Hosea 14:1-3

Tonight I invite you to turn with me to the last chapter of Osaya, chapter 14. I want to read the first three verses of this chapter for our text and study this evening. Osage chapter 14 reading verses 1 to 3. Oh, Israel return unto the Lord by God, for thou hast fallen. by thine iniquity. Take with you words and turn to the Lord, say unto him, take away all iniquity, and receive us graciously. So will we render the caz of our lips. Assure shall not save us. We will not ride a price. upon horses, neither will we say any more to the work of our hands. Ye are our gods, or in thee the fatherless, findeth mercy. God blessed to us. It is sacred and holy word. This evening may it be a blessing to us. Maybe you’ve heard the story by Barney, who was always proud of his thick, wavy black hair. But as time went on, his hair began to fall out. And last he had one lock left of hair in the front. And then, awakening one morning, he looked at his pillow, and there was his lock laying there on the pillow, jumping up from the bed. He ran downstairs and said, Martha, Martha, Martha. I’m bald. story because it reminds me of Christians that begin dabbling in the things of the world. And they progressively wonder further and further from the Lord deeper and deeper into sin. And for a period of time, they do not seem to realize the seriousness of what is happening to them. It’s not until they have some startling experience. some severe chastening, they wake up, see their true condition. It’s easy for you to slowly and gradually be led downward into sin. Eventually, you find yourself miserable and plagued with guilt. You realize that you find yourself miserable and plagued with guilt. your spiritual life has grown cold and that the blessings you once enjoyed were taken for granted. It’s time to repent. How do you go about repent? Where do you start? What is the way back to God? Our text here provides an interesting statement here about the steps. of repentance. The text provides for us a study of Israel who has fallen away from God. God is promised. He’s going to bring a severe judgment upon them and send him into captivity. But you also find in God’s word a comfort for those who go into future exile. The remnant. who have come to realize that they need to return to the Lord. And so he gives directions here in our text. God calls you to return to him, verse one. This is an instructive call. As a sinner, you are told to, you were told to, you told exactly what you ought to to do here. Return to the Lord. Return. Reverse your course. Of course, you have taken the opposite way than what you ought to have taken, and therefore, you need to have taken. And therefore, you need to go back. Sort of like Elijah going into the wilderness and God’s saying to him at the cave, what doest thou here? You know, he has to send him back. You’ve gone. from God, come back to God. You have been prayerless, begin to pray. You have closed your eyes to God’s word, begin to read it. Bring forth fruits meet for repentance. God says, reverse your engines. Return is a single word, but it speaks about total change. And you must return. unto the Lord. You not only look to God, but to return to God. Like the prodigal son, you must arise and go to your father. You don’t simply talk about it, think about it, but you do it. Do not return part of the way, but do not rest until you feel that you are once again in his fellowship in favor. It’s a tender call. Oh, Israel, return. That’s just a lot of love and tenderness in that word, oh, there you are in your desperate situation. You must look again once again to God for help. How will he respond? What will you say to you? God is willing to receive repentant sinners. He wants his people to return to him. There’s loving entreaty in those words. It’s not a chilling command and sharper command. Israel get back here. He’s a warm and tender entreaty from loving lips. So Israel returned. These are wooing words. Words of reconciliation. Isaiah 557 says, let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts let it return unto the Lord and he will have mercy upon him to our God for he will abundantly pardon. Tenderness of God calls you act and calls you return to him something that ought to really melt your heart. Notice it’s a divine. Notice it’s a divine call. It’s God it’s called. You know, the first mention of reconciliation is never done by the center. It’s always God who takes the initiative. He would never pursue God on your own. Like a lost sheep, you’re too busy straying and wondering about, think about returning. But the Lord himself, who watches over you as a wandering sheep, sees you fallen and hurt. calls out return to me. But we’re merely a minister speaking to you. You might be able to refuse, but this is God himself. And your maker never calls in vain. As God said, my sheep, hear my voice. Do you? call that moment in the garden of Eden when Adam had sinned and hid himself in the trees. And God calls out to him, Adam, where art thou? God is not playing hide and seek here. What he’s doing is he is getting Adam to think, where are you Adam? Where do you stand? And God calls that they might returned to him. The call Adam couldn’t ignore. He had to come and face his creator. It’s a gracious call. Lie God, says here. Why God may disown the nation, his elect among the people of Israel will never be cast aside. God says to you as a backslidden Christian, I’m still your God. You’ve entered into a covenant relationship with me. Now return to me. Your mind. God doesn’t say return like an escaped prisoner or your jailer. Return to the whip and the stocks. Return unto your God. The prodigal found that even after all his wandering, his father still treats him as his son and embraces him. God will not cast off his people. he chastens every son when he receives. But he never disowns one. Nothing is able to separate you from the love of your heavenly father. God would be completely just if he had cast us off. So God called you to return to him. Secondly, you notice here that God, you acknowledge the harm done by your sin in verse 1, the second part. You have fallen. There’s a O’Henry’s story that’s called the way back home. He was an American writer. In one of his short stories, it portrays the force of memory. He told him a man who, as a lad, in a country school, sat beside a sweet, innocent young girl. As he grew older, though, he fell into company that was bad and became a thief. One day while congratulating himself on his recent picking someone’s pocket, saw this girl coming down the street. And that former classmate was still as beautiful and pure looking as ever. Overwhelmed at how low, you know, he had fallen in his sinfulness, he ducked into a side street, leaned his head against a post of the ampose and cried. And in that moment of agony, he cried to God, oh, how I hate myself. The memory had shown him how loathom he had become. God wants you to remember also to hear the words of Christ to his church at Ephesus. Remember, therefore, from where thou hast fallen, and repent. remember from where you have fallen. God calls for you to think back for a moment on the pleasures and delights of the Christian life he used to enjoy. Remember, he says, what it was once like, the closeness you had had with God, the peace of mind, the contentment, that was yours. Reflect on those happy days and turn back to him. But what has the world given you, really? You find true satisfaction and all that you’ve engaged in? No, like Israel of Old, he found that the price you paid to pursue a sinful course in this life wasn’t worth it. So we find here you have fallen. You have fallen. Then he says, you’re full of iniquity. That word, iniquity is an ugly word, isn’t it? Yet true repentance begins with an acknowledgement that sin is sin and that it’s ugly and black in God’s sight. Jay Graham Miller served as a missionary to the New Hebrides some years ago, which is near New Zealand. He said it was the custom of the New Hebrides. If you did something trifling, they would call it in Pigeon English mistake mistake. If you did something more serious, you would still call it one small mistake. If you did something that was dastardly and you were found out you would shrug it off by saying oh me fella me make one small mistake no more illustrates the tendency of the human heart but it’s not true repentance there was a man that rewrote the story of the three little pigs from the wolf’s point of view it was a a children’s book numerously done. His book was called The True Story of the Three Little Pace. Quickly went through various printings and became a bestseller. In the story, the wolf claims his intent was not having port for dinner, but he was wanted to borrow a cup of sugar or his grandmother’s birthday. birthday cake. And he wasn’t really huffing and puffing. He just happened to sneeze. And that caused the straw house to fall down and collapse. As you go through this, you begin to see how he mitigated all the activities that he was engaged in. And you see that the children who know the story well find it humorous that he would come up with such a storyline. It was a complete farce. The sad thing is a lot of people mitigate their guilt and their sin. They don’t see it in its ugliness. Iniquity. They want to rewipe what happened into a favorable light. When you are truly repentant, the smallest sin becomes an offense. It’s a mountainous. in the sight of God. You see all the ugliness and dreadfulness of the sin. Remember the Bible says that Christ was bruised for our iniquity. We might be forgiven of it. And so we should call these iniquities, not mistakes, but the ugly word that they are. They are great sins. in God’s sight. I call for repentance. You acknowledge the harm done by your sin. Thirdly, you turn from specific sins in your life, as verse three indicates. Here’s Israel’s example. There are three specific sins that are listed here. Reliance on foreign, excuse me, reliance on foreign alliances. reliance on military power and reliance on false gods. Assure here is a slang word for Assyria. Israel, when in trouble, turned to Assyria for help. 513 was an example of that instead of trusting in the Lord. This is the popular modern trust in political leaders instead of God himself. Next, Israel must give up all carnal confidence and military strength. We read about horses. Now, Israel was forbidden to multiply horses. Egypt might glory in horses and chariots, but though Israel was supposed to glory in the Lord himself. And thus you find the pious Ezekiah obeying this law so carefully that Rabsaqa, who was the Assyrian officer under King Snackerib, said to him, I’ll give you two thousand horses if you’re able to put riders on them. And I’ll still defeat you. Psalm 27 says this. Some trust in horses and some in chariots but we will remember the name of the Lord our God. That’s where our confidence is supposed to be. Israel must also turn from our false gods. If you declare, if you desire to come to the true God, you have to put away all foreign gods that have been where you’ve been seeking all this time and give the glory to God alone. Israel’s example. Turning from specific sins is what we see mentioned here. Two things regarding repentance are easy I think to see here. Repentance of someone else’s sin. That’s always always. easy. Repentance of sin generally is also something we often do. But the repentant specific sin, it’s so difficult that it actually impossible apart from the grace of God find that repentance, which took place at Nineveh according to the book of Jonah, the capital of the Syria, under his preaching. Nineveh was known for its violence in dealing with those who were their enemies and they conquered them. But revival came. And we find that when Jonah preached they repented. And it was true revival because it exactly corresponded the sins which they repented of. They had to repent of their violence and their treatment of others. Now, you ought to do the same thing. It’s specific sin. Whether it be covetousness, whether it be greed, whether it be lust, but we have to repent of these things. Turn from, throw away those things that would bring us to fall into sin. The one thing you must not do is pretend that your specific sin is not sin. So we talk about immorality or pride or anger or gluttony or dishonoring of your parents or whatever. Or think that you can retain it and nevertheless serve God must turn from specific sins in your life. Fourthly, you must appeal to God of the God of grace. Verse 2, that’s part of verse 3. You seek the Lord in prayer. Take with you words and turn to the Lord. Well, that’s simple enough, isn’t it? God doesn’t ask for you to do some great and awesome deed. Simply bow the knee. Speak to him. You don’t come with your righteous efforts to make up for your sinful deeds. You come with humble words and plead for mercy. You confess your sins. Say unto him, take away all iniquity. God says, Dear, I’ll tell you what to say when you come in repentance. Say unto him, take away all iniquity. He teaches you how to pray you as a of repentance. What a gracious God he is in this. By the very fact that God tells you what to say, you have assurance that he’s going to hear you because he always hears prayer according to his will. You are to ask God to take away all iniquity. Not just some of it, but all of it. You don’t look on one sin and say, well, spare that one, God. Take it all away. If you have been given over to drink, you ask God to take it all away. Passion or pride or greed, God, take it all away. This is how we respond. Repentance means you do not wish to spare. anything. Though it cost you, a right eye, maybe something that’s you delight in, or a right hand, something that gains you money. We don’t shrink back. We say, take it all away. You plead for God to forgive you. Receive us graciously. You know you’re not worthy to be received, but you ask to be received. Graciously. by the Lord. Come solely on the basis of God’s grace. There’s nothing which is perhaps harder to do than that. They just cast yourself upon the grace of the Lord. He must receive you graciously, or else he has to reject you righteousness. What a relief to find God welcoming you in mercy here. You promise praise and thanksgiving. We render the cast. of our lips. Now that’s a strange statement. What are the calves of your lips? Well, they are the sacrifices of praise and thanksgiving. Caves are brought to you from the stall as sacrifices. They are struck down and they die at the altar. God’s not asking you to bring bollocks here with horns and horns and holds and takes no pleasure in the blood of calves or of goats. He desires a broken heart, true faith, a humble love. These things live at the altar. And you are to bring your best lots, your best expressions, your best testimony, and the heartiest praise to God. Not the calves of your stall. The calves of your lips is what God wants. But your gratitude be a living sacrifice unto the Lord. As David said, Deliver me from blood guiltiness, O God. Thou God of my salvation. And my tongue shall sing aloud of thy righteousness. And then you hold up before God his promise, verse 3. God is the father of the fatherless. God is saying that he cares for those who are in a helpless state. And as sinners, we’re in a helpless state. Unless you were to encourage you to come to him, and even in the most fordial and condition, he promises to help those in need. so that you come and you cast all your care upon him, for he cares for you. So God lays before you here the steps of repentance. When you have awakened to your desperate condition, God shows you what he expects of you. God calls you. God always takes the initiative. and it’s a tender, loving call. He says, I’m still your God. O Israel return. Thank God blessed to us. His word this evening. Let’s close with the word prayer. Heavenly Father, we bow before you. We confess our sinfulness in all areas of life. Please be gracious to us and help us. Be kind to us. reach out to us and bless us. Remember us, Father, and take us back tenderly. And may we return willingly to you. In the name of Christ, we ask these things with Thanksgiving. Amen. Let’s stand for the benediction. Grace be with all them to love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity. Amen.