God's Call to Repentance
Introduction
What is word has the most synonyms in the English language? Have you taken the time to go through the whole thesaurus to find the answer?
Well, I didn’t. I was curious though so naturally, I asked AI. The answer might surprise you. In fact, it’s a word associated with a lot of shame. The word is “drunk,” as in, intoxicated. It actually makes sense that a shameful word would have so many synonyms or euphemisms. Paul Dickson found over 2900 different synonyms for the word “drunk.” That supposedly is the record.
Now, we might not be quite as creative as Paul Dickson, but we do quite well to find synonyms for another phrase.
The phrase: “I’m sorry.”
We come up with all these creative ways to make ourselves and those whom we have wronged feel better. Yet, we tiptoe all around coming out and admitting, “I was wrong.”
What are some ways? “I’m sorry if you…” or “I’m sorry that you…” “Just forget about it.” “Leave it in the past.” “Are we good?” “Can we just move on?”
Why is it that we struggle so much to say, “I was wrong. Please forgive me?”
In this passage, we find a similar inability to rightly admit fault and restore relationship. The nation of Israel has violated the covenant God has made with them. God is using His prophet Hosea to symbolize the reality of Israel’s unfaithfulness to him, and also God’s loving commitment to his people.
Chapter 6 is the first glimmer of hope for resolution for Israel. The only way forward is to completely and actually repent. No counterfeit apologies. No vague resolutions.
In God’s call to Israel for repentance, I pray we can also learn how to truly repent.
As we have journeyed through the book, Hosea has now become very clear about how exactly it is that God’s people have been unfaithful to Yaweh. Their idolatry is akin to adultery, and he has made no bones about that. God justly speaks this way about our sin. There is no problem with that. Yet, we must understand the purpose behind these kinds of indictments.
Even more so, in chapter 5, God warns of the consequences of Israel’s idolatry.
In verse 10:
“The princes of Judah are like those who remove a landmark; I will pour out my wrath on them like water. Ephraim is oppressed and broken in judgment, Because he willingly walked by human precept. Therefore I will be to Ephraim like a moth, And to the house of Judah like rottenness. “When Ephraim saw his sickness, And Judah saw his wound, Then Ephraim went to Assyria And sent to King Jareb; Yet he cannot cure you, Nor heal you of your wound. For I will be like a lion to Ephraim, And like a young lion to the house of Judah. I, even I, will tear them and go away; I will take them away, and no one shall rescue. I will return again to My place Till they acknowledge their offense. Then they will seek My face; In their affliction they will earnestly seek Me.” Hosea 5:10–15
All of the accusations, all of the warnings, even when they are harsh, they are always for a purpose.
God corrects his people to bring them back to himself.
It is a tough thing to identify with a God who would do such things to those whom he loves. To us, loving isn’t hurting someone. How can we hurt someone that we care about? Causing someone pain is the opposite of loving them!
These are the parts of Scripture that we might get a little uncomfortable to talk about. But this is who God is. And its important to understand this is who he always is, and always will be.
Read Deuteronomy 4 sometime. God predicts and promises exactly what is unfolding in this book if the Israelites were to do exactly what they have done. He even foreshadows the legal proceeding motif by calling heaven and earth to witness against the Idolatry of his people.
We might assume that God is like us, reacting to the situations around us and doing our best to only escalate when necessary, making judgement calls about how harsh to be. There is no reactionary nature with God. He is not just doing his best to roll with the punches. Long, long ago in eternity past, God settled exactly what needed to be done to bring His people Israel back to himself when they strayed.
And he is the same for his people today.
For whom the Lord loves He chastens, And scourges every son whom He receives.” Hebrews 12:6
We need to properly understand God’s ultimate punishment for sin and his loving discipline to teach his children. His purpose in his correction is not ultimately to make us feel shameful or guilty. His ultimate goal is restoration and joy.
Friend, is God in some way teaching you that you might repent so that you can experience His joy? My prayer is that this message makes clear to you what the Bible says about what it means to truly repent. You’re only one step of full repentance away from the joy of communion with God.
When we begin to trust that God’s correction is to bring His people back to himself, we begin to gain confidence God’s nature.
Repentance believes that God is faithful to his covenant.
If God is truly set out to bring me back to Him, then there can be no true hurt in repentance. There is nothing but goodness and blessing in repentance. (Now, I did not say there is no pain or that it is easy. The pain does not truly hurt. It only truly heals.)
God tells us his goal in his severity with Israel: that they would seek him at the end of chapter 5, and chapter 6 begins with 3 verses that poetically describe true repentance.
For a moment, I would like us all to become theologians. That doesn’t mean we all need to read thousands of pages and use flowery language. All that means is this: I want us all to look at these verses, think about what we read, and ask: “What can I learn about God from them?”
The hypothetical Israelites here know that the God who has torn and stricken them is ready to heal. Why? Because he said he would be. Just as he promised that he would deal harshly with Israel for their idolatry and disloyalty, he promised that would be ready to heal. Ready to restore. Ready to bring those same traitors and adulterers right back into the blessing of the covenant.
But from there you will seek the Lord your God, and you will find Him if you seek Him with all your heart and with all your soul. When you are in distress, and all these things come upon you in the latter days, when you turn to the Lord your God and obey His voice (for the Lord your God is a merciful God), He will not forsake you nor destroy you, nor forget the covenant of your fathers which He swore to them. Deuteronomy 4:29–31
It is for the exact same reason that we should fear God’s complete justice that we can rest in his mercy. He is faithful to all of his promises. He is always the same.
To turn back to God is to believe that God is gracious and merciful as he says he is. Do you see how he has promises to revive you and is ready to do so? They say, “After two or three days.” This means soon or quickly. He’s not going to make you wait so you know the seriousness of what you have done. The moment you turn back, he’s ready for things to be as he should be.
I can’t help but think of the story of the prodigal son. The father let’s his son experience the full consequences of his sin. He does shield him from that. But the moment he sees the son taking the steps to return. The moment! He RUNS. There is no delay. God has all the time in the world! He has infinite time. There is no rush or hurry for God to do anything! Yet, he wastes no time restoring those who turn from their sin.
In the most wonderful mystery, what the father wants is for us “live in his sight.” (vs. 2) You know what that makes me think of? A father and mother sitting, watching their kids play, enjoying presents on Christmas, playing in the yard, or growing up, getting a job or getting married.
This desire for God to be with us and to know them then is reciprocated in their desire to know him.
Repentance determines to know God.
Not only is God ready to receive those who turn to him, his going for and his coming are like the morning and the rain.
What is one thing which we all know about the morning? It’s happening. In our human experience, there is nothing more sure than the morning. What do they say? Death and taxes. Well, we can add, the morning.
And especially for an agrarian society, what always happens in spring? The rains come. Just as the joy of morning and the relief of rains always come, our God will meet with those who seek him.
I love those who love me, And those who seek me diligently will find me. Proverbs 8:17
There is a theme when we find language like this. Solomon says “diligently.” Hosea describes a kind of pursuit. Those who pursue God in a heart of repentance do not do so halfheartedly. It’s full gallop. It’s no holds barred. It’s pedal to the medal.
Now, my goal is not to make us introspective this morning. We do not need to be looking inward and become obsessive about how genuine our desire for God is. Our hearts are deceitful and desperately wicked. You’re going to have feelings of hypocrisy at times. The point of the passage and what we must grasp is: God is so ready to fully receive and bless us with all the blessings of walking with him and knowing him. He’s so ready to watch us enjoy the glory of his presence and goodness. Do not hold anything back from him. He will not hold any good thing back from those who love him. Do not get in your own head about this. Put your eyes on him and seek him diligently.
In our text this morning, we have come to a point where a harsh reality kind of smacks us in the face. It’s the same kind of feeling when you read the syllabi for your classes or your sitting there after all the snow has melted looking at a field that needs a lot of work to be ready for planting.
We have risen to the peak of wondering at God’s faithful mercy and grace, and come crashing down to the reality of who Israel is because of the choices they make.
“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. Hosea 6:4
We come face to face with Israel’s failure in stark contrast to the repentance God desires. There is some debate over whether verses 1-3 represent a false attempt at repentance or God’s example of true repentance which Israel cannot attain to.
Over the rest of the chapter, God reveals the true nature of Israel and how unrepentant they are. We see some obstacles to repentance for Israel. As we look at the reasons why Israel is like the fog in the morning, we can understand what it takes to overcome our own spiritual fickleness.
We can take verse 6 as a summary for Israel’s problem because here we find what really matters to God. These words may be very familiar for you:
For I desire mercy and not sacrifice, And the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings. Hosea 6:6
This is what God truly desires from Israel: mercy and knowledge of God. God doesn’t want the offerings and the sacrifices. He wants the heart under and behind them.
And by the way, mercy is the same as “chesed,” for those who remember Pastor Thomas’ message on God’s covenant faithfulness or “chesed. In verse 7, God clarifies his concern. Like man, which is the same word for Adam, they transgress the covenant. God’s relationship to Israel is defined always by his covenant with them. He corrects and blesses because he does what he said he would in the covenant. And he expects us to do the same. Be faithful to the covenant.
So the Israelites failed to keep the covenant by not seeking him, and desiring to know God and his ways. In verse 8, Hosea describes another way they have transgressed their covenant with God.
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. Hosea 6:8–9
True faithfulness involves both heart and hands.
God calls out two specific instances of breaking the covenant by hurting other people. In either case, we cannot be sure exactly what historical event is being referred to or if history records them at all.
What we do know is that the people of Israel knew. And the people knew these were egregious crimes against other people. An entire city becoming associated with bloodthirst, and the priests becoming murderous. Lewdness is the wickedness which springs from heinous desires and thoughts. They have become corrupt inside and so they do evil on the outside.
As Pastor Thomas has pointed out from the book of Hosea, God’s covenant does not just include what happened in the temple or just on the sabbath. The covenant was about all of life, especially how you treat other people.
Israel did not get to offer sacrifices on Saturday and then take advantage of people on Monday. God required that they honored him by honoring his image in other people. To hurt other people was to violate the covenant with Yaweh. There is no compartmentalizing with God Either you keep the covenant in all of life, with all of your being, or you don’t.
In verses 8-9, God gets very specific about the wickedness he saw. And we should remember that indeed, nothing escapes God’s sight. His eyes see everything, the evil and the good. But now, his view becomes broader, to the whole nation. These acts of deplorable violence are not just isolated events. They are related to the whole nation’s unfaithfulness and defilement.
One of the primary lessons of the the whole book of Hosea is this: sin is like cheating on your spouse, over and over again. Shamelessly. What God is trying to get through to Israel is the depth of their betrayal because that is what we all need to understand in order to repent.
A repentant heart sorrows over the betrayal of sin.
If Israel continued to justify and rationalize their sin, they could not repent. God sees the horribleness of sin, but Israel is blind to it.
Because God is gracious, he tells them about how bad their sin is. He does it over and over in Hosea, because as he says, he hews them down by their prophets and and slays them with his words. Even more in his mercy, he allows them to experience the consequences of their actions. In Hosea 7:2, their own deeds surround Israel. And for many of us, God may use circumstances in our lives to correct us, to show us how wicked our sin really is.
But for all of us, there is one place we can go to see how sin is like vile prostitution and how dirty that makes us: the cross.
God is so ready to forgive us that the Father sent God the Son, Jesus Christ, to pay the incalculable debt of our appalling harlotry. And he rose again three days later. If we will turn from our sin, and seek the one true God to worship him, then He will totally forgive us.
In Jesus’ death we find God’s hatred for sin, but also his desire for his people. In the cross we find the rightful consequences of idolatry and God’s readiness to forgive.\
And so, my friend, if you do not know Jesus, repent of your idolatry. Embrace what it means to walk in covenant with God.
For those who follow Christ, the cross reminds us of the the God who calls us to repentance.
What is word has the most synonyms in the English language? Have you taken the time to go through the whole thesaurus to find the answer?
Well, I didn’t. I was curious though so naturally, I asked AI. The answer might surprise you. In fact, it’s a word associated with a lot of shame. The word is “drunk,” as in, intoxicated. It actually makes sense that a shameful word would have so many synonyms or euphemisms. Paul Dickson found over 2900 different synonyms for the word “drunk.” That supposedly is the record.
Now, we might not be quite as creative as Paul Dickson, but we do quite well to find synonyms for another phrase.
The phrase: “I’m sorry.”
We come up with all these creative ways to make ourselves and those whom we have wronged feel better. Yet, we tiptoe all around coming out and admitting, “I was wrong.”
What are some ways? “I’m sorry if you…” or “I’m sorry that you…” “Just forget about it.” “Leave it in the past.” “Are we good?” “Can we just move on?”
Why is it that we struggle so much to say, “I was wrong. Please forgive me?”
In this passage, we find a similar inability to rightly admit fault and restore relationship. The nation of Israel has violated the covenant God has made with them. God is using His prophet Hosea to symbolize the reality of Israel’s unfaithfulness to him, and also God’s loving commitment to his people.
Chapter 6 is the first glimmer of hope for resolution for Israel. The only way forward is to completely and actually repent. No counterfeit apologies. No vague resolutions.
In God’s call to Israel for repentance, I pray we can also learn how to truly repent.
As we have journeyed through the book, Hosea has now become very clear about how exactly it is that God’s people have been unfaithful to Yaweh. Their idolatry is akin to adultery, and he has made no bones about that. God justly speaks this way about our sin. There is no problem with that. Yet, we must understand the purpose behind these kinds of indictments.
Even more so, in chapter 5, God warns of the consequences of Israel’s idolatry.
In verse 10:
“The princes of Judah are like those who remove a landmark; I will pour out my wrath on them like water. Ephraim is oppressed and broken in judgment, Because he willingly walked by human precept. Therefore I will be to Ephraim like a moth, And to the house of Judah like rottenness. “When Ephraim saw his sickness, And Judah saw his wound, Then Ephraim went to Assyria And sent to King Jareb; Yet he cannot cure you, Nor heal you of your wound. For I will be like a lion to Ephraim, And like a young lion to the house of Judah. I, even I, will tear them and go away; I will take them away, and no one shall rescue. I will return again to My place Till they acknowledge their offense. Then they will seek My face; In their affliction they will earnestly seek Me.” Hosea 5:10–15
All of the accusations, all of the warnings, even when they are harsh, they are always for a purpose.
God corrects his people to bring them back to himself.
It is a tough thing to identify with a God who would do such things to those whom he loves. To us, loving isn’t hurting someone. How can we hurt someone that we care about? Causing someone pain is the opposite of loving them!
These are the parts of Scripture that we might get a little uncomfortable to talk about. But this is who God is. And its important to understand this is who he always is, and always will be.
Read Deuteronomy 4 sometime. God predicts and promises exactly what is unfolding in this book if the Israelites were to do exactly what they have done. He even foreshadows the legal proceeding motif by calling heaven and earth to witness against the Idolatry of his people.
We might assume that God is like us, reacting to the situations around us and doing our best to only escalate when necessary, making judgement calls about how harsh to be. There is no reactionary nature with God. He is not just doing his best to roll with the punches. Long, long ago in eternity past, God settled exactly what needed to be done to bring His people Israel back to himself when they strayed.
And he is the same for his people today.
For whom the Lord loves He chastens, And scourges every son whom He receives.” Hebrews 12:6
We need to properly understand God’s ultimate punishment for sin and his loving discipline to teach his children. His purpose in his correction is not ultimately to make us feel shameful or guilty. His ultimate goal is restoration and joy.
Friend, is God in some way teaching you that you might repent so that you can experience His joy? My prayer is that this message makes clear to you what the Bible says about what it means to truly repent. You’re only one step of full repentance away from the joy of communion with God.
When we begin to trust that God’s correction is to bring His people back to himself, we begin to gain confidence God’s nature.
Repentance believes that God is faithful to his covenant.
If God is truly set out to bring me back to Him, then there can be no true hurt in repentance. There is nothing but goodness and blessing in repentance. (Now, I did not say there is no pain or that it is easy. The pain does not truly hurt. It only truly heals.)
God tells us his goal in his severity with Israel: that they would seek him at the end of chapter 5, and chapter 6 begins with 3 verses that poetically describe true repentance.
For a moment, I would like us all to become theologians. That doesn’t mean we all need to read thousands of pages and use flowery language. All that means is this: I want us all to look at these verses, think about what we read, and ask: “What can I learn about God from them?”
The hypothetical Israelites here know that the God who has torn and stricken them is ready to heal. Why? Because he said he would be. Just as he promised that he would deal harshly with Israel for their idolatry and disloyalty, he promised that would be ready to heal. Ready to restore. Ready to bring those same traitors and adulterers right back into the blessing of the covenant.
But from there you will seek the Lord your God, and you will find Him if you seek Him with all your heart and with all your soul. When you are in distress, and all these things come upon you in the latter days, when you turn to the Lord your God and obey His voice (for the Lord your God is a merciful God), He will not forsake you nor destroy you, nor forget the covenant of your fathers which He swore to them. Deuteronomy 4:29–31
It is for the exact same reason that we should fear God’s complete justice that we can rest in his mercy. He is faithful to all of his promises. He is always the same.
To turn back to God is to believe that God is gracious and merciful as he says he is. Do you see how he has promises to revive you and is ready to do so? They say, “After two or three days.” This means soon or quickly. He’s not going to make you wait so you know the seriousness of what you have done. The moment you turn back, he’s ready for things to be as he should be.
I can’t help but think of the story of the prodigal son. The father let’s his son experience the full consequences of his sin. He does shield him from that. But the moment he sees the son taking the steps to return. The moment! He RUNS. There is no delay. God has all the time in the world! He has infinite time. There is no rush or hurry for God to do anything! Yet, he wastes no time restoring those who turn from their sin.
In the most wonderful mystery, what the father wants is for us “live in his sight.” (vs. 2) You know what that makes me think of? A father and mother sitting, watching their kids play, enjoying presents on Christmas, playing in the yard, or growing up, getting a job or getting married.
This desire for God to be with us and to know them then is reciprocated in their desire to know him.
Repentance determines to know God.
Not only is God ready to receive those who turn to him, his going for and his coming are like the morning and the rain.
What is one thing which we all know about the morning? It’s happening. In our human experience, there is nothing more sure than the morning. What do they say? Death and taxes. Well, we can add, the morning.
And especially for an agrarian society, what always happens in spring? The rains come. Just as the joy of morning and the relief of rains always come, our God will meet with those who seek him.
I love those who love me, And those who seek me diligently will find me. Proverbs 8:17
There is a theme when we find language like this. Solomon says “diligently.” Hosea describes a kind of pursuit. Those who pursue God in a heart of repentance do not do so halfheartedly. It’s full gallop. It’s no holds barred. It’s pedal to the medal.
Now, my goal is not to make us introspective this morning. We do not need to be looking inward and become obsessive about how genuine our desire for God is. Our hearts are deceitful and desperately wicked. You’re going to have feelings of hypocrisy at times. The point of the passage and what we must grasp is: God is so ready to fully receive and bless us with all the blessings of walking with him and knowing him. He’s so ready to watch us enjoy the glory of his presence and goodness. Do not hold anything back from him. He will not hold any good thing back from those who love him. Do not get in your own head about this. Put your eyes on him and seek him diligently.
In our text this morning, we have come to a point where a harsh reality kind of smacks us in the face. It’s the same kind of feeling when you read the syllabi for your classes or your sitting there after all the snow has melted looking at a field that needs a lot of work to be ready for planting.
We have risen to the peak of wondering at God’s faithful mercy and grace, and come crashing down to the reality of who Israel is because of the choices they make.
“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. Hosea 6:4
We come face to face with Israel’s failure in stark contrast to the repentance God desires. There is some debate over whether verses 1-3 represent a false attempt at repentance or God’s example of true repentance which Israel cannot attain to.
Over the rest of the chapter, God reveals the true nature of Israel and how unrepentant they are. We see some obstacles to repentance for Israel. As we look at the reasons why Israel is like the fog in the morning, we can understand what it takes to overcome our own spiritual fickleness.
We can take verse 6 as a summary for Israel’s problem because here we find what really matters to God. These words may be very familiar for you:
For I desire mercy and not sacrifice, And the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings. Hosea 6:6
This is what God truly desires from Israel: mercy and knowledge of God. God doesn’t want the offerings and the sacrifices. He wants the heart under and behind them.
And by the way, mercy is the same as “chesed,” for those who remember Pastor Thomas’ message on God’s covenant faithfulness or “chesed. In verse 7, God clarifies his concern. Like man, which is the same word for Adam, they transgress the covenant. God’s relationship to Israel is defined always by his covenant with them. He corrects and blesses because he does what he said he would in the covenant. And he expects us to do the same. Be faithful to the covenant.
So the Israelites failed to keep the covenant by not seeking him, and desiring to know God and his ways. In verse 8, Hosea describes another way they have transgressed their covenant with God.
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. Hosea 6:8–9
True faithfulness involves both heart and hands.
God calls out two specific instances of breaking the covenant by hurting other people. In either case, we cannot be sure exactly what historical event is being referred to or if history records them at all.
What we do know is that the people of Israel knew. And the people knew these were egregious crimes against other people. An entire city becoming associated with bloodthirst, and the priests becoming murderous. Lewdness is the wickedness which springs from heinous desires and thoughts. They have become corrupt inside and so they do evil on the outside.
As Pastor Thomas has pointed out from the book of Hosea, God’s covenant does not just include what happened in the temple or just on the sabbath. The covenant was about all of life, especially how you treat other people.
Israel did not get to offer sacrifices on Saturday and then take advantage of people on Monday. God required that they honored him by honoring his image in other people. To hurt other people was to violate the covenant with Yaweh. There is no compartmentalizing with God Either you keep the covenant in all of life, with all of your being, or you don’t.
In verses 8-9, God gets very specific about the wickedness he saw. And we should remember that indeed, nothing escapes God’s sight. His eyes see everything, the evil and the good. But now, his view becomes broader, to the whole nation. These acts of deplorable violence are not just isolated events. They are related to the whole nation’s unfaithfulness and defilement.
One of the primary lessons of the the whole book of Hosea is this: sin is like cheating on your spouse, over and over again. Shamelessly. What God is trying to get through to Israel is the depth of their betrayal because that is what we all need to understand in order to repent.
A repentant heart sorrows over the betrayal of sin.
If Israel continued to justify and rationalize their sin, they could not repent. God sees the horribleness of sin, but Israel is blind to it.
Because God is gracious, he tells them about how bad their sin is. He does it over and over in Hosea, because as he says, he hews them down by their prophets and and slays them with his words. Even more in his mercy, he allows them to experience the consequences of their actions. In Hosea 7:2, their own deeds surround Israel. And for many of us, God may use circumstances in our lives to correct us, to show us how wicked our sin really is.
But for all of us, there is one place we can go to see how sin is like vile prostitution and how dirty that makes us: the cross.
God is so ready to forgive us that the Father sent God the Son, Jesus Christ, to pay the incalculable debt of our appalling harlotry. And he rose again three days later. If we will turn from our sin, and seek the one true God to worship him, then He will totally forgive us.
In Jesus’ death we find God’s hatred for sin, but also his desire for his people. In the cross we find the rightful consequences of idolatry and God’s readiness to forgive.\
And so, my friend, if you do not know Jesus, repent of your idolatry. Embrace what it means to walk in covenant with God.
For those who follow Christ, the cross reminds us of the the God who calls us to repentance.
- Remember that God is faithful and merciful to forgive.
- Determine to know God.
- Be faithful to love God both in heart and hands.
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