HOCF SERMON 2023

Hosea 14: Repentance Leads to Restoration

Hosea 14
[a]Return, Israel, to the Lord your God. Your sins have been your downfall!
2 Take words with you and return to the Lord.
Say to him:
"Forgive all our sins and receive us graciously,
that we may offer the fruit of our lips.[b]
3 Assyria cannot save us; we will not mount warhorses.
We will never again say 'Our gods' to what our own hands have made,
for in you the fatherless find compassion."

4 "I will heal their waywardness and love them freely, for my anger has turned away from them.
5 I will be like the dew to Israel; he will blossom like a lily.
Like a cedar of Lebanon he will send down his roots;
6 his young shoots will grow. His splendor will be like an olive tree,
his fragrance like a cedar of Lebanon.
7 People will dwell again in his shade; they will flourish like the grain,
they will blossom like the vine- Israel's fame will be like the wine of Lebanon.
8 Ephraim, what more have I[c] to do with idols? I will answer him and care for him.
I am like a flourishing juniper; your fruitfulness comes from me."

9 Who is wise? Let them realize these things. Who is discerning? Let them understand.
The ways of the Lord are right; the righteous walk in them,
but the rebellious stumble in them.
SERMON:
Today we are on the last chapter on the Book of Hosea. If we are going to look back from the beginning of this Book up to the last chapter, it tells about how Israel has been unfaithful to God and how God made Hosea marry Gomer, a prostitute as a symbol of God's love for Israel. That Hosea, a faithful servant of the Lord marries someone who is always unfaithful, tells that even when we are unfaithful, God is faithful.

God's love for us is like Hosea to Gomer, that even when she has committed adultery over and over again, God will always welcome us back to Him. That God is always willing to welcome us back as long as we come to Him with a repentant heart.
This might sound convenient, this might sound easy, but the book of Hosea also reminds us that even though God will always welcome us back, our sinfulness, our ungodliness will always have its consequence.

Remember that the people of Israel, realized how far they have fallen away from God when they started to struggle. When everything started to go wrong. When everything started to get difficult and when they started to feel the miserable life away from the favor and blessing of God.

And all because they have sinned. All because of their unfaithfulness that their lives started to go downhill. they were oppressed by other nations, they experienced hunger, they experienced a hard life. then they started to realize how great life was when they were with God. They realized that sin was their downfall.

And this is what many people do not realize. This is what many of us do not see. That when we choose to live our lives in disobedience or ignorant of God's will, we will always find ourselves in trouble. We will always find our struggling. We will always find ourselves failing and void of meaning and purpose. Many of us do not realize that sin is the cause of all our problems in this life.

From the beginning of time, even at the garden of Eden, the first people, Adam and Eve have enjoyed a life of abundance and sweet fellowship with God. Until, they disobeyed God.

And so Ama and Eve were diven out of paradise, they were cursed to work and labor for everything they have to eat, and the ultimate punishment is death. They lost immortality. They lost eternity and their struggle began.

You see many of us are suffering because we do not realize that it is our sins that cause our downfall. Many of us do not realize that it is sin that opens the doorway for evil to come and cause trouble in our lives, in our family, in our jobs, in our ministry, in our relationships. it is sin, it is our disobedience that puts us in trouble.

When problems andsuffeirng come to us, we often look for solutions to our problems. When storms come we often look for some place to hide. Yet many of us, instead of sheltering ourselves from the problems and challenges of life, we often make more storms out of one storm that came because we tend to solve our problems by making another problem.