Sermon June 13, 1999 Christ Our Healer based on Hosea 5:15-6:6
Grace to you and peace from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Especially: 6:1-2 Come, let us return to the LORD. He has torn us to pieces but he will heal us; he has injured us but he will bind up our wounds. After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will restore us, that we may live in his presence.
We get roughly a third of our members here on a Sunday. Do you wonder why the rest don't make it? Pastors spend some time wondering what is going on in people's thinking and in their believing that would keep them away. This sermon today is not for those who are absent, but for you who are here. So, on the other hand, we can think about why you have come here today.
What is your motivation? Is this your sacrifice to God? Is it your good service to Him, to keep Him happy? That often is the meaning conveyed in the word "worship." It gives the impression that we come to offer our gifts to God. We come here to bow down before God so that He will be happy and we will have done our required service to Him. Christians often think that their "worship" earns them something. After all, they have given up their Sunday morning. They may place their faith in the fact that they go to church on Sunday. Today's Old Testament lesson shows us that such "worship" only out of a sense of obligation is not pleasing to God. It also indicates the better reason to come here, and that is to be healed.
Our Old Testament lesson comes from the prophetic book, Hosea. Hosea's name means "salvation." He preached and wrote some 800 years before Christ's early ministry. He was a prophet of the Northern Kingdom, Israel, and was God's instrument to warn that kingdom of their coming capture and exile by the Assryians, if they did not return to their Lord.
God understood the Israelites better than they understood themselves. They failed to see that they were doing anything wrong. They really didn't know that they were sick and in need of healing. In order to help His people turn to Him, God needed to treat them with tough love. So, the first verse says: "Then I will go back to my place until they admit their guilt. And they will seek my face; in their misery they will earnestly seek me." This brings out an important point for us: unless we see that we are sick, we will not seek healing. Jesus said in our Gospel lesson: "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick." If you're not a sinner, you don't need a Savior!
The text asks the question of how God might get His people to see their sickness. It says: "What can I do with you, Ephraim? What can I do with you, Judah? Your love is like the morning mist, like the early dew that disappears." Part of God's tough love plan for us is to strike us with the Law. We need to see how we fall short of God's requirements. Here God was criticizing His people because their love or faithfulness toward Him was lacking. It is like fog or dew that burns off as soon as the sun heats it up. Their faithfulness toward God did not last and was not true.
God sends us His Law in the words of the prophets and through His Word the Scriptures. He says: "Therefore I cut you in pieces with my prophets, I killed you with the words of my mouth; my judgments flashed like lightning upon you." This judgment goes forth as light so that it is plainly visible. The Lord's Word can be like a burning word: NKJ Jeremiah 5:14 "Therefore thus says the LORD God of hosts: "Because you speak this word, Behold, I will make My words in your mouth fire, And this people wood, And it shall devour them." God's law strikes us with our sinfulness. Our Lord is helping us see that we are sick with sin and in need of healing.
In our text, God's law comes specifically in the last verse: "For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgment of God rather than burnt offerings." Hosea confronts the people of Israel with their meaningless offerings to God. Instead of what the people were offering, that is sacrifices and burnt offerings, God would rather have their mercy and acknowledgement of Him. Mercy is again better represented by faithfulness. This is the same faithfulness that evaporates like the dew.
Rather than burnt offerings that are meaningless, God wants His people to truely turn to Him and call upon Him. He wants them to be faithful to Him. Instead, they are offering faithless and heartless sacrifices. They are simply going through the motions, doing what they believe they are obligated to do in order to satisfy God. God promises to reject them along with their sacrifices.
Now it is important to search our own souls to see if we are guilty of the same sins. Does this law apply to us? So we come back to the question: Why you have come here today? Have you come here out of faithfulness to God, acknowledging Him as the Lord of the universe, or are you simply going through the motions? Are you here because you feel like God wants you to come and offer some sort of sacrifice? Do you feel that since you have sacrificed your time, by not sleeping in, playing a round of golf, going fishing, doing some extra work, and so on, then that sacrifice will make God happy with you? Are we here merely to obedient because we fear punishment? If we are here for any of these reasons, like the Israelites, we are offering a heartless sacrifice. This is our sickness from which we need to be healed.
The Lord has presented Himself as a healer of illness and disease. He was Israel's physician in the time of Moses. NKJ Exodus 15:26 "If you diligently heed the voice of the LORD your God and do what is right in His sight, give ear to His commandments and keep all His statutes, I will put none of the diseases on you which I have brought on the Egyptians. For I am the LORD who heals you."
He promised to be the healer later also. NKJ Deuteronomy 32:39 "Now see that I, even I, am He, And there is no God besides Me; I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal; Nor is there any who can deliver from My hand." Certainly the Lord can kill us for our sin and strike us with the Law, but He can also heal us.
Our text leads us to the same thoughts of the Lord as our healer. Hosea writes as if the people were speaking, saying, "Come, let us return to the LORD. He has torn us to pieces but he will heal us; he has injured us but he will bind up our wounds." The Lord will heal and He will bandage up our wounds. Like a nurse or doctor, He cares for us and helps us recover from the damages of sin.
The text from Hosea leads us to look for the wonderful healing that we have. It leads us to look for it specifically in an event lasting three days. "After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will restore us, that we may live in his presence." In these words our rivival and restoration happens in three days. The revial is literally being made alive again. The restoration is literally being raised up. This the Lord accomplishes in three days.
This verse uses a manner of writing which is typical in the Hebrew language. It involves stepping up to something. Here the number of days is first given as two and then stepped up to three. It really isn't two, but the manner of writing builds up the excitement at reaching the final number of three.
You can see this manner of writing elsewhere in the Old Testament. For example: NKJ Proverbs 6:16 "These six things the LORD hates, Yes, seven are an abomination to Him." Or NKJ Proverbs 30:18 "There are three things which are too wonderful for me, Yes, four which I do not understand." Both of these illustrate that same style of stepping up to the final number.
In three days the Lord makes us alive and raises us up. This healing reminds us of Christ's three days in the grave. His death on the cross led to His burial. There He lay three days, until He arose again to proclaim victory. In Christ's rising from the dead, we too are guaranteed that we will be given life and be raised up. As a result of Christ's sacrifice and resurrection, we are healed from our sins and made alive. We are revived and restored from the diseased state we were in without Christ. We were lost in our trespasses but Christ has raised us up.
We see from that verse of our text just how high Christ has raised us: "After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will restore us, that we may live in his presence." The purpose of being revived and restored is so that we may live in His presence. Isn't that incredible! We who are lost and condemned without Christ are to live before Him. This means our God will look favorably upon us. He will not turn away, as rejecting us, but rather we will live right before Him. We will be able to look Him in the eyes. This is quite a healing for us pitiful sinners. Not only is it a position of great honor to be before the Lord's face, but it is also a position of great protection and grace. As the tax collectors and sinners ate with Jesus in our Gospel lesson, we who deserved to be rejected by God are to be welcomed into His presence, to eat with Him and be blessed by Him. All this occurs through Christ healing us from our sins.
This healing from Christ is a wonderful thing. It is a gift which He gives in many forms and repeatedly. We need to continue to receive the healing and be blessed by it. So, this is why we should come here to our divine services. We come to be served by our Lord and healed by Him.
We come to be healed with the Absolution. We confess our sins and then hear how they are removed by Christ, with the pastor speaking the words for Christ. The sins forgiven on earth are forgiven in heaven. We come to receive healing through the Lord's Supper. Our Lord's body and blood are offered to us for the remission of sins. We come to be healed with the Word. We are restored through the Gospel of forgiveness via the read and preached Word. Our liturgy and hymns proclaim Christ's healing to us. These are all the gifts of healing the Lord gives to us here in His divine service.
We come to our Lord, then, not because it is required, not to make Him happy, not to avoid punishment, but rather we come to be blessed with healing. We come to have the wounds of our sins wrapped and the torment of our trespasses removed.
Our sins are a sickness from which we need to be healed. Our Lord helps us see our illness through the Law. Then our Savior wants to heal us in the Divine Service. We come here to be healed. In the last verse of Hosea the Lord says: NKJ Hosea 14:4 "I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely, For My anger has turned away from him." We come to hear of that love, forgiveness and healing. We are revived and restored, raised and given life, by the one who spent three days in the tomb for us, Jesus Christ. Amen.
Now may the peace of God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.