Hindrances of True Repentance: Hosea 6:11-7:16

Well, our sermon scripture reading continues in our series in Hosea this morning.

Hosea chapter six, verse eleven, and uh into chapter seven through verse sixteen.

You can find that on page seven oh six in your cheer Bible there, or follow along in your bulletin.

Here now the reading of God's holy word.

When I restore the fortunes of my people, when I would heal Israel, the iniquity of Ephraim is revealed, and the deeds, evil deeds of Samaria.

For they deal falsely.

The thief breaks in, and the bandits raid outside.

But they do not consider that I remember all their evil.

Now their deeds surround them, they are before my face.

By their evil they make the king glad, and the princes by their treachery.

They are all adulterers, they are like a heated oven, whose baker ceases to stir the fire from the kneading of the dough until it is leavened.

On the day of our king the princes became sick with the heat of wine.

He stretched out his hand with mockers, for with hearts like an oven they approach their intrigue.

All night their anger smolders.

In the morning it blazes like a flaming fire.

All of them are as hot as an oven, and they devour their rulers.

All their kings have fallen, and none of them calls upon me.

Ephraim mixes himself with the peoples.

Ephraim is a cake not turned.

Strangers devour his strength, and he knows it not.

Grey hair is sprinkled upon him, and he knows it not.

The pride of Israel testifies to his face.

Yet they do not return to the Lord their God, nor seek him for all of us.

Ephraim is a du like a dove, silly and without sense, calling to Egypt, going to Assyria.

As they go I will spread over them my net.

I will bring them down like birds of the heavens.

I will discipline them according to the report made to their congregation.

Woe to them for they have strayed from me.

Destruction to them for they have rebelled against me.

I would redeem them, but they speak lies against me.

They do not cry to me from the heart, but they wail upon their beds, for grain and wine they gash themselves.

They rebel against me.

Although I trained and strengthened their arms, yet they devise evil against me.

They return but not upward.

They are like a treacherous bow.

Their princes shall fall by the sword.

Because of the insolence of their tongue, this shall be their derision in the land of Egypt.

Let us pray.

And Lord, we give you thanks for the gift of your spirit.

For we do ask now that as we seek to understand your truth, we ask and pray that you would give us soft hearts to receive all that you would give to us.

And Lord, that you would help us to trust you and all that you have to say.

We ask and we pray these things in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Well, one of the great tragedies I witnessed growing up in a climate like Australia, where I came from, is the impact of wildfires.

And uh, and you as you know, we're not immune to wildfires here in the U.S.

as well.

But these wildfires, as I would watch, um, these things unfold, would spread with such fervency and and and and and they would wipe out hundreds and thousands of hectares of life.

And and one can only look upon a scene like that in amazement as you're watching the news and you're watching um the fires spread and and and and the attempts that are made by firefighters to try to save um property and lives and and and just to see how much damage is caused by just such a little spark.

What begins with the ignition of uh a lightning strike or a careless match or a campfire can go on to light the tinder around it and then, aided by wind and dry fuel, becomes an inferno, destroying everything in its path.

And that is the scene in which we encounter here with Israel.

This is a scene at brushfire levels.

This is sin and corruption in the nation of Israel spreading at brushfire levels.

And it's been spreading all over the land, and it has spread to the leadership, it has spread to the common Israelite, it has spread and shown itself in diplomacy, and it's infiltrated prayers.

And so the cry has gone out in the midst of this at this point.

Come and let us return to the Lord.

He has torn us apart, but he will heal us.

He has injured us, but he will bind up our wounds.

And there may have been some serious urgency behind that cry, but what we see is that although it sounds good, although in some ways they use the right vocabulary, it isn't genuine.

Uh, their love, God says, is like a morning dew that comes for a brief time and then passes away.

Uh Jim Boyce uh tells the story of a convict that was released from a Kansas prison after serving seven years for fraud.

And upon his release, he immediately acquired uh someone else's credit cards.

And he went on a spending spree that took him across the state into first-class hotels and gourmet restaurants and private planes, and he was caught after all this and brought to trial.

In court, the man confessed what he had done, but he asked the judge to pardon him on the ground that he had now learned his lesson.

It was wrong, he said.

I know that now, and I'll never do anything like that again.

The judge was unimpressed.

He said, I have learned that courtroom confessions last only until the criminal gets to the door.

And then he committed the man to prison again.

You see, that's something of a similar picture that we see going on here.

It was as genuine as this convex, this turning, this cry.

And so God says, when I would heal Israel, the iniquity of Ephraim is revealed.

In other words, you say that you have turned, but there is still a twistedness and a distortion that's destroying everything.

And it's and it's the case where it's now the evidence is all in my face.

There are hot-headed princes and assassination plots.

There is a loss of identity and half-heartedness as my people.

And strength is being sapped, reinforcing the need for fertility and production to pay the bills.

And so you see, they resort back then to the Baals, these fertility gods.

And they start to offer up prayers that lead to self-harm and spreading of lies about God.

And so God says, All of this is in my face.

You say that you've turned, but all of this is still here.

And so when what what Israel is unwilling to address and unable to see is that their sin at the root is a running and turning away from love.

God's love.

That's what's at the heart of the matter.

And some of us uh, I think are prone to think that love is where we end up after repentance, which is true, but the truth is that love is where repentance begins and ends.

We see that here.

We see God having shown his commitment to them.

He continues to show his continued, persistent, steadfast love toward Israel in spite of her rebellion, precisely because he prep appeals to his people.

That's what he's doing here.

At any point, you know, God could just throw up his hand and say, I'm done, I've had enough, and remove himself entirely, but he doesn't do that.

Because love can't keep him apathetic to the disease of sin that is going on in the lives of his people.

And so, although Israel is responding to his advances, although Israel is not showing a real willingness to return, God doesn't stop pursuing her.

He continues to speak truth, he continues to engage, he continues to pursue her.

And and yes, it involves discipline, but but all of that does serve to call her back to his heart.

If you think about someone that you love who is unresponsive to your appeals, if they are not seeking to turn from fault.

It's love that continues to be present in that person's life without giving over and and compromising on the truth.

And so God is not heaping on here.

We we see judgment after judgment.

That is not heaping on the truth.

That is not heaping on.

That is that is revealing and showing what's already going on.

He's pointing out what is obvious to him, but what is unable to be seen by his people.

And so it's love because unless we see our sin, unless we see uh and are clear of what we need to repent of, unless we see what is getting in the way of our intimacy with God, we cannot turn from it.

Seeing clearly is the beginning of any real, genuine repentance.

One Puritan uh said it like this.

He said, the eye is made for seeing and weeping.

Sin must first be seen before it can be wept for.

And so there's a U-turn involved in repentance.

Uh, if it's not clear to me that I'm driving up a one-way street, going against the traffic, that I'm not going to turn and do that U-turn that is necessary in order to go back and follow the right way.

And so I need to see.

Sinclair Ferguson writing about this is this new attitude to sin will be as concrete as the sin to which the new attitude is directed.

It is a walking back along the former path of disobedience.

The repentance to which the rich young ruler was summoned was to develop self-denial in the very area that had been marked with self-indulgence, selling everything he possessed and giving his money to the poor, and then following Jesus.

In the case of Zacchaeus, repentance meant returning what had been taken unjustly.

Likewise, you remember the prodigal son.

He left home saying, Give me to his father.

But after going off in the far country and coming to his senses, he returned saying something different.

He said, He returned saying, Not give me, but make me.

See, the turt, the U-turn here was realizing I've prized my father's possessions, and with that log in my eye, I failed to see the greatest prize as being in my the presence of his abiding love.

Give me was the attitude that took him away from home.

Make me was the attitude that took him back home.

This U-turn is always directed toward God and involves the heart.

And you see, for a long time that was foreign to even my own journey in the Christian life.

I knew I needed to change as a Christian, but I didn't really know how to deal with the flesh.

What I failed to understand was that up until that time, I was attempting to deal with sin in what I would call fire pit form.

Not a spark, but a fire pit.

And what I mean by that is that my understanding of the battle against sin was not at the level of desire and attitudes, but at the level of an already roaring fire.

Theologians use the two terms here: indwelling sin and open sin.

And so up until that time, my repentances were for sins that had already escaped, as it were, and were open and out in the open, and I saw them and I saw that there was a problem with them, and I would seek to repent of those sins, those ones that were witnessed openly.

But I did not repent for fleshly desires and attitudes in my heart.

And obviously, God was calling me to something deeper.

But you see, in order to repent of desires of the flesh in our hearts, what was needed was a deeper love in my inward heart.

I needed the Spirit to bring the love of Christ to dwell within me if I was going to be able to deal with the sins of the flesh.

Otherwise, a person just can't bring themselves to admit fault.

It's just too threatening.

We can't do it.

And that's true of all of us.

That's why the presence and work of the Holy Spirit is vital in our hearts.

And so it's essential to remember that true repentance is a saving grace.

It's not a condemning sentence.

There's all the difference in the world between those two realities.

True repentance is unto life, it's tied to love.

It's God showing favor toward us and showing us our sin.

It's God showing his love for us and strengthening us by his love and kindness in Christ.

So that we then turn from it and we walk in new obedience with a new outlook on life.

And so repentance is not for immature Christians and something that more mature Christians get a pass from.

In fact, the opposite is actually true.

The more time that you and I spend with Christ, the more you abide in his love, the more you see things that need to be repented of.

Because you begin to see how you are indeed running away from love.

You're running away from intimacy, you're running away from his advances and pursuit of you.

And yet even then we remember that repentance is unto life.

There is refreshment that comes from being in the presence of the Lord.

And so I want us to focus for the remaining moments this morning and focus our attention on these signs that are given to us in this passage that are given as examples to us to show us our hearts and to show us where we need to repent so that we come to Christ.

There are some rich images that show us the heart's corruptions and signal our need to repentance.

The first is a sign, or the first sign is a heart like a heated oven.

A heart like a heated oven.

Israel had corruption in the palace.

During this time, Israel experienced assassination after assassination.

And so it's out of the six men that were ruling in that period of the 30 years, four were assassins and only one died in his own bed.

The corrupt heart is like a heated oven.

It's not the kind of oven that we tend to think of these days where you can, you know, set the button to 350 or 400 and it just cooks evenly and everything's good.

This is a different kind of oven.

This is an oven that's smoldering one moment, simmering lowly, but then it's set ablaze the next.

It was the strong desire of King Saul, you might remember, that at one moment he was listening to David on the soothing song of the harp strings, but then only a few moments later was hoisting a spear in his direction to kill him.

You remember this, the strong lust of David, where he was out a time of ease, and he was out on his palace, and he overlooked Bathsheba, the next moment coveting the wife of Uriah.

This is a sign of the heated oven.

And passion like this is often blinding.

We can't see clearly.

You remember that Nathan, the prophet, came to David and spoke to him in parable form, and we might say, well, why did he do that?

Well, no doubt he did that because he knew David's heart was hard.

And so he determined that it was easier for David to see someone else's sin than it was to be able to see his own and to admit fault.

And it's true, I you know, I've found as a pastor that we can be experts in studying sports, we can be experts in in the news and politics, we can be experts in any other field, we can be experts even in examining and pointing out other people's sin.

But when it comes to our own hearts, we can be infants in our learning.

And so, along with this blinding, the heart that is like an oven lacks constancy.

It creates instability.

You may have heard of Jekyll and Hyde behavior.

It's the attempt to describe the intense and dramatic mood swings of people.

Right?

I mean, those those people who are around them are always preparing themselves for who am I going to be around today?

Is it going to be Jekyll or is it going to be Hyde?

People don't know what they're likely to get from one day to the next, or even one moment to the next.

The heart, like a heated oven, avoids moderation and self-restraint.

And so we're not to give ourselves over to impulsive and capricious behavior, suddenly changing with every mood, unpredictable to those around us.

We're reminded that God is a God who is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.

And so I'd ask you this morning, is this a pattern in your own heart?

Do you do you see something of a pattern of an oven in your own heart?

Do you allow fleshly passions to simmer and then to be set alight?

Bursts of anger, heated attacks, demeaning words.

The heated oven is God's sign for the need to call upon him and to return to the loving heart of Christ.

The second sign is a heart like an unbaked cake.

Israel was living under an alternate reality.

Ephraim at this time had lost his sense of identity.

He was mixed in with the peoples, and so his strength was being sapped by strangers.

He didn't have a real clear sense of his identity as God's people.

And the signs of aging were clear as day, but he couldn't see it.

One commentator writes How better describe a half hearted people, or sorry, a half fed people, a half cultured society, a half lived religion, a half hearted policy, than by a half baked scum.

There is a weakness that had developed, a real lack of a sense of identity and who they were as God's people.

We might think of Samson, who was drawn to the beauty of Delilah.

And at one point, you know, Delilah calls out, Samson, the Philistines are upon you.

And he awakes from his sleep and he tries to shake off the things that were restraining him, like he did it at other times.

But we read that he did not know that the Lord had left him.

The strength that the Spirit provided had withdrawn and left him with little strength to fight.

We know something of this weakening that takes place.

Likewise, Martha felt weakened by anxiety and many troubles, you might remember, with Jesus.

Here she was, fragmented.

Many things were pressing upon her, many troubles were uh were flooding her mind and her heart.

And and yet Jesus speaks into this fragmented soul and he says, Martha, I want you to think not in terms of troubles, but in terms of necessities.

One thing is necessary.

And pointed to her need of him and her devotion toward him.

An unbaked cake is a sign of half-heartedness.

A war that is fought on too many fronts weakens resources and is difficult to defend.

Sin has a way of weakening our hearts, it divides our loyalties.

And so we find ourselves fragmented.

And so David wrote of this in his own soul.

He says, When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day.

For day and night your hand was heavy upon me.

My strength was dried up as by the heat of summer.

So here's the Lord, a heavy hand on him, and that heavy hand led to his strength being diminished.

It's like the sapping of strength that one feels on a hot summer's day.

We know what that's like, right?

We get that in Virginia.

In the summer, when the heat and the air and the humidity, the constant exposure to the heat, and maybe you're out in the garden and you're having to work and you can't get away out of the sun, and it just starts to sap you of your strength.

A lethargy develops, and we experience the inability to function with any real strength.

And that's how David describes this weakening that comes in his soul as he kept silent and allowed unconfessed sin to build up in his heart.

Do you know something of this lack of strength?

Have you been keeping quiet in regard to your sin?

Are you trying to fight the war on too many fronts?

Is your life fragmented?

Is your heart fragmented?

Are you allowing unconfessed sin to build up in your heart?

That's the sign of an unbaked cake.

One writer speaks to the way our half-baked theology distorts our need for ongoing cleansing so that we find freedom.

He says we make our security in Christ a pretext for non-repentance.

We are assured of our salvation, yet somehow we are no longer convicted of sin.

We are like the small boy who was, when sent from the table to wash his hands, returned with a big smile and the astonishing remark, Well, they had such a wash this time, they'll never need to be washed again.

Eternal security in Christ is a great and grand truth.

We are by faith sons of God and the citizens of heaven, but we are still sinners and always shall be this side of heaven.

We still need to wash at the fountain opened for sin and uncleanness.

Grace will never lead us into sin, but it will ever convict us of it.

And sin thus revealed will always lead us back to grace.

You see, grace doesn't wash blindly over sin, it doesn't steamroll over it.

It shows us areas in our hearts that need to be dealt with, that need to be sprinkled clean.

And then it leads us back to grace.

God would have us turn to Him for an upright heart.

The third sign is the sign where a heart like a dove.

Israel doesn't like the decline that's taking place in this season of its history and under the Lord's discipline.

And so we see back in chapter two, you might remember in reading chapter two of a Hosea, God said through his prophet that this would actually take place.

He said, I will take back my grain in its time, and my wine in its season, and I will take back my wool and my flax.

I will put an end to all of her mirth, her feasts, her new moons, her sabbaths, and all her appointed feasts.

I will lay waste her vines and her fig trees, of which she said, These are my wages, which my lovers have given to me.

And so this is taking place, and and she doesn't like it.

And so she turns to God, but she doesn't turn in true repentance.

And verse 14 gives us something of a clue as to why.

They do not cry to me from the heart, but they wail upon their beds.

And so you see, the big revealer as to the genuineness of this people calling for repentance stems from where their cry arises.

They don't cry from the heart.

They experience remorse, yes, but that's not the same as true repentance.

Charles Spurgeon said it, well, you see, that if I hate sin because of the punishment, I have not repented of sin.

I merely regret that God is just.

In other words, I don't like being caught.

It's the sting of being caught.

It's the sting of having to deal with what's been thrown at me.

And we can be good at finding ways of avoiding that humble place where we need to admit that we've been on the run from love.

The sign of the dove is the cry that goes out because of how our circumstances are impacting us.

And when God chooses to put a heavy hand upon us and withdraw some of the blessings He has given to us, there are times in which that weight is felt by us, and we want to get out from underneath that.

And so we look for opportunities to make life better.

It's a heart that's more concerned to ask God to solve our problems rather than using our problems to seek God and rest in His love.

You see, because it's still self-seeking and looking to control things rather than willing to yield and trust in the deep work of the Holy Spirit and the work of the heart.

I mean, I wonder how many prayers that have gone up that have sought to avoid this deeper work.

We can find many strategies to try to avoid this deeper work within us.

We can even direct it toward ourselves and heap on ourselves.

We heap on self-contempt thinking to ourselves, and that was a uh that was an attitude or a strategy of the balls.

Self-inflicted harm.

And God says, that's not for you.

But we can do that.

We can help, we can heap on self-contempt, thinking to ourselves, well, if I can, if I only impose enough grief on myself, then God might see how sincere I am and and and favor me.

Have pity upon me.

And so we resolve and we make promises to God to do better next time in the hope that he might be moved to help us.

But we find ourselves in all of this unchanged.

And and you see, it only takes a few times for that to happen again and again to feel like you're just being a hypocrite and you're crying out to God, you know, employing the same strategies.

And then it continues to heap on and heap on, and we can we can do a great harm to ourselves.

We can do all of that and not return upwards.

Both strategies lie to us.

They pull us down, but they cannot lift us up.

You see, what is needed is the work of the Holy Spirit to work within our hearts to bring to us the love of Christ.

And so in the midst of these signs, the signs of corruption, the oven, the cake, and the dove, Jesus gives us another way that does return us upward.

He gives you and I another sign.

And he brings that sign to be within our hearts to free us.

And it's a sign of the cross.

It's a sign that speaks of his willingness to take upon himself all of our evil, all of our hearts' corruptions, so that you and I might receive mercy.

It speaks of a love powerful enough to receive you and to keep you, and it speaks of a heart of goodness and gentleness that is willing to speak into your wounds with patience and peace, joy and kindness.

Given for you, given to abide in you, so that he might be with you always and forever.

You see, only a heart like this, only a heart like Jesus can truly restore and make one's heart whole.

Only a heart like Jesus can produce in us these pleasing fruits of love.

Only a heart like Jesus can redeem and bring penitent sinners refreshment and life.

He has life words for each one of us by his spirit.

And see where he bids us to come and to be renewed in his love, to be warned by his grace and mercy, and to receive his words that he would give to us, speaking tenderly and kindly to us.

Oh, may we once again return and rest satisfied this morning in the beauty of his all-sufficient love.

Amen.

Let us pray.

Our gracious Father, we praise you and thank you for your love.

Lord, we thank you for the way that you have been so kind to us.

Lord, we thank you that you know our frail frame.

You know our sicknesses individual sicknesses that dwell within our hearts.

And yet, Lord, we praise you and thank you for the love of Christ that you give to us.

That you pour out afresh in our hearts as we return to you and as we seek you and dwell with you.

Oh Lord, we pray and ask that you would be pleased to continue to show us show us what's getting in the way of our intimacy with you.

We pray that you would continue to enable us to rest in your all sufficient love.

Father, we praise you and thank you for the love of Christ.

And by the work of your spirit, we give you thanks and all these things.

Amen.