Hosea 6-7 “Repentance”
Intro: Texting while Driving; Junk Food; Wreckless Spending –>Repentance
Repentance=turning from one way of living/thinking/feeling to another way of living/thinking/feeling.
-Christianity=Repentance is turning away from sin and unbelief and turn to God and His ways.
-If we are to follow God, we must see both the goodness of repentance and our need for repentance.
Context: Hosea, prophet to a financially prosperous but spiritually wicked people.
-Married an adulterous woman=SIGNàGod’s people are faithless to Him!
-God is calling His people to repentance—to come back to Him in faithfulness and love.
TODAY: God’s Word helps us see the goodness of repentance and our need for repentance.
1 Goodness of Repentance; 2 Need for Repentance
I. Goodness of Repentance (6:1-3): Repentance is a GOOD thing.
QUESTION: What comes to your mind when you hear the world repentance? (Drudgery, work, joy)
-World’s narrative: Becoming a Christian will steal your joy
-Bible: Repenting and becoming a Christian will lead you into true and everlasting joy.
-SEE THE GOODNESS OF REPENTANCE WITH ME
-GOODNESS in God’s Invitation to REPENT: (1) “Come, let us return to the LORD;
-Israel (and us the reader) is being invited to come back to God.
-Our sin led us away from God, but God invites us to come back to Him.
-GOODNESS in what God will do as we Repent (1b-2)
–for he has torn us, that he may heal us; he has struck us down, and he will bind us up.
– 2 After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will raise us up, that we may live before him.
-God does bring discipline, but the end result is for our good.
-This is give us hope in our repentance: the end will be for our good!
-GOODNESS in the GOAL of Repentance: (3) 3 Let us know; let us press on to know the LORD;
-KNOW THE LORD is the goal and prize: GOD is what we seek are seeking after.
-Repenting means an active seeking (“press on to…”) and the possibility of really KNOWING God!
*Question: In Jesus’ first sermon of his public ministry, what is the first word we hear him say?
–Matt 3:17 “Repent!”
-REPENTANCE at CONVERSION=When you become a Christian you repent
-REPENTANCE throughout a Christian’s life=Every day we repent and strive to follow God (Luther)
**BIG IDEA: Repentance is a GOOD thing! It leads to joy and the best thing: leads us to God!
- Need for Repentance (6:4-7:16): Israel Needs to Repent
If we are to seek repentance, we must first see our NEED for repentance.
-Our passage shows us why Israel NEEDS to Repent and give us 3 broad categories to consider.
-It is relevant to us=we often fall into the same errors of as the North Kingdom of Israel.
1 Israel needs to repent because her Love for God is FICKLE (6:4-6).
Getting up early in the morning and walking barefoot in the grass. Your feet are wet.
-Coming back a few hours later and grass dry.
-The morning dew doesn’t last.
-The love of Israel is like that! It is FICKLE and short-lived (4) ‘Your love is fickle!’
-God has disciplined them and warned them through his prophets and revealed what he really desires (5-6)
*APPLICATION: Could the same be said of our love for God? Is our love for God like the morning dew?
-Are we faithful to God in hard times as well joyful, boring as well as exciting, peaceful and perplexing?
-God’s Word calls us to REPENT of our fickleness and love God with an enduring love.
2 Israel needs to repent because her Love for God is FAITHLESS (6:7-10).
Annoying but catchy lyric from 90’s.
‘Say my name, say my name, acting kind of shady, ain’t calling me baby’
-Song about a FAITHLESS lover—unfaithful with relationship and going after other lovers.
-Israel has a FAITHLESS love toward God (7b): there they dealt faithlessly with me.
-Instead of being faithful with their resources, land, gifts, they were faithless toward God.
-Israel’s sin was like the sin of Adam (7a)
-God gave his instruction, but Israel has broken it.
-Israel’s faithless seen in lots of ways (8-10)
-Cities, priests, whoredom, defiling.
*APPLICATION: How might Hosea’s message be an indictment upon us?
-Are we being faithful with what God has given you? Relationships; time; talents; resources?
-Faithful with our heart? Giving God our heart exclusively?
3 Israel needs to repent because her Love is FALSE (6:11-7:16).
Illustration: If I saw I’m devoted to Cubs fan, but only watch White Sox games and trivia…
-Main Idea: ‘You say you love me, but it sure doesn’t look like it.’
-Israel “deal[s] falsely” with God (7:1b)
-Instead of being true and sincere in their love, they have chosen what is false and evil.
-SIN = dealing falsely with God.
-God sees all their evil (7:2) and their sins are before His face (7:2)
-There is no truly hidden sin from God
-HEATED OVEN Metaphor (7:3-7)
-As an oven heats up and gets hot, they are hot with lustful desire (4) and anger (6b)
-Their sin is seen in the kings (7:3, 7)
-ISRAEL is Mixing with the People (7:8a)
-Compromise with the nations [views, ethics, gods]
–QUESTION: Could that be said of us? Are we mixing with unbelieving culture?
-Compromising with our views, morals, behaviors? (James 4:4)
-Israel is a CAKE NOT TURNED (7:8b)
-“cake not turned” is a cake that is burned and uncooked
-Ruinous, unfit state.
-Being Changed but know it NOT! (7:9-10)
-Apostacy from God is creeping on, but Israel refuses to acknowledge or recognize it.
-Falling away from God usually is like this, along with refusal to return to God (10)
-Israel is like a DOVE (7:11-12)
-Israel is like a silly dove that flies here and there.
-Displayed their willingness to go to Egypt and Assyria
-FALSE Love is ultimately SIN AGAINST GOD (7:13-16)
13 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.14 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.
GOSPEL CONNECTION: CROSS=Goodness of Repentance and our Need for Repentance
-GOODNESS OF REPENTANCE
-Repentance also means believing in the one who died on the cross of your sins.
-NEED FOR REPENTANCE
-Our fickleness, faithlessness, falseness, and sin is so evil, that only the death of Jesus could overcome it.
-2 COR 5:21àGreat Exchange.
CLOSE: Grant us the grace to repent and come back to you God.
