1. "True words of love begin not with expressions of saccharine flattery, but with the kind of bracing honesty that we found in this book, in this call to return, that is, repent, turn around, come back, come home. That's full of love. You can surround yourself with people who never talk to you like that, and you can think it's love, but that's the world's cheap, fake version."

2. "How often we look to those things that most threaten us as those things which we need to make peace with. We think transactionally, politically, as if somehow compromising with our temptations will allow us to manage them. As if those sins will save us. And that sin that you're trying to compromise with will no more spare you than Assyria spared Israel."

3. "In His love, God arranges the circumstances of His children's lives so that we increasingly discover the fullness of His love and His faithfulness by causing His children to rely on Him alone."

4. "A Christian church is where we hear the best of news for the worst of people. This best of news is for the other people sitting here that you are thinking are too bad for this news. Yes, it's news for them if they will turn and trust. It's news for you if you will turn and trust."

5. "You'll never turn from your idols until you gaze at this God. You've got to see what He's like. You've got to see He's better than what you have, or you'll never turn."

6. "This whole book is an expression of the kindness and love of God for His people in telling us the truth about our idols. He loves us by telling us the truth about even those deceptions that are most deeply buried in our lives, that we are most committed to, perhaps that we even build our own identities around."

7. "Nothing you or I have ever learned at a school is as important as this: the ways of the Lord. They are right. They are what will be more important and fruitful in your life. The absence of them will be more critical and more tragic in its circumstances than any other knowledge you could have or fail to have."

8. "Your religious words mean nothing if you're committing adultery. Save your breath on singing Amazing Grace. Doesn't even matter if it moves you emotionally, just stop it. Just wait until you're following the ways of the Lord not perfectly, but sincerely. And then offer your praise to Him."

9. "You realize who you really are, don't you? You're Gomer. I'm Gomer. You and I are the unfaithful object of God's ever faithful love. We are idolatrous Israel being called to return to repent. Those who have been loved by God but who have been unfaithful to that love that claims us."

10. "I am a sinner, yes, but I am of that subset of sinners—I am a repenting sinner. And I'm saying this publicly in a messy way so that you all know I mean it and you will help me continue to live in this way."

Observation Questions

1. In Hosea 14:1-2, what specific instruction does God give to Israel, and what does He tell them to bring with them when they return to Him?

2. According to Hosea 14:3, what three things does Israel confess they will no longer rely on for salvation, and what does God promise the orphan will find in Him?

3. In Hosea 14:4-5, what three things does God promise to do for His people, and what natural image does He use to describe how He will be to Israel?

4. What agricultural and botanical images does God use in Hosea 14:5-7 to describe the blessings His people will experience (list at least four)?

5. In Hosea 14:8, what rhetorical question does God ask Ephraim, and what does God declare about Himself in relation to Israel's fruit and care?

6. According to Hosea 14:9, what two types of people are contrasted, and what happens to each group in relation to "the ways of the Lord"?

Interpretation Questions

1. Why is it significant that God not only calls His people to return but also provides them with the very words they should say (14:2-3)? What does this reveal about God's character and His love for sinners?

2. The sermon emphasizes that Israel's confession in verse 3 involves renouncing trust in Assyria, Egypt (horses), and handmade idols. Why is this specificity in confession important, and how does it relate to the nature of true repentance?

3. How do the rich images of restoration in verses 4-7 (healing, dew, blossoming, fragrance, dwelling in God's shadow) connect to the ultimate promise of restored fellowship with God? What is the climax of these blessings?

4. Verse 8 summarizes the entire book of Hosea by contrasting God with idols. Why is it important that God declares "from me comes your fruit" rather than from the fertility gods Israel had been worshiping?

5. The sermon notes that the promises of Hosea 14:4-7 were never fulfilled in the northern kingdom of Israel because they were conquered and scattered. How does the sermon explain the ultimate fulfillment of these promises, and what does this teach us about reading Old Testament prophecy?

Application Questions

1. God tells Israel to bring "words" of confession when they return to Him (14:2). What specific sins, false reliances, or "idols" in your own life do you need to name and confess to God this week, rather than offering only vague or general admissions?

2. The sermon describes how God's love includes "bracing honesty" about our sin rather than "saccharine flattery." How can you cultivate relationships—in your family, friendships, or small group—where you both give and receive honest, loving truth-telling?

3. Israel was tempted to rely on political powers (Assyria, Egypt) and things they made with their own hands. What modern equivalents—career security, financial resources, technology, political solutions, or self-made plans—are you tempted to trust for your ultimate well-being instead of God?

4. The sermon calls us to study God's Word to learn how to love Him and walk in His ways (14:9). What concrete step can you take this week to increase your engagement with Scripture—whether through memorization, daily reading, or studying with others?

5. The preacher identifies all of us as "Gomer"—the unfaithful one who has been loved by a faithful God. How does recognizing yourself as the one who has wandered and been pursued by God's love change the way you approach worship, prayer, and your relationships with other struggling believers?

Additional Bible Reading

1. Deuteronomy 30:15-20 — Moses presents Israel with the same choice between life and death, blessing and curse, that Hosea echoes in his final call to return and walk in God's ways.

2. Hosea 2:14-23 — This earlier passage in Hosea depicts God's promise to restore Israel after judgment, providing a fuller picture of the covenant love that culminates in chapter 14.

3. Romans 9:22-26 — Paul quotes Hosea to explain how God's promises of restoration extend to Gentiles, showing how the church is the fulfillment of Hosea's prophecy.

4. 1 John 5:1-5 — John teaches that love for God is demonstrated through keeping His commandments, directly reinforcing the sermon's emphasis that love entails obedience.

5. Psalm 1:1-6 — This psalm presents the same contrast between the righteous who walk in God's ways and the wicked who perish, echoing Hosea 14:9's wisdom conclusion.

Sermon Main Topics

I. Introduction: The Centrality of Love in Biblical Religion

II. What Does Love Sound Like? (Hosea 14:1-3)

III. What Does Love Look Like? (Hosea 14:4-7)

IV. Where Does This Kind of Love Come From? (Hosea 14:8)

V. What Does Such Love Mean Now? (Hosea 14:9)

VI. Conclusion: We Are Gomer, Called to Return

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Detailed Sermon Outline

What does love sound like? What does it look like? Where does love come from? And what does true love do today or when it wins out? These are questions that we wonder in life.

They're reflected in our songs, in our movies. Answers to these questions are things that we look for. It's interesting, though, among religions, only biblical religion finds such questions at the center of it. From the romantic to the sexual to the ethical, questions of individual love, questions of creation, redemption, eternity, all even love in God Himself.

God's relationship to the world. Only biblical religion is centered on such questions of love. If love generally considered is a positive affection and regard for someone, and a naturally following entailment is simply to act consistently with that affection and regard, then we can see love as being at the center of the book of Hosea. We've said that throughout that this 8th century BC prophet is to be read on three levels. On the first level, this is a story transparently of love between a preacher called by God, we see in the first three chapters, Hosea, and what many today would call a sex worker.

Maybe a religious cult prostitute, Gomer. On the second level, there is the love of God for His people, Israel, and their unfaithful response, which is presented in a picture form in Homer, I mean, in Hosea and Gomer.

And though that's historically true as a story, it's also significant in depicting the way God's people have responded to God. And after the first three chapters, that story of Hosea and Gomer individually is dropped. And really mainly you just get the Lord talking expressly to his people, as his people, about their unfaithfulness from chapter four on. And then finally, as we noted, there is the story of our own lives that we find on these pages and God's love for us and our halting love for him.

Deep and painful language of unfaithfulness is predominant in the book. As Hosea warned Israel against their own idolatrous unfaithfulness to the Lord. But there have also been calls to return, depths of divine origin of real love, even glimpses of true love and final triumph over indifference and sin, over unfaithfulness and rival loves.

For 30 years, God spoke to His people through Hosea about His love for them and about their ancient professed love for Him and about what that meant. We want to listen to Hosea one more time as his story comes to a close. Turn in your Bibles, if you would, to the book of Hosea in the Old Testament to chapter 14. If you're using the Bibles provided, you'll find that on page 771.

Hosea chapter 14.

Return, O Israel, to the Lord your God, for you have stumbled because of your iniquity.

Take with you words and return to the Lord. Say to Him, 'Take away all iniquity. Accept what is good. And we will pay with bulls the vows of our lips. Assyria shall not save us, we will not ride on horses, and we will say no more, 'Our God, to the work of our hands.' In you the orphan finds mercy.

I will heal their apostasy, I will love them freely, for my anger has turned from them. I will be like the dew to Israel, he shall blossom like the lily, He shall take root like the trees of Lebanon. His shoots shall spread out. His beauty shall be like the olive. It is fragrance like Lebanon.

They shall return and dwell beneath my shadow. They shall flourish like the grain. They shall blossom like the vine. Their fame shall be like the wine of Lebanon.

O Ephraim, what have I to do with idols? It is I who answer and look after you. I am like an evergreen cypress. From me comes your fruit.

Whoever is wise, let him understand these things. Whoever is discerning, let him know them. For the ways of the Lord are right, and the upright walk in them, but transgressors stumble in them.

Four questions as we look through Hosea's final chapter. And you'll find the answers to the most important things you have left to learn about love. First then, what does love sound like?

Well, look again at those first three verses. First we have God's love expressed through His prophet Hosea, whose very name means salvation. Return, O Israel, to the Lord your God, for you have stumbled because of your iniquity. I love the way James Moffatt renders that. Your faults have made you fall.

Take with you words and return to the Lord. Say to Him, Now, does this... do these initial lines, does this sound like love to you? Imagine that God's people Israel have wandered away from Him. They've lost themselves in a forest of self-made pagan idols from the people around them.

True words of love begin not with expressions of saccharine flattery. But with the kind of bracing honesty that we found in this book, in this call to return, that is, repent, turn around, come back, come home. That's full of love. You can surround yourself with people who never talk to you like that, and you can think it's love, but that's the world's cheap, fake version. Real love includes this kind of vocabulary.

Even that God would have the prophet call him their God. Return, O Israel, to the Lord your God. What a kind statement. The Lord shall let himself be called your God by people who have treated him like that. But that's the way our God is.

When they had been living as they had, this was an amazing mark of God's forbearing love. This is the God that we see, He's revealed Himself in the Old Testament. Would you see how this God is merciful? Look at Him carefully explaining the truth about where they found themselves. You have stumbled.

Friends, if you want to get someplace different than where you are, you have to know where you are to begin with. So Him being clear with them that they've stumbled is a loving thing to do. Would you see how God is gracious? Well, look at Him, tell them the source of their stumbling. It's their own sin because of your iniquity Their iniquity purchases in itself none of God's attention, none of His kindness or favor, and yet here He is in sheer grace explaining to them what He'd already long warned them about, even after they had ignored all His warnings.

He's kind enough to say it yet again. Would you see how slow this God is to anger? He shows them a way back to Him. Take with you words. He will catechize them in the very words of apology and of love that they must speak to him.

Parents, surely you know something about this from teaching your children the very words they should use. Spouses, we surely know that with each other. When we help the other one, when we trust that they mean better than they're able to speak right now, and we actually provide them with words that we think will be helpful to us, and to them. That's kind of what the Lord's doing here. Would you see how abounding and steadfast love this God is?

Listen to him in these first two verses of chapter 14. He says to them, Return to the Lord. And then again in verse 2 he says, Return to the Lord. Would you see how this God abounds in faithfulness? When they had broken their covenant with him, like the adulterous wife Gomer had broken her covenant with Hosea, the Lord doesn't merely tell them to bring him words, but he tells them what words to bring.

He says here in verse two, say to him, he's making it in as small of pieces as he can for them to be able to follow. This is what true love sounds like. It's as simple as we need it to be. And then too, in the mouths of the people coming back, it sounds like the words that the Lord's given them, picking up here in verse two, take away all iniquity, accept what is good, and we will pay with bulls the vows of our lips. Assyria shall not save us, we will not ride on horses, and we will say no more, 'Our God, to the work of our hands.' In you, the orphan finds mercy.

So here's the sound of love in the lips of the returning sinner. We've just heard of it in the lips of God in his words. Now here it is in the sinner. We hear it in the honesty about his own sins. So you see there in the second half of verse 2, two humble pleas and a pledge.

The pleas are, first of all, Forgive all my sins. And the second is to accept what is good. And the only reason you have to ask that is because even the good is not that good. It's so compromised and polluted, you have to ask him to accept it. It can be received only by grace.

And then there's the pledge to pay with the fruit or the vows of our lips. That is, our words will no longer be used in the worship of false gods, but only of you, the true God. And then in verse 3, the work of confession gets even more specific as confession so often does. And the great sin which Isaiah has called them out on throughout these chapters is admitted, it's confessed, the sin of spiritual adultery, of spiritual unfaithfulness, of idolatry. Look again at verse 3.

He says, First they admit that Assyria will not be their savior. And how true that is. Within three, four, five years of this last bit of Hosea, Assyria would attack them and conquer them and spread them to the nations to be lost forever. True words are never spoken. Assyria shall not be our savior.

Yeah, that's right. How often we look to those things that most threaten us as those things which we need to make peace with. We think transactionally, politically, as if somehow compromising with our temptations will allow us to manage them. As if those sins will save us.

And that sin that you're trying to compromise with will no more spare you than Assyria spared Israel. Then they say, We will not ride horses. This is not an anti-equestrian sentiment. Horses here stand for Egypt. Egypt was famous for having a large army and a huge cavalry.

So the great power to the north of Israel was Assyria. The great power to the south was Egypt. Their trouble was they had been fleshly in their thinking. They thought only of what in this world would preserve them. And so here they're confessing, We know Assyria is not going to be our Savior.

We know that Egypt will not save us. There's no great power that would save them. And then this third specific confession they make, which includes both of these first two, but it's even more sweeping, We will say no more, Our God, to the work of our hands. Even the way the Lord gives them to confess this sin to them shows the absurdity of it, that they would worship something that they have created. How silly is that?

But that's what they were doing on every hill, every threshing floor throughout the land of the promised land, promised them by Yahweh, promised them by the Lord. Here now, love gets specific in confessing and in renouncing. We will say, no more our God to the things our hands have made.

I'm struck by this of how honest God's words of love are to us. Our words of love to God are humble.

Did you know this is what love sounds like?

So many times these days we hear other false things, like some kind of assertion, like, I'm going to have this faith and I will manifest it in reality. And it's all this kind of satanic self-assertion that mimics faith. When true faith in the Bible, true love is honest about our own faults and it's humble before the Lord.

I wonder if you'd imagine some more lulling, some more flesh-pleasing, some less costly version of pleasure or indulgence would be the sound of love. But, friend, there is no return for sinners like you and me to the presence of God without the honesty of confession.

My friend, if you're here today as an embodied Israel, A kind of backslider, one who has known God's blessings in the past, perhaps even who knew something of what it means to be involved at church or to enjoy hymns or even to pray with friends, to be known as someone who is zealous for God, but you have long ago moved from that profession of faith and from that practice. You've fallen away from it. The Book of Hosea is for you. This book is for backsliders, calling them to return. There is hope for those who once professed and have pulled away.

This chapter is a chapter that sounds out God's loving message of restoration specifically to people like you.

God would have you find mercy. I'm struck by that last phrase in verse 3, In youn the orphan finds mercy. That orphan that he's talking about is Israel himself. He has to confess himself as being an orphan. He realizes that it is he himself who has orphaned himself.

Back in Hosea chapter 1 verse 9, the Lord calls Hosea's son, Not my people, for you are not my people, and I am not your God. But it's to this very one whose status is one who was declared fatherless, was a reflection of his own wandering sins, his own unfaithfulness and idolatry to this one, to this self-orphaned person. God would have him now find mercy. Friend, God would have you find that same mercy. How do you imagine yourself to be in a worse position than Israel that Hosea is prophesying to?

How can you imagine your sin is worse than that which we've seen depicted on the pages of the prophet Hosea. As we listen to love here, lay aside all the wrong reliance on Assyria or on Egypt, on their own strength, or the creations of their own hands. We see a great truth, don't we? We see that in His love, God arranges the circumstances of His children's lives so that we increasingly discover the fullness of His love and His faithfulness by causing His children to rely on Him alone.

In His love, every other thing we would rely on, sometimes things in and of themselves good, okay, but not meant to bear that weight.

God pursues us and in his loving sovereignty, he pulls them away from us so that at the end, we're left like the people of Israel. We know that Egypt won't save us. We know that Assyria won't save us. We know that what we've made ourselves can't save us. We don't have any hope unless there's hope in God.

That's the sound of love. We also see that in considering our second question, what does love look like? Love sounds like we hear in these first three verses. What does it look like? Well, these are the wonderful verses of promise we see in verses 4 to 7, and these verses are welcome in Hosea's book.

This has been a rough book, but here verses 4 to 7 are such wonderful hope. Look at these verses again.

I will heal their apostasy, I will love them freely, for my anger has turned from them. I will be like the dew to Israel. He shall blossom like the lily. He shall take root like the trees of Lebanon. His shoot shall spread out.

His beauty shall be like the olive, and his fragrance like Lebanon. They shall return and dwell beneath my shadow. They shall flourish like the grain. They shall blossom like the vine. Their fame shall be like the wine of Lebanon.

Twelve lines of blessing Promised blessings enough for all of God's people. God showers his blessings on his people. Finally, ultimately. And the particulars we don't need to go through. They simply show the richness of God's blessing.

No one plant could exhibit them all. You got the blessing of the mighty cedars and their strength, the blessing of the olive trees and their beauty and fruitfulness, the spreading vine to indicate still more. The first ones are more comprehensive there. Apostasy. Healed, they are brought back.

God's love to them will be free, that means gracious. Purchased not by our sinning less, but by God's forgiveness by his own plan of redemption. Friends, we see God's grace in the way we've been celebrating in our Christmas carols. He has sent his only Son to live a life of perfect fellowship with his heavenly Father. Trusting him fully.

And he died on the cross, not because he had ever done anything to deserve death, but he died on the cross specifically to bear the penalty of sins for all of us who would turn from our sins and trust in him alone. Friend, that could be you today. That could be you. These blessings could be yours. You could return by relying on the way the Lord has made in Jesus Christ.

He raised him from the dead, and He accepted this sacrifice on the behalf of all of us who would come. And the result is right there in verse 7, Then they shall return and dwell beneath My shadow. May it not be the most fetching way you've ever heard it put, but that's the promise. That's the climax right there. It's as if Adam and Eve didn't have to hide anymore when the Lord comes to the garden.

Or they're invited back in, or this is why the curtain of the temple when Christ was crucified was torn in two so that there was no more division between the Holy of Holies and the rest of the world. Or the great climax we saw just a few months ago in Revelation 22 when we got to the end of our series. Verse 4, when we said, when we saw the words, they shall see his face. It's the final blessedness, the climax of the Bible. Revelation 224, that's what this is pointing toward.

They shall dwell beneath my shadow. This is what it meant to dwell with him again. This is what love would look like. Fellowship restored. So in Christ we have not merely forgiveness secured.

You know, it's not merely we found out that we can be let off, the charges can be dropped, we're free. But no, fellowship has been restored. We're invited now to know and experience freely and fully the everlasting love of God, to know his full presence forever. He expresses his love and he shares it and shows it. Friend, if you find yourself discouraged and disconsolate this festive season, you're at the right place.

A Christian church is where we hear the best of news for the worst of people. This best of news is for the other people sitting here that you are thinking are too bad for this news. Yes, it's news for them if they will turn and trust. It's news for you if you will turn and trust. As the hymn says, There is no discouragement who will make him once relent his vowed attempt to be a pilgrim.

We get the strength we need from the journey by studying how it is that God always has and always will fulfill his promises in his time. We're a kind of community of memory as we help each other recount what we see of God's goodness recorded here in his word, what we've even seen of it in the experiences of each other's lives as we can tell it back to each other in times of trial. Brothers and sisters, look at the lushness of God's good promises and blessings here to his returning people. The blessings for disobedience, which are in many chapters of Hosea, you can go back and read chapter two if you want this afternoon for contrast, a very specific contrast to these blessings. The blessings for disobedience are here replaced with the blessings from God's free love for repentant and returning sinners here in chapter 14, all conveyed in one rich image after another, healing, blossoming, fame and fragrance.

Even the idea of dew here in verse five is to show how certain and constant and comprehensive and inexhaustible will be these blessings. This is just something of what love looks like. There's a lot more you can meditate on from these verses, but I want us to move on to another question then. Where does this kind of love come from? Where does this kind of love come from?

It sounds like something more than we have in ourselves and our own resources. Look at verse 8.

O Ephraim, what shall I say to you? O Judah, what shall I say to you? What have I to do with idols? It is I who answer and look after you. I am like an evergreen cypress.

From me comes your fruit.

The love that Hosea was telling the Israelites about wasn't the love of any of the idols that they had worshiped. He wasn't extolling the power and virtue of himself, that is Hosea, or his own love, or the Israelites' own love in returning. No, here Hosea is quoting the Lord, letting his people know that he, the Lord, not their idols, is the one who answers them, who looks after them, who makes them know such visible blessings as we've seen in verses 4 to 7. Their fruit comes not from Baal or from the other idols that they had worshiped, the fertility gods, but from the Lord himself.

Friend, if you're here today and you're not used to being in a religious meeting, especially you're not used to being maybe in a Christian church, I don't know how many times at the door I'm told by a Jewish friend or a Muslim friend or an atheist friend, first time I've ever been in a Christian church. If that's you today, you're very welcome here. You're always welcome to come. I think one of the things that you're going to find is that the Bible always presents God like this. He's not merely the projection of human ideas.

He's not the personification of the sea or of death or of some certain power like the gods of Greece or the Norse countries or India might seem sometimes.

God is no mere idea. He is a God of love who loves and cares for his people. This is why God's purpose and goal for his people is to have a relationship with him. It's not merely to obey certain rules. It's not merely to have a certain kind of society.

It's not merely to submit so that a certain civilization can be maintained. No, he is about having a relationship personally with each one made in his image.

He is a God of love who loves and cares for his people. That's why God entered into covenant with Abram. It's why he had a covenant with Jacob and his twelve sons. God wants a people for himself and for his own glory. My friend, you need to know what this God is like that we are calling you to leave your current loyalties for.

What good have other loyalties brought you in your life? How are they working out? Let me just issue you a call on behalf of every Christian in this room. We are happy to compare our lives with yours. We know at any given time we can look like a pretty sad lot, but we trust in the picture of the whole, the blessings God has for us are incomparably better than what you have experienced with your own religious loyalties or secular concerns.

So just to be clear, we are calling you to be unfaithful. To the sins that you have given yourself over to. But you'll never turn from your idols until you gaze at this God. You've got to see what he's like. You've got to see he's better than what you have, or you'll never turn.

So come to church, get to know Christian friends, read and study this book, see what this God what the Bible is really like. We can tell that this God's love excels all others because He is the one who tells us the truth even about our idols. We worship and we praise Him in our times together as part of our relationship with Him. We sing about our souls being satisfied in Him alone. We sing about Christ's death for us and our being forgiven for our sins because of Him and talks about filling us with His own Spirit and giving us a new birth.

Have you not seen and heard these themes already in our time together this morning?

This whole book is an expression of the kindness and love of God for his people in telling us the truth about our idols. We thought a few moments ago about how we need the truth, how we're harmed by a lack of it, how we're helped when we're told it, so God helps his people. He helps his people by telling them the truth. He loves us by telling us the truth about even those deceptions that are most deeply buried in our lives, that we are most committed to. Perhaps that we even build our own identities around.

He and he alone will always tell us the truth.

Verse 8 really summarizes the whole book of Hosea. If you want the whole book in one verse, this is it. O Ephraim, what have I to do with idols? It is I who answer. This is I as opposed to all your idols you've made.

It is I who answer and look after you. I am like an evergreen cypress. From me comes your fruit. This has been his message to his people presented by Hosea's marriage and preached in Hosea's speeches. It's only about the blessings of verses 4 to 7 with God's own presence.

Apart from his own presence, there are no blessings. I mentioned in the beginning that only biblical religion is absolutely centered on love. From the understanding of God himself in his own self-relationship, even God in himself, he's not lonely. He didn't make people because he was lonely. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit has known eternal love fully in himself.

And no need to make any other created being to receive his love. No, he chose freely to make others. In his own self-relationship, then he is love. In his relationship with his people, he is love. To what he calls his people to have with him, a relationship of love.

To how he teaches his people to relate with each other, there is love. And even with those who are outside, there is love. Love is at the center of biblical religion. It's all about love.

Friends, that's not what Marxism is like. That's not what Hinduism is about, or Islam, or Buddhism. That's not what materialism or stoicism are about. The centrality of love in Christianity, from the nature and character of the God of the Bible to what he calls us to be like, to what he wants from us, is about love. While it's not true to say that love is God, the Bible itself teaches us that God is love, and it teaches us what it means when it tells us that.

Which brings us to our last question in our investigation of Hosea through these fading days of autumn.

What does such love mean? What does such love mean now?

Look at the last verse, verse 9. This is like the sort of wisdom tag that you can put on the end of almost every book, it seems, in the Old Testament. But here it is for Hosea.

Whoever is wise, let him understand these things. Whoever is discerning, let him know them, for the ways of the Lord are right, and the upright walk in them. Them, but transgressors stumble in them. The ways of the Lord are right.

Friends, we're in Washington, D.C. There are a bunch of us that have a bunch of degrees. We've had a lot of schools tell us that we're smart and learned. Nothing you or I have ever learned at a school is as important as this: the ways of the Lord. They are right.

They are what will be more important and fruitful in your life. The absence of them will be more critical and more tragic in its circumstances than any other knowledge you could have or fail to have. The ways of the Lord are right. Hosea here is reminding the nation on what we know was the eve of the Assyrian destruction. We know that.

They didn't know that. They're being warned, but we, looking back in history, know it was A handful of years after this, that this people was completely obliterated from history, that the Assyrian empire came and destroyed them. You see what God was doing here in Hosea. This is like the last brick in the wall. He's building his case against his people.

He is one more time bringing up the themes that he brought when Moses first took them to the Promised Land. If you go back to Deuteronomy chapter 30, Deuteronomy chapter 30, verse 15, amazing how similar all this is. Here you have the great prophet Moses. He's had a 40-year ministry. He's at the very end of his 40-year ministry.

They're literally about to walk away from him into the Promised Land, and what does he say? Deuteronomy 30:15, speaking for the Lord, See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil. If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I command you today by loving the Lord your God, by walking in His ways, by keeping His commandments and His statutes and His rules, then you shall live and multiply, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to take possession of it.

But if your heart turns away and you will not hear, but are drawn away to worship other gods and serve them, I declare to you today that you shall surely perish. You shall not live long in the land that you're going over to the Jordan to enter and possess. I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life that you and your offspring may you may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying his voice, holding fast to him, for he is your life and length of days that you may dwell in the land that the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them. Now, at the end of Hosea's 30-year ministry, the Lord gives him this similar message for his people.

Look again at verse 9. Get your eyes literally down on Hosea chapter 14 verse 9. I want you to see it because I want you to notice it has five phrases. And you're not going to keep these in your memory, but they're on the page for you if you'll look.

They're those phrases beginning with whoever, whoever, for, and, and but. Now, as often the case with the Hebrew poetry, the emphasis is not in the final line, it's in the middle. So you should focus in on that middle. For the ways of the Lord are right. That is the point of this verse.

The two lines before it teach us a little more about this, the two lines afterwards teach us a little more, but the point is there in the middle. So the way for you and I to get where we should go is to follow the ways that the Lord lays out in his word. Psalm 100, It is he who has made us, not we ourselves. We are his. He knows how we should live.

We weren't made for idols or even for ourselves, ultimately, but for the Lord, for the Lord's purposes.

His is the word that we need. And it is walking in His ways that we can do only because He's revealed them to us. He has loved us in this way. And that very walking is what our answering love looks like to Him. As the apostle John tells us again and again, if we love the Lord, we will do what He says.

So again, look at verse 9, look at those first two lines. They're a great example of parallelism. There's a little Bible class. Parallelism in Hebrew poetry, it's right here. And this is so you won't make a mistake in Bible study.

Sometimes Christians, when they notice two different words, will try to go, oh, what's the difference between these two? And think that's where the hidden meaning is, the hidden juice, the importance. You will utterly fail at understanding Hebrew poetry if you do that. And these two lines are just a perfect example for you not to be misled and make stuff up and put it in God's mouth. Here's what God is saying.

This is parallelism. Whoever is wise, let him understand these things. Whoever is discerning, let him know them. They're saying the same thing, just stated in different words. Sometimes when we study the Bible, we look for those differences, but in this case it would be very difficult to do the final two words, these things and the them, those things that conclude the line, the first line, the second line, the them is just referring back to these things.

It's the same thing. But then what about the other two? Wise in line one, you see, and discerning in line two, or understand in line one and know in line two? We should assume that the point is not the distinction between them, but rather the filling out of the meaning by using similar words with similar meanings. That's how you're going to understand this part of God's Word.

So these things are the ways of the Lord and they should be known and understood by anyone who is wise and discerning. So if you're not wise or discerning, if you're a fool, Don't worry about what God says. But if you would like to live wisely and well, then pay attention to what God has said. His ways are right. His is the way that's straight ahead.

And then the last two lines, he makes a very similar point, but it's not parallel. Now it's another thing you see in poetry, it's contrast. Look at the last two lines. Get your eyes down. To the copy of the word there in front of you that we have made sure you have, even if you didn't bring your own.

Hosea chapter 14, verse 9, the last two lines, and the upright walk in them, but transgressors stumble in them. Once again, the final words of the two phrases are the same, them, both are referring to the ways of the Lord. But that's where the likeness to the first half ends. Indeed, it's the contrast in the actors described and in what they do. On the one hand are the upright, On the other, the transgressors.

Well, what do the upright do with the ways of the Lord? Well, they walk in them. Okay, but what do the transgressors do with the ways of the Lord? They stumble in them. Okay, which one do you and I want to do?

Do we want to walk in the ways of the Lord or do we want to stumble in them? Well, that walking in them will help to make us wise and discerning to be upright as people specially related to our upright God should be. What this is telling us is that love entails obedience. That's why God sets aside in the prophets all the religious ceremonies that are offered with words but surrounded by disobedience and lack of concern with him. Your religious words mean nothing.

If you're committing adultery, save your breath on singing Amazing Grace. Doesn't even matter if it moves you emotionally, just stop it. Just wait until you're following the ways of the Lord not perfectly, but sincerely. And then offer your praise to Him. 1 John 53, For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments.

That's New Testament. 1 John 53, this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. So brothers and sisters, what does that mean for us? Well, that in the same way we study to learn to love others, So we study God's Word to learn to love God. How does He want us to live?

What's He told us in His Word? Well, we study that to learn it. What does He want us to do? We learn that by studying His Word. So how are you giving yourself to studying God's Word?

That's what we do at the beginning of every week here at Capital Baptist Church. We think every single week of our lives is supposed to begin with us studying God's word. That's why we come together on the first day of the week. In fact, we're so impatient, we don't even wait to the end of the first day of the week. We come to the first hours of the first day of the week to give them to the Lord as a sign that, look, it's all yours.

We're just giving you the beginning part, the first fruits of our time. We may be dead by Thursday. So just to make sure that whatever we got, we're gonna give to you, whatever portion of it we have, we're gonna start right at the beginning and give it to you. And we're going to begin by studying your word. We're going to open your word because we know that in your word we find the way that we can come to you.

The first hours of the new day, we give ourselves to meeting together to praise God and pray, to read his word and hear it taught. And part of what we're doing in all of this is learning ourselves to trust and read and study and understand and obey God's word. What a privilege that he's spoken to sinners like you and me.

That he would talk to us. I wonder if you look back at 2025, it's just about done, what's it been characterized by in your own life? Been a lot of walking in the ways of the Lord? Or has there been a lot of stumbling? And by stumbling in English, that word's not great.

I don't mean mistakes. We all make mistakes. We're not perfect in that sense. No, I mean more. Knowing that we're not walking in the ways of the Lord and doing that.

How much is that characterized your year?

Understand the ways of the Lord and walk in them. That's what we hear the call to here. That's what Hosea is to us. Reminds me of that magnificent entrance to the Psalms. Do you remember that?

Look over at Psalm 1.

It's exactly the same message. Psalm 1, six short verses. Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers, but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, its leaf does not wither, in all that he does he prospers. The wicked are not so, but they are like chaff that the wind drives away.

Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, or sinners in the congregation of the righteous. For the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish. Parents, if you've been looking for some piece of Scripture to memorize with your family in this new year, grab this last verse of Hosea, Hosea 14, verse 9, as a great little summary. Or if you say, Mark, one verse, our family's got that. Great.

Grab Psalm 1. Do the first Psalm, six verses. Say it together at the dinner table. Read it together. Read it together so often, you can finally just say it.

It's a great way to begin the new year. And kids, if your parents don't do that with you, you can always quietly just start memorizing it yourself. You can just start memorizing God's word because you're at that time in life when you really need to know this stuff. Because when you go into junior high and high school, you are gonna be so tempted to live in ways that do not please God by a lot of your friends. That you've got to arm yourself, even if your family doesn't help you as much as they should.

This is what loving the Lord means now. This is what it looks like today.

All right, so there's Hosea. Five studies, got through it all pretty quickly, pretty rough middle patch, sorry about that. Those two or three sermons all on idolatry. Interesting first three chapters on Hosea and Gomer. I wonder who you've identified with in this book.

Hosea? He's the one we hear speaking all the time, the prophet. Have you felt for him and his being called to love an adulterous wife?

But you realize who you really are, don't you?

I mean, you're Gomer. I'm Gomer. You and I are the unfaithful object of God's ever faithful love. We are idolatrous Israel being called to return to repent. Those who have been loved by God but who have been unfaithful to that love that claims us.

Realizing that is how we begin to understand what love is. Coming to realize and repent of that is what brings us to be baptized. So, friend, if you've been baptized, I assume that was a marker of the time when you first realized this about yourself. And you were saying, yeah, I mean to go this other way. Backslider I am, but returning I am.

So, I am a sinner, yes, but I am of that subset of sinners, I am a repenting sinner. And I'm saying this publicly in a messy way so that you all know I mean it and you will help me continue to live in this way. Consider how strongly God in His holiness desires justice and so desires to punish us for our sin because our sins are lying about what He is like. Consider then how much He must have loved us in order to come up with His plan of redemption. This is love, not that we have loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

I've been asked more than once by visitors in this building during the week, somebody will come in and visit and say hello, and I'll bring them in and show them this main hall, and they'll look around and what question do you think I get more than any other question? Yes, thank you, Rob.

Where's the cross? I get that question all the time.

I vary my answer depending on who I'm talking to.

There's one right there in the window, but basically, basically I just say, it's in the Bible, and it's in our hearts, it's in our lives. That's where the cross is.

It's not just a physical symbol that we honor. It's a reality of what God has done in history and what He's done in our own lives.

Listen to these words of John in the New Testament. I am not writing a new command, but one we've had from the beginning. I ask that we love one another and this is love, that we walk in obedience to His commands. As you've heard from the beginning, His command is that you walk in love.

I think the most surprising thing for me in this time studying through Hosea, and I haven't preached on here in 25 years. So long time since I last preached on it here. The most surprising thing came, yesterday, more yesterday than the day before. Yesterday when I was staring, here at verse 14, I mean, chapter 14, and I looked at that list of promises. You know, in verses four to seven, there's ri, that rich, rich list.

And I just was thinking, wow, is God's word wrong here? Because this never happened.

Never happened. Not like this. Now see if Hosea had been like most of the prophets in the Old Testament, like Isaiah that we got last week, and we're gonna get the next few weeks with Caleb. Well then this all happens when they come back from the exile in Babylon. But these people, they never come back.

What are these pro, when God says, I will, I will, I will, what is He talking about? Because He never does, because they never come back.

Ooh, well, that is, unless you realize that Hosea is almost as it were looking past Israel to us.

Weird, the audios. Romans 9, he quotes Hosea twice about the restoration of God's people, about the grafting in of you and me. Most of the prophets of the Old Testament, they'll be fulfilled in the church in one sense, but there's a first fulfillment in the people of Judah returning from Babylon. But Hosea is to the northern kingdom, the worst one, the hopeless one.

No, friend, I think his eyes are on you and me. We are the returning backsliders. We are the ones who are to know these blessings in this life and eternally. This is a call to us today. These promises are ours.

They can be yours.

Lord, we thank youk that with these ancient words to Israel, you, call youl elect out of sin and idolatry. Thank youk for fulfilling this chapter in us. Oh, God, we pray that yout would call even more to yourself today. We ask in Jesus' name. Amen.