Good morning, everyone. Please do not be offended if it seemed like I was running away from some of you this morning. Yesterday after a really excellent food pantry where we were able to distribute just a ton of food and give out a bunch of gift cards and just bless the community right before this Thanksgiving holiday season, I went home after that and I had lunch with my son Sam. It was his birthday yesterday and so we went out and spent a little time together, had a great time with him. And then I went home and I started to shake. started to shiver and things just got worse and worse. So as we were just singing those last songs, I didn't realize when I was speaking with Daniela about what we should sing this week, that those songs would be so directly applicable to me. He is holding me fast this morning. He is keeping me in his grip. And I'm grateful for the fact that though I need him every hour, he is able to provide for me every hour. I went to bed last night with 103 degree temperature. I could not think straight, and I went to bed praying, and woke up with no headache, woke up with no fever, and my voice is lacking, but that's not really all that unusual for me. But we're gonna do our best to continue to preach the word of God this morning, and so if I don't give you a hug, it's because I love you, and I'm trying to keep you from getting what I have been dealing with. My whole family has gone through this pretty much. My wife is the strongest of us. It barely affected her at all. I thought I was going to skip out on it entirely because everybody else got it. And then finally, I'm the last one to receive the blessing of dependence upon the Lord. But during this Thanksgiving season, I think that we have so much to be thankful for. And even when we go through times of affliction and times of weakness and sickness and sadness, we always have much to be thankful for. And one of the things we should be most thankful for is the mighty Word of God. the Word that anchors us to the truth, the Word that saves us from heresy and keeps us thinking properly about our God, the Word that teaches us how to worship Him as we have been designed to worship Him. And so this morning we're going to rejoice in that Word as we turn to Hosea chapter 14, the last chapter of this prophetic work, the first of the minor prophets. This book has focused primarily on the lack of faith exhibited by the northern kingdom of Israel, and then the contrasting faithfulness of God himself, who must and will keep every promise that he makes to his people. And so we're gonna be looking at the first three verses of chapter 14 this morning, beginning in verse one. 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, except what is good, and we will pay with bulls the vows of our lips. Assyria shall not save us, and we will not ride upon horses, and we will say no more, our God, to the work of our hands. In you, the orphan finds mercy. Would you pray with me? Gracious Heavenly Father, you are the rock of our salvation. and you cannot be moved. You never grow tired or weary, Lord. There is no sickness that can infect you. You are constantly faithful to your people. You're unwavering in your promises. And I pray, Lord, that as we put our attention upon your word today and we remember how essential the process of repentance is, to the life of people like us who have been afflicted by sin, who are still vulnerable at times to temptation and struggle. Lord God, help us to rejoice in this pathway that you have led back to you. We know that pathway only goes along with Christ, and so we pray that you would help us to rejoice in the fact that repentance is possible because Jesus came and gave his very life as a sacrifice for sinners like us. Help us, Lord God, to have a renewed, steadfast commitment to doing what is right and good. Give us a desire for holiness, Lord, and help us to grow in your truth. We ask all this in the name of your Son, Jesus Christ. Amen. Here in the outset of chapter 14, the prophet is establishing for us a template of sorts. These first three verses are almost like a liturgy, which is sort of like a format for worship, but a liturgy that describes how one is supposed to go about the process of repenting to God. The northern kingdom, as we have seen, has by now, by far and large, turned away from the Lord God. And the Prophet is teaching them how to return to Him, how to turn back to Yahweh. Now this might be somewhat of a strange charge, given the kind of language that Hosea has been using as he warns his countrymen of the consequences that are even now upon them. As we have learned in previous chapters, their fate is essentially set. The Northern Kingdom will experience an unraveling. They will cease to be the power that they once were. Just as Gomer, Hosea's wife, who was unfaithful and cheated on him, just as she experienced a true divorce from her husband for a time, so does the Northern Kingdom forfeit the blessing of being God's covenant bride. But Hosea still speaks of a restoration of sorts. And so we are to look forward to a mighty work that God will one day do to bring near to Himself a people under the fulfilled blessings of the new covenant, the covenant that we are in now. The repentance that Hosea urges in this final chapter of his prophecy will not happen on a large scale in his own day. The prophecies of previous chapters make that certain, but this turning back is still something that God will bring about in his timing. The faith that his people do not have within themselves, God will eventually give to them as a free gift. What is Israel being called to return to? The prophet makes it very clear. They are to return to the Lord, their God. I want us to recognize, first of all, the personal nature of this charge. God has made Israel into a covenant people for himself. He has set them aside from other nations of the world so that he might accomplish his will in them and through them. Being the covenant people came with many secondary blessings. They were given a land. They became a nation of much influence. They developed an identity and a reputation in the world. But all of those secondary things were not nearly as important as the fact that they had a personal connection with God himself. Israel had forgotten that. And so it's important here that God does not call them to turn back just to the covenant or turn back to the law, but he says, return to the Lord, your God, to the personal God who cares for you and has loved you to himself. This problem of confusing secondary things with primary things is something that afflicts even the church today. There are those who see their involvement in church as the ends of their salvation. They are blessed by church. They are governed by the church. It helps them to know what is right and wrong. They find their identity in the church. Some are very passionate about the church. And there is room for that kind of passion. This is the bride of our Lord that we're talking about when we speak of God's church. But it is a very tricky error to begin to think of the church as the final end of your faith. that the whole point of salvation was to get you out of hell and to get you into the church and eventually into an eternity free from sin and struggle. Those are all true things. But each victory in Christ that I just mentioned, being glorious and being a blessing beyond measure, They're not the primary reason that God saved you. The whole point of the covenant of redemption, my friends, is not you becoming a part of the church. It is reconciliation between you and the God who made you. The personal God who is calling you to Himself. You are not near to Yahweh if you don't know Jesus. The Scripture makes that so plain to us, that there is only one way to the Lord God, and that is through the work of His Son. If you don't have Jesus, because of your iniquity and your sin, you are very alienated from that personal God. You are not His child. You have no inheritance in His kingdom. You are opposed to His rule, and in subtle or exuberant ways, you mock God by caring little for His covenant. And so, son of Adam, daughter of Eve, the greatest accomplishment of God's gift of salvation is that He causes us to return to Him, to this relationship, which really should be the most important aspect of our entire existence. Take note that repentance is recognizing that God is the judge of what is right and what is wrong. And that if we're to be near to Him, we must confess our wrongs and ask Him to forgive us so that we can be restored to right fellowship with Him. And so repentance is not a call for us to forgive ourselves. Don't we often hear this in our culture today? That the real problem people have is not being able to forgive themselves for some sin that they have committed. But what lies behind that kind of thinking? What lies behind that mindset? It is the idea that I am my greatest judge. That way of thinking is a remnant of our life before salvation, when we think that if I'm going to be truly set free from my sin, that I have to be the one who forgives myself. But in reality, I am not my own judge, because I am not the highest authority. God is my judge. There is someone whose opinion of you matters much, much more than what you think about yourself. And ironically, this is the key to getting over the grief of sin is realizing that if God has declared you clean and forgiven and holy, then that's what you are. It's not contingent about whether you feel clean about yourself. It's not whether you can forgive yourself or not. It's whether the God who created you and governs the universe has declared you righteous or not. If we put our own opinion of ourselves in a place of higher importance than God's opinion of ourselves, then we're not giving him the respect and the honor that he deserves. So if you've been struggling with the question, will I ever be able to forgive myself? Let me assure you that there is a more important question Will God ever forgive me for what I have done? And the answer to that important question is yes. Yes, if you are in Christ, then you have forgiveness of sin. For the shed blood of Jesus is mightier than any sin that you could possibly commit against God. Repentance is good and necessary, but when we repent, we seek forgiveness of God through Christ. We don't seek forgiveness of ourselves, for we are not the ultimate judge. Why have the Northern Kingdom stumbled in the first place? Why is there a need for reconciliation? Hosea puts it very bluntly. It is because of their iniquity that they have stumbled. It is the iniquity of man that does damage to this covenantal relationship, not any failure on God's part. So if there is a rift between you and the Lord, it's not because the Lord has forgotten you. It's not because he has neglected to be a good father to you. It's not because he doesn't understand you. It's because you and your stubbornness and your selfishness have turned away from the God of glory. To stumble typically indicates an interruption of faithful progress towards shared covenantal promises. And in the Northern Kingdom circumstances, they are stumbling, for they have cut themselves off from the very source of life, as we spoke of the last two sermons in Hosea, that apart from God, there is no life. The result is that they are lifeless and unable to defend themselves. They need a champion to step in and to take on the threat of sin on their behalf. And so two commands are given by the prophet Hosea here to the northern kingdom. And they are each related to one another. First, they are instructed to take with them words and then to say some very specific things. So when he says, take with you words, this command, verse two, means that they are to bring confession of repentance as an offering of worship to the Lord God. Note the command that is frequently included in Israel's instructions regarding worship. They are not to come before the Lord empty-handed. We see it in Exodus 23, verse 15. where it says, you shall keep the feast of unleavened bread. As I commanded you, you shall eat unleavened bread for seven days at the appointed time in the month of Abib, for in it you came out of Egypt. None shall appear before me empty-handed. Exodus 34, 20. All the firstborn of your sons you shall redeem, and none shall appear before me empty-handed. Deuteronomy 16, 16, three times a year, all your males shall appear before the Lord your God at the place that he will choose, at the feast of unleavened bread, at the feast of weeks, and at the feast of booths. They shall not appear before the Lord empty-handed. So God deserves an offering from us. The covenantal worship that God has established for Israel involved the bringing of offerings to God. In this situation, the sacrifice that they need to bring is not a bull. It's not a sheep. It's in fact their words. It is words indicative of a true state of their heart. Their confession that they absolutely need Yahweh to spare them from the calamity they have brought upon themselves by way of their own iniquity. So in bringing words to God, they are to give an offering of truth and compliance to the Lord. They are to confess with their mouths that the will of God is good. Jesus insisted that Peter give this kind of offering to Him. Do you remember in chapter 21 of John? After the terrible failures that Peter displayed when Christ was on His way to the cross, when He was being wrongly accused of sin, and Peter had followed along to see how things would turn out, and people recognized him and said, aren't you one of the disciples of Jesus? And three times, Peter denied even knowing Christ, refused to stand with his Savior in solidarity with Him, but denied that he even knew Him. And then after the resurrection of Christ, following his crucifixion and his suffering, Jesus began to appear to his disciples. And in one of those appearances, in John 21, we learn that Jesus met with the disciples on the shore of the Lake of Galilee. And there they were sharing a meal together. And I imagine very sheepishly, Peter sat as Jesus began to speak to him. And Jesus began to say to him, Peter, do you love me? And why did he say that? Because Peter needed to confess something to God. He needed to confess something to Jesus. Yes, Lord, you know that I love you. And so then Jesus says, then feed my sheep. Peter, do you love me again? And Peter says, Lord God, you know that I love you, then tend to my sheep. Three times he insists that Peter share this verbal affirmation of his love for God. It was not like it was some special key that unlocked forgiveness for him, but he was ministering to the heart of Peter. Peter was seeing through his confession that he truly does love the Lord, and he was seeing through Jesus' acceptance of that declaration that Jesus loves him too. Despite his failures, despite his sin of turning his back on Christ when it mattered the most, this saying out loud of the truth was part of the process of repentance for Peter. This good confession amounts to an amen to God. We agree with Him and we align our heart with His heart, which is always true and good. It is a verbal confirmation that the terms of the covenant are good terms, that God's covenants that He makes with us are faithful promises and contracts by which we are to interact with Him in a worshipful way. It's an assurance that the offending party is no longer trying to wiggle out of the covenant or to reimagine the terms of the covenant. And so the story of the prodigal son is a great example of someone with a repentant heart bringing words as an offering of contrition. You recall the circumstances of the story in Luke 15, the story of the prodigal son. where a young man has come to his father, he's unsatisfied with his station in life, he wants to be independent, he wants to be out on his own, so he comes to his father and says, Dad, I know you're not dead yet, but I can't wait for that. I want you to give me half of your property. I want to have my portion of my inheritance now. I don't want to wait. And so amazingly the father grants his son this request and his son runs off into the world and begins to systematically ruin himself because he's cut himself off from this wise father. He spends all the money that his father has given to him. He thinks the people who call themselves friends love him when in reality they're just there for his resources. And as soon as the money is gone, the friendships are gone as well. And this man finds himself desperate and lonely and afraid. Verse 17 of Luke 15, it says, Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me as one of your hired servants. You notice that he thinks about this ahead of time. He formulates what he will say to his father to show to him that he has a repentant heart. In verse 20, and he arose and he came to his father, but while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion. And he ran and embraced him and kissed him. And the son said to him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. You see, the prodigal son thought very carefully about his situation. He came confessing his sin and requesting the forgiveness and mercy of the father who has authority over him. And that should be an element of our repentance as well. When we recognize that we have fallen into iniquity, we have offended our God, that we have sinned, not just against each other, but against heaven, then we should come before him with a heart of repentance that desires to confess verbally to our God what we have done wrong. When they were ready to repent, Israel was to take words as an offering to their God. He says, say to them, and then he gives them some specific things that they're to say. He gives them the content of sincere repentance. And it's very interesting the way he frames this. Because you would think that he would call them to go to Yahweh with the request, God, please forgive me. Please bring me back into right fellowship with you. Please wash away my sin. But very interestingly, instead he instructs them to give commands to Yahweh. To give imperative commands back to their God. Considering their great sin, they were in no position to demand anything of God, and yet Yahweh has never wavered in His covenant promises. In His declaration that He would be protector and provider for these people is so sure and so resolute that God even invites these sinful people to speak as if those promises will surely come to pass, as if they are certain to get what they ask for here if they ask sincerely for repentance. for they are only telling God to do what God himself has assured them that he would do. What are they to say to the Lord? They are to say this, take away all iniquity. Again, that's an imperative command. Take away all iniquity. Iniquity is simply man's propensity to sin. It is a determination to break the laws of our God. And while forgiveness is a key aspect of repentance, forgiveness will only need to happen again and again and again if the sin that warranted the repentance isn't done away with. So they are to lead with this, God, take away my iniquity. I don't want to have to be a person who confesses sin and asks for forgiveness. I would rather be a person who's free of iniquity because you've conquered it in my life. Israel needs God to take away this sin that has done such harm to their relationship with God. Man does not have the capacity to take away all of his own iniquity. He cannot do it. Only God can. And God has said that He would. And so Hosea is instructing the people of the northern kingdom to acknowledge the power to forgive sin is in the hands of God alone. And therefore we need to appeal to Him if our iniquity is to be defeated. Secondly, they are to say, accept what is good. In other words, please God, receive the offering of our words and repentance. And why would He not? If they are finally giving the offering that God has insisted that they give, if they are finally determined to give a good offering, will He not accept it? This also means if they're going to be bringing a good gift to Him, one according to the covenant promises, that they're going to stop offering what is detestable. They will no longer offer up empty worship, vain religiosity, as we have seen Hosea point out in previous chapters. Religion that is not rooted in a true love for Yahweh as they had been charged with doing in the previous chapters. Now their religion will be full with a love of God. The ways that they approach Him will be fueled by an affection for this God of forgiveness. And thirdly, they are to say, we will pay with bulls the vows of our lips. Now this formulation in the Hebrew, this line's actually really difficult to translate, and so people have wrestled over what it means for a long time. And there's actually a possibility that some of the manuscripts have a slight error in one of the words. The word for bulls is perim, but the word for fruit is peri. So just a little bit of a difference there would make this sentence actually read, we will pay with the fruit of our lips, which might be the true meaning of what is meant here. But even if the right translation is the bulls of our lips, then the phrase would need to be read in much the same way. What is basically being said is, rather than bringing bulls for a sacrifice, the sacrifice is our confession. It is our repentance. And so this is the offering that we bring with our lips. In addition to declaring what is right and appealing to God's willingness to forgive, in verse three, Hosea tells the Israelites that they must also declare their sins and denounce the actions that jeopardized their relationship with Yahweh in the first place. And so verse three says again, Assyria shall not save us. We will not ride on horses and we will say no more, our God, to the works of our hands. In you, the orphan, finds mercy. And so three confessions concerning their iniquity are displayed here in these words. First of all, we have a confession that the Northern Kingdom was wrong to look to a treaty with Assyria, who was a godless people, a people who were mighty in military strength, but had a bankruptcy of spiritual wealth. They knew nothing of Yahweh. They didn't respect his law at all. So why would Israel have tried to make a treaty with Assyria and become friends with them? Ironically, it's Assyria that comes in and destroys them in the end. The very place that they looked to for help and for a treaty was to the nation that would eventually treat them like prey. And so they are confessing here that it was wrong for them to do that. God alone is their fortress and their shield. It was an act of faithlessness on the part of Israel to run to a godless nation looking for protection and peace. And so part of their repentance is to acknowledge that and to say yes to God's accusations against them. Secondly, the phrase, we will not ride on horses, which is likely a reference to becoming dependent on support from Egypt. Not only did they look to Assyria for help, but they looked to Egypt. Egypt was known as the supplier of all the region's horses. If you had a military and you want that military to be strong, you had to go to Egypt to get horses. Isaiah 31.1 says, woe to those who go down to Egypt for help and rely on horses, who trust in chariots because there are many. and in horsemen, because they are very strong. But do not look to the Holy One of Israel, or consult the Lord." And that's exactly what the Northern Kingdom had done. They wanted to find peace of mind, they wanted to find assurance, but rather than looking to the God who had promised them peace and protection, they looked to worldly sources for those things. They needed to confess this and come clean with their mistakes. The last confession directly addresses their idolatrous sins. We will say no more, our God, to the work of our hands. And so the Northern Kingdom's romance with Baal and with Asherah and with other foreign gods of the pagan peoples around them had caused them to break the first and the second commandments. They had put other gods before Yahweh and they had made images of those other gods and even images of Yahweh, thinking that they were doing him honor by doing so. Note again the importance of words. We will say no more, our God, to the works of our hands. Our repentance is to be to the Lord alone, not to any facsimile of a God, not to some God of our own creation, but to the one true God. They were to bring their Amen only to Yahweh. Now the cataloging of Israel's sin here is a go and sin no more kind of moment for the Northern Kingdom. You might remember in John chapter eight, when a woman was dragged before Jesus in a public place as he was teaching others, the scribes and the Pharisees brought her in saying that she had been caught in the very act of adultery. They insisted that Jesus command her to be stoned for her sexual sins. And Jesus, in a very nuanced way, confronts them and challenges them, for they are a people of sin as well. He writes something in the sand. We don't know what was written in the sand. Perhaps it was the direct sins of those men. Perhaps it was a reference to the mercies of God. We don't know what was written in the sand. But then as he finished writing, he looked up to those scribes and Pharisees, and he said, he who is without sin among you, cast the first stone. They could not meet that requirement. There was not one of them that was also worthy of God's punishment. And so one by one they dropped their stones and they walked away without a word. Now, this woman was not stoned for iniquity that day, but it was not proof of her innocence necessarily. It is proof of Christ's mercy. And Jesus, in the final words of that account, does not leave her without an important command of his own. What does he tell her to do? He says, go and sin no more. Go and sin no more. And so as Hosea has been instructing the people of the northern kingdom on how to repent and how to properly seek the Lord in reconciliation. It was so very vital that they count upon the promises of God's restoration, but that they also confess openly the things that they had done to jeopardize their relationship with God in the first place. This plain confession is very often missing from modern attempts at repentance. What we say in repentance is often vague. It often falls very much short of a true confession of sin. We say something like, Lord, you know I'm not perfect, so Lord, just forgive me. That's significantly different than naming our actual sins and confessing our need for forgiveness. When we fail to say to God what we have done, that specifically needs atoning for, then we show some things about the way we think of our sin. It shows that we haven't really taken our sin very seriously. Perhaps we haven't even taken the time to see exactly what we're doing in violation of God's law. It reveals that we may not have any intentions of turning away from that sin. By keeping it vague, then later on we don't have to feel grieved if we go back to the specific sin that we named to our God. in my reveal that we are too proud to confess our real failures, that because we don't want to be humbled before the Lord God, then we'll just keep it general. Oh yeah, I know I'm a sinner just like everybody else, no worse than them, but yeah, I need your forgiveness, Lord, so please forgive me. That's different than coming before the Lord God with a broken heart and saying, God, this is specifically what I have done to break your covenant. I know that all the world is full of sinners, but I'm a sinner too. I am a sinner too, and here's what I have done to break your law. I need your help, Lord God. When we are negligent to name our sins before the Lord, then it might reveal that we aren't even appealing to God for the power to overcome those sins. For if you're gonna have victory over those things that would keep you from God, you need God on your side. You need the blood of Christ to wash those sins away and to fortify your heart so that you don't fall back into that sin. So pray boldly and specifically that God would strengthen you against those particular sins. Name them by name. and ask that God would have victory in your life over those things. Do we confess the gospel promises that in Jesus Christ we can have full forgiveness of our sins, to remind ourselves of His gracious gift to proclaim His victory over sin? We ought to. Our repentance should be full of declarations of the victory of Jesus Christ. Now these true words, when we come to the Lord confessing our iniquity, that may be very humbling to us, but what a small thing for God to demand of us, considering the salvation is a gift far too valuable for us to ever be able to afford on our own. If God is willing to give this to us, then we should be honest with him and straightforward about where we stand. Repentance is the way of life. for those who have trusted in Jesus and who still live here on earth. I want you to think about that for a moment. There will be a time when repentance will have completed its usefulness in your life. If there is no sin in heaven, what is there to repent of? If the new heavens and the new earth is a glorified state of existence where we see Jesus face to face and we're no longer hindered by the confusion of thinking that the things of this world can ever be nearly as glorious as God himself, then why would we ever wander away from him? There will no longer be a need for us to turn back to God when this life is finished, because we will be ever connected to our Lord. And so repentance eventually will cease. But in the meantime, what an important role that it plays in the life of the believer. And I want us to carefully think about that. For there are some misconceptions about the role that repentance can and should accomplish in our lives. Before the Lord saved us, There was no true repentance in our lives. Sin is the aim of the non-believer. It is what we desire. We are comfortable in it. We make excuses for it and justify our sin to ourselves and to others. We might have turned away from sin from some small degree at times because we wanted to avoid its harmful consequences, but there was no true desire to glorify the Lord or to be holy as He is holy. So when we didn't have our Savior, sin was our aim. We were not repentant people. But when the gospel message pierces the heart, it changes one's view of what sin is. We begin to realize the weight and the ugliness of our sin. We begin to see that it is dishonored to God, the God who made us and sustains us, the God to whom we owe everything. And so one of the very first things that God gives to us upon salvation, once He has regenerated our heart, is He gives us a desire to repent. Acts 11, Peter is testifying that God sent him to the house of a Gentile. And there he preached the gospel. And he tells others that while he was doing so, God filled his Gentile audience with the Holy Spirit. And he proved to them in a supernatural way that even the Gentiles could be saved by the gospel of truth. And in Acts 11 verse 18, he says this, this is very interesting. He says, So if there is repentance in you today, it's because God has granted it to you. You have been made alive in Christ, and once you are alive in Christ, the sin that exists in you, you begin to see it for the filthy and ugly thing that it is. Where did this repentance come from? It came from God. And what did it lead to? It led to life. So there is an undeniable connection between repentance and the very beginning of a Christian's faith. Repent and believe is a command that you will hear over and over again in the New Testament, particularly in the four gospel accounts and also in the book of Acts. but the work of repentance is not finished and done with once we enter into the family of God. To the contrary, repentance is a tool that we did not possess prior to being saved, but once we are saved, repentance becomes a daily instrument that God uses in our personal sanctification. In Revelation chapter two and three, If you're familiar with Revelation, you know that that section of the book constitutes seven letters that God gave to seven specific churches at the time that John was writing. Each of these short letters addresses things that those churches are doing well, it addresses things that they are struggling with, and it gives them encouragement to stay the course and to remain faithful to the God who saved them, even in the face of persecutions that some of those churches were having to endure. Over the course of those seven letters, the instruction to repent is used no less than eight times. Repent, repent, repent. These letters were not to unbelievers. They were to churches, places where the redeemed were dwelling and were trying to live holy lives. And so when John urges these brothers and sisters in the Lord to repent, to trust the Lord, They are being sent a message that in order to stay connected to the Lord God, in order to have a healthy relationship with Him, we are to continually put our sin before the Lord and trust that God's Son is able to overcome those sins. Why is repentance continually necessary? Because upon salvation, we become citizens of the new heavens and the new earth. But we remain as pilgrims, as sojourners in a world still thoroughly impacted by sin. 1 Peter 2 verses 11 through 12 says, Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh which wage war against your soul. Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation. And so our aim used to be sin. Before God saved us, we were happy to do whatever gratified our flesh. But in Christ, we have a new aim. It is our aim to be holy now. But sadly, we don't always hit the target that we're aiming for, right? There are times when we, even as redeemed believers, are drawn away by the things of the world. We find ourselves thinking and speaking and behaving as we did before we were saved by Christ. Our Savior knew this would be the case, and so he granted to Christians a faithful means by which we can keep the encroaching effects of sin from hindering our relationship with God. Now there are actually two processes that are inseparably linked to repentance. And they represent the two sides of one and the same coin. You really can't have one without the other. One is negative more in feel and one is more positive in feel. These two processes are called mortification and vivification. Don't be intimidated by the big words there. They're just titles that have been given to basic truths of the scriptures. By becoming familiar with these two terms, I think we're going to understand a little more clearly why repentance is the ongoing blessing of God in the life of believers. So what is mortification? Mortification is the ongoing process of putting our sin to death. Think about mortician, right? What does a mortician do? Same root word here. A mortician prepares a body for burial. And so when we mortify sin, we recognize that sin is not gone and buried forever. We recognize it still persists among us, but we are preparing it to be put away. We are battling against our sin. It has been defeated on the cross when Jesus died in our place and rose again on the third day. Death and sin lost their sting. They no longer rule us like they did before, but they are not yet totally laid to rest. We will still struggle with sin in a practical sense every day as believers. And so we must be putting sin to death in our lives. Colossians 3.5 says, And so Paul, speaking to the Colossians there, is specifically naming our need to mortify the flesh, to prepare for death these sins which no longer have a place in the life of those who've been cleansed and made holy. Now, take note, this is an ongoing process. We're to be constantly putting to death the kinds of evil desires that no longer have any business in the life of a person who's saved by grace. A.W. Pink wrote, I think it's a very wise observation there. That as long as you are alive here on earth, sin will have the potential to impact you. We don't have the ability to create perfect societies where sin has no place. This world is affected by our sin. The whole creation groans because of the sin of Adam. That is why God promised to bring in new heavens and a new earth, because as long as we are in this broken place, sin is going to abound and we will have to battle against it. So mortification is a process by which we develop a proper hatred for our sin. The more I realize that I should truly be judged for what I have done in breaking the laws of God, the more dedicated I become to rejecting sin and giving it no place in my life. People who don't think of sin as a big deal are not gonna be mortifying their sin. They're not gonna take it seriously and see it as the enemy that it truly is. But the more I clearly understand that my gracious Savior had to suffer in my place To free me from this sin, the more I should rightly despise the sinful behaviors that necessitated that suffering. When I am mortifying my sin, as Colossians 3, 5 instructs me to do, that means that I'm not going to delay in dealing with it. As soon as I see sin creeping in, I'm gonna immediately do something about that. I'm gonna confess to the Lord God my iniquity. I'm gonna ask Him immediately for the strength to cut it off at the pass. So many sins begin small in our lives, and because we do not eradicate that small seed of sin right away, before you know it, that seed has grown into something very difficult to deal with. Author J.C. Ryle is one of my favorites, and he says in his book, Thoughts for Young Men, that a seed, when it is planted, produces a little sapling. And that sapling can be pushed one way or the other by a child. It can be pulled out of the ground without much difficulty at all. But when that seed has turned into a full-grown tree, you're going to have a lot of trouble getting it out of the ground. So we need to cut sin off when it is young, when we first see the evidence of sin encroaching upon our relationship with the Lord. And if we're mortifying our sin, then we will see it right away and do something about it. When I'm mortifying my sin, I don't allow myself to think casually about sin or to regard it as anything less than a threat to my spiritual well-being. It is sin that kills man. Death is the product of sin. So sin is not something to laugh at. It's not something that we should count as our entertainment value. Sin is serious. We must put it to death, friends. If I am mortifying my sin, I will be determined to put on the full armor of God every day. For I see sin as a threat, as my enemy. I see sin as dangerous. And so I want to be fully guarded against that sin. So if you want to know more about what it means to put on the full armor of God, read Ephesians chapter six and praise God for giving us defenses against these kinds of dangerous sins. Finally, I will be determined to make use of the ordinary means of grace that God has provided for me. That means coming together on the Lord's day. That means hearing the preaching of the word week in and week out. That means going to the scripture in my times of devotion. It means seeking the Lord God in prayer, both private and corporate. It means singing praises to my God so that I won't forget that He is worthy of exaltation, that I want to be near to that God. And if sin's gonna threaten me being near to that God, then sin has no place in my life. Make use of the ordinary means that God has provided to strengthen you against this great enemy. Mortification is not just hatred for sin's consequences, by the way. but also hatred for the fact that sin is an offense to God. Even the reprobate who doesn't believe in God hates the consequences of their sin, right? Somebody who's not a Christian hates that, you know, if they commit adultery that it ruins their family, they hate that. If somebody is a drug addict and they can't keep a job and their life's falling apart and they're living on the streets, they hate the consequence of the sin, but they don't really hate it because it's an offense to God, they hate it because of what it does to them. So when we're talking about the mortification of sin, our motivation is much greater. Yes, we hate sin because of what it does to us, but we hate sin even more importantly because it is an offense to a God who deserves honor and glory and praise. The process of mortification is not really my work, by the way, for it is dependent not on my own power over sin, but on Jesus' power over my sin. And so Sinclair Ferguson said, when I am tempted and feel the power of sin and it's tug at my affections, the gospel gives me something to say. Christ bled and died for this sin. I will therefore have nothing to do with it. I am now united to Christ by the indwelling of the spirit. How can I drag him into my sin? When mortification is something that we take seriously, we're gonna find ourselves repenting more frequently. For we're no longer thinking of sin as a light and harmless thing. We have come to see the suffering that it brought upon our Savior, and we begin to realize that persisting in sin hampers our closeness to God. With God as our greatest good, we want to take action right away, returning to God our Lord by way of the repentance that He has made possible in Jesus Christ. Mortification. is the negative side, but I told you there's also a positive side to this coin, these two processes which really help us in this act of repentance. The other side is vivification. J.I. Packer wrote, Sanctification has a double aspect. Its positive side is vivification. the growing and maturing of the new man. Its negative side is mortification, the weakening and killing of the old man. And so let's think now about vivification, about this positive aspect of the repentant heart. The prospect of growing in our awe and reverence to God, the result of which is a desire to live a holy life, more completely dependent upon him, that is what vivification is all about. In 1 Peter 1, we read in verses 14 through 16. As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passion of your former ignorance. But as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct. Since it is written, you shall be holy for I am holy, says God. Have you ever had somebody in your life that you just had a great, tremendous respect for? You saw the way that they lived, you watched their wisdom, and you respected them so greatly that you found yourself doing things that they were doing because you wanted to be like them. shouldn't that be all the more true of those who have come in contact with the living God? That we have such a respect and a reverence for God, that we see this vast holiness that my brother Ross so often speaks about as being, you can't conceive of the depths of the holiness of God. We are so blown away by the majesty of our God, and yet, Why would we not want to be holy like Him? Why would we not want to pursue that kind of purity and righteousness, knowing that we can never match it? But if we're gonna put anything in front of us as a model, then let us see the glory and the goodness of God as something worth imitating. The more we admire and love the holiness of God, the more eager we will be to turn away from our sin. Proverbs 16.6 says, So we see the beautiful forgiveness that Christ gives to us, and we are humbled by it, we are blown away by it, and it gives us a holy and a reverent fear for God, which causes our hearts to want to turn away from that sin that we also desire to mortify in our lives. So sin is a powerful danger, and therefore we mortify sin, but the believer is privy to an even greater power, the power of God Almighty, who can vanquish sin and death with a little word. To die to sin is only half of the equation, Christian. You have been saved so that you can live unto Christ. And as we develop a stronger sense of the ugliness of sin, as mortification causes us to want to turn away from any kind of lawlessness and rebellion, vivification is the process of developing an ever-increasing appreciation and love for the Savior who has set us free. And as we love Him more and more, we will find ourselves wanting to live in ways that better glorify Him and bring honor to His name. It should be clear to you, dear Christian, that repentance is more than just the gateway to salvation. It is a gift of God that helps us constantly draw nearer to Him, despite the fact that we live in a fallen world and struggle constantly against our flesh that is still tempted to sin and offend the God who saves. We close with the last thing that Hosea said in verse three, which is a declaration of the kindness of God, which is appropriate, because remember what the New Testament tells us, it is the kindness of the Lord that leads us to repentance, right? God has always expressed a compassion for the fatherless, and here, in the final part of verse three, he says, in you, the orphan finds mercy. Think about Deuteronomy 10, 18, where it says, He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing. Psalm 10, verses 16 through 18, the Lord is king forever and ever. The nations perish from his land. O Lord, you hear the desire of the afflicted. You will strengthen their heart. You will incline their ear to do justice to the fatherless and the oppressed, so that man who is of the earth may strike terror no more. Psalm 68, 5, So God has a heart for the one who is fatherless. But the way that Hosea uses the word orphan here is best understood in a spiritual sense. God has compassion on those who, because of their sin, are fatherless. They are alienated from God the Father. They are not connected to Him. The fact that God would be so kind as to grant repentance to a sinful people like us indicates that He has no intention of letting our sins destroy the covenant people. By redemptive work that Jesus accomplishes, we have forgiveness of sin, and by way of repentance, those who have been alienated from the Father can be brought near once again to Him. You may recall that at the beginning of the book, Hosea and Gomer had three children. And each of those children were given pretty harsh names. You might recall that. Each of those names was indicative of one of the negative prophecies that was going to be levied against the northern kingdom of Israel. But you might also have picked up throughout this book that Hosea has been systematically showing that when our hope is in Yahweh, that those curses of those three names are being reversed. And here we see the reversal of L'oruhamah. L'oruhamah means no mercy. But when those who see their iniquity have a humble heart to come before the Lord God and to confess it to Him, then loruhma becomes ruhama, becomes mercy. God is eager to forgive us, friends. He wants to give you the power to overcome your sins. Stop trying to battle these things apart from His help. make full use of this wonderful gift that He has given to the saints that we might come to Him regularly thanking Him for His holiness and His purity and asking Him to make us holy and pure by defeating our sin and helping us to mortify the desires of the flesh. Father, we thank you for this morning. We pray that you would bless our hearts as we consider the great kindness that has been shown to us. We were once orphans, lost at the fall, and yet you have overcome that disconnection. You have, by the blood of your one begotten Son, Jesus Christ, redeemed holy people unto yourself. And so I pray, Lord God, that we would not take that position that we now have with you lightly, Lord. Help us to understand the mighty power that we have over sin. If we do not allow it to dwell in our lives, if we come and bring those sins to the throne of grace, you can overcome and defeat. And so, Father, continue to have great victory in us. Humble our hearts, Lord, and help us to recognize that hiding our sin is not victory over it. Father, our victory over sin is bringing that sin to the light so that you might vanquish it and put it to rest. We love you, Lord God, and thank you for your victory. All our hope is in Christ Jesus, and we pray this in his perfect name.