Let me read from Hosea 6-4-7-16 tonight as we come to the word. What shall I do with you, O Ephraim? What shall I do with you, O Judah? Your love is like a morning cloud, like the dew that goes early away. Therefore, I have hewn them by the prophets, I have slain them by the words of my mouth, and my judgment goes forth as the light. For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings. But, like Adam, they have transgressed the covenant. There they dealt faithlessly with me. Gilead is a city of evildoers, tracked with blood. As robbers lie in wait for a man, so the priests band together. They murder on the way to Shechem. They commit villainy. In the house of Israel, I have seen a horrible thing. Ephraim's whoredom is there. Israel is defiled. For you also, O Judah, a harvest is appointed. When I restore the fortunes of my people, when I would heal Israel, the iniquity of Ephraim is revealed and the 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 become 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 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. Gray hairs are 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 this. Ephraim is 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 their 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. This is the word of the Lord. Pray with me, please. Father, again, we do thank you for this time to worship you tonight, to come before your presence, to sing of how great you are. and to hear your word, Lord. And we pray tonight that you would give us humble hearts once again, that we would receive your word with gladness, that we would receive what you're teaching us with joy, even if it might be a hard thing for us to hear, Father. Would we look to your son and we thank you, Father, for what you're doing in our lives. Thank you for this word. I pray that you would use it to change us and to transform our lives tonight. We pray these things in Jesus' name, amen. I think one of the most tragic people or people groups in our society today are American celebrities. not just any old American celebrity, but the ones that are constantly in prison or constantly running up against the law. It seems like over the last few years that we've had a spate of just several, and unfortunately it's young women, who have transgressed the law again and again and again, and they have this celebrity status that just puts them up on a pedestal. And every time they show up in court, Something like this happens. They're the judges trying to be strict and stern with them, and there's this celebrity, and they're just sobbing, and I'll never do it again, I'm so sorry, it's not like me, it's not in my nature to do this, I can't believe it happened again, I'll never ever, just be gracious with me, be kind to me, I have all these things going on, just don't throw the book at me. they put on a little bit of a show and inevitably, it seems, they get some leniency and before you know it, they're back out again doing the very same thing one more time. And the drama is just repeated. The stakes are a little bit higher, the judge is a little bit firmer, so it seems, but yet over and over again, the record plays of this pity, this sorrow, and I'll never do it again, and then they're back out doing the very same thing again. It's very insincere, I think, to have somebody come and apologize, to quote unquote repent, and yet go back to the very same thing that they were doing to begin with. This passage tonight in Hosea, is God's continued word against the nation of Israel, against particularly the northern kingdom. And it's been hard as we've come through the last three weeks, we've hit this valley. We saw the glory and grace of God in chapter three to say, I will redeem and bring you back as my people. I will, as Hosea paid for, bought back his bride. Gomer and loved her again. So God says, that's how my love is to you. I will do what is necessary to get you back. I will redeem you to myself. I will pay for your sin. And then from chapter four to this chapter through six and seven, we've just hit this valley. God saying, here's judgment against Israel. Here's the way you've demonstrated your wickedness. Here's the signs of your spiritual adultery. And here's the way I'm coming to judge you. And again tonight, we have two chapters here of hard, straight words to the people of Israel saying, your sin is just in front of me. It's before my face. But there's an interesting dilemma about this passage. because it seems like Israel made a turn. It seems like, if you remember at the end of last week's message and at the end of the passage we studied last week, there were words of repentance. There were statements and confessions of sin. Look with me at chapter six, verses one to three here, just to set us up tonight. This is what they were saying in the face of their sin as God was accusing them. let us return to the Lord, for He has torn us, that He may heal us. He has struck us down, and He will bind us up. After two days, He will revive us. On the third day, He will raise us up, that we may live before Him. Let us know, let us press on to know the Lord. His going out is as sure as the dawn. He will come to us as the showers, as the spring rains that water the earth. That's a very good sounding return. Come, let's return to the Lord. Let's know Him, let's press on to know the Lord. Let's make a change, let's turn it around. And for anyone who would use those words to repent and to come back to God, that's a good and faithful thing to say. It's a very orthodox statement. But yet God, throughout the rest of these two chapters continues to press the issue. You're faithless. You're spiritual adulterers. Nothing has changed. Why is that? It's because the words in verses one through three of this chapter are just words. It's just insincere repentance. Here Israel has once again put on a show and said, this is what it is, we'll repent, we'll say the right words, and God will make everything all better again. But it missed the true heart of repentance. Tonight I wanna show you from the rest of chapter six and all of chapter seven that a lifestyle of insincere repentance results in sincere judgment from God. A lifestyle of insincere repentance results in sincere judgment from God. And I wanna show you what insincere repentance looks like. Because it happens over and over again today, and not just in celebrity America, but in our own lives, in our own church, in our own world, we can be insincere about our repentance. Unless we see exactly what that looks like and what true repentance is. We will always be playing a game with God about our hearts. We will always be giving him words that don't really change anything. And so tonight we're coming to look at God's word to see how insincere repentance affects our lives. What does it look like? And how can we truly go back to God and repent and return? Let me unpack this for you. Let's look at this together. There's five things that God shows us here about insincere repentance. Five things in this text that reveal to us what insincere repentance looks like. The first one is there in verses four through six. It's the insincere repentance gives lip service to God. Insincere repentance gives lip service to God. This is God's statement right back to them. He's heard these words. Come, let us return to the Lord. Let us know the Lord. Let us press on to know him. And he looks at their lives and he looks what's happened and he says, what do I do with you? What do I do with you, O Ephraim? What do I do with you, O Judah? Your love is like a morning cloud, like dew that goes early away. I mean, God looks at their lives, he looks at their confession, and he says, your love is like a vapor. It's just, it's so brief. You act like, oh, we're really coming back, we're really repenting, we're really turning, and yet, when I look at what you've done, and I look at how you live and what you say, it's just, It's insincere, it's just flattery. It's right words and yet it's gone. Poof, it's out of the way. Look at how they were giving God lip service. They were coming and saying, let us return to the Lord, let us go back to Him. And even so, verse six, they were showing up, continuing to sacrifice. They were performing religiously once again. They were doing, as it seemed, all the right things, and yet it was just lip service to God. If I say I'm sorry in the right way, and I show up and I sacrifice, once again, I'm off the hook, right? God doesn't have to judge me anymore. Things will be okay. I can just give God lip service and say, yeah, yeah, God, I know you're up there. I sinned again, so sorry. It'll never happen again, and just keep moving on. That's what their deeds were like. That's what their words were like. Morning dew and God saying, I want steadfast love. I want you to know me. Don't just show up and perform and pretend like that's enough, that that's real, true repentance. You're just giving me lip service. Just saying, yeah, sorry. If you're a parent, some of you may have the experience of having your children respond back to you in this way. Excuse me, son, daughter, I caught you. You weren't doing what was right. Oh yeah, I'm so sorry. It'll never happen again, bye. And five minutes later, they're doing the same thing again. You've had this experience before, right? Yeah, I have anyway. My kids are only four and two, or one, so we know what's going on. It's lip service. Yeah, God, I'll say the right thing to get out of the moment, to get out of the judgment, Nothing's really changing. Nothing's really happening differently. God says they even sent the prophets to you. Their words were to slay you, to cut you to the heart, and my judgment was to be like a light to just broadcast to you, here's your sin, here's what you're doing. It was just to shed light on everything, and yet you're just, I'm so sorry, it'll never happen again. And then you just turn around and continue in the way that you were going. That's insincere repentance. How often do we come to God and He exposes our sin, shows us the error of our way, sorry God, never happen again, and we put it out of our mind immediately. Or we show up and we say, well, I can atone for that if I just show up at church and worship and that'll be covered and paid for and we can just move on. God says I want love, I want steadfast love. I want you to really know me, not your religious performance, not your lip service to me. Insincere repentance gives lip service to God. The second thing is there in verses seven, all the way through to the end, or to verse seven in chapter seven. It's this, is that insincere repentance goes on in sinful living. Insincere repentance continues on in the sinful lifestyle that it was previously engaged in. Let me just put it simply, nothing changed. Absolutely nothing changed. In these verses, 6-7 all the way down to 7-7, God specifically points the finger at two areas or two events in the life and history of Israel. Now you have to understand here in Hosea's day, it's as if Hosea is reading a newspaper And God is working in Hosea, and Hosea's reading the daily events of the nation, and God's speaking through Hosea and saying, go confront them about these very specific activities. Go out to the nation and just start broadcasting my message of confrontation to them on these two events precisely. We have here, and in this poetry, Hosea is using a lot of word picture. In the first event there in verses seven through the first part of 11, he uses these city names, Adam, Gilead, Shechem, to point to places that were, they had a good reputation in Israel's society. These were cities that were valued and honored. Good things had happened there. God had done good things. And yet, the nation had twisted and turned and changed those good things into utter acts of depravity. We don't know exactly the specific events, they're not recorded for us in the history books of 1 and 2 Chronicles or 1 and 2 Kings, but what we can construct from verses 7 through 11 is that it seems in one case that the priesthood was utterly, utterly violent. God here says, like Adam, they transgressed the covenant, referring in one hand to Adam the person, but also, as you see there at the end of verse seven, there, speaking of a place, the city of Adam, this place that was good, this man that was good, Hosea uses a word picture to say, They just turned it upside down. There they dealt faithlessly with me. Gilead was a good place and yet now it's a city of evildoers, tracked with blood, robbers lying in wait for a man. So the priest band together, they murder on the way to, here's the third city, Shechem. They commit villainy. The priesthood at this time had become so immoral, so wicked, so depraved, that they're out there setting an ambush to kill people. Seems like it was happening right outside of the city of Shechem. And so God looks at the whole nation in verses 10 and 11 and says, in the house of Israel, there's a terrible thing. In Ephraim, Horeb is there. Verse 11, the first part of it, in Judah, there's a harvested judgment appointed. The whole nation hadn't changed one bit. still committing their sin. In fact, the word in verse nine for villainy, it's a gross word. It's a word for utter, sick depravity and immorality. It's as if the nation had hit the bottom of the barrel, morally speaking. The second event is there at the beginning of, or at the end of verse 11, all the way through verse seven. And this has to do with the kingship, the rulers of Israel. And here a little parable is told. It's a story, if you will, and a comparison of the kings and the princes, the religious leaders, of being like an oven and a baker. And being like an oven and baker, they're full of violence, they're full of rage, they're full of killing and murdering one another. God says, I would go and I would heal them, but yet when I get ready to do that, It's like the lights went on and all the cockroaches in the room were seen and they scattered. Their wickedness just showed up again. They deal falsely, the thief breaks in, the bandits raid. They don't consider I remember all their evil. God just saying it's there, it's in front of me again. Verse three, by their evil they make the king glad. It seems like there was this one particular event and I would probably trace it back to 2 Kings 15 to 25. There was this event where they got the king drunk. There was this party, and they're having a day for the king to celebrate him, and he's getting drunk. There's this wickedness, this orgy, this partying going on. The princes are there in their treachery. They're all adulterers, literally speaking, and their passion and their immorality is just like a heated oven that just warms up, and it continues to get hotter, and hotter, and hotter, and rage, and rage, and rage. And so, at the end of it, you see there, for their hearts are like an oven, they approach their intrigue all night, their anger smolders, in the morning it blazes like a flaming fire, and they devour their rulers. Four times in one chapter in 2 Kings 15. Four times there, you see the kings of Israel assassinated, one after another. One king stepping up to take power, and the guys behind him, the guys that should have been his protection and support, they're coming after him to destroy him personally, so much so that they assassinate him, and it's like the next guy on the top of the pile, and they go after him, and they assassinate him. Four times in that one chapter, this kind of treachery happens, and God says, I hate it. You haven't repented of anything. Nothing has changed, Israel. In fact, it's just gotten worse. It's become more evil, more wicked. You're killing kings, your priests are out in the streets ambushing people. Violence, villainy, debauchery. This is the nation of Israel. They haven't repented of a single thing. Nothing has changed. Insincere repentance goes on in sinful living. It's the celebrity that says, oh, I'm so sorry, I'll never do it again. And then, two days later, they're caught. The same crime, the same time, the same way. How true of it is it for us? God, I'll never do that again. I will never talk that way about another person again. And yet, 10 minutes later, boom. Just happening all over again. Insincere repentance, it doesn't change anything in our lives. It just looks at the sin and says, well, I hope I never do that again, and let's keep moving on. In fact, it might even go deeper and get worse. Like, we just use God as an ATM card. We go up, we say, in Jesus' name, I'm so sorry. Expect everything will be made right, and then we go out and have an excuse to sin some more. Oh, but God is gracious. He's so kind. And so I can just do whatever I want. Absolutely not. Insincere repentance changes absolutely nothing. Have you been saying, God, I'm sorry for fill in the blank, and yet you're not changing in it? You're not stepping forward to see something different happen? It's not real repentance. It's just words to God. It's just flattery of Him, and it's lip service. Insincere repentance gives lip service to God. It goes on, it continues in sinful living. The third thing is there in verses eight through 10 of chapter seven, in that insincere repentance grows arrogant to God. Insincere repentance grows arrogant towards God. God says, Ephraim, meaning the northern kingdom, Israel, Ephraim mixes himself with the peoples. It's like a cake, not turned. Strangers devour his strength and he knows it not. Gray hairs are 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 this. If you persist in insincere repentance long enough, you will get arrogant about your sin. You will grow hard towards God. And so when he confronts you again, when he brings, judgment and discipline upon you to get you to change and get you to repent, your heart hardens, it shrivels up and it says, oh no, you're not, I'm fine, leave me alone. Nothing's wrong here, God. Who do you think you are, God? Yes. Here Israel has just hardened themselves even more. It's gone down so much deeper for them. There's sins here in particular, verse eight is that they've now begin to mix themselves with the Gentiles. God said there's to be a separation between you and the nations. There's to be a life, a different lifestyle from you and the nations. And God's looking at them saying there is no difference. They're mixed together with the people. They're like a cake that's not burned, that's not ready. They think they're mature, they think they're ready to come out of the oven, and when you pull them out, they're chewy, soggy, doughy, and nasty. They're really immature, they're not fully cooked. Furthermore, he lays on the imagery in verse nine, he's like, the strangers are devouring their strength and they don't know it. They think they're strong, they think they're wise, they think they're mature, but they're weak. So much so, it's a bit of a mistranslation here where it says gray hairs. The Hebrew says gray spots. It's really the idea of mold on bread, those little gray spots that begin to grow and mold is just at the front end of getting really gross. That's what their sins are like. They're just like little gray spots sprinkled on their bread, their dough. They're corrupt, they're moldy, they don't even know it, and they're proud about it. They stand before God, they don't return, and they're like, I'm fine, who do you think you are? That's how insincere repentance works. We hear the word of God, we're convicted of it, and we come and we say, okay, I'm sorry. Nothing changes, we hear the word of God, we're convicted of it once again, and this time, we're a little bit angry. Come on, I already dealt with that. That's not true, again. Really? Quit picking at me. Quit judging me. We begin to get harder and arrogant towards God. God keeps disciplining us because he loves us and he wants to see change in us. He wants to see us become more like Christ. But when we continue to hear the same kinds of discipline, when we begin to be convicted of the same kind of sin again and again and again, and nothing changes, we're just getting hard towards God, and we're becoming proud about it. Some Christians turn this kind of sin into an area of saying, well, this is just liberty for me. Who are you to judge me that I do this, or that I go there, or that I watch this? Who are you to really say that I'm that bad? And we take what God clearly commands as being right and wrong, and we turn it into a judgment call. We make the white and the black of God's word very gray. We say, come on, who are you to judge me for that? I hear some young guys do that with the issue of pornography. Oh, come on, who are you to judge me for that? Their hearts were pricked early. They were sensitive to that, but then they began to grow arrogant about that. They were convicted again and again. I'm like, come on, man, quit judging me for that. Who are you to say? That's insincere repentance. God's calling Israel out for this right away. They haven't really turned. They've given God lip service, nothing has changed, and now they're growing arrogant towards God. Their pride is testifying to his face. Just standing before God saying, leave me alone. I want nothing to do with you. The fourth thing is, this gets even deeper for us. is there in verses 11 to the first part of verse 16. It's this, it's the insincere repentance groups one God as one resource among many. I love verse 11, Ephraim was like a dove. Well that's kind of a nice picture, that's pretty. Silly and without sense, calling to Egypt, going to Assyria. God here, he gets to the point where he's like, Israel, your sin is so bad. When trouble hits, you're just like this flittering, silly little bird. You're just going around trying to seek aid and protection and security from anywhere you can find it. That was true of the nation of Israel. when the threat of Assyria had come upon them, when the threat of Egypt coming up and militarily invading the nation was at their doorstep, they started looking for security in any other nation. They were forming such strange and awkward alliances, it wasn't even funny. At one time, they had an alliance with both Egypt and Assyria. It was like, if Assyria attacks us, Egypt will protect us. If Egypt attacks us, Assyria will protect us. God was saying, this is crazy. You should have come to me. I would have protected you. I would have taken care of you. The nations have no power over you. I have all power. If I want to tell a nation to be gone, I will. So why would you go to another weaker people? Why would you go for security to another place? This is just a mark of their insincere repentance towards God. Now they're seeing God as one resource among many. Now they see God as an option. If he isn't as helpful, if he doesn't work out as well, I'll go try this one. I'll try this nation. I'll try this source of security, this place, this help. If God isn't really doing it for me, if he's not really helping, I'll go other places. God says I'm gonna discipline them. I'll spread a net over them. I'll bring them down like birds. It's like this image of throwing a net and trapping the bird so they can't even fly. pronounces woes, they've strayed from me. Destruction, they've rebelled. Their sin is so deep that they, by the way they live and by their seeking other alternatives and other resources other than God, they're speaking lies about God. Think about that for just a moment. When you and I begin to seek and to find security, satisfaction, and life, In any other resource outside of God, we're actually lying about who God is. We're saying he is not enough. He's not strong enough to secure us, to help us. He's not good enough. He's not good enough to give us true joy in him. He's not able to give us life, to give us fullness of life. When we look for security, satisfaction or life anywhere outside of Christ. We're calling God a liar. That's exactly what Israel is doing here. It's insincere repentance. God, you won't provide for me. God, these nations are about to knock our door down. So we're gonna find other ones, because we don't trust you. We don't believe this about you. They haven't really repented. God says I'd redeem them, but they're not even speaking the truth about me in the nations. How about for us? Have you tried, have you issued words of God, I'm so sorry, I've done it again, I'll get help, and then you go for help somewhere else. You look for some other remedy, other than Christ, other than the good news of the gospel to be your supply, to be your source of satisfaction and joy. to be that security for you. It's insincere. God, you're just one, you're one drug in the medicine cabinet. Maybe you'll work, maybe not. This is the state of the nation, it's the state of our hearts. We're so insincere about God. The last, the last sign of their insincere repentance is there in verse 16. It's the insincere repentance generates spiritual bondage. Look with me back at verse 14 for just a moment. It says, they don't cry to me from their heart. They don't cry to me from their heart, but they wail on their bed for grain and for wine, they gash themselves. These are the methodology of these people. They're crying out to God with their lips, but it's not from their heart, it's not sincere. And to get what they want, grain and wine, they're laying on their beds, wailing around, oh God doesn't love us, he doesn't care for us, he's not giving us what we need, he's not providing for us. And so they enact themselves in pagan rituals of slashing themselves, taking a knife and cutting themselves, thinking that some other foreign God will respond to that and give them what they want. Their hearts are completely idolatrous. And God says, I trained them, I strengthened their arms. I was the one who prepared them for battle and they've rebelled against me. They return, but not upward. There's a form of repentance here. There's a form of sorrow. They're saying, I am sorry. There's an apology there, but it's not towards me, God. And so he compares them at the end of verse 16 to a treacherous or faithless broken bow. They're just, They're not useful at all. If you were to take a treacherous bow to battle, you wouldn't hit a barn. That's what God is saying they're like. They're completely, completely helpless and useless. And because of this, the end of verse 16, their princes shall fall by the sword because of the insolence of their tongue. This shall be their derision in the land of Egypt. God's saying I'm gonna judge them again. and they're gonna go back as if they were in slavery in Egypt all over again. It's gonna be spiritual bondage for them. Literally, this is exactly what happened to the nation. Assyria came in, invaded, and scattered them all over the world. They were not a nation anymore, they were gone. Back into slavery, back into bondage. Insincere repentance generates spiritual bondage for us. If you just give lip service to God enough, if you just fake your repentance to Him enough, you'll just end up being addicted and locked in to spiritual bondage. You'll be shackled to your sin. No recovery, no hope. Let me say it again as I said at the beginning of this message. A lifestyle of insincere repentance results in sincere judgment from God. If you think that you can just give God enough lift service, just play your way through repentance and play your way through coming back to him enough, you're probably not a Christian. You're just playing a game and you are in spiritual bondage. You're shackled. You haven't been freed from your sin. You haven't been redeemed. You are dead. And that was the state of the nation here. God at one point saying to them, you're not my people anymore. You've sinned and your sin is so great and your repentance is so fake. You're not my people. You're not redeemed. You're lost. You're shackled in Egypt. You're scattered. This is what a lifestyle of insincere repentance breeds. arrogance, hard-heartedness to God, lip service, pretending, faking it with him, ultimately spiritual bondage. James Montgomery Boyce says that we are never in greater danger than when we assume that he will always forgive us as long as we go through the outward forms of repentance. We're never in greater danger. So how do we respond? What do we do? I'd show you three ways to really repent tonight. These passages show us the negative, they show us the insincere nature of repentance. And if we're sensitive to God's word, if we're sensitive to his spirit, we can see from them the opposite. How do we really repent? First of all, sincere words. It's not a game to go to God and just be, I'm sorry, off the hook again, here we go. Our words need to be sincere. Do you feel it in your heart when you've sinned and you're convicted about it and you're going to repentance? Do you sense I have offended the holiness of God? I have transgressed, not my neighbor, not myself. I have sinned against God, first and foremost. And in coming to him, we say with the sincerity of our words, this is true of me. I have sinned against you, and you only have I sinned. Real repentance is sincere words. It's helpful for me. and I hope it would be helpful for you, that when you go and you repent, when you go and seek the grace of God, that you would name the sin that you've committed. We make sin too generic these days. I've misstepped. I've made a mistake. This is how we come to God. God, I'm sorry I failed you. Name it. Say it sincerely, God, I lied. God, I was lusting again. Father, here it is, I'm greedy. Come with real sin, real words to him and say, this is what's in front of me. This is what I've done. Change me. Real repentance starts with sincere words. Not lip service, not a game, not an attempt to get off the hook. and be let go by a lenient and stupid judge, but sincere words before a holy God. Sincere words, a saved heart is the second thing. We come with a heart that has been remade, reborn. This is where I need to tell you again of the gospel. This is where I need to remind you that no one can truly repent unless God has worked in their heart to replace that arrogant stone heart with a heart of flesh. And he's done that by the grace of our Lord Jesus who came and died for our insincere repentance, who came and shed his blood so that our repentance could be real and so that by his life, by his resurrection, we could have, by the grace of God, by the spirit of God, new hearts that when we hear of our sin and we're called out on it, we come with broken hearts to God and we say, it's true, I've done this. Forgive me. Change me. This is what God is pointing them to in verse six. I desire, in chapter six verse six, I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice. The knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings. Listen, God doesn't want your religious performance as a way of repentance. He hates that. It's disgusting to him. God wants your heart. Again, verse 14 of chapter seven, they did not cry to me from the heart. He wants your heart. And he'll give you a new heart. If you would receive Jesus, if you would come to him and say, I have a stone, arrogant, cold heart against you, I need your grace. I need your forgiveness, and that's only found in Christ. sincere words, a saved heart, and then lastly, serious change. Words that sound like repentance, that don't accompany a difference, a transformation, it's just lip service. It's not real. God wants serious change. When we come to him with our sin, and we say, here it is God, I have failed you once again and this is it, there has to be transformation. There has to be a change. If you would truly repent and go to God, would you also say and do, there has to be a difference in my life, something has to change. If you're an alcoholic and you're coming to God and you're saying, God, I am devastated that my addiction to alcohol has broken my relationship with you and I am repenting of that. I am coming to seek your grace and forgiveness. Don't go to the bar the next night. It's not a change, you're just gonna step into a trap once again. And I'm not saying that to say that you've gotta order your life and fix it to make it perfect. What I'm saying there is if you repent, if you're truly sincere about your change and your desire for it, take the steps that demonstrate that repentance. Show a difference, show a different path that you're walking on. Begin to take steps, get the TV out of the house, get the computer out of the dark closet of the room where only you and yourself see it. Move it somewhere else, but show us, show God, I want things different. They have to change. That was Israel's problem. Oh yeah, God, here we are, we're coming back to you. Let us return, let us know you. And we're gonna go murder some people today. That'll be fine. No change, no difference. Real repentance comes with sincere words, a saved heart, and serious change. For some of you, that will mean making a plan of something has to be different. I've gotta plan things a different way. I've gotta strategically put myself in a different situation. That's not to earn God's favor. It's not to act like, hey, I've got it all together, and I've made things happen. It's to say to God, things have to be different, and so that means I've gotta behave differently, but I'm responding to your grace. I'm responding to the fact that if I truly come to you in repentance, you'll receive me back. You'll give me your grace. You'll make me new. Life will be different. Are you just playing at insincere repentance with God? Let me just conclude with this. Are you like Israel here, saying, oh yeah, I'm so sorry, never to do it again, and then it's back to the same old, same way, same thing once again? Has your heart truly been changed? Has God confronted you with your rebellion and sin and moved in your life in such a way that you're just arrogant about it? Or have you heard his spirit speak to your life? Are you ready and willing to say, I need grace, and I'm coming back, and this is real, and I have to change? A lifestyle of insincere repentance will result in sincere judgment from God. Oh, would we be a people that are of soft hearts, that are truly changed by God? And when confronted, we come and repent rightly. Let me pray. Father, we thank you for your word. It's a challenge again for us to hear how we've been playing a game with you, how we've been insincere in our attempts to repent. We probably do it to put on a show more than we are really doing it to be reconciled to you. So Father, tonight we come as your people and we ask that you would make us new again. That you would once again forgive us and restore us. Lord, mark out for us the change that we need to make. Restore our hearts. For those here who are dead in their sin, Lord, rejuvenate them, revive them, give them new birth. Lord, let us be a people that as we hear your word, that we would be truly sensitive to you and truly repent so that we might display your glory and be transformed into the image of your son. We thank you for your word tonight in Jesus' name, amen. This message has been brought to you by the Santa Rosa Bible Church. Our purpose is to lift up the Lord by living out the word, loving one another, and leading others to Christ. Be sure to visit us on the web at www.srbible.org, or come visit us in person at 4575 Badger Road, Santa Rosa, California 95409. You can also give us a call at 707-538-2385.