Psalm 5: 4, 5, 8										Rev. S. de Marie
Psalm 27: 6
Psalm 12: 1-5							Reading:		Hosea 4:1-10;
Psalm 40: 1,2										Hosea   5:1-15
Psalm 85: 3,4							Text:		Hosea 6: 1-7

Beloved congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ
How is your relationship with God, with your Savior Jesus Christ? Do you have a living faith, a real intimacy with Him? Is He the first in your life? That is a life question. Just as the bond of love can fade in a marriage, so can our bond of faith.
So let us ask ourselves again and again, Do I really love the Lord? Does my heart go out to Him? But also how do I shape my love for God and Jesus Christ?
When your belief becomes something automatic, it becomes superficial. Then the bond with God becomes looser. Then there is the danger that you will become unfaithful to God. The Bible is full of it, in order to warn us. To teach us how to truly love God and be faithful to Him.
I may proclaim God's Word to you from Hosea 6 under the theme:

God wants sincerity in the covenant life of His people.
This requires:
1. right knowledge of God
2. lasting love to God
3. sincere faithfulness to God

1. The people of Israel were the people of God's love. God had chosen them to be his wife.
But Israel has become unfaithful to God. It has gone downhill since King Jeroboam I. At first, they were not strict in on serving God. Against God's will, they instituted the worship services of Bethel and Dan. After that they even started to serve the idols, the Baals. Since Ahab, even with prostitution in the Baal temples. Meanwhile, Jehu's great-grandson Jeroboam II is king. Under him there is not any consideration of conversion. The Lord sees in his people unfaithfulness, with adultery to other gods. Through His prophet Hosea He addresses it so that they will return to Him.
For example, Hosea must portray in his personal life the current situation of Israel. To force the people to understand. For that, he must marry the adulterous Gomer.
And through his prophecies, the sermons, God wants to entice and draw his church as a bride. God thus appeals to His people on their love and faithfulness.
In chapter 4, God brings a charge against His people as His bride. For He finds no faithfulness and love in her. He sees instead: infidelity and disobedience. He notices hatred, violence, foolishness and rebellion.
How did all that come about? In chapter 4:6 God reveals firmly: that this is because of a lack of knowledge, because of the lack of the right knowledge of God.
Israel no longer knows God. He is their God, their Maker, and their Husband, is He not? But Israel no longer knows what is in it for her. She no longer entrusts herself to Him. She no longer knows His will, His law. they no longer pay attention to His glorious virtues and mighty acts of redemption.
Congregation, “knowing”, here, is much more and goes much deeper than just knowing facts. It concerns the intimate knowing of man and woman in marriage.  It is knowing as reflected in the bond of marriage. In John. 17:3 the Lord Jesus prays regarding his children:
This is eternal life, that they may know You.
If you have eternal life, you live each day with and for God. Then you know God not only intellectually, but above all, personally, with your heart. Then you know God's glory and you are happy about that, yes, overjoyed. If you have eternal life, you know God's great deeds and then you praise Him for them. His almighty and loving acts of creation and redemption, of re-creation and nurturing. You are full of it and let it show.
Now that Christ has come as the Son of God’s love, knowing God is much richer and fuller for us than for Israel. We have come to know God as our merciful Father through Jesus Christ. We may know His love and His faithfulness deeper. All of God's glorious promises shine forth for us through Christ's work of redemption. Therefore, our knowledge can be much richer than it was for Israel and Hosea.
But in principle it is about the same kind of knowledge of God, namely as knowledge of faith, as knowledge from God's Word. Believing is a certain knowing: the certain knowing that all that God has revealed in His Word is completely reliable. But at the same time, faith is also a firm trust, that is the other side of knowing. The firm confidence that all of God's glorious promises in His Word are for me too. Our mind and our heart thus come together in knowing God. Neither side may be missing. If you know Him better and better in this way, your faith in God will grow, yes, then love for Him will blossom.
Compare that to a happy marriage. That is where knowledge of each other and love and loyalty to the other belong together. You want to get to know each other more and more, to grow towards each other in love and loyalty.
Now Hosea must tell Israel that God notices that they lack knowledge, love and faithfulness! There is no longer any knowledge, no concrete and no warm knowledge of Him, of His law, of His covenant promises and of His covenant demands. No right knowledge of His glorious virtues and of His great deeds. That loving knowledge is lacking.
We read in chapters 4 and 5 that the king is to blame. And also the prophets and the priests. But just as much, the people. Nobody is excused. But the main culprits are the priests, the office bearers who have to transmit, interpret and apply the Word of God, and also use it in possible discipline. But that pure proclamation is no longer there. And that proper discipline is no longer there. In chapter 4:6 the LORD says to the priests:
My people are destroy for lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I will also rejected you from being priests for Me.
God removes those office bearers from office because they prove to be unfaithful. They have dragged the people away from God, but the people let themselves be dragged along too.
Thus, 'it shall be: like people, like priest,' says Hosea in chapter 4:9. From lack of knowledge it comes to faithlessness and wickedness.
The spirit of the world, the spirit of fornication, takes possession of their hearts, and they know not the LORD. But chapter 5:4 reveals that the LORD knows them well. Nothing is hidden from Him.
Then comes the LORD's reaction. He withdraws from them. He sends enemy nations against them. In order: that they would repent and as yet be saved. Thus God is pushing His people toward a reformation, toward a return to Him as a return to His Word. So that they would yearn for Him.
What is particular about our text of chapter 6 is first that that reformation indeed seems to be coming. In verse 1 it sounds like the people are really calling out:
Come, 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.
So there sounds to be a real call to repentance here, confessing guilt that God had to turn against His people. And there is also expectation of redemption: the Lord will heal us, He will restore true life to us.
In that call we even hear the desire to live according to God's will, to have fellowship with Him. They say in verse 3: 
Let us know, let us pursue the knowledge of the LORD!
Congregation, these are touchingly deep words. They point to a beginning of faith and repentance. Our will is to know the LORD! His covenant love and faithfulness. Our will is to commit ourselves to that.
Israel therefore recognizes what it lacks. What the Lord has pointed out to His people. That there was no knowledge of Him, no knowledge of His will, His law, of His promises, and of His love. He was absent from their minds!
But now Israel wants to know God again, to come into intimate contact with Him again.
Their wish is accompanied by a call, a call to the other Israelites: Come, come, go with us, and do as we do, Let us return to the LORD, Then we will know Him.
Now congregation, you can expect God's blessing on such a reversal, right? God is faithful and willing to forgive. He is found by those who sincerely seek Him. There is therefore a sure hope of His blessing, verse 3:
His going forth is established as the morning light; He will come to us like the rain, like the latter and former rain to the earth.
Yes, with sincere conversion to God it may come to God's full blessing. As after sunrise the sun irradiates and warms the land, and as a heavy downpour of the latter rain irrigates and waters the land. In this way God's blessing will bring everything withered back to growth and bloom.
Thus there is a time for good in Israel. People want to know the LORD and accept and worship Him as God. God then allows himself to be found just as the father was ready when his prodigal son returned and He went to slaughter the fattened calf. This is how God makes himself known to those who return to Him.
Congregation, in Christ we understand all this much, much better. He has taught us to know the Father. He has done so as our highest Prophet and Teacher. The superior of Hosea, or of any Old Testament prophet. He showed us who God is in His unfathomable love and heavenly faithfulness. In his divine justice and holiness.
But we must also be asked the question. Do we have knowledge of God? Right knowledge, in which our minds and hearts turn in love to Him and His Word? Is there a fervent desire among us to get to know Him better from His Word through the Spirit of Christ? 
Congregation, our love for God will have to be evident in how we deal with God's Word in our homes. How we teach our children God's Word from a very young age, and how we help them with the material for catechism and society.
Our love for God will have to manifest itself in the desire for real Reformed education.
Then we want to do everything we can. It will be noticed at the Bible study societies. Then we will focus on personally wanting to know the Bible better and better and taking time for that. We crave more knowledge because we long for God. For the word of Hosea also applies in our time: where knowledge s lacking, the people perish.
Congregation, this is deeply about the genuineness of your relationship of faith with Christ and with God the Father.
 
2. God wants sincerity in the covenant life of his people. This requires: 1st. right knowledge of God, 2nd. lasting love to God.
Thus the first verses of our text seem to point to a true return of the people. But then comes a big disappointment. For in verse 4 we hear the LORD cry out:
O Ephraim, what shall I do to you? O Judah, what shall I do to you?
The Lord is displeased with the conduct of his people. How is this possible? Well, what looked so beautiful didn't last. It looks like a beautiful hot air balloon that bursts. The conversion of Israel expressed in such poignant words will not be followed up. The Reformation appears to have no real depth! Desire is not a purified desire. The words of love turn out not to be true love. Those words are not followed by deeds. There is no lasting love that the Lord might expect of his bride.
The LORD wants to be known, He is the faithful one. You can rely on Him. Therefore the Lord is also likened to the dawn, which shows the rising sun and announces a refreshing rain to all. He is faithful and rich in faithfulness.
But to what does the LORD now compare the love of his people?
He says in verse 4:
For your faithfulness is like a morning cloud, and like the early dew it goes away.
With God's people there is no evidence of steadfastness and abundance. Their love is only visible for a moment, and soon disappears into thin air. A morning cloud that rises for a moment, but has completely disappeared when the day clears. In Israel, for example, they know that clouds have already disappeared by nine o'clock in the morning. Dew that hangs in the air for a while but quickly dissolves again by the sun. The LORD says:  Well, thus now is your love, O Israel. There was an emergency, you were in a bind. You felt that God withdrew, that He turned against you. You realized your guilt and wanted to listen to My voice for a moment. There was just a revival, an awakening in the church. But hey, it was only for a moment.
Congregation, it was not a true reformation of the heart. It was only on the outside. Certain wrongs were acknowledged, but the heart was not transformed. Yes, the Lord was served with burnt offerings and sacrifices. Perhaps more intensively and carefully than before. But in the end it remained merely an external religion. Where was the real desire for the right knowledge of God? Where was the love to God that nourishes this desire? Their love was not permanent,  not rooted in the right knowledge of God.
Yes, naturally, people want to be friends with God. They want to make sacrifices. People do talk about God. But that doesn't mean true love. There is no love of the heart in which God has the monopoly. One is not full of love to God. Their hearts are divided, they want to serve idols in addition to the service to the Lord and just go their own ways again.
When the need was great, yes, then attention was focused on the LORD for a while, but now that things are getting better, oh well, now other things are pressing again. Their desires go back to the world. What remains is a half-hearted and therefore hypocritical love, a divided worship. And that is an abomination to the LORD.
How God's prophets insistently warned Israel against this. They had heard God's judgment on this. The LORD says in verse 5:
Therefore I have hewn them by the prophets, I have slain them by the words of My mouth, and your judgements are like light that goes forth.
God's judgment had been clear and ready. The people are now once again forced to discover their sins. The lack of knowledge and love. And to do away with appearances.
Even now God does not definitively push his people away. He still points them in the right direction. Verse 6:
For I desire mercy and not sacrifice, and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings.
Congregation, these are well-known words. Constantly of great actuality.
The Lord Jesus Christ also quotes these very words when He exposes the hypocritical practices of the Pharisees. With their false piety where their haughty self-will and hardening rebelliousness are covered with a robe of religiosity. The Lord Jesus gives unmasking words about this. Warning to put covenant children back on track. The path of true righteousness, rather than self-righteousness. The path of the obedience of faith, not that of self-will. The path of true love, not that of self-love or dual love.
Congregation, we see a lot of what is being said here happening all around us. We too have had to realize the need for repentance in recent history. We as a church also had to rediscover love and loyalty, because of the lack of knowledge. Led by the Lord, repentance came in liberation. There was a return to God's Word. But the big question today is, is there also lasting love? Is there evidence of reformation of our hearts? Is there fire that continues to burn.
Is our first love still there, or has that first love already faded and is it no more than a morning cloud?
But let us also realize, Congregation, that even now the Lord is not satisfied with our worship, with our ecclesiastical life, if hearty love has disappeared from it.
If there is not a heartfelt effort to increase in personal and communal knowledge of Him. We have received so much more from the Lord to know his love. We know our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself up for us in sacrifice, and who now pleads for us as high priest. Surely we may receive His Spirit to delight and love to live according to the will of God? Let us then show true love in gratitude and worship the Lord. Not halfway, not superficially, not outwardly, but what is pleasing to Him, with reverence and awe.
The Lord also warns us in the New Testament when He in Heb. 12:28 says:
Therefore... let us have grace, by which we may serve God acceptably and with godly fear. For our God is a consuming fire.

3. God wants sincerity in the covenant life of His people. This requires:
The right knowledge of God, the steadfast love to God. Finally, we now see the third thing that is also necessary: sincere faithfulness to God.
If knowledge and love are lacking, life in the covenant is over. Then the covenant is treacherously broken. That is the sad result when the heartfelt desire to know God and to live and walk in love with Him disappears.
Then the sins pile up as unconfessed sins, over which there is no more repentance and sorrow. Then follows hardening in those sins. The great commandment 'to love God alone' is then transgressed with hands and feet. Let alone that you will then still be able to serve God acceptably. No, when the knowledge of God and the love for Him disappear, there is a breach of faith.
That then spills over into all of life. Then it becomes clear that children of Abraham are children of Adam, the sinful Adam. They leave God's covenant to become children of disobedience. Hosea had to tell the people in verse 7:
But like men they transgressed the covenant; There they dealt treacherously with Me.
The Lord had made a covenant of love with Adam. How much had He not bestowed upon Adam. A perfect body, a perfect soul, a perfect woman to assist him, a perfect creation to live and work in. And the Lord, in all His love, asked of Adam was heartfelt obedience. But Adam showed pride and ingratitude. He transgressed the covenant with the LORD, treacherously by rejecting God's love. The Israelites are now doing the same.
They had been chosen, by grace, to be God's people, and brought out by Him from the house of slavery, kept, cherished, nourished, and loaded with the treasures of the promised land. But they too now treacherously forsake their covenant God, as their Maker and their Husband.
Congregation, you too are asked to show faithfulness as a people of God. Faithfulness as a sign of love. Faithfulness, in serving the Lord in the worship services on the day of rest. Also faithfulness, for the worship of your everyday life. For that life too must include worship to the Lord. Your faithfulness to Him is also requested in that everyday life. In society, in politics, in public life, also in secret things. In your spare time, in your going out, in your entertainment. Your whole life is one in the covenant with the Lord. Let us show our faithfulness in this by not participating in the sinful world, but by living a holy life.
That means three things. First, that, in doing so, you deny yourself. For we ourselves are also children of Adam. We must kill our own self, our old haughty, rebellious, self-willed man. 
It also means carrying our cross. It is precisely when you are faithful to the Lord that you will encounter difficulties and adversity. You will suffer reproach from this world, they will taunt you as narrow-minded and call you an extremist. Even in your own family you may experience this cross.
But – and that is the third – you can't do all this in your own strength. But you will be allowed to look up to the Lord Jesus Christ. He has loved his Father perfectly and proved faithful, as High Priest he has done the will of the Lord in obedience to the end. He has fought and conquered as our eternal King. He is our Leader. He gives us the power of His Spirit upon our prayer.
Then let us especially see in Hosea the work of God on His church. How He admonishes His stubborn and disobedient people. How He seeks His people in His admonition.
 Congregation, the LORD is still dealing with us in the same manner. We may read all this in His Word and also hear it as our admonition. Also as our calling to stand again in the right relationship with God and to continue to live sincerely with Him. This is even more important to us. For we live by the fulfilled sacrifice of Christ. As our supreme Teacher and prophet, He has declared God to us. He is the way, the truth and the life. By Him we can know God better. We may also receive his Spirit. That is why God asks more of us. Let us then surrender to His Spirit. Be willing to live by His Word by the mind of the Spirit. The Spirit who puts God's law of love in our hearts and writes it in our minds.
Congregation, how different life becomes when you know God's love, when He pours out that love into your heart and you show Him love in return. Then faith works out the willingness to work, in your heart. Thus will the blessings of the Lord come to you. Then you yourself will desire to practice toward godliness. And you will desire to rejoice in the Lord. Then life on earth will already be different. For then it becomes eternal life with eternal joy that never ceases.
So you may experience the profound truth in what the Lord Jesus said to His Father in his high priestly prayer:
This is eternal life that they know You.
Amen