Hosea 9 – What Shall Be Done?

Hosea 6:4-11

 

“O Ephraim, what shall I do to you? O Judah, what shall I do to you? For your faithfulness is like a morning cloud, And like the early dew it goes away. Therefore I have hewn them by the prophets, I have slain them by the words of My mouth; And My judgments are like the light that goes forth. For I desire mercy and not sacrifice, And the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings.

 

But like men, they have transgressed the covenant; There they dealt treacherously with Me. Gilead is a city of evildoers, And defiled with blood. As bands of robbers lie in wait for a man, So the company of priests murder on the way to Shechem; Surely they commit lewdness. I have seen a horrible thing in the house of Israel: There is the harlotry of Ephraim; Israel is defiled.

 

Also, O Judah, a harvest is appointed for you, When I return the captives of My people.” Amen.

 

George Washington’s Farewell Address and Its Modern Neglect

As many of you know, there is a long-standing tradition in the US Senate. Every February, one of the senators goes out and reads the exact same speech. This long speech, which takes 45 minutes to deliver, has been repeated every year for a very long time.

 

This tradition, which began in the 1800s, has a deep history. It is the annual reading of George Washington’s Farewell Address, delivered on September 19, 1796. George Washington, the Founding Father to Americans, delivered this address after completing two terms as president and turning down all requests from those around him to serve another term. The speech contained his wisdom, beautiful farewell remarks, and precious political statements simultaneously. Since then, the House of Representatives no longer reads this address, but the Senate still reads it every year before all senators.

 

The content of the speech is too vast for you and me to fully grasp, and it includes astonishing points. For example, it warns of the dangers of party politics, opposes the creation of a standing army, emphasizes that the Constitution should never be changed according to the times or the people, and is one of the greatest orations of the era, proclaiming that the true foundation of the liberty we enjoy lies in religion and morality.

 

Despite its fame, this address is sadly also the most neglected speech in the United States today. The US is currently losing a great deal of freedom in moral and religious aspects. While it is true that we live in an affluent nation, there are too many aspects that make it difficult to answer the question of whether we truly live in a righteous and good nation. There are things to be grateful to God for, but the reality constantly forces us to ask if we, as Christians, are fulfilling our responsibilities to this society and nation. In this respect, George Washington’s address is sometimes called the most neglected speech today.

 

God's Ignored Appeal: “Come, and let us return to the Lord”

The reason I bring this up is that Hosea 6:1-3, which we read today, is perhaps the most appealing and greatest passage among the countless words and sermons in the Bible that express the heart of God, and it may be a favorite passage for you.

 

“Come, and let us return to the Lord; For He has torn, but He will heal us; He has stricken, but 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 in His sight. Let us know, let us pursue the knowledge of the Lord.”

 

However, every single word of this magnificent passage is utterly neglected. This desperate plea of love was not heard, even fleetingly, by many people of Israel and Judah. Despite the clear message in these verses about the Messiah who would turn back for us, die for us, and rise for us—despite the earnest heart of God saying, 'If you return, I will heal you and give you life'—this passage is also a Word of God that has been completely ignored.

 

A Lament for Israel: “What Shall I Do to You?”

Then let us examine how Israel neglected God's earnest word. Verse 4, which we read today, begins like this:

 

“O Ephraim, what shall I do to you? O Judah, what shall I do to you?”

 

This is not a question asking, 'What would you like me to do for you?' It is not a promise saying, 'Just name it, and I will grant your request!' On the contrary, it holds the opposite meaning: 'There is truly no remedy for you. I love you, cherish you, call you to return and come back, yet how can you refuse to come? What kind of people are you to so continually defy me?'

 

So, how does Hosea answer this? Today's text says, 'For your faithfulness is like a morning cloud, and like the early dew it goes away.'

 

The Meaning of Lovingkindness (Hesed)

The word "faithfulness" here is quite important. The Hebrew word, 'Hesed,' is very difficult to simply translate as 'love.' Therefore, it is translated by various words in the Old Testament: first, 'lovingkindness' or 'mercy.' It is also used with the meaning of 'love' and is translated as 'steady love' or 'devotion.' It is also translated in relation to the covenant, as 'covenant love.' In other words, this word 'Hesed' signifies a love that keeps the covenant unswervingly, which is, of course, God's love, but also the love that God requires from us.

 

Easily Fading Enthusiasm and Excuses

But the Bible says that this love disappears like the morning dew when the sun rises. Scripture is not saying that we never had that 'Hesed' in the first place. It suggests that we did have 'Hesed' and that we once confessed it to God. In Deuteronomy, the Israelites promised Moses before entering the land of Canaan, 'We will listen to the word of the Lord and will obey and keep it.' They spoke with confidence. That confession was not forced. They spoke with great joy. They were excited before God, standing at the doorstep of Canaan. They were thrilled and loudly promised to keep and obey God’s Word, in the joy that 'Now God's promise is coming true.'

 

However, their promises faded like the morning dew as soon as the sun rose. That is, as soon as they began to face difficulties again, as soon as things got hot under the sun, as soon as they went through hard and challenging moments, all those vows withered away. In other words, they were enthusiastic about God, excited by the truth, and for a time, they liked and desired God's Word. As Jesus clearly stated through a parable: 'At first, they hear the word, and they receive it with joy and delight, and they talk as if they will live by it, but it soon withers away.' It's similar to that. It vanished as soon as the sun came up.

 

And they filled that void with countless excuses. 'God, now that we've entered Canaan, they have iron chariots. How can we defeat them? They live on the mountains. It's not easy for us to climb up there. They are tall and very strong.' Their hearts began to be filled with excuses for everything. Although God had promised, 'If you rely on Me and go in, all this will be yours,' they were unable to live by God's word for even a moment.

 

The Christian Life, Like Morning Dew

What about us? Aren't we similar to the people of Israel? When we first came to know the Lord's word and grace, when we realized, 'This is who God is, and this is what the cross of Jesus Christ means,' wasn't there a warmth in our hearts? Didn't we make countless resolutions then, such as, 'I must study the Word more diligently, I will surely read the Bible through this year'? What about now? Are you too busy with the work of survival? We once spoke as if we would lay down everything for the saints, as if we would live our entire lives for the Lord and His Kingdom—what has become of our resolve?

 

When you come to church, there are so many things that you find dissatisfying. Things don't go your way, and what you desire doesn't come to pass. And in your opinion, something seems lacking. Then, what do you do? You end up treading water. As if it were a matter of course, you fill that space with excuses. Israel did the same. Everything could be an excuse as they entered the Canaan right before them.

 

Not only this, but we also begin to have people within the community that we don't like. We speak as if it is natural that we will no longer serve the church simply because this person is troubling our hearts. Friends, what does the fact that others make your heart heavy—or sometimes that the church affairs do not please you—have to do with serving the Lord?

 

You are still called by the Lord, and as long as your circumstances, your heart, and the grace granted by God permit, you are to live solely by the confession that you are true to God, without hiding behind every excuse.

 

If God were to ask you about your life on this earth, you would have to answer what kind of time you spent with the Lord, and what your life was like as you spent time for the Lord and for your neighbor. Despite this, we often see the reflection of Israel and Judah in our own lives. If this stems from our great weakness, let us examine the second issue. This, too, is related to lovingkindness.

 

What God Desires: Lovingkindness and the Knowledge of God

We are so weak in consistently serving God until the end, and that lovingkindness so easily fades away. This fact, however, is deeply connected to sacrifice. Though the word 'sacrifice' cannot be completely replaced by the modern word 'worship,' the fundamental content is similar.

 

Both Israel and Judah brought many offerings that they could present to God. And they carried out all the sacrifices through the priests, exactly according to God's Law, without fail. Of course, sometimes their hearts were not sincere, and they brought offerings that were not up to standard, but the order of presenting the offerings, the moment of sacrifice, and all the formal acts performed through the priests were faultless. In other words, the 'vessel' was good, but they failed to put the essential content in it.

 

We know how God evaluated their sacrifices. Doesn't God say, 'I will not accept this. This does not please me.' They followed God's command, His word, and kept all the laws. Yet, the essential content was missing inside. The vessel was there, but nothing was contained in it.

 

The prophet Amos even said that 'God hates your feast days, and He despises your sacred assemblies.' Today's text also says very clearly:

 

'For I desire mercy and not sacrifice, and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings.'

 

The True Demand Spoken by the Prophet Micah

To help you understand this passage more fully and clearly, let me introduce the words of the prophet Micah. Micah says this:

 

'With what shall I come before the Lord, And bow myself before the High God? Shall I come before Him with burnt offerings, With calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams Or ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, The fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? Shall I offer all that I possess?'

 

And then, Micah immediately reveals the true demand:

 

'He has shown you, O man, what is good; And what does the Lord require of you But to do justly, To love mercy, And to walk humbly with your God?'

 

We know how important worship is. That is why you strive with all your might to somehow attend worship services. We have been constantly taught that worship is precious. You have probably heard many times that 'If worship fails, our lives fail.' That's right. Worship is important. However, in Micah's words, there is something more that God requires than the act of worship itself.

 

The Problem of Misunderstanding Worship

We often use the expression 'offer worship' and misunderstand worship as an act of giving something to God. As a result, we easily think of this worship as an act of trying to serve God to look good to Him. Consequently, you try to come to the place of worship for fear of incurring God's displeasure. This is because we were taught incorrectly about worship from the beginning.

 

We misunderstand why the Bible requires worship from us and why God gathers us to the place of worship. We were not taught from the beginning that God calls us to worship in order to grant us blessings, to reveal who He is, to serve us, to delight in us, to bless us, and because He loves us so much. Instead, we regard this worship as our merit and believe we must not miss worship for this reason. If you didn't know this fact until now, then at least after today, your attitude toward worship must truly change.

 

Micah's Four Requirements and Hosea's Two Cores

Micah’s passage speaks of four things. The first is to 'do justly.' To elaborate, this is the command to live according to God's word, that is, to live according to God's righteous truth.

 

The second is the command to 'love mercy.' This 'mercy' is one of the terms used to describe Jesus Christ, but here it encompasses God's Hesed (lovingkindness) and the command to love Him. And that love is shown to God by our obedience to His word.

 

The third concerns the greatest problem that can arise in our lives as we strive to learn what is right, worship correctly, believe in God purely, become innocent, and serve the Lord with a pure heart—the temptation of Satan, which is pride. If there is anyone who thinks, 'I am currently praising more correctly than anyone else,' there is no pride more frightening than this. If you think, 'I attend a more righteous church than any other church,' you are entertaining a quite dangerous thought. Because, as everyone knows, we want to live as such a church, but none of us can possess such a church or live that way. Friends, the name 'Los Angeles Nampo Church' is a phantom. It has no substance. You are the substance. Are you perfect? Are you worthy of boasting about yourselves? Can you say before God, 'God, I am a righteous church'? You cannot. Therefore, the more we try to be righteous, the more we always face the greatest temptation.

 

The harder we try, the more prideful we become, and the more we strive to stand correctly before God, the more we begin to see the flaws in others. It would be good if we could discern that, use it as a boundary for ourselves, and guide them to the right path with warm love, but unfortunately, such a heart does not come so easily. We are people who always think of how great we are first. So, what happens? Eventually, we easily become proud. So, what is the third requirement? It is humility: 'Humble yourselves.'

 

And finally, there is 'unity'—meaning to walk with God. These four requirements for a believer in Micah are expressed in two core elements in today's Hosea text: the 'knowledge of God,' which is God's word, and the second is 'God's Hesed,' which is unwavering love for God.

 

The Danger When Knowledge and Love Are Separated

Micah's four demands must never be overemphasized, and they cannot be separated from each other. Sometimes, one of these is emphasized more during a sermon, depending on the text. There are times when God's grace is emphasized, and other times when God's judgment and the nature of sin are emphasized. However, these elements can never be spoken of as a single fact only.

 

As you know, if only God's love and Hesed are emphasized, it becomes love without truth, and love without truth naturally becomes a wrong kind of love. This is like dedication without truth. What kind of result does it lead to? It is like what Paul said: 'They have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. For they being ignorant of God's righteousness, and seeking to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted to the righteousness of God.' This means that if they are truly zealous about something but lack knowledge, they end up seeking their own glory. It may seem untrue, but if you think about it closely, it is a very clear fact. And the result appears as pride.

 

Conversely, what happens if there is knowledge but no lovingkindness (love)? It becomes cold knowledge and naturally leads to pride.

 

This phenomenon can also be easily observed in the way parents love their children. The love in a parent's heart may be similar for all, but what happens if there is only emotional love without a correct understanding and knowledge of the children? That child may not feel that they are receiving genuine love from their parents. Parents may think of their children as their possessions and try to raise them only as they wish, yet not realize that this is wrong. Lacking proper knowledge of the child, they fail to consider who that child is, what kind of person they are, what kind of person the parent should be for the child, and what things the parent can use to teach the child. Such parents have never deeply considered the method of conveying that love to their children, and in that state, what happens when they love without knowledge? They ultimately fail their children.

 

What does that parent always say to the child? 'What have I failed to do for you? When your mom and dad were young, we couldn't go to school even if we wanted to during the war. I send you to school so comfortably, I pay your tuition—what on earth are you lacking?' They end up saying things like this. What is lacking? The love for the children is clear, but the accurate knowledge is lacking. As a result, if things go wrong, they could ruin their children.

 

Do you understand? This is the problem we always face when the two elements—love and knowledge—do not go together and are separated. And we ponder how we can keep both together at once.

 

Spiritual Worship That Unites Knowledge and Love: Offering Ourselves as a Living Sacrifice

The Bible presents an amazing solution to the problem of knowledge and love. We now face the question, 'How can we have both knowledge and Hesed (love)?' If you thought, 'I must study hard, and I must practice love hard too,' in a way, that's not entirely wrong. We have heard countless times the saying, 'Let's act according to what we have learned.' But we know from experience that we have tried to do this all our lives, yet it doesn't work out well. If we only lived according to what we have learned, we would all be saints by now. This is a very basic principle that you learn in 'Good Citizen' class, even if you only go through kindergarten or elementary school, without needing to go all the way to university. If people only kept this, we would be living in a peaceful world now. 'Do not harm others. Think of others.' But we don't not do it because we don't know; it is simply that we are unable to keep it. Therefore, the Bible approaches it in a different way.

 

Of course, the method the Bible speaks of does not demand that you live this out perfectly. Instead, the Bible says this: 'Offer even your dedication, your zeal, and all your love as a sacrifice.' It commands you to make all your knowledge, correct doctrine, and the passionate heart and knowledge about the Bible a holy sacrifice.

 

The Bible commands that our entire life—everything we have, all the knowledge we possess, and even all the tears and pain hidden in our hearts—every moment of our lives, be offered as a holy, living sacrifice.

 

Let me read this beautiful biblical expression to you:

 

“I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.” (Romans 12:1, NKJV)

 

The 'body' mentioned here does not just mean the physical body. Although there are several words translated as 'body' in the Bible, especially in the New Testament, in this verse, it means to offer your body, mind, and your core self—all of it—as a holy, living sacrifice.

 

Therefore, your knowledge, and all of it, must be offered as a sacrifice to the Lord. You must burn all those sacrifices by offering them as a burnt offering to the Lord. So, my knowledge must be burned. It cannot be left as my pride. Nothing of mine remains. Therefore, there is nothing to boast about. You stand in a position where you cannot be proud at all.

 

Even your sins and your weaknesses are placed together on the altar of burnt offering. They are burned together. This is what we call dying with Christ.

 

Worship: The Experience of Dying and Living with Christ

Why do you come to the place of worship? Did you perhaps come today to sing good praises? Or did you come to gather one plausible word, one moving phrase that you can live by for the week? No. You come to die.

 

Why do we have the Confession of Sin and the Assurance of Pardon in our worship order? Every time you worship, you must confirm that you die with Christ. You come to die.

 

You come to surrender your sin, all that you possess, your life that you considered smart, all the knowledge you possess, your life that wants to boast whenever it has the time, and your pain that wants to be discouraged whenever it has the time—all of this—to death with Christ. 'Lord, why am I here? I come to confess that I am nothing, and that I am only Christ’s, to be burned and consumed as a living sacrifice with Christ, in Christ, since Christ is the true sacrifice.' And at the same time, why do you come? To live with Christ.

 

Successful Worship Is the Realization of Resurrection

When you 'worship,' you don't come to feel that you 'did worship properly' just by experiencing some emotion, knowledge, or realization. During many moments of worship, no matter how zealous we are, sometimes we lose focus, sometimes we may briefly doze off due to the exhaustion of the week, and sometimes we may not participate in the praise but merely watch. While these are all things we clearly need to correct, your worship is not ruined because of them.

 

Your worship is ruined because you fail to realize that you have died and lived with Christ. Through today's Word and through the praise, you must die with Christ, and through this worship, you must rise again with Christ and go out into this world. Therefore, we cannot help but be filled with the joy of resurrection, the life of resurrection, and the amazing comfort and grace that resurrection provides. This is because we rise through worship in this place and go forth.

 

You enter as one who is dead, but you go out as one who is alive with the Lord. When we go forth, resurrected by the life of Christ, what can stop you, what can discourage you, what can shake you, and what can defeat you? Therefore, we rejoice.

 

So, even if you come to worship with a gloomy face at first, and even if you lament during the congregational prayer at the start of worship, saying, 'Forgive the sins of the week,' when the Lord sends you out to the world at the end, you will have the conviction: 'I rise with the resurrected Christ, I escape the place of death with Christ, and I will live out this world with the glory of Christ.' The confession will burst from your lips: 'Until the last moment of my life, I will live with Christ again through this worship.' This is what spiritual worship, or reasonable service, is.

 

Praise, Good Deeds, and Sharing Are Sacrifices

Therefore, Hebrews 13 says this:

 

“Therefore by Him let us continually offer the sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to His name.” (Hebrews 13:15, NKJV)

 

Praise is called a sacrifice because praise is the fruit of the lips that witnesses to the name of Jesus Christ. That is why this praise is called a sacrifice. Not all praise is a sacrifice. However, praise becomes a sacrifice because it exalts the name of Christ and becomes the fruit of the lips.

 

This is also true in the realm of our daily lives. It is the crucial attitude in the true sacrifice of our lives—the true spiritual worship—where we offer our entire lives as a holy, living sacrifice.

 

When you imitate Jesus Christ and use language that not merely delivers a word, but considers the other person, encourages them, compliments them, delights in their appearance, and loves them in your heart, that finally becomes a sacrifice. It is my spiritual worship.

 

It does not stop there. The author of Hebrews urges us not to forget to do good and to share. What does God call all these acts—your acts of doing good to one another, caring for one another, considering, helping, and protecting one another? He says, 'With such sacrifices God is well pleased.' (Hebrews 13:16, NKJV)

 

It is not only singing hymns, reading the Word, and raising hands in prayer that are sacrifices; God says He is pleased with the sacrifice of knowing how to give up your own things for one person, remembering them, comforting them with a warm heart, and giving them your life and time.

 

I do not doubt that you have come to this worship with a heart that truly desires the truth, is pleased with God, and exalts the Lord. But how are you living and dealing with your brothers and sisters, your wives and husbands, with the same heart?

 

The Root of the Problem: Rebellion Against God

The danger we easily fall into concerning worship is being fixated on conventions: 'The order of worship must be this way' or 'Certain steps must be done in worship, and others must not be done.' Sometimes, we even debate whether a song is a Gospel song or a hymn, as if singing a Gospel song means we are doing something wrong or making a mistake.

 

When we face small problems, we often fail to resolve them well. At those times, we feel helpless, blaming ourselves for not having the ability to solve the issue. This is true whether it is a church matter or a family matter. As soon as a small storm hits, instead of going to God, we fall into a state of feeling hurt and blame ourselves, even confessing our weakness to God. 'Lord, I am so weak, and my feelings are so hurt right now. I can't even pray.' You might say this. When conflicts with your children worsen, you might think, 'Am I raising my child too much according to my own preferences? I need to be more careful in the future.' When difficulties arise between spouses, you might resolve, 'Ah, I am hurting their feelings with my words. I need to change my words to be more gentle and kind.'

 

That's right. These are common problems we may experience, and we think we can solve them in such ways. But when we look at today's text, God points out these problems much more seriously and painfully.

 

He says, 'No, your real problem is the problem with your sacrifice.' 'It is nothing else, but the problem of your worship. The problem of your spiritual worship.' He is now telling us a much deeper truth. We think that if there is a misunderstanding between us, all we need to do is clear it up. We sometimes think that because we did not approach the matter sincerely, if we sincerely dedicate a lot of time and effort to the issue, we can solve it. But the Bible does not say that. You, too, probably feel in your heart that there are things that cannot be solved even with such effort, and this feeling is deeply rooted in our minds.

 

Like Adam, They Have Transgressed the Covenant and Dealt Treacherously with Me

Israel and Judah are playing games. And God says, 'They have transgressed the covenant like Adam.' God is going back to the time of Adam to address this issue. It might make us wonder if God is being a bit too harsh. What does this have to do with Adam, and what does Adam's issue have to do with me? The people living at that time may not have even known what era Adam belonged to, and the same is true for you. Yet, He says that we transgressed the covenant of Adam. To express the breaking of Adam's covenant in other words, it is that 'we have rebelled against God.' We might feel a sense of injustice that such a fault would qualify as the crime of treason against God.

 

But the Bible says that when we stop loving God, that is the cost of our rebellion against God. Isn't that frightening? But it is an undeniable truth.

 

The Bible will tell you the same thing if you stop loving your wife and are not loving her. 'If you are not loving your wife, you are rebelling against Me.' If you are not respecting your husband and are engaging in power struggles according to your own knowledge of the world, God will tell you, 'You are rebelling against Me.' If you provoke your children to wrath, you will hear the same words from God: 'You are despising My word and rebelling against Me. Your spiritual worship, your sacrifices, are utterly abominable.'

 

The Seriousness of Sin: "Your Hands Are Full of Blood"

In the life of a believer, because we are forgiven of our sins, we sometimes tend to take sin too lightly. Of course, it is also wrong for a believer to live as if burdened by excessive guilt, constantly emphasizing sin, or holding onto sin, which is like living as if we were overwhelmed by it. When we evangelize to unbelievers, we don't just keep talking about sin, do we? We tell them that God loves them and wants to save them. What good is death without salvation and without resurrection?

 

However, we believers tend to take sin too lightly precisely because we know we are forgiven. So, when we encounter a problem, as I mentioned earlier, we often think that we can overcome and move past this issue over time, even without sincerely trying to resolve the misunderstanding or even making an attempt to do so. We didn't try, but we think that if we just step forward properly, it will be resolved quickly, so we just pass it by or let time slip away.

 

Friends, the fact that we are committing sin or doing wrong is actually rebellion against God. When we stop loving, when we are caught up in hatred, when we envy and are jealous, when we slander others—in that moment, if we are despising a person who is the image of God, even a little, if we are sinning in our hearts by uttering those things without considering them, we are rebelling against God. We are acting for ourselves, not following God's word, just like Adam, and no one—not the priests nor the people—is an exception.

 

Shall I speak more in the language of the Bible? The Bible says this: 'Your hands are full of blood.' We may not have taken up a knife to harm anyone, nor have we stained our hands with blood, but the Bible says so. How terrifying are the words of Jesus? 'If you call your brother a fool, if you look down on your brother, you have committed murder. Your hands are full of blood.' How dreadful is this word? Yet, at the same time, this word is absolutely true.

 

The Bible says that we come before God with hands full of blood, and how abominable is this appearance of ours. It says that God's judgment is right before our eyes. It says, 'You have rebelled against the Father and despised the Father.' The Bible says, 'You have shed the blood of your neighbor, and your hands are now full of the blood of your husband and wife.'

 

The Bible says the same thing about all our attitudes in life—when we do not walk the righteous path in this society, when we turn a blind eye to injustice, and when we live as if everything will be fine, as if we have no responsibility because we believe in Jesus, thinking that we are simply people who will go to heaven. To us, who fail to let justice flow like a torrent, God says, 'Your hands are now full of blood. How can I accept your sacrifices?'

 

Our Unsolvable Problem

So, we can only cry out, 'Lord, what should we do?' 'Lord, have mercy on us. Lord, help us.' We thought we had the ability to solve all these problems. Or we thought we could handle them to some extent in our own way. We thought that if we tried harder, something would work out. But you have seen so many times that it does not work. You know very well how much pain and wounds those small, seemingly insignificant things have caused and will cause us, how they have snowballed, haven't you? It is the same in the family. We know through experience and through our nature that those problems can always arise between a wife and a husband. Don't you know who we are? What are you going to do?

 

The Only Solution: Let Us Return to Jesus Christ

God also says, "What shall I do to you, what shall I do to you?" If we truly faced this word of the prophet Hosea today and looked at ourselves, we must absolutely return to God's magnificent word, and we must return to the sermon given through Hosea. We must go there.

 

We must go to Jesus Christ, who died with us, revives us on the second day, raises us up on the third day, and became the first fruits of that.

 

'Come, and let us return to the Lord.'

 

For the Restoration of Spiritual Worship

Though the Lord has torn us—though our hearts are deeply wounded, and we are so exhausted and tired that we have no hope—He will heal us. Though He has stricken us—in those moments when there seems to be division among us, when things seem discordant, when a wife and husband try to do better with the same issue but it leads to a quarrel, when beloved children disobey and cause heartache and difficulty—instead of the vague thought, 'I should just be nicer to the other person,' we must realize, 'I am truly failing and falling short in spiritual worship.'

 

We must confess, 'I am not dedicating all that I have to God. I am truly not offering the knowledge and the love that I possess together. I am not offering my entire life. That child is still mine, my heart is still mine, and all my possessions and belongings are still mine.'

 

We must confess, 'Lord, I want to return to You. I will return to You.'

 

'He has stricken, but He will bind us up; He will revive us and raise us up, that we may live in His sight. Therefore, let us know the Lord. Let us pursue the knowledge of the Lord.'

 

God's Earnest Invitation

Friends, what does God do? 'What shall I do? What shall I do?' And then, what does He do?

 

'I will heal you. I will bind you up. I will become the rain for your heart and soak your heart with moisture. I will truly become the rising sun for you, and a light in your heart to dispel your darkness. I will prepare a feast, I will put a ring on your finger again, I will embrace you and weep, calling you My son, and I will give you everything I have, and I will rejoice and be glad with you. You are My love, and you are My joy. Therefore, return, repent. Just return, turn back and come.'

 

Let us pray.

Lord, Israel did not even know that they were like the morning dew. Their voices, which at first were so boisterous, as if they would offer everything to God, all faded away and fled, but they themselves did not realize it. Why? Because they came to the temple to offer sacrifices.

 

Is it not the same for us? We are worshiping, so what an ironic comfort this is! How can we be at ease?

 

True spiritual worship has left us, our hearts are filled with envy, jealousy, and hatred, our hearts are still full of unwashed wounds and pain. Lord, instead of loving a wife and respecting a husband, instead of truly raising children with the Word, we ourselves have become so assimilated into this world. Lord, behold us, who do not return, but simply bring countless offerings to God, giving them to Him, and living as if there are no problems. Lord, forgive us.

 

Lord, allow us to return to the word where You earnestly call us, the word that says, "I will heal you again, I will bind you up again, I will be your life, I will save you, and I will surely make you bear fruit." Let the Lord be my joy and my love.

 

May the love of God that You confess and appeal to crash into my spirit, be deeply rooted in my heart for once, and may that love of the Lord become a root in my heart and bear fruit. Lord, turn us back to You.

 

We pray in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.