You can't escape from the sin.
It's everywhere. It's in your own house. What does God want? He wants people who know him, but they. What does God get? He gets people who do not consider that God will remember all their sin. It never enters their mind that God sees in verse 2 that our deeds are before his face.
That he's not a he's not a deistic remote God just letting the world go according to his natural laws and according to our free Will but that he's closely involved and judging the sin. He sees up close.
What does God want? He wants a government that promotes righteousness and punishes injustice. It should build monuments to admirable people who did what was right and it should terrorize criminals who do what's wrong.
What does God get he gets rulers like in verse 3 who are made? Oh my glad by evil. They like it. They they like sin. They like evil deeds. They approve of treachery. Maybe they enable lawlessness by telling you know, telling the police just let it go.
Don't punish it. They build monuments to traitors or like in Chicago when we live there. They name streets after pornographers after all the pornographers give them money. What does God want. He wants faithfulness.
Including to marriage and self-control so that sex is only for marriage. What does God get? He gets a lot of adultery in verse 4 like Gomer. He gets a society full of people driven by lust because they've been told to satisfy their every desire.
Whenever and however they can and so they burn with lust like their old their ovens in those days burned with fire once people believe that they're always To satisfy their every desire that the desire itself makes itself, right?
Well, they can't control themselves sexually. They can't control what and how much they drink so they become drunks in verse 5. They can't control their anger in verse 6. So it's smolders. So they plot schemes here.
They were constantly plotting to overthrow the king four out of Israel's last five Kings were assassinated. Today the rioting and then looting we've seen is the outbreak of a fire in the heart of people who have never been taught Self-control that there's some things you have to say no to yourself for never to actually research history and learn before tearing down statues.
So they end up tearing down statues to abolitionists and those who ended slavery in the name of opposing racism. You know figure that out. They are hot as an oven in verse 7 devouring their rulers if they can't do it literally.
They'll do it to their images. What does God want? He wants a pure people whose love for him is steadfast. What does God get he gets a people like he from here the natural Israel in verse 8. This is mixed with the world our worldly people just as unfaithful.
This is fleeting in their love just as just as ignorant of God as the world. They're like a half-baked cake. Too done on one side burned hard on crust on one side, but Not done at all on the other side.
Just gooey dough in Jesus's day too much about rule-keeping and not enough about mercy in hours too too done with our low standards moralism Niceness and therapeutic religion while not enough about faithfulness and steadfast loyalty.
We go back and forth between too much legalism and too much laxity antinomian ism. We have people in churches now overdone with lessons about focusing on the family and Who find the idea of keeping your word?
Strange. Matt Chandler commented how when he had brain cancer, he had sometimes spent hours lying on his bathroom floor Vomiting and his wife having to take care of him through all that the modern attitude He said was to think about her, you know.
You poor thing having to to endure that dreary duty to go off and find your own happiness. We denigrate it because we live in a culture that says love is all about intoxicating emotions, but what we find such a duty is Steadfast love that's what God wants.
Now we have churches full of strangers like here strangers are occupying God's people the people who don't belong like in verse 9 who Weaken them because the pastors the other members are constantly having to try to entertain them Interesting next and who never consider what God wants out of a church.
We've gotten this has gone on for so long. We've gotten old like here got old doing this developing gray hairs. But we don't change because of our pride in verse 10. We're too proud to confess. How wrong we've been.
What does God want?
He wants sincere repentance. Turning to him to love and know him. What does he get? He doesn't get that. For all their sin is here for the judgment that's coming in verse 10 still. People don't return to him to seek him instead.
He says they're silly people. Like it like a dove. Going back and forth between two different things it has no Short no long-term memory is flitting about from one thing to help them to another for us.
Maybe for from we flip out for money to relationships to government to politics to sports to friends. Maybe styles of churches that are suited to meet our needs, but we never turn to God. Not really. Oh, they might flee to him.
What they say to is to him for therapy if they're suffered from Suffering some kind of trauma. After all he's cheaper than alcohol and better than better on the liver. But like a dove though people are silly or without sense calling on one kind of help to another here.
Go to Egypt and then let's go to Assyria, even though the two are enemies of each other now. Maybe let's go to go to money. Make making dollars is everything. Next. Maybe a romance even though they cost the money we used to live for anything.
But they won't seek the Lord. So God will he says. Entrap them in verse 12 in his net to throw a net over there. But catch them like a bird and he will discipline them. Maybe.
Maybe.
One out of four of their neighbors is killed and another one out of four as a leg amputated all while they have to watch Woe to them in verse 13. They thought he was a distant God. Just encouraging niceness, but he brings destruction on the rebels.
What does God want? He wants to redeem them in verse 13 to save them, but he gets lies. About him spread lies that you can use him to get wealthy or use him to blow away the corona virus. What does God want?
He wants you to cry to him from your heart to love and know him but what he gets without his grace. Changing your heart. It just wailing. From the judgment that he brought wailing at the loss that you've suffered the the trauma.
Whatever the food the drink the the money you've lost seeking food seeking Things while we continue to rebel against him, even though every good thing we have comes from him still we use it all To do evil against him to seek anything other than him.
He wants repentance. Turning from our our self-centered life instead We turn to every way Except to him. We don't turn Upward today. We don't even bother to ask what he wants. You know no more than you would think to ask a waitress at a restaurant what she wants she comes to you.
What how can may I help you? You don't think that what could I do for you? I just know no. For us, what does God want? What a ridiculous question. God's like a waitress. He's here to serve us. We use him to get what we want so instead of being his tool instead of being a Weapon in his hand to do his will like a bow in the hand of a archer.
We think he's a weapon in our hand to do our will and the result in verse 16. We're like a treacherous bow. I wish we shoot the wrong way. The archer gets hit by his own arrow. So our protectors will be destroyed and derided no matter how tough they talked.
What does God want? He desires mercy. Not scrupulous rule keeping. What does God want. He wants you to cry to him from a heart of steadfast love. Real love loyal love that doesn't just melt away. At the love of money or of things or the rumblings of your belly what God wants is for you to know him.
To pursue knowing him more than you pursue anything else.
Now.
From you what's he going to get?