FBC Morning Light – November 14, 2022

Well good Monday morning to you. I hope you had a great day yesterday, the Lord's Day, being together with God's people and worshiping the

Lord. I hope it was a good day for you. Well today we're reading in the Old Testament minor prophet of Hosea, and specifically

I want to zero in on chapter 6 and a few verses that challenge us about the nature of our loyalty to the

Lord. In verse 4, the Lord asked the question of Ephraim.

Ephraim, remember, is one of the twelve tribes of Israel, but that tribe,

Ephraim, came to stand for the entire northern kingdom after the kingdom divided, and they split into the northern tribes and then

Judah and so forth. Ephraim came to be referred to in place of Israel.

So Ephraim stands for those ten tribes that broke away. So the Lord asks, O Ephraim, what shall

I do to you? And then he zeroes in on the southern kingdom, Judah. He says, O Judah, what shall

I do to you? Now why does he ask these questions? He explains. He says, for your faithfulness is like a morning cloud, and like the early dew, it goes away.

Your faithfulness. Now that word, translated faithfulness, is translated several different ways, and never, well

I shouldn't say never consistently, it's translated a lot of different ways even within the same translation.

I'll show you what I mean here in just a minute. The Hebrew word behind it is the word hesed, and it has to do with...the

word hesed is a complex word, but it has to do essentially with one's covenant loyalty, and wrapped up in that covenant loyalty is love toward the one with whom you are in covenant.

So you would see hesed applied, for example, to a marriage relationship, where there ought to be hesed expressed between husband and wife.

But most of the time what we're really concerned with is the word as it's used in our relationship to God.

God demonstrates his hesed, his covenant loyalty to us, to his people, and he wants to see that same quality in us.

He wants to see steadfast covenant loyalty. So many times, for example, in the

ESV, the word is translated steadfast love. One thing I appreciate about the

ESV in its translation of this word is it's pretty consistent. Now I think in this particular verse, the

ESV translates it this way. It says, your love is like a morning cloud, and like the early dew it goes away.

But, you know, we think of love as, well, we tend to think of it more emotional, which is not a good way to think about it, but that doesn't capture the fullness of this term.

Your steadfast love, your loyalty to the covenant, the Lord says, is like a morning cloud.

Well, what's the morning cloud like? It's like the fog, like a fog. You get up in the morning, especially this time of year, fog can happen pretty frequently.

You get up in the morning and there's a dense fog that, you know, blocks out the sun pretty significantly, and it makes it difficult to drive.

But an hour later, it's all dissipated. It's all gone, and it has lifted.

It's gone, and the sun's shining brightly, and you didn't even know that it was foggy an hour ago.

That's what he's describing here. Your loyalty to the covenant, God says, your faithfulness to me in your keeping of the covenant, your obedience to God, your walking in God's ways, and so forth.

It's like the morning cloud. You make a great expression of it, you make a great profession of it, but yet, really, you're not faithful in it.

You make the commitment on Sunday, and you forget about it on Monday, is the kind of idea here.

But then it goes on to say, in verse 6, what the Lord desires. He says, in the

New King James, it says, for I desire mercy and not sacrifice, and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings.

All right, so obviously here, what the Lord is saying is, your religious rituals are simply not enough.

They're not enough. You can offer your sacrifices, you can offer your burnt offerings, but I'm not interested in them when you don't have, as the

NKGV translates it, mercy, and you don't have the knowledge of God.

Now, that word mercy is the same Hebrew word. It's that word hesed. So what the

Lord is saying is, my people, look, your loyalty to the covenant is very unstable.

It's like a morning cloud that dissipates. It's like the early dew when it goes away.

You're not really loyal to that covenant, but that's what I want.

That's what I desire of you. I desire that steadfast covenant loyalty.

I desire that of you. I want that more than I want your sacrifices. I want you to know me.

I want you to know me more than I want your burnt offerings. Burnt offerings mean nothing to me when you really don't know who

I am and don't love me accordingly. Your sacrifices really don't mean anything to me if all they are is just ritualistic performances to try to get from me what you want, while at the same time, you're not really faithful to the covenant.

You're not faithful to do what I've called you to do, to be what I've called you to be. This hasn't changed these years later, even in the new covenant.

God still wants steadfast love. He still wants covenant loyalty. He still wants us to be consistently faithful to him, and he wants that more than he wants our religious ritual.

He's not impressed if we go to church every Sunday, and then we live like we want to live Monday through Saturday.

He's not impressed if we put great sums of money in the offering plate, but then we really don't know

God. No. He wants our steadfast love, and he wants us to know him.

And of course, here's the thing. If we really know him, and if we're faithful to his word, to his covenant that he's made with us, and we with him, then those religious practices, if you will, will come naturally, and they will just flow from our heart of love for our

God. Well, I trust today that the Lord will challenge us all to be more consistent, more faithful, more steadfast in our love for him.

So, Heavenly Father, we do pray today that you would help us to be faithful, diligent, and committed to you, to your word, to growing in grace and knowledge of Christ, to being the people of God that you would have us to be.

Help us to be faithful in that, we pray, and we ask it in Jesus' name. All right, well

I hope you have a good day. By the way, listen, if these devotionals are a blessing and a help and encouragement to you, maybe they will be to somebody else.

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