This sermon was preached at Langham Church 10:30am service on Sunday 11th June 2023.

Hosea 5:15-6:6

What does God desire of you this day? What does God desire of you? He desires steadfast love. Not sacrifice, not duties, not rule-following, but deep and intimate love. ‘For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice,’ says the Lord, ‘the knowledge of God rather than burnt-offerings.’^[1]

Our Old Testament reading today is from the prophet Hosea. Hosea was writing in the 8^th century BC. It was a time when the Israelites had turned away from God. They still were Israelites and Jews in name and sometimes in practice, but rarely in their hearts. Hosea was around during this time and he spoke of how Israel had turned away from God and the coming destruction of the kingdom of Israel when the Assyrians would invade Israel in 722 BC.

But Hosea wasn’t all doom and gloom. For in all his prophecies about Israel, he spoke about the greater love of God who didn’t want that to be the end of the story for Israel. Hosea spoke of how God longed for Israel to return to him. Hosea says how God longs for Israel to seek his face, to want to return to him, to press on to know him. 

Yet even though God was longing for Israel to return to him, sadly they did not return to him. It’s like in a movie where the good guy has this unrequited love for this girl. He has loved her always, been there for her always, but still, she doesn’t love him back. And God’s words are like this heartbroken lover. He says, ‘What shall I do with you, O Ephraim? What shall I do with you, O Judah? Your love is like a morning cloud, like the dew that goes away early.’ To clarify, Ephraim and Judah are different names God is using to refer to the people of Israel.  

Whom does God sound like here? Well, he sounds very human. When God asks, ‘What shall I do,’ he sounds like any broken-hearted lover any of us have come across asking rhetorical questions. It’s rhetoric that is deeply familiar to most of us from any romantic story. There always comes a point when one of the lovers finds themselves stuck as to what to do in their love story. Though God is never lost as to what to do (he is God after all), his language here shows that his love for Israel, for humanity, is a deep and passionate love. For all the complexities of the Bible, at its essence, it is a love story. It’s a story of God loving his people and longing for the happy ending when they get to be together.  

Imagine Hugh Grant in the final scenes of a movie saying to Andie MacDowell or Julia Roberts, ‘How can I give you up? My heart is changed within me; all my compassion is aroused.’ Sounds like something heart-throb Hugh would say, doesn’t it? Well, these are not words from Hugh Grant or Richard Curtis; these are the words of God. A little later in Hosea 11:8, God says, ‘How can I give you up, Ephraim?…My heart is changed within me; all my compassion is aroused.’

To be God’s people is not to be merely subjects of a king, it is to be beloved by the King. As Christians, we are recipients of this love from God for we are God’s people, we have become part of Israel through Jesus Christ bringing us to God. God loves us with the fullness of his heart. He wants to be in a relationship with us. As we saw in our Song of Songs series at the start of the year, God loves us in a romantic and heart-yearning love. He loves us so much and wants to be bound up in love with us so much that he gave himself for us with his death on the cross.

Last summer, my family said goodbye to my grandmother’s brother. He had a saying, that was his go-to saying and made its way into every prayer he ever made. He always said: ‘God loves us too much.’ God loves us too much. That is God loves us more than we could ever comprehend, more than we can handle. 

Did you know that God loves you like this? How often do you think of how much God loves you? What do we do when God loves us like this? Do we respond in love to God? Do we return to the Lord and seek his face? Or is our love like a morning cloud, like the dew that goes away early in the morning? Is our love here one moment and then gone the next? What kind of love do we have for the God who loves us too much? 

Today, have you chosen to seek the Lord, to love him and return to Him? Have you come to God today? What does God desire of you? He desires steadfast love. The reality is that we know at times we all walk away from God. We don’t love him as he loves us. We don’t love him from the depths of our hearts. And sometimes we can be doing all the right things that Christians should do, but if we don’t love in our hearts for God, it’s all meaningless.  

In our Bible study series on Galatians over the past couple of months we have been looking at this very dynamic of the faith of our hearts and doing the works of the law. The law and doing good Christian works is good and does please God, however, if we followed the law and did good works but there was no change in our hearts then we are not living as God wants us to. It’s through the faith of our hearts that we are saved, not through being good and doing good things.

Think of your relationships, both in family and friendships. When you do something for a loved one, make them a cup of tea, pick them up from the airport, or give up your whole day to help them move house, whatever it is, think about why you do it. You do it because of love. There is a desire in your heart to love them by doing things to bless them, to show your love for them. If you did these things only through habit or duty without any love in your heart, then it wouldn’t feel the same would it. If we were the loved one being picked from the airport by a friend who did it with no love or excitement to see us and help us and instead turned up with a grumpy look on their face, we would feel sad. Because though our friend helped us out, there isn’t that connection of love in that moment. In a relationship, we will put up with a lot from our other half. We will put up with them not doing a lot of things around the house or running errands. The dishes are piling up, clothes are on the floor, and the dog still hasn’t been walked. Sure, it’s annoying but it’s not the end of the world. But if they did all those chores and errands but didn’t love us anymore, well that would be a big issue for us. That would be worse. That would hurt. We wouldn’t want this for anyone. But sometimes, we do the exact same thing to God. 

You come to church, you sing the hymns, you give financial, you make the coffee, but still you don’t love God in your heart. You do all the things that a Christian should do, but it’s not founded on your love of God. Sometimes we can get caught in going through the motions of doing church and being a Christian, but then forget what it is all about. It’s about love. 

Jesus says go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy not sacrifice.’^[2] The word for mercy, is the same word used for ‘steadfast love’ from Hosea. This Hebrew word חֶ֥סֶד (hesed) is often translated as loving mercy. It is more than just our human love or mercy. It refers to God’s loving mercy, grace and compassion on us. It is not a human kind of love and mercy God is calling us to, rather we are called to emulate his godly loving mercy. Well, what does this loving mercy look like for us? חֶ֥סֶד is personified by Jesus Christ on the cross. Jesus’ חֶ֥סֶד was so deep that he gave his life for us. That is the kind of love God requires of us. Will we give our whole lives for him? Will we love him with our whole heart? Or do we keep doing through the motions? 

This is what Israel was doing at the time of Hosea. They might be have been keeping the Jewish Law and following the festivals and making sacrifices to God, but they didn’t have any love in their hearts for God. What sought of relationship is that? It’s meaningless without love in it. Which is why God says, ‘I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt-offerings.’^[3] The sacrifices are meaningless to God if there is no love behind them. God wants a real relationship with us. A relationship of love, where we give our hearts to each other, where we come to know one another and not just know about one another. Where we come to know one another’s heart. And anyone who has been in a relationship for a long time knows that love isn’t about warm, fuzzy feelings. Love is a choice. Love is commitment to give your heart, to give your life to another.

What does God desire of you this day? What does God desire of you? He desires steadfast love. Not sacrifice, not duties, not rule-following, but deep and intimate love. ‘For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice,’ says the Lord, ‘the knowledge of God rather than burnt-offerings.’^[4]

So, what are we going to do in response? What are we going to choose? Love God. Come back to him if you feel you have walked away from him. If you feel like you are going through the motions of church and being a Christian, today you can change. God is longing for us to give our hearts to him. All we need to do come to him and love him with our whole lives. 

I’m going to close with the words we heard from Hosea, words that God is yearning for us to say:

‘Come, let us return to the Lord; for it is he who has torn, and he will heal us; he has struck 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 appearing is as sure as the dawn; he will come to us like the showers, like the spring rains that water the earth.’^[5]

Amen.

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^[1] Hosea 6:6 [NRSV].

^[2] Matthew 9:13 [NRSV].

^[3] Hosea 6:6 [NRSV].

^[4] Hosea 6:6 [NRSV].

^[5] Hosea 6:1-3 [NRSV].

Check out what I am currently reading: Tiago Forte – Building a Second Brain (affiliate link)