Greetings everyone from Trinity Reformed Baptist Church in Armstrong. It's a joy to be here again this evening to worship together with you and to look at God's Word together. You can turn with me to the book of Hosea. Again, the book of Hosea.
It's the first of the minor prophets. You can turn to chapter 7. Hosea chapter 7. We're just gonna look at one verse this afternoon or this evening, verse eight, but I will read the entire chapter here just so we have the context for us as we go on here.
So first, beginning at verse one, sorry, of Hosea chapter seven. When I would have healed Israel, then the iniquity of Ephraim was uncovered, and the wickedness of Samaria, for they have committed fraud. A thief comes in, a band of robbers takes plunder outside. They do not consider in their hearts that I remember all their wickedness.
Now their own deeds have surrounded them. They are before my face. They make a king glad with their wickedness, and princes with their lies. They are all adulterers, like an oven heated by a baker.
He ceases stirring the fire after kneading the dough until it is leavened. In the day of our king, princes have made him sick, inflamed with wine. He stretched out his hand with scoffers. They prepare their heart like an oven while they lie in wait.
Their baker sleeps all night and in the morning it burns like a flaming fire. They are all hot like an oven and have devoured their judges. All their kings have fallen. None among them calls upon me.
Ephraim has mixed himself among the peoples. Ephraim is a cake unturned. Aliens have devoured his strength, but he does not know it. Yes, gray hairs are here and there on him, yet he does not know it.
And the pride of Israel testifies to his face, but they do not return to the Lord their God, nor seek him for all this. Ephraim also is like a silly dove without sense. They call to Egypt, they go to Assyria. Wherever they go, I will spread my net on them.
I will bring them down like birds of the air. I will chastise them according to what their congregation has heard. Woe to them, for they have fled from me. Destruction to them, because they have transgressed against me.
Though I redeemed them, yet they have spoken lies against me. They did not cry out to me with their heart when they wailed upon their beds. They assemble together for grain and new wine. They rebel against me.
Though I disciplined and strengthened their arms, yet they devise evil against me. They return but not to the Most High. They are like a treacherous bow. Their princes shall fall by the sword for the cursings of their tongue.
This shall be their derision in the land of Egypt. Amen. Well, let us pray. Our Father in heaven, we do come before you now and we appeal to you for the power of your Holy Spirit to be here among us this evening as we examine your word.
Father, we pray that you might be here in that special way, that this day or this time now would give us just a foretaste of that glory that is to come, where we gather with your people for all of eternity in your presence and hear from you and sing your praises. And Lord, how we thank you that we have this time now to hear from you. through the Word being preached. And Father, we do ask that Your Spirit would be here now. We know without the Spirit, it is but a dead word.
So Father, we pray for that. We pray that You would take this message, You would use it and accomplish it for all the purposes that You have intended for it. That it would be for the strengthening of Your people, for the edifying of Your people and building them up. That it would be for the salvation of souls and that it would be for Your honor and glory.
And we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.
Introduction
So the prophet Hosea, he was sent by God to the nation of Israel, essentially as God's prosecuting attorney. Pastor Butler preached half my sermon there when he commented on Deuteronomy. 18. But that was the reality of it. God had taken Israel.
He was their own, or his own, special people that he had taken for himself. He had given them a law to follow. They were not to follow the laws and the customs of the nations around them. They were to follow the law of their God, Yahweh, the Lord.
And they were supposed to obey that law in complete and in perfect fidelity, perfect faithfulness, to him. They were not supposed to add to it. They weren't supposed to take away things he wanted. Perfect obedience, perfect faithfulness to him.
And in the book of Hosea, if you know anything about it, if you remember from a few months ago when I was here, we looked at earlier in the book the comparison of the marriage relationship that God uses to show this to Israel. Essentially, Israel was was Yahweh's bride. He was the bridegroom. She was the bride.
He had taken her to be his bride, but she had been an unfaithful bride. She had gone and committed spiritual adultery with the gods of the nations that were around and worshipped those gods. So Hosea now is is God's prosecuting attorney and essentially what he's doing is God is Yahweh is filing for divorce He says I'm going to cut you off. I'm going to divorce you but all through those court proceedings in this book here, we see God always promises that he's going to divorce them, he's going to cut them off, that is the just reward that they deserve for their sin, yet he is going to provide a way that they can be reconciled, that that relationship can be restored again, because he loves them so much.
So he's gonna provide that way where they can be healed of their sin problem, that put this, separated them, They had to acknowledge. You can see it if you turn to chapter 5, verse 15. They had to acknowledge their offense, he says here. To recognize that they had actually sinned against God.
That this was fair, what God was doing. Cutting them off and exiling them out of the land. They had to acknowledge their offense and then they had to seek the Lord for forgiveness in chapter 6, verse 1. Come, let us return to the Lord.
He has torn, but He will heal us. God, they were to seek Him for the healing, for forgiveness. God always provided that way. But throughout this book, so much of the book contains charge after charge of Yahweh charging His people for their infidelity, their unfaithfulness to Him.
And Hosea is presenting all the evidence, and he's presenting the evidence, the justification for this divorce, for this separation. There. And Hosea is the master of the analogy. You probably picked that up when we read through this chapter here in verse 7.
He's the master of the analogy here. He's used several baking analogies in verses 4 through 8, actually. He's we have an analogy of a silly dove in verse 11 not knowing how to not Recognizing the danger that it's in of judgment God's judgment coming like a silly dove the analogy of a bow with a floppy bowstring Translated here as a treacherous bow in verse 16 defenseless against God's judgment But today I want to look at the analogy in verse 8 there that Ephraim is a cake unturned Now Ephraim here, just so we're clear, Ephraim is another name for Israel, the northern kingdom in the context here that we're talking about. Ephraim was the biggest, had one of the biggest tribes there, so often Ephraim is used just to reference Israel in general.
So we're talking about Israel here.
The Analogy of the Unturned Cake
So first we'll look at the analogy, we'll unpack the analogy here of the cake unturned, and we'll see how it applies to the nation of Israel in context, and then we're gonna see how it applies to us today. So Hosea, He's been using these baking analogies. He's been on a roll with them. And now he comes, he starts to use another baking analogy in verse eight.
And he says here, Ephraim is a cake unturned. So he's describing Israel as a pancake. the type of bread that was baked in a pan, not bread that was baked in an oven, but bread that was baked in a pan over a fire. Now, the Israelites wouldn't have had the flapjack pancakes that we think of today when we think of pancakes, but the principle is the same, mixing batter together, cooking it in a pan, and just the way that we would make pancakes today. So we can have the pancake, the flapjack pancake in our minds, in order to help us understand the analogy here.
So kids imagine that it's a Saturday morning and your parents say, you know what, let's go out for breakfast. Let's go out for breakfast. So you go to Denny's or something. I don't know if there's a Denny's in this town, but we all know Denny's.
So let's go, let's say we're gonna go out to Denny's for breakfast. And you go to the restaurant, you sit down at the table, the waitress gives you the menus and you start looking at the menu And you see the picture of this pancake. It's beautiful. It's just golden brown on there.
Your mouth starts to water. And then the waitress comes around. And she says, can I take your order? And you point to the picture on the menu.
And you said, I want that. I want that pancake. It looks so good. So you sit there.
Feels like forever. It's only a few minutes, but it feels like forever. But then the waitress starts to bring the food out. She brings out your family stuff.
She gives your brother. She gives him his food. He's ordered the pancake, too. You look at it.
Oh, it looks so good. Your mouth starts to water. And then you just can't wait to get yours. You can't wait to cover it in syrup.
Aunt Jemima syrup. Well, we can't say that anymore, can we? It's now something else. But you want to cover it in syrup.
And you want to eat it. It looks so good. But then the waitress puts your plate in front of you and you take a look at it. You sit back in shock.
It doesn't look anything like the picture. It looks awful. It's not nice and golden at all. It's raw.
It's gooey. There's gooey batter on the top. The pancake and you kind of you take your fork and you lift up the edge and you see it's just burnt on the bottom It's black. It's gross.
Well, what happened? Well, the cook never the cook didn't flip your pancake It's it's unturned to use the language here. He flipped your brother's pancake That's why it looks so good. And and and it looks like that one looks like the picture but yours it looks so It looks so gross.
It never got flipped. It's and it's displeasing You take your plate and you push it away. It's displeasing. What a disappointment.
Well, that's what God says to Israel here. He says, that's exactly what you are to me. You're like this pancake that didn't get flipped. You're not pleasing.
You're revolting to me. Why? Because God had given Israel his law. He had, Taken Israel, they were his people.
He gave them a law. The law was to reflect his goodness and his justice, or his truth and justice. They were supposed to live according to that law as a reflection of who he was. And he pointed to that law like it was the Denny's menu.
And he says, this is what I want. I want this from you. He pointed to that. Just like the prophet Micah says, he has shown you, oh man, what is good.
He pointed, he said, this is what I want, Israel. But Israel looked nothing like the picture. Israel looked nothing at all. They did not reflect that law at all.
They had violated that law in every way possible, their sin. And they looked nothing, nothing like it. Well, why was that? Well, that's what the first part of the verse tells us.
Ephraim has mixed himself among the peoples. So this is another baking reference now that he's using again here. He's mixed himself, the idea of mixing the batter. Like a baker who's mixed the wrong ingredients into the pancake batter, Israel had mixed wrong ingredients into their life as a nation.
They were supposed to be a nation that was different, completely different than the other nations. What we just read in Deuteronomy 18, they were not supposed to do the things that the other nations did. They were supposed to obey God's laws and not mingle with the other nations there. God had told them that many times through the Old Testament.
He always said to them, I've separated you from the nations. You were different. You're to be different. You're to You're to separate yourselves from the nations around you and not look like them, not mingle in their lifestyles and practices and worship of their gods.
When in Numbers 23, that's the story of the prophet Balaam and Balak, the king of Moab. And he hired Balaam, who was an ungodly wicked man, but Yet God used that ungodly man. Balak hired him to curse Israel, but instead God caused Balaam to bless Israel. One of the things that he said about the Israelites, he says, I see a people dwelling alone, not reckoning themselves as one of the nations.
Israel was supposed to be different. They were supposed to represent their God. They were supposed to represent Yahweh by obeying His laws, by reflecting who their God was. Their society as a nation in a political outward way would reflect who their God was.
Their society would be peaceful and stable if they followed all of those laws. All of the nations around them would be ruling Ruling by that according to the laws of their own gods little g gods and their societies would be chaotic as a result of that there would be You can read Psalm 82 if you want to if you want to to learn more about that But where God indicts essentially he's talking to the gods of those nations, but he's saying there's there's no truth There's no justice. How long will you afflict the poor and will you will you have be unfaithful or an injustice and That's what the nations around them were like. Israel was supposed to be different.
They're supposed to display the glory of their God when they lived according to his laws as a nation. But as a result of that, as a result of mixing in the practices of the nations around them, they are no longer pleasing to Yahweh. They're like an unflipped pancake now, burnt on one side, gooey, uncooked batter on the other side. Good for nothing, displeasing, something you would spit out of your mouth.
And that's what God says to them.
The Grain Offering and God's Requirements
Now I wanna see something else here that's gonna help us to draw out a few points from the pancake motif in connection to Old Testament worship. Turn to Leviticus chapter two. Leviticus chapter two. We'll begin at verse four.
And if you bring as an offering, a grain offering baked in the oven, it shall be with unleavened cakes of fine flour mixed with oil, or unleavened wafers anointed with oil. But if your offering is a grain offering baked in a pan, so that's what we're talking about here in Hosea, it shall be of fine flour, unleavened, mixed with oil. You shall break it in pieces and pour oil on it as a grain offering. And if your offering is a grain offering baked in a covered pan, it shall be of fine flour You shall bring the grain offering that is made of these things to the Lord.
And when it is presented to the priest, he shall bring it to the altar. Then the priest shall take from the grain offering a memorial portion and burn it on the altar. And it is an offering made by fire, a sweet aroma to the Lord. What is left of the grain offering shall be Aaron and his sons.
It is most holy of the offerings to the Lord made by fire. No grain offering which you bring to the Lord shall be made with leaven, for you shall burn no leaven nor any honey in any offering to the Lord made by fire. As for the offering of the firstfruits, you shall offer them to the Lord, but they shall not be burned on the altar for a sweet aroma. And every offering of your grain offering you shall season with salt, and you shall not allow the salt of the covenant of your God to be lacking from your grain offering, with all your offerings you shall offer salt." Now, I read all those verses because we see here very clearly this grain offering was about preparing something and presenting something to the Lord as an offering, as part of worship.
But very specific ingredients are listed here, and they couldn't add any leaven, they couldn't add any honey. God was very clear what He required of them, and they had to ensure they had They had the fine flour, and they had the oil, and they had the salt. So mixing in any of these other ingredients, he tells us very clearly, would not be acceptable to the Lord. And this specific grain offering is representative of the entire law of God that he's given to them here, of all aspects of it there that they could not add, they could not take away from them.
God had given the law, he'd given them the moral law, he had given them the civil law, which told them how to structure their society. He had given them the ceremonial law, which told them how to worship him. And he said, this is what I want from you. But instead, they had used the wrong ingredients.
They had mingled themselves with the nations. They were displeasing to God as a result of that.
Israel's Three-fold Failure
From the moral perspective, they had completely defiled themselves. There was theft, there was killing, there was adultery, lying, cheating, coveting, worshipping other gods, worshipping the golden calves that the King Jeroboam had set up. They were like the nations around them. They had mixed in that lifestyle, immoral lifestyle, into their own.
From a civil perspective, the rulers didn't rule according to truth and justice, and truth and mercy. If you go back to Hosea, we see that in chapter 4. of Hosea, the charge against the Israelites. There's no truth or mercy or knowledge of God in the land. They're swearing, lying, killing, stealing, committing adultery, breaking all restraint, bloodshed upon bloodshed.
So they were, as a society, life as society was chaotic. They were not following those civil laws. From a ceremonial perspective, they were, and when it came to the worship of God, they were mixing in all types of other styles of worship, such as the way, the methods in which the pagans, the nations around them worship their God, and they were full out worshipping those gods as well. They were worshipping Baal and Moloch, and Chemosh, Marduk, all those other gods.
They were worshipping them. And the fact that they were mixing in pagan worship styles into their worship of Yahweh, what they said was worshipping Yahweh, all of that made their worship so displeasing to Yahweh. And even as they tried to worship Him, It was displeasing to them. Yahweh wanted complete fidelity.
He wanted perfect faithfulness. Again, think of the marriage relationship here. A husband is not pleased. If his wife, even though she sleeps with another man, that she still sleeps with him too?
Of course not. Obviously not. And that's how Yahweh says this to Israel. They were, Israel was, that's what they were doing.
They were worshiping other gods, being unfaithful in the way that a wife would be unfaithful to her husband. Their worship was abominable to Yahweh. Displeasing, like this unflipped pancake. And that's the reason.
If you look at the rest of the chapter, we're not going to look at those verses, but the rest of the chapter tells us God is going to send judgment upon them because of this, because of their unfaithfulness to Him, because they have not kept those laws and kept them perfectly and presented themselves as God had said here's my law pointed to it This is what I want from you like it was the Denny's menu and yet when all of their all of their sin and all of their unfaithfulness made them displeasing to God and worthy of judgment the rest of the chapter says that God is going to come and judge them for it and
Application to Humanity as Image-Bearers
But what does this mean for us? We can read this, we can look at the nation of Israel and think, wow, that's, I can't believe they would do that. God, they were God's special people. God, and all they had to do was follow his laws.
But they went after other gods. But we're not looking, we're not looking, I think I said this last time, we're not looking through a window at the nation of Israel. We need to look at this passage as a mirror. How does it show, what does it have to do with us?
Well, it's very similar. It's the same, essentially. God created us, mankind, to be His image-bearers. That means that we are supposed to reflect the character of God according to our creaturely capacities, according as we as creatures, we are to reflect God's character, as it were, as His image-bearers.
We are to image Him. We are to be like God. Just like the nation of Israel, as I said, was supposed to reflect the goodness and the truth, the justice and the mercy of their God as a nation, they're supposed to reflect that we, on an individual level, are supposed to reflect the goodness and the holiness of our God, because we are His image-bearers to image Him. And God gave us His law that shows us exactly how we are to live.
He wrote it on our hearts, He gave it to us in His word, It tells us exactly how we are to live in a way that reflects His glory. He pointed to that law like it was the Denny's menu and says, this is what I want from you. This is what is pleasing to me. He says, I want you to look exactly like this picture, this law.
As Peter says, God wants us to, we're to be holy as He is holy. And that's what we need to understand.
God's Demand for Perfection
God demands perfection. He demands perfect obedience to that law. He does not demand our best effort. He's not satisfied with, well, I'm a pretty good person.
No, he wanted perfection. That's what he ordered. He gave us that law and he says, this is what I want. Recently, last week, I actually had a conversation with an individual and he said to me, I'm not perfect, but I'm not a sinner.
And I said, what? He said, because he had classified in his mind little sins were imperfections, and the big sins, murder and adultery and bank robbery, those were sins, but he was just imperfect, but he wasn't a sinner. But it doesn't work that way. God tells us whatever is not perfect obedience to my law is sin.
Even if you've stolen a cookie from the cookie jar when you were a kid, that was the only thing you've ever done that was wrong. That's a sin. Or looking with lust upon someone. Jesus tells us clearly, that's a sin.
You've broken that law, and now you no longer look like the image that God wants you to be. That goes for every single one of us. Maybe you're like Israel, maybe you've done some sort of an outward, heartless religion, you went to church, maybe you went to church your whole life, perhaps. But that doesn't matter.
Just like Israel, that outward going through the motions of a heartless religion wasn't pleasing to God. We've sinned. We have mixed sin into the batter of our lives. And that makes us displeasing to God, as displeasing as an unflipped pancake.
And we would push that away, we're displeased, it's revolting. As a result of that, we're bound for judgment, just like Israel here. God will come in judgment upon those who because of their sin, because of the violation of his law. Unless, of course, just like Israel, as I mentioned already, chapter 5, unless we acknowledge our offense, we acknowledge the reality that we don't have a perfect life to present to God.
Because of our sin, we acknowledge our offenses. Then we come and we return to the Lord in an appeal for mercy, in an appeal for forgiveness and an appeal for him to heal us, as he says in chapter 6, verse 1, trusting in the healing remedy that he has provided for us. Well, we know, as new covenant believers,
Christ as Our Representative Offering
We know that the healing remedy that God has provided, the cure that God has provided for our sin problem is His Son, our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. If we had to present ourselves on our own before God, it's like presenting an unflipped, a half-baked pancake that would repulse God. But God made that way where we can have a new, we don't have to present ourselves. We have a representative.
We can have a representative who presents himself for us, God's own son. And Pastor Butler already said this before. What did God say about his son when he was baptized and on the mountain of transfiguration? What did he say?
Voice from heaven said, this is my beloved son, what in whom I am well pleased. God is well pleased with his son. He's not well pleased with us, with our presentation, but he's well pleased with his son. We don't have that, but anything that's, we can't present perfectly pleasing life to God but Christ can Christ he took upon himself a human nature he came he was born in Bethlehem last couple weeks we've been Traditionally is the time of year when we consider those things the incarnation that the Son of God took upon himself a human nature Why did he do that so that he could come and live? in obedience to this law, born under the law, says Paul, so that he might redeem those who are under the law.
Because the law, we have failed to live up to that law, but Christ came and lived under that law in perfect obedience to the law. And his life was a life of perfect obedience. And he could present himself, the writer of Hebrews says, he's the express image of his person, perfectly in his humanity on this earth, perfectly imaged God, perfectly matched up with that law, with that picture. of what God was requiring. Christ presented a life that was well-pleasing to God.
He's the only one who's ever done that. The only man who has ever lived a life that is perfectly well-pleasing to God. And it's his life that can become ours and represent us before God so that we don't have to present ourselves to God and present our half-baked, unflipped pancake of an excuse for a life towards Him. We have Christ that can be our representative.
Christ the Perfect Sweet-Smelling Offering
Think back to the grain offering that we read from in Leviticus chapter 2. The person had to prepare this grain offering, and they had to present it. It was a pancake. They had to present it as an offering to God.
They had to make it exactly how God had determined. The right ingredients, None of the wrong ingredients there and present it to God. And it was to be as a sweet smelling aroma that pleases God. Turn to Ephesians 5.
This is where we see Christ. Christ doing this in his life. Ephesians 5 verse 2. Walk in love as Christ also loved us and gave himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma.
Remember the sweet-smelling aroma in Leviticus 2, that it would be to God if you did this just right and just perfectly and just so. Well, we've already seen we can't do that. We failed to do that in our lives, but Christ did. He gave himself as an offering.
The Greek word is prosphero. That means to carry something forward. It means to present something. And that was his perfect life of obedience.
Perfectly living in obedience to the law of God. Not to cheapen the work of Christ, but to keep with the analogy, Christ presented the perfect golden brown Pancake that matched exactly what the menu said it should look like that's what Christ did is he presented his life Prospero put his life forward as a as an offering to God perfectly accepted a sweet-smelling Sacrifice a sweet-smelling aroma. He says here, but Christ also did something else. It tells us he it says he gave himself not only as an offering but also as a sacrifice and that was well-pleasing to God.
The sacrifice. Sacrifice is giving up something, not putting something forward, but the giving up of something for God, the giving up of his life is what it was there. Christ, because he was perfect, because he was pleasing to God, he became worthy and he became acceptable in God's eyes, but he also became then a sacrifice for that was acceptable on that cross. When he offered himself to pay for all the sins and all the shortcomings and all the failures of his people, all those they had mixed in, all of that sin, and that had caused them to be this displeasing, unflipped pancake, Christ takes all of that sin, pays for it all in full so that we can be forgiven.
That's the gospel. That's the good news here, according to Hosea, that we don't have this in and of ourselves. We can't present ourselves acceptable to God because we are not perfect. God demanded perfection, but Christ is.
Christ is perfect, and Christ also pays for our failure to be perfect so that we can be accepted with God. And that's for everyone who believes in Him, everyone who recognizes that reality, as already said in chapter 6 or chapter 5, acknowledging your offenses, recognizing the fact that you aren't perfect and God demands perfection because He is so holy and He said, this is what I want from you. And again, that doesn't matter if you've committed the most heinous of sins and heinous of crimes you could imagine, or if you've, as R.C. Sproul would say, committed the tiniest peccadillo.
Whichever one it is, either way, we can't present that perfect life. But Christ can, and Christ does. That's for all who believe in Him. He will represent them before God, and then we can be forgiven, and we can be accepted in God's sight.
The relationship can be restored again because of Christ. Don't ever lose sight of that. Believer, if you're here, if you're a believer, don't lose sight of that. We talk a lot in the Reformed traditions, we talk a lot about living a life of obedience to God, living according to His laws, that we're supposed to be doing that, and we're right.
Never subconsciously start to think that because I'm doing so well, and I'm living in obedience to God's laws, that's what's making me right with God, or that's what's making my entrance into heaven, God accepting me into heaven because of that. Never lose sight of the fact that it is Christ, Him alone. It's His perfect life, His death. that allow entrance into heaven for anyone, for all who believe in Him. But for those who are believers in Christ, redeemed, we're redeemed image bearers.
That's what Paul says, we're redeemed image bearers and we are then to be conforming our lives and changing our lives back to look like, back to image our God again. To be conformed to the image of Christ because that's to be conformed to the image of God for which we were created. We are supposed to be.
Sanctification: Conformity to the Image of Christ
We are supposed to be doing that, transforming our lives, casting out sin, putting on good works. Turn to Hebrews chapter 9 for a moment. Hebrews chapter 9, verse 13. For if the blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling the unclean sanctifies for the purifying of the flesh, so he's talking about Old Testament worship there, and then verse 14, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal spirit offered himself without spot to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?
Christ's death on our behalf cleanses our conscience, it breaks us free from the bondage of sin, as Paul says in Romans, in Romans chapter 6, he talks about that, but it breaks us free of that. So then we can serve the living God, so that we can do works that are pleasing to Him, having been redeemed, having been broken free. Turn to chapter 13 in Hebrews, if you're still there. Verse 20.
Now may the God of peace, who brought up our Lord Jesus from the dead, that great shepherd of the sheep through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you complete in every good work to do His will, working in you what is well-pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen. Christ, by the power of His Spirit, working in us, with us, working us, striving to that end, we are to be conformed back to the image. of Christ, we're to be complete. That complete is the word, the Greek word telos, reaching its goal, its purpose, the purpose for which we were created, image bearers of God.
We broke that, we failed, but Christ redeems us and now he conforms us back towards that end, towards that goal of being like Christ, being an image bearer of God. And again, this is not so that we can be accepted with God, this is because we are through Christ, if we have faith in Christ, this comes after. We have to remember, your pastor tells you this all the time, the law points us to Christ, because we failed to keep the law. But we come to Christ, we find forgiveness, and then Christ points us back to the law.
And again, that law, it's like the picture on the Denny's menu. We need to, we want to be conformed to that. We want to change our lives. And through the life of what we call sanctification, cleaning up our lives in order to look more and more like, in obedience to his law, and look like that picture on the Denny's menu.
And now, if you're back in Hosea, turn back there again, what was it that made Israel unacceptable with God and so displeasing? Well, it was the fact that they were mixing themselves among the peoples, mixing themselves among the nations around them, mixing themselves with the world. So as we work by the power of the Holy Spirit to conform our lives back to the image of the one, the image of God, the one whose image we are created in, we need to remove worldliness. We need to remove sin, excuse me, from our lives, ridding ourselves of whatever is in opposition to the will of God, to the revealed will of God.
Turn to Colossians. Sorry, I'm getting you to jump around a lot here, but you can turn to Colossians where we see this. Chapter one, verse nine. For this reason, we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding, so that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing him and being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God.
Paul prays here that they would be filled with the knowledge of his will, the knowledge of God's will. That's his word, his law that tells us how we are supposed to be living. It's the Denny's menu with the picture on it that we are supposed to conform ourselves to. So we need to grow in that and study that so we know what it is that pleases our Maker and our Redeemer, removing the sin from our lives.
Removing Worldliness from the Christian Life
Now we ought, I had a section here about doing that on a corporate level, when it comes to worshiping on a corporate level, and we can apply it that way, but I think you're very familiar here with the regulative principle of worship. It's that same principle, removing the worldliness and only doing what God requires here. But anyways, I want to keep looking at this on a personal level here. We ought not to be mingling worldliness in with our Christianity, in the sense of our lives as Christians, who we are as redeemed image bearers, where all week we go to work, we look like the world, there's no difference about us, then we come to church on Sunday, and then we look like Christians again, or maybe whenever we hang out with our friends, we look like the world, and then we're home with our families, then we act more like Christ again.
Or we watch movies, we watch, you know, listen to music that the world promotes. I want to be careful here, that doesn't mean that we can only listen to choirs singing psalters and we can only watch Kendrick Brothers movies. That's not what I'm saying at all here, but we have to, we need to make sure that and be on guard that what we're watching, what we're listening to, that we're not using the world's standard of what's acceptable, but we're using God's standard as revealed in his word. It's not, we cannot mix.
Christianity and the world, Christianity and, or sin in our lives. God wants our heart. We saw that. He wants fidelity.
He wants faithfulness to him. So we ought to be working to that end. Do not quench the Spirit, the Spirit who's working in us to conform us, to make us complete, to bring us to that goal. Don't quench that.
Work with Him. Don't try to live with one foot in both camps, one foot in the world and one in the church. We want to be living a life in accordance with His will. Conforming our lives more and more growing to becoming looking more and more like that picture on the on of the pancake on the menu there he God He wants us to be conformed to His image.
That is why we were created. That is our purpose for being here. If you ever ask yourself, why are we here? How do I know what my purpose is in this life?
That's your purpose, to image God. That's the only thing that can give you purpose in this life, to be redeemed. to be restored, to be renewed as an image bearer, and then work to that end. That needs to be the ultimate goal. That is the only thing that can bring you purpose.
Last week at Trinity, I preached from 2 Peter 3, 17 and 18, sort of as a New Year's resolution. Peter says, Beware, lest you fall from your own steadfastness and being led away with error of the wicked. But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, we're to be steadfast, diligent, Peter says in verse 14, to be diligent, intentional in our walk with the Lord, growing in the knowledge of our Savior. And the knowledge gives us the foundation so we can grow in those Christian graces, living that out in our lives. don't have a lackadaisical attitude towards the Christian life.
We see that, unfortunately, so much around us. have no worry that they're mixing themselves with the peoples. They're in the sense of mixing sin into their lives. They're not so concerned about that. Oh, I'm in.
I'm in. Well, God says no. He does not want that. It's displeasing to him.
We are to be conformed to his image. We don't have that lackadaisical attitude. Be intentional, be steadfast, be diligent, as Peter says, conforming our lives to His image, using His word, His will, growing in that, understanding that. We sang Psalter 119.
How many of you can say that, what we sang? How I love your law. I meditate on it day and night. I keep your commandments. we need to be working to that end.
But again, we can never forget the gospel, never forget the gospel, the good news, the fact that As we're working towards godliness, as we desire that as his people, never forget, for one, that our shortcomings are forgiven. We try, and we see ourselves fail, and we want to beat ourselves up about it. But God says, no, you're forgiven. You're accepted in Christ.
It's not about your performance that makes you accepted with me. You're accepted because of Christ. Again, that's not an excuse to sin, but if our heart is right, it's a blessed reminder that we have while we're striving to live in a way that glorifies Him. It's a blessed reminder that our sin is forgiven, all those failures. and shortcomings are forgiven.
But again, never forget the fact that we are saved, we are accepted with God, we are pleasing to God, we're loved by God because of Christ, because of His perfect obedience, because He's paid for all of our shortcomings. Never lose sight of the gospel. Yes, we want to live in obedience to Him, but we are accepted with God because of Christ. He is our representative before God.
We're united to him by faith. We're accepted by God in God's sight because of Christ. Remember what I said at the beginning? This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased.
Well, if we have faith in Christ, he's our representative and now God is well pleased and we're accepted because of him. Never forget that.
Call to Unbelievers
And if you're here this evening and if you're not a believer, What we've just talked about the last few minutes here, about removing sin from your lives, that's not where you start. You don't start by trying to clean up your act, trying to fix yourself, trying to make yourself acceptable to God somehow. You can't. You've sinned, you've failed, you've already fallen short.
You can't try. You need to believe in Jesus. That's where you start, believing in Him. the one with whom God is well pleased. Trust in him, acknowledge your offense, recognize the fact you have sinned.
You can't present a perfect life to God, but Christ can. And he says, whoever believes will be forgiven, will have this righteousness that makes you worthy, that you are then accepted in the beloved, as Paul says. Our sin is forgiven. And we no longer stand deserving of the judgment that is spelled out in the rest of the chapter here.
Judgment of Hosea 7. Judgment for violating the law. But we can be forgiven of that trust in the Lord Jesus today. That's where you begin.
Then we go on. Then we go on to live a life of obedience, intentional, as Peter says, diligent, steadfast, growing in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Well, let's close there in prayer.
Closing Prayer
Lord, how we do thank you for this passage of Scripture. We thank you for these analogies that Hosea gives to us that make it so clear, the gospel so clear to us in our precarious position before you, if we were to present ourselves on our own, worthy of being Pushed away by you cast away thrown into outer darkness because we are so displeasing but father how we thank you for that one who offered himself as a sweet-smelling Aroma accepted in your sight Lord so that we can have acceptance with you again and that we by our union with him through faith can now be accepted in the beloved and we can be reconciled with our Creator and with our through our your son our Savior the Lord Jesus Christ father, please take this message and apply it to the hearts here, that your people would leave here encouraged, strengthened in the reminder that we are, that it's not about our performance that makes us right with you, encouraged to press on in our walk with the Lord, in our conformity to the image of Christ. Father, we pray you would take this message and apply it to the hearts of any here who may not be in Christ who have not acknowledged their offense, who have not come to you for forgiveness through the Lord Jesus Christ, that today that they would see that the Savior and come and trust in Him and Him alone and know then that they are right with their Creator and that they are bound for glory with Him. Father, we pray to that end.
We pray you'd be glorified here and now and it's in Jesus' name that we pray. Amen.