SERMON
THE PROPHET HOSEA 14:1-9 [NLTse]
Return, O Israel, to the Lord your God, for your sins have brought you down. 2 Bring your confessions, and return to the Lord. Say to Him, “Forgive all our sins and graciously receive us, so that we may offer you our praises. 3 Assyria cannot save us, nor can our warhorses. Never again will we say to the idols we have made, ‘You are our gods.’ No, in You alone do the orphans find mercy.”
4 The Lord says, “Then I will heal you of your faithlessness; My love will know no bounds, for My anger will be gone forever. 5 I will be to Israel like a refreshing dew from heaven. Israel will blossom like the lily; it will send roots deep into the soil like the cedars in Lebanon. 6 Its branches will spread out like beautiful olive trees, as fragrant as the cedars of Lebanon. 7 My people will again live under My shade. They will flourish like grain and blossom like grapevines. They will be as fragrant as the wines of Lebanon.
8 “O Israel, stay away from idols! I am the One Who answers your prayers and cares for you. I am like a tree that is always green; all your fruit comes from Me.”
9 Let those who are wise understand these things. Let those with discernment listen carefully. The paths of the Lord are true and right, and righteous people live by walking in them. But in those paths sinners stumble and fall.

SERMON
How many of us, here (don’t raise your hands), believe that human beings are basically good, but sometimes we make mistakes (we “sin” the Bible calls it) and so, sometimes, we need Jesus’ forgiveness and help. (Again, please don’t raise your hands, or anything.)

With that question in mind, let me read to us all from Ephesians (a letter Paul wrote to the Christians who were living in Ephesus, Greece, at that time). Paul writes: “Once you were dead because of your disobedience and your many sins. You used to live in sin, just like the rest of the world, obeying the devil—the commander of the powers in the unseen world. He is the spirit at work in the hearts of those who refuse to obey God. All of us used to live that way, following the passionate desires and inclinations of our sinful nature. By our very nature we were subject to God’s anger, just like everyone else.” (2:1-3) And then Paul goes on to write about the change Christ brings into people’s lives when we trust in Him.

So, God the Holy Spirit (through Paul) says that before we put our trust in Jesus that you and I were dead because of our disobeying God and because of our sins. He says that everyone in the world is like that: Dead because of disobeying God and because of sin. Either people are “living” obeying Jesus or people are “dead”, obeying the devil and refusing to obey God. (But even those who are alive and obeying Jesus were at one time dead, obeying the devil and refusing to obey God.)

The Holy Spirit (through Paul) talks about life before Christ a different way in Romans (the letter Paul wrote to the Christians who lived in Rome, Italy at that time). He says, “No one is righteous—not even one. No one is truly wise; no one is seeking God. All have turned away; all have become useless. No one does good, not a single one. Their talk is foul, like the stench from an open grave. Their tongues are filled with lies. Snake venom drips from their lips. Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness. They rush to commit murder. Destruction and misery always follow them. They don’t know where to find peace. They have no fear of God at all.” (3:10-18)

Notice that the Bible isn’t talking, here, about evil, wicked people. The Bible is talking, here, about all people. “No one is righteous.” “No one is seeking God.” “All have turned away.” “All have become useless.” “No one does good.”
But then a person – you or me, perhaps – puts their trust in Jesus Christ: “I believe Jesus conquered death and was resurrected from the dead; I believe Jesus is God, God’s one and only Son; I believe He died to serve the punishment I deserve for my sins; I believe that He loves me and is good and that He has a good plan for my life; I believe I can trust Him, and that He’ll be with me always to comfort and guide me…”

And something happens after a person – you or me, perhaps – puts their trust in Jesus: God forgives that person for all the sins they’ve ever done, are doing, and will ever do in the future, and from that point forward God looks at that Christian and treats that Christian as though they had never ever done anything wrong but had always behaved perfectly! (God forgiving us all of our sins – past, present, and future – is called being “justified” because of our faith, and God always looking upon us as though we were absolutely perfect-in-every-way is called being “sanctified” in His eyes.)

So, that’s how God thinks about us and that’s how God looks upon us. (Such amazing grace. Such amazing love.)
But you and I know, even though we have believed in Jesus, that we still sin and we are still far from perfect. Yes, God looks at us and treats us as though we had never sinned and were perfect (we have been justified, we have been sanctified) but there’s another kind of sanctification than just the way God looks at us. There’s a kind of sanctification that has to do with how much we’re sinning today as opposed to how much we were sinning yesterday or the day before or the year before that. And that’s a process. We are fully sanctified in God’s eyes, but we are being sanctified day by day: That is, we are sinning less today than yesterday or last year as we trust God more and more and obey Him more on account of our growing faith.

You see, Christians will always be sinners. The Bible says in 1 John, “If we claim we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves and not living in the truth.” (1:8) The Bible says that to the one reading it who is not yet a Christian, to the one reading it who has just become a Christian, and to the one reading it who just turned 100 and has been a Christian their whole life! “If we claim we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves and not living in the truth.”

Our whole lives long there will always be temptations we give in to. There will always be better days and worse days. And, as we grow closer to the Lord year after year after year of trusting in Him, we will grow in understanding sin better and better and see sins in ourselves that we never had noticed being a part of our lives before.

I share this all with you today because we Christians seem to tend towards two different attitudes about sin: Either we don’t take sin very seriously, thinking we’re not so bad, that sinning is not so bad, and so we never make much progress against our sinful ways and hurtful habits; or, when we realize we’ve sinned it’s as though the world has come to the end and we live in fear of ever being discovered and think we’re no good and believe we could never be loved by God because we’re so foul.

But, both of these attitudes are twisted. The Christian who doesn’t think he or she is so bad doesn’t understand what it’s like to die on a cross. Jesus suffered horribly on the cross. Crucifixion is one of the sickest ways human beings have ever devised to kill each other. And if the perfect Lord Jesus Christ had to die that kind of horrible, torturous death for our sin, then our sin must be horrible and torturous (whether we think so or not)!

The Christian who thinks he or she is an abomination each and every time they sin hasn’t understood the cross, either. Because the perfect Lord Jesus died a horrible, torturous death there, and He did not die a horrible and torturous death so that we could continue to beat up on ourselves and hate and condemn ourselves and refuse to forgive ourselves for our sins. No, He died a horrible and torturous death so that we would be assured that He had indeed served the punishment for our sins, so that we would be confident that we’ve been forgiven and live grateful to Him forever because of it!