Sermon for the Second Sunday after Pentecost, 2026, from Hosea 5:15–6:6
Pastor Peter Ziebell
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.
The text for our sermon today is our First Reading read before, Hosea 5:15–6:6:
15I will return again to my place,
until they acknowledge their guilt and seek my face,
and in their distress earnestly seek me.
1“Come, let us return to the Lord;
for he has torn us, that he may heal us;
he has struck us down, and he will bind us up.
2After two days he will revive us;
on the third day he will raise us up,
that we may live before him.
3Let us know; let us press on to know the Lord;
his going out is sure as the dawn;
he will come to us as the showers,
as the spring rains that water the earth.”
4What shall I do with you, O Ephraim?
What shall I do with you, O Judah?
Your love is like a morning cloud,
like the dew that goes early away.
5Therefore I have hewn them by the prophets;
I have slain them by the words of my mouth,
and my judgment goes forth as the light.
6For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice,
the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.
Lord God, heavenly Father, sanctify us through Your truth, Your Word is truth. Amen.
Dear friends in Christ,
Has anyone ever said “sorry” to you, but you know their apology isn’t really sincere? They make it sound good, but you know they don’t really mean it. You can tell by the tone of their voice and the look in their eyes that they aren’t sorry and won’t change their behaviour. Sometimes, such apologies hurt just as bad as what they did to you in the first place. Can you imagine how God feels when we do that to Him?
Speaking through His prophet Hosea, God’s charge against Israel was that “there is no faithfulness, no love, no acknowledgement of God in the land. There is only cursing, lying and murder, stealing and adultery” (4:1b-2a). God’s people had become evil and corrupt, infected with the idolatrous ways of the world. Yet, through it all, they still maintained the outward appearance of worship. They observed the appointed religious festivals and brought the proper sacrifices required by the law. Obviously, this kind of charade didn’t fool God, so He said that He would hide Himself from them until they admitted their guilt and earnestly sought His face. Oh, they tried to tell God they were sorry, and on the surface, it sounded good. They said, “Come, let us return to the Lord; for He has torn us, that He may heal us; He has struck us down, and He will bind us up. 2 After two days He will revive us; on the third day He will raise us up, that we may live before Him. 3 Let us know; let us press on to know the Lord; His going out is sure as the dawn; He will come to us as the showers, as the spring rains that water the earth.”
That’s what they wanted. When they talked to God, they expected He would answer like the soft, soothing rain of a springtime shower. Instead, they got a storm! God said to them, “4 What shall I do with you, O Ephraim? What shall I do with you, O Judah? Your love is like a morning cloud, like the dew that goes early away. 5 Therefore I have hewn them by the prophets; I have slain them by the words of My mouth, and My judgment goes forth as the light.”
Their understanding of God was seriously flawed. They treated Him like a machine: put in your dollar (your offering, your sacrifice, or whatever) and out comes forgiveness. They wanted God to act according to their expectations, but they weren’t willing to act according to His. They brought God their pocket change, but God was looking for a change of heart. He wanted more than just “lip service.” He said, “I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.”
The Lord had shown His own faithful love to His people by making and keeping His covenant with them. He had proved true to all His promises in the past and revealed the further promise of a Saviour, who would bless all nations. He sought love from His people in return.
Now, at this point, someone might say, “But didn’t God command them to offer sacrifices?” And the answer would be, “Yes.” In Leviticus, there are five types of offerings they had to give, as well as seven festivals they were required to observe. But all the animal sacrifices required in the law mean nothing if they were not brought as an expression of Israel’s trust in God and His promises. He wanted His people to acknowledge Him, that is, to trust in Him alone as their Saviour from sin. All the burnt offerings described in Leviticus were worthless if Israel did not bring them in faithful love for the God who is His people’s only Deliverer and King.
At this point, it is fair to say that the average Israelite in Old Testament times probably had to work harder at his or her religion than most Christians work on their faith in modern times! There were an awful lot of rules and regulations they had to keep track of—and today, we think we’re doing well if we can just keep the Ten Commandments straight!
The problem is that the people, for all their outward piety, missed the point of what they were doing. They had come to see their religion as an obligation to be fulfilled rather than a relationship with the living God! They also didn’t see the connection between their worship life and the way they treated other people the rest of the time.
But let’s not be too critical of the Israelites, because it’s important for us to examine our own lives to see whether we’re guilty of the same thing. For example, how often do we simply run through the words of the Confession, Creed, or Lord’s Prayer without really thinking about what we’re doing? Do we give our worship of God any more thought than the countless other rituals that make up our daily routine, like brushing our teeth or tying our shoes? Or do we simply think that if we can check off one more Sunday, somehow God will be happy with us—that He will somehow let us into heaven if, here on earth, we have taken the precious time to regularly enter His house of worship? Have we stood at the Communion rail without giving any thought to the body and blood of our Lord, there for us to eat and drink? Have we pictured Baptism as a kind of magical incantation that automatically entitles us to heaven, without ever giving any thought to its daily significance in our lives or to our promise to remain faithful, to renounce the devil and all his works and ways? Even pastors, if they are honest, will admit that it’s all too easy to just “turn on the autopilot” on Sunday morning.
This kind of thinking can be summarised as “the religion of sacrifice.” It isn’t easy. It isn’t fun. It doesn’t really even work! Religion of sacrifice always starts with a negative balance—a bank account that’s in the red. The problem with the religion of sacrifice is that we can never do enough, because we keep adding to the negative balance—even as we try to make up for it! As God reminds us through Isaiah, “all our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment” (64:6), and “merit nothing but wrath and damnation” (Large Catechism I, 198). No, God would rather we use our time and energy to help people in need than to go through the motions of religious rituals in an attempt to undo our sins.
If you’ve been trying to please God your whole life but constantly feel like you’re spinning your wheels or getting stuck in the mud, there’s good news for you! We don’t have to offer God our sacrifices to make up for our sins—we never really did to begin with! In the Old Testament, as we mentioned earlier, there were five offerings the Israelites were commanded to enact, but they always pointed to something else. The burnt offering demonstrated Jesus’ total offering of Himself in submission to His Father’s will. The meal offering demonstrated the purity of Jesus’ sinless service to God. The peace offering demonstrated the fellowship believers have with God through the grace of the cross. The sin offering demonstrated that Jesus bore the guilt of our sin. The trespass offering pointed to Jesus’ payment for the guilt of our sins. As Hebrews states, Jesus IS the “once for all” sacrifice for the sins of the world (10:12). Other sacrifices had to be repeated over and over again—they never really changed anything. But with Jesus, once was enough! His righteous sacrifice effectively cancelled out our sin.
To put it another way, as God’s gift, through faith in Christ, we now have a positive balance in our account with God, who keeps on giving! In the book of Romans, Paul talked about Abraham’s faith and said, “It was credited to him as righteousness.” He went on to say that these things were also written for us because Jesus “was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to our life for our justification” (Rom. 4:18-25).
Maybe you’ve been in a situation where you “had somebody by the neck.” You caught them doing something wrong, and you had all the evidence to back it up. You confront them with what they have done, and they have no excuses for their crime, no mitigating circumstances, and no one to speak in their defence. Are you going to let them have it? Our human nature typically would say, “Yes! Throw the book at them! Make them pay!”
Or perhaps you’ve been the one who was caught, and the accusing finger was pointing straight at you. What can you do? There’s no logical or legal defence you can offer. All you can do is simply plead for mercy and hope against all hope that your accuser has it in his or her heart to forgive you.
Hosea knew about this from his own experience. He took an adulterous wife, named Gomer. She gave him children, but she wasn’t faithful to him. She left him. Even God’s Word would allow divorce in such circumstances, for the marriage covenant has been broken. But God told Hosea to take her back and to love her, even though it meant that he had to buy her back! That’s mercy. That’s the way God loves each and every one of us.
The point is clear. This kind of mercy may not come naturally to us. Others may not even understand it. But it’s who God is! He is always loving and merciful—even if it means that it causes Him pain, even if it means He has to buy us back with the innocent blood of His only-begotten Son. God’s mercy to us is in the sacrifice of His Son. No other sacrifice is needed. No other sacrifice will be accepted.
Now, the New Testament still talks about sacrifices we offer as Christians. We offer God our prayer, praise and thanksgiving in worship. We listen to Paul’s advice when he asks us to “present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship” (Romans 12:1). Note the difference: these are living sacrifices. They are made out of the abundance of love, grace and mercy that God has already shown to us in our Saviour.
Just ask Matthew, the tax collector! When Jesus called him, Matthew immediately left his tax collector’s booth without a word or second thought. But did he think of it as a sacrifice? Not compared to the mercy that Jesus first showed him in loving and accepting him as one of His own. Just think—might God be calling you today to sacrifice your pride in order to be merciful to someone that you know?
Hosea ends his book with another invitation to genuine confession. He says, “Say to [God], ‘Take away all iniquity; accept what is good, and we shall pay with bulls the vows of our lips’” (14:2).
When the Israelites had prayed, they expected healing and life from the Lord even while they refused to acknowledge their guilt. Hosea urges them to confess their sin, to bring to the Lord the sacrifice of “a broken and contrite heart” (Psalm 51:17). Penitent sinners will pray for forgiveness. They will freely acknowledge their sin. Repentance is what the Lord is looking for. He longs to hear His beloved people bring the “vows of our lips,” that is, sincere words of repentance and faith, the humble praises that please Him more than all the sacrificial animals on the temple altar.
Because of Jesus, we know God will hear this prayer. Because of Jesus, the mercy God shows—even to the unmerciful—is the same mercy that can also help us to be more merciful in the way we treat others. To God alone be all glory and thanks. Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.