LOVE’S LASTING LOYALTY
HOSEA 6:4-6
Benedict Arnold. The name has come to be synonymous in
American history with betrayal. To be
sure, there were others who lived in the American colonies who were sympathetic
to the British cause, but Benedict Arnold was different because he was a
colonial general, a leader in the revolution, and a war hero. And then came the
betrayal. It was discovered that he had
planned to sell out his own American forces for money. He escaped, but his good name has not escaped
and we think of him as traitor and betrayer.
You see, the closer you are
supposed to be to a cause, to a belief, to an organization, to a person, the
more hurtful are the effects of betrayal.
There is a corollary between the proximity of the relationship and the
pain brought about by its betrayal. It
is because betrayal is greater when there is an expectancy of loyalty.
That is why betrayal in a
marriage is so devastating. There is
meant to be no closer bond than the ties of marriage. Two who were separate individuals now become
one flesh. They pledge bonds of loyalty
“till death us do part.”
When that kind of betrayal
comes, it cuts deep and can smash a world apart. The feelings that are generated are
overwhelming: shock, misery, numbness, helplessness, despair.
As we come to the book of
Hosea, we come to the story of a man who was facing that sort of betrayal. It was not the husband who had been
disloyal. It was his wife. Hosea had been told by God to go and to marry
a woman of the streets; a woman of immoral character. He did what he was told. He married a woman who was known for her
immorality. And in the course of time,
that reputation proved to be deserved as she betrayed his trust and left
him. As we look at the situation, we
almost want to say, “Hosea, what did you expect?”
But as we look at the story a
bit more closely, we can begin to see ourselves in the story of Hosea and
Gomer. And no, we are not in the role of
Hosea. We are in the role of the
unfaithful wife.
Hosea was to be a living
parable, portraying the relationship between the Lord and His own unfaithful
people. Hosea was playing the part of
God. His unfaithful wife was acting in
the same manner we act when we are unfaithful.
What Hosea says to Gomer is what the Lord said to
4 What shall I do with you, O Ephraim?
What
shall I do with you, O Judah?
For
your loyalty is like a morning cloud,
And
like the dew which goes away early.
5 Therefore I have hewn them in pieces by the prophets;
I
have slain them by the words of My mouth;
And
the judgments on you are like the light that goes forth.
6 For I delight in loyalty
rather than sacrifice,
And in the knowledge of God rather than burnt
offerings. (Hosea 6:4-6).
You can hear the pathos in
these words. They are filled with pathos
and pain. There is almost an exasperated
tone that is taken as the Lord communicates to His people. We don’t normally think of the God of the
universe expressing emotion, but the Scriptures tell us that our sins grieve
God’s Spirit. It is out of that grief
that the Lord relates His desire for His people. What does God want? The answer is given in these verses:
1. GOD
WANTS LOYALTY: For I delight in loyalty (6:6).
What
is involved in this quality we call loyalty?
It involves the taking of sides.
It means that I align myself with the one to whom I am loyal; that I
resolve to look out for that person’s welfare and to do that which will result
in that person’s good.
What
sort of loyalty is in view here? It is
the loyalty of love. How do I know that?
It is because of the particular Hebrew
word that is used here to describe this loyalty. It is the Hebrew word khesed, -- it is
normally translated “lovingkindness.”
But it can alternately be translated as...
Love
Joy
Peace
Patience
Kindness
Faithfulness
Gentleness
We’ve
just finished a study of the fruit of the Spirit here at
Why
did the translators render this term “loyalty?”
Perhaps it is because they recognized something about this quality of
love. Perhaps they recognized that there
is a link between loyalty and love.
There
is, you know. You will always be loyal
to that which you really love. Real love
will capture your heart and your loyalty.
There
is a scene in the film version of The Lord of the Rings where Sam relates both
the instructions that had been given to him to follow Frodo and his own resolve
to carry it out, “Don't you leave him Samwise Gamgee, and I don't mean to!” It pictures one who has committed to
following his master, no matter where that might take him. Even into Mordor
itself. Even into those dark places.
We
look at the picture of such loyalty and it fills us with a longing. I believe there is in each one of us a
longing to express and to demonstrate that kind of loyalty. We were made for that. We hunger to hear the words, “Well done, good
and faithful servant.”
We
were made to want to please our Creator.
Every person here longs for a fulfillment and a meaning to life. God delights in loyalty and, whether we
realize it or not, we long to be that delight.
Unfortunately,
there is a world of difference between longing and doing. As Paul says in Romans 7:19, the good that
I wish, I do not do; but I practice the very evil that I do not wish. As one fellow said, “I can be good, but I
can’t be good enough for long enough.”
That brings us to our next point.
2. GOD
WANTS LASTING LOYALTY.
4 What shall I do with you, O Ephraim?
What
shall I do with you, O Judah?
For
your loyalty is like a morning cloud,
And
like the dew which goes away early. (Hosea 6:4).
Dew
is a morning phenomenon. That is true
here in
The
Lord describes the loyalty and the love of Ephraim and of
·
Ephraim was
shorthand for the ten northern tribes.
They were the tribes that had broken away to do their own thing. They not only became their own kingdom, they
also established their own places of worship at
·
It
did not matter if you were in the north or in the south, the problem was the
same. It was in the perseverance of
their love. There is a correlation
between the reality of your love and the endurance of your love.
• Real love lasts. That is one of the ways you can tell whether
it is real. It passes the test of time.
When
we see those first romantic attachments experienced by our kids, we refer to it
as “puppy love.” I don’t know if that is
a very good term, because it is real to the puppy. What makes it puppy love is that it does not
last.
That
is because real love is not merely an emotion that you experience. Real love involves a commitment and a binding
of yourself to that one whom you love.
• I think the overwhelming problem with
marriages today is that there has not been a determination to love with
loyalty. People talk about “falling out
of love” as though love were a tipsy canoe that dumps you into some cold
water. The truth is that love is a
decision. How do I know that? Because you are COMMANDED
to love.
• Husbands, you are commanded to love your
wives (Ephesians 5:25).
• Wives are instructed to love their
husbands (Titus 2:4).
• Believers are told to love one another
(John 15:12), to love your neighbor as yourself (Galatians 5:14), and even to
love your enemies (Matthew 5:44).
How
do you do that? How do you love the unlovely? You do it by recognizing that YOU are
unlovely and that you have been loved with a supernatural love despite your unloveliness.
Steve
Brown likes to say that you can’t love until you’ve been loved and then you can
only love to the extent you have been loved.
I’m still pondering whether that is true, but what IS true is that you
have been loved with an infinite love and that you are therefore called to
reflect that love toward others.
• Fickleness is a mark of immaturity. God calls you to grow up and to love with an
adult love.
3. GOD
WANTS LOYALTY MORE THAN RELIGION.
6 For I delight in loyalty
rather than sacrifice,
And in the knowledge of God rather than burnt
offerings. (Hosea 6:6).
This
is not to say that sacrifice or burnt offerings were unimportant. Those sacrifices of the Old Testament were
established by God as a picture of what Jesus would accomplish upon the cross
as the ultimate sacrifice. There is an
old saying that goes: “A picture is worth a thousand words.” The sacrifices and the offerings and the
tabernacle and the temple and the priests were all living pictures of what
Christ would accomplish upon the cross.
God
was not calling for an end to that sacrificial system in Hosea’s day, though
this perhaps is a hint that the sacrificial system would eventually come to an
end.
Neither
is Hosea saying that we ought to dispense with the outward elements of
religion. It IS to say that religion
without the reality of a loving loyalty is worthless.
Let
me get more specific. There is no value
of coming to church on Sunday morning if your life is not different on Monday
morning. Indeed, if your religion is
confined to rituals without reality, then it is worse than the absence of
religion because it is inoculating you against the real thing.
You
know about inoculations. That is when
you go to the doctor and he gives you a shot.
That shot contains a very small amount of the disease that you are
trying to avoid and it allows your body to react against that disease and to
build up an immunity.
That way, when you are faced with the real disease, it will not affect
you.
Religion
without reality has a tendency to inoculate you against the real thing. It gives you just enough to let you think
that you are doing something to impress God, but in reality, it is only
deadening your soul to a real relationship with God.
God
wants loyalty more than religion.
He
wants reality more than ritual.
Here
is the point. There is a correlation
between the reality of your love and the value of the expressions of your love.
4. GOD
DEMONSTRATED HIS LOYALTY AT THE CROSS.
But like Adam they have
transgressed the covenant; There they have dealt
treacherously against
This
reference to Adam takes us back to the Garden of Eden. It reminds us of the first sin. But it also reminds us that there was once a
covenant relationship with Adam.
When
you spoke about a covenant in the Old Testament times, you were speaking about
something that involved life and death.
Entering into a covenant was tantamount to binding your life to your
promise. Keep the covenant and live;
break the covenant and die. Breaking a
covenant was not like getting a traffic ticket.
Rather, it was taking to yourself and embracing
a sentence of death. That was the very
nature of a covenant.
But
Adam transgressed the covenant. And he
wasn’t the only one. Hosea says that we
have also transgressed the covenant. We
have acted in a way that was treacherous.
We have set ourselves against God.
Adam brought sin into the world and we have continued that same path of
sin and rebellion and covenant-breaking.
That
is why Christ came. He is the
covenant-keeper. There is an
organization out there called “Promise-Keepers” and it is a good organization
and it is doing some good things, but Jesus is the only True Promise
Keeper. He came and He lived the live we
should have lived and then He died the death we deserved to die.
Adam
was made to love God and to be loved by God.
And
so were you.
That
is why God brought about a new covenant.
This new covenant was not written on tablets of stone, but in the hearts
of men and sealed in the blood of His Son.
From where do you get...
• Loyalty?
• Lasting loyalty?
• Loyalty that transcends ritual to the
place of relationship?
• Loyalty that goes beyond religious
platitudes to the place where we live and breathe?
You get it by going to the
cross. You get it by looking at the One
who loved you to the point of death and beyond.
You look at the One who loved you with an everlasting loyalty. You look at the One who was not content with
ritual sacrifices, but who sacrificed Himself for you.
There is a correlation
between the reality of your love and the extent to which you have been loved.
You will never love to the
degree you can love until you see the infinite degree with which you have been
loved. You will never forgive to the
degree you can forgive until you see the infinite degree with which you have
been forgiven. You will never give to
the degree you can give until you see the infinite gift that you have been
given.
When I tell Paula that I love
her—and I tell her that a lot because wives need to hear that they are
loved—she sometimes retorts, “But I love you more.” I used to dispute that, but I don’t
anymore. It may be that she has a
greater capacity for love than I do. I
don’t know how to measure such things.
But instead, I typically reply, “But I loved you first.”
I did, and we both know
it. We met in college and within a
couple of weeks I decided that I loved her and that I was going to marry her
and live with her for the rest of my life.
I didn’t tell her that at the time; it would have scared her away. But over time, I wooed her and told her of my
love and I won her heart.
The Lord has done the same
thing with us. He loved us before we
ever loved Him. He loved us before the
foundation of the world. Before the
hills were new and before the stars were young, He called us by name and
determined that He would make us His beloved bride. And yes, He loves us a lot more than we can
ever love Him.
As we learn of the greatness
of His infinite love, it will do something within us. We will begin to respond with a reciprocating
echo of that wondrous love.
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