Sunday Sermon Manuscript for June 7

Scripture: Hosea 5:15–6:6

Title: Knowing God More and More

Introduction

1. Even after years of faith, you may find it hard to explain exactly what it means to 'know God.' If someone asked you to describe it, you might not know where to begin. You pray, you worship, you listen to sermons — and you assumed that the longer you were part of church life, the more it would make sense. But when someone actually asks you to explain it, a surprising sense of bewilderment can set in.

2. For those who are newer to church, the language that long-time members use can feel foreign. People talk about receiving God's grace — but is that something that just happens on its own? Do you receive it by coming to church more faithfully? It's not always easy to understand.

3. Reading the Bible can feel the same way. The words are there on the page, but understanding them requires background, history, context. Even those who read through the entire Bible often find that not every passage lands with clarity.

4. I don't remember who said it, but someone once told me: the Bible can be read by anyone who can read — but without being moved by it, the meaning stays locked away. There are times when a passage you've read dozens of times suddenly speaks to you in a completely new way, and you think: so this is what it means that the Word is alive and active. And yet it's also something that doesn't come easily.

5. Perhaps all of this uncertainty is itself part of the journey toward knowing God more deeply. In that sense, today's passage speaks directly to the question: what does it mean to know God? The prophet Hosea ministered in the northern kingdom of Israel during the 8th century BC — roughly from the end of King Jeroboam II's reign until just before the northern kingdom fell to Assyria.

6. Though he was from the southern kingdom of Judah, Hosea was called to go north and speak God's word there. It was a time of economic prosperity but deep spiritual decay — rampant Baal worship, social injustice, and widespread violence. In that context, Hosea was a prophet who proclaimed God's word almost in solitude, with no guarantee that anyone was listening. And at the heart of his proclamation is a vivid picture of who God is.

Verse 1 — Come, Let Us Return to the LORD

7. Verse 1 opens with a call to worship: 'Come, let us return to the LORD.' The Hebrew word for 'return' is שׁוּב (shuv). It doesn't simply mean changing direction — it carries the meaning of restoring a broken relationship. Throughout the book of Hosea, this word serves as the defining word for Israel's repentance and return to God.

8. The people confess that God has 'torn' them. The Hebrew טָרַף (taraf) describes the way a wild animal tears its prey. In the preceding chapter, Hosea 5:14, God describes himself as a lion: 'I will be like a lion to Ephraim, like a great lion to Judah.' This is not a picture of cruelty. It means that the people are finally recognizing that the devastation they are experiencing — the Assyrian invasion, the collapse of their nation — is ultimately in God's hands. The pain feels like being torn apart by a lion.

9. And yet, this same God who tears is also the one who heals. The same God who struck them down is the one who will bind up their wounds. This is the paradox at the heart of the passage — and the God we need to remember today.

10. This apparent contradiction is not a mistake. God's judgment and God's healing are not two different things from two different Gods. They are two expressions of the same love. Both the striking and the binding up happen because God loves us.

Verse 2 — After Two Days, on the Third Day

11. 'After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will raise us up, that we may live before him.' When you first read this, the resurrection of Jesus naturally comes to mind. In fact, the early church fathers did cite this verse as a prophecy of Christ's resurrection.

12. But looking at the original context, we find something a little different. The Hebrew יְחַיֵּנוּ (yechayyenu, 'revive us') and יְקִמֵנוּ (yekimenu, 'raise us up') are expressions more commonly used to describe recovery from serious illness than resurrection from death. In 2 Kings 20, when King Hezekiah fell gravely ill, Isaiah brought him this word from God: 'I will heal you; on the third day you will go up to the temple of the LORD.' This is the precise parallel to Hosea 6:1–2.

13. In the ancient Near East, 'three days' was a symbolic expression for recovery and new beginning. The people are confessing: 'We will surely be restored from this suffering. God will revive us.' Just as Hezekiah's illness was healed, so too do the people believe they will be healed. That faith itself was not wrong — the problem, as we'll see, lay elsewhere.

Verse 3 — Let Us Press On to Know the LORD

14. Verse 3 takes the vague hope of healing and grounds it in something concrete — a particular posture and practice. This may be the central word of today's sermon: 'Let us know the LORD; let us press on to know him.' The word translated 'know' here is the Hebrew יָדַע (yada) — and it does not mean simple information.

15. In Scripture, yada refers to deep, personal, experiential knowledge — the kind that comes through relationship. It is the very word used when a husband 'knows' his wife. Not knowledge acquired from a distance, but the kind of knowing that grows through living together, walking together, laughing and weeping together.

16. The text says to press on — to pursue. The Hebrew רָדַף (radaf) means to chase, to pursue relentlessly — like a hunter after prey, or a merchant after profit. Faith is not something that passively arrives. It must be actively sought. Spiritual maturity doesn't come from standing still. It comes from deliberately putting one foot in front of the other, from the kind of effortful pursuit this verse is calling us to.

17. The people confess that God's coming is as certain as the dawn, as reliable as the early rain and the spring rain. For an Israelite farmer, those rains were a matter of life and death. The rain that must come — and always does come at its appointed time. With that same urgent expectation and certainty, God comes to us. This is a beautiful confession, and it captures something true about who God is that we must hold onto.

Verse 4 — God's Lament

18. Verse 4 shifts the atmosphere entirely. God speaks: 'What shall I do with you, Ephraim? What shall I do with you, Judah?' This is not an expression of anger. It is a lament. Not abandonment — but heartbreak.

19. God picks up the very metaphor of rain that the people used in verse 3. They called him the early rain and the spring rain — but God says their love is 'like the morning mist, like the early dew that disappears.' Morning mist burns off the moment the sun rises. Dew sparkles briefly and then vanishes. The people expected a flood of healing, but what God saw in their love was barely a vapor.

20. The word translated 'love' here is חֶסֶד (hesed). The New Korean Revised Version renders it as 사랑 (love), but hesed is not simply an emotion. It is faithful, covenant love — the kind that holds on to the end, the kind that does not change when circumstances change. God is not looking for a religion that burns hot in the morning and turns cold by evening. He is looking for hesed that encompasses an entire life.

21. If last week's Walking with Jesus Seminar could be summarized in one question, it was this: how do we offer God not just a passing feeling, but our whole life? As we said, this kind of offering requires the deliberate, effortful practice of remembering — of choosing, again and again, to live as God's people.

Verse 5 — My Judgment Goes Forth as the Light

22. Verse 5 is a difficult sentence: 'Therefore I have hewn them by the prophets; I have killed them by the words of my mouth.' God struck Israel through the prophets. This is a declaration that the Assyrian invasion and the collapse of the nation were not random accidents of history — they were the words of God being fulfilled in time.

23. 'My judgment goes forth as the light.' God's justice always comes to light. It cannot be hidden. It cannot be covered up in the darkness. This is a sobering word — but it is also a word of comfort. Injustice will not be buried forever. God's faithfulness will always be revealed. And as we said at the start, even the shattering — even the tearing apart — is another form of the same love.

Verse 6 — What God Truly Desires

24. Finally, verse 6 — the heart of the entire book of Hosea, and our concluding word today: 'For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.'

25. Please don't read this as a rejection of worship. God is not saying worship is useless. He is saying worship alone is not enough. You can bring offerings, sing praises, give generously — and yet if you are not pursuing the knowledge of God in your daily life, that worship does not reach him.

26. Jesus quoted this verse twice. In Matthew 9:13, when the Pharisees criticized him for eating with tax collectors and sinners, he said: 'Go and learn what this means: I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.' He says the same thing again in Matthew 12:7. In Jesus's eyes, a religion that keeps every external rule while treating people with contempt is not what God wants.

27. Amos 5:24 — 'Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.' Micah 6:8 — 'What does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?' All of these point in the same direction. Knowing God is not something that happens only during the Sunday service. It must be expressed in the whole of life — from Monday morning to Saturday night.

28. So — how do we grow in knowing God? This question stayed with me for a long time as I prepared this sermon. I kept asking myself: am I actually getting to know God right now, or am I just accumulating information about God? Those are two different things.

29. Hosea 6:3 says: 'Let us press on to know the LORD.' Press on — radaf — pursue. But how do you pursue? Where do you begin?

30. I found my answer in a confession our church has held onto for a long time: 'The Lord is always with us.' It's true. But I began to wonder — what would it look like to live that truth more concretely, more practically? That's what led to the Walking with Jesus Seminar, and to the tool we created for it: the Spiritual Journal.

31. Let me be honest with you — the Spiritual Journal is not an elaborate spiritual program. It's simply this: at the end of each day, write down where the Lord was. When you were angry today — the Lord was there. When something moved you to gratitude — that was his hand. When you were exhausted — he was beside you. The practice is about not letting those moments slip away unnoticed.

32. If you prefer an app, you're welcome to use it. The journal has a sharing feature — though you don't have to share if you'd rather not. But we also prepared actual notebooks, because there is something about writing by hand that an app simply cannot replace. Take that notebook, and each day, write down the ways the Lord was with you.

33. Hosea 6:6 says: 'The knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.' Knowing God — yada — is finding his presence in the ordinary moments of every day. The Spiritual Journal is a tool for practicing that discovery.

Closing — God Desires to Give Us Life

34. The story in Hosea 6 does not end here. By chapter 14, God is inviting Israel again: 'Return, Israel, to the LORD your God' (Hos. 14:1). And he makes a promise: 'I will heal their waywardness and love them freely, for my anger has turned away from them' (Hos. 14:4).

35. The God who tears and then heals. The God who strikes and then binds up. The God who laments over our morning-mist love — and still does not let go. This is the God who speaks to us today: 'Keep knowing me. Press on to know me.'

36. Just as the fall of Israel to Assyria was not the end of the story, our weakness — our faith that evaporates like morning dew — is not the end of our story either. God desires to give us life. That is the good news this passage is declaring to us.

37. This week, ask yourself just once a day: 'Was the Lord with me today?' That question will make us into people who keep pressing on to know God more and more. The Lord is always with us. Amen.

Reference Passages

• Matthew 9:13 — 'I desire mercy, and not sacrifice'

• Matthew 12:7 — Same citation, in the context of the Sabbath controversy

• Hosea 14:1–4 — God's invitation to return and promise of restoration

• Amos 5:24; Micah 6:8 — A God who seeks justice and steadfast love