SPEAKER_00: We are returning back to our sermon series on the book of Hosea.
SPEAKER_00: If you're new, recently we began this series several months ago, and we were looking this morning at chapter 10 in the Old Testament, the prophet Hosea.
SPEAKER_00: Follow along in the bulletin if you would like.
SPEAKER_00: Reading God's word.
SPEAKER_00: Israel is a luxuriant vine that yields its fruit.
SPEAKER_00: The more his fruit increased, the more altars he built.
SPEAKER_00: As his country improved, he improved his pillars.
SPEAKER_00: Their heart is false.
SPEAKER_00: Now they must bear their guilt.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord will break down their altars and destroy their pillars.
SPEAKER_00: For now they will say, We have no king, for we do not fear the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And a king, what could he do for us?
SPEAKER_00: They utter mere words.
SPEAKER_00: With empty oaths they make covenants.
SPEAKER_00: So judgment springs up like poisonous weeds in the furrows of the field.
SPEAKER_00: The inhabitants of Samaria tremble for the calf of Beth Avan.
SPEAKER_00: Its peoples mourn for it, and so do its idolatrous priest, those who rejoiced over it and over its glory, for it has departed from them.
SPEAKER_00: The thing itself shall be carried to Assyria as tribute to the great king.
SPEAKER_00: Ephraim shall be put to shame, and Israel shall be ashamed of its idol.
SPEAKER_00: Samaria's king shall perish, like a twig on the face of the waters.
SPEAKER_00: The high places of Avon, the sin of Israel, shall be destroyed, thorn and thistle shall grow up on their altars, and they shall say to the mountains, cover us, and to the hills, fall on us.
SPEAKER_00: From the days of Gibeah, you have sinned, O Israel.
SPEAKER_00: There they have continued.
SPEAKER_00: Shall not the war against the unjust overtake them in Gibeah?
SPEAKER_00: When I please I will discipline them, and nations shall be gathered against them when they are bound up for their double iniquity.
SPEAKER_00: Ephraim was a trained calf that loved to thresh, and I spared her fair neck.
SPEAKER_00: But I will put Ephraim to the yoke.
SPEAKER_00: Judah must plough, Jacob must harrow for himself.
SPEAKER_00: Sow for yourselves righteousness, reap steadfast love, break up your fallowed ground, for it is the time to seek the Lord, that he may come and reign righteousness upon you.
SPEAKER_00: You have ploughed iniquity, you have reaped injustice, you have eaten the fruit of lies, because you have trusted in your own way and in the multitude of your warriors.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore the tumult of war shall rise, arise among your people, and all your fortresses shall be destroyed, as Shalman destroyed Beth Arbal on the day of battle.
SPEAKER_00: Mothers were dashed in pieces with their children.
SPEAKER_00: Thus it shall be done to you, O Bethel, because of your great evil.
SPEAKER_00: At dawn the king of Israel shall be utterly cut off.
SPEAKER_00: This is the reading of God's holy and infallible and errant word.
SPEAKER_00: May we ask the Spirit's work in our own hearts this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Father, we thank you that with sin, Lord, there is grace that you offer when we fall greatly.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, you are the one who restores us.
SPEAKER_00: So Lord, we pray by your Spirit's work this morning.
SPEAKER_00: May the seed of your word not fall on hard ground in our hearts.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, would you soften our hearts?
SPEAKER_00: Would you enlighten our minds?
SPEAKER_00: Father, would you do a work in our wills that we might desire to trust you in all things.
SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name, amen.
SPEAKER_00: If there's a word to think of this morning, what Hosea is speaking about, that word might well be deception.
SPEAKER_00: Hosea has done a masterful job from the very beginning of describing what it looks like to fall away from God, to wander away from the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: He's used a multitude of images, different ways to capture what falling away, wandering away from the Lord actually looks like.
SPEAKER_00: Probably the strongest, certainly the first illustration that he used was the marriage of Hosea and his wife Gomer.
SPEAKER_00: We're going back to the beginning of this series, to the beginning of the book.
SPEAKER_00: A woman who proved to be unfaithful on many occasions, who eventually, as we saw, literally would be bought back by her own husband on the slave block.
SPEAKER_00: And we saw then, and we understand, that that's a spiritual representation of all of us.
SPEAKER_00: All of us were sold to sin.
SPEAKER_00: All of us were enslaved to sin.
SPEAKER_00: No exceptions.
SPEAKER_00: But the Lord saw us in our misery, and the Lord came after us.
SPEAKER_00: This series title is A Love That Pursues.
SPEAKER_00: And we're learning to really grow in our appreciation for that truth of our God.
SPEAKER_00: A God that pursues us in love.
SPEAKER_00: And just like Gomer was on the slave block, sold into slavery, each of us have been on the slave block of sin.
SPEAKER_00: And our husband, our truest husband, the Lord Jesus Christ, came to buy us back after we left him.
SPEAKER_00: That was the point of that story in Hosea with his wife Gomer.
SPEAKER_00: But Hosea has used other word pictures, not just for a faithless marriage, Gomer's wandering eye, chasing after other lovers, illustrating the hearts of God's people, the northern tribe of Israel at that time in particular.
SPEAKER_00: Though God had been so good to her, her restless heart would remain restless until she finally saw with new eyes who her true husband really was.
SPEAKER_00: Was it Hosea?
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
SPEAKER_00: But I believe that she came to see her truest husband, the Lord Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Just as he met her, bought her, redeemed her, so he does for all of his children, all of his people.
SPEAKER_00: We come to verse 2 of this text, and it says, their heart is false.
SPEAKER_00: Other translations translate this, their heart is deceitful.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what we're exploring more this morning.
SPEAKER_00: What this Hebrew word means, literally, is oily, slick, double-tongued.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: Something that is evasive, something that is slippery, something that's hard to really catch or hold on to?
SPEAKER_00: James Boyce makes a statement, the idea that they went through the motions, the Israelites at this time are going through the motions of doing one thing when actually their intent was to do something else all the while.
SPEAKER_00: Does that sound familiar?
SPEAKER_00: We've all been guilty of saying one thing with our lips, but by our lives demonstrating that we are committed to another purpose, another end that we see that we think is attractive.
SPEAKER_00: No doubt when Gomer went off with her other lovers, she would have said that she still loved Hosea, that she wasn't entirely unfaithful to Hosea.
SPEAKER_00: She probably would have said, but Hosea, at the end of the day or night, at the end of the week, I come back to you.
SPEAKER_00: And we just immediately know how wrong that is.
SPEAKER_00: But it's not that we haven't done it.
SPEAKER_00: This was Israel's doing.
SPEAKER_00: This is what they were doing.
SPEAKER_00: They were still giving to worship.
SPEAKER_00: They were still going to worship.
SPEAKER_00: They were still bringing their tithes and their offerings.
SPEAKER_00: They were bringing their animal sacrifices.
SPEAKER_00: Outwardly, it looked like they were doing a lot of the right things.
SPEAKER_00: But inwardly, their hearts were very far from God.
SPEAKER_00: They were going to other altars that we read about throughout this book.
SPEAKER_00: The prophets, the major and the minor prophets, speak repeatedly about the other altars that they built, the other gods that captured their hearts.
SPEAKER_00: And as we've seen in this sermon series today, no, they probably aren't stones.
SPEAKER_00: But what about wealth?
SPEAKER_00: What about career?
SPEAKER_00: What about lust?
SPEAKER_00: What about pride?
SPEAKER_00: What are the things that infiltrate our minds, capture our hearts, and lead us away from worshiping God with an undivided heart?
SPEAKER_00: That's what this sermon series is looking at.
SPEAKER_00: It's been said that in idolatry a third party gets in between God and the person, adulterating an exclusive loyalty.
SPEAKER_00: It's always about the third party.
SPEAKER_00: The third party may be an actual person, but the third party may be again wealth.
SPEAKER_00: It may be self-fulfillment.
SPEAKER_00: You might say, well, it's something as simple as that, yes.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, just living for self is idolatry.
SPEAKER_00: Didn't God say that you must worship me and no other gods, including your own living for comfort or living for affluence, whatever that may be.
SPEAKER_00: The danger of third parties is that they are always wedge shaped.
SPEAKER_00: That's the way Cornelius Plantinka put it.
SPEAKER_00: The danger of a third party is that they are always wedge shaped.
SPEAKER_00: They're always cutting in.
SPEAKER_00: They're always separating us from God, from the heart of God.
SPEAKER_00: A pure heart is an undivided heart.
SPEAKER_00: Divided worship destroys worshipers.
SPEAKER_00: Divided love divides lovers.
SPEAKER_00: Sin is deception.
SPEAKER_00: I like the way Lewis Meads put it, and we looked at this briefly earlier in the series.
SPEAKER_00: Self-deception is a shadowy phenomenon by which we pull the wool over some part of our own psyche.
SPEAKER_00: We put a move on ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: Now we can relate to that, right?
SPEAKER_00: We put a move on ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: We deny, suppress, or minimize what we know to be true.
SPEAKER_00: We assert, we adorn, and we elevate what we know to be false.
SPEAKER_00: And listen to this phrase as he puts it.
SPEAKER_00: We pritify ugly realities and sell ourselves the prettified versions.
SPEAKER_00: We do pretti up, we try to make something ugly attractive.
SPEAKER_00: Until it becomes attractive to our own eyes.
SPEAKER_00: And all of a sudden we find that we want to spend more time with it than with God.
SPEAKER_00: And we can take anything.
SPEAKER_00: And all of a sudden we find that increasingly our desire to be with God lessens and our desire to be with it grows.
SPEAKER_00: It can be good things that we make too much of.
SPEAKER_00: We can promote things that are good into the things that are best.
SPEAKER_00: But whenever we promote anything else, the things that we've already shared or talked about this morning or not, whatever we elevate, whatever we promote will always come with it demoting God.
SPEAKER_00: There is no such thing as having God and it on the same level.
SPEAKER_00: It's impossible.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus said, you will either love the one and hate the other, or hate the one and love the other.
SPEAKER_00: First, we deceive ourselves, and then we convince ourselves that we're not deceiving ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: That bears repetition.
SPEAKER_00: First, we deceive ourselves, but it doesn't feel like that.
SPEAKER_00: It just feels like something's resonating with us.
SPEAKER_00: Something that makes you feel alive.
SPEAKER_00: And that could be seeing your stocks go up if that's what you live for.
SPEAKER_00: Work, performance, approval.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, how many of us, if we were honest, would say, you know what?
SPEAKER_00: I think maybe sometimes I'm just living for the approval of others.
SPEAKER_00: I'm living for the approval of my boss, I'm living for the approval of my spouse, my children, my church, whatever it is.
SPEAKER_00: Self-deception says, it's okay.
SPEAKER_00: That's good.
SPEAKER_00: First, we deceive ourselves, and then we convince ourselves that we are not deceiving ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: The outline is brief.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to look at deception exposed, deception judged, and deception confessed.
SPEAKER_00: Deception exposed, it's all over the chapter that I read, verses 1, verses 2.
SPEAKER_00: Israel used to, Israel, I planted you as a precious vine in my garden.
SPEAKER_00: And read through the Old Testament, you'll find it all over in Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos.
SPEAKER_00: The Psalms talk about this.
SPEAKER_00: God says, I planted you as a vine, and I did everything necessary to plant you with good seed, to water, to grow.
SPEAKER_00: I sent the sunshine, I sent the water, I did everything necessary, but you just went wild.
SPEAKER_00: And you didn't bear good fruit, you bore weeds and thorns.
SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah says in chapter 2, verse 21, you became a corrupt wild vine, almost always portrayed that way negatively in the Word of God, exposed by the deeds in their lives.
SPEAKER_00: We could ask ourselves this morning, how would we know what that really looks like very practically?
SPEAKER_00: The weeds and not the fruit.
SPEAKER_00: Well, Galatians certainly speaks about that.
SPEAKER_00: When we get the fruit of the Spirit, we also get the works of the flesh, verse 19.
SPEAKER_00: It says the works of the flesh are evident.
SPEAKER_00: Sexual immorality, but let's remember how Jesus defined that.
SPEAKER_00: It's just looking at a woman or a man in your mind and lusting.
SPEAKER_00: That's adultery.
SPEAKER_00: Impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity.
SPEAKER_00: Now listen to these.
SPEAKER_00: Do we struggle with anger?
SPEAKER_00: Rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy.
SPEAKER_00: And he goes on.
SPEAKER_00: Deception exposed.
SPEAKER_00: Make no doubt about it.
SPEAKER_00: Part of the point of this sermon this morning is that the Holy Spirit would show us.
SPEAKER_00: Am I deceived?
SPEAKER_00: Am I putting a move on myself that I don't even recognize?
SPEAKER_00: If so, Holy Spirit, please show me.
SPEAKER_00: Secondly, deception judged.
SPEAKER_00: Verses 10, 14, 15, and throughout.
SPEAKER_00: When I please, this is God speaking now, when I please, I will discipline these people.
SPEAKER_00: The nation will be gathered up against them.
SPEAKER_00: Nations will be gathered up against them.
SPEAKER_00: We've seen this in the series.
SPEAKER_00: Assyria, the emerging big political power of the world from the north, is coming down very soon.
SPEAKER_00: And they're going to decimate Israel.
SPEAKER_00: They're going to level Israel.
SPEAKER_00: The ten tribes will never again live in that land as the ten tribes as they did before.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 4, so the judgment springs up like poisonous weeds.
SPEAKER_00: God says, What I have in mind for you because of your idolatry, because of your adultery, what I have in mind for you is like a garden that started out like a pretty good garden, and all of a sudden the weeds were so overwhelming that you looked at that patch of garden, you said, It's useless.
SPEAKER_00: I'll never recover my garden.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 5, the glory has departed.
SPEAKER_00: They will soon be carried off to Assyria.
SPEAKER_00: Ephraim shall be put to shame.
SPEAKER_00: Israel shall be ashamed of his idol.
SPEAKER_00: Eventually our idols always shame us.
SPEAKER_00: Whatever the idol may be, eventually, and see the danger of it, of self-deception is we might well be hearing this this morning and thinking, well, I'm not sure if this is an idol, I'm not sure if this is dividing my heart from God.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not sure if I'm wandering into the arms of another lover.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not sure, I'm not sure.
SPEAKER_00: But unless our idols are exposed, we'll never deal with them.
SPEAKER_00: And we will continue to go on until the time will come, and the time will come.
SPEAKER_00: If they're not exposed, if they're not judged, the time will come when your idol will bring you down.
SPEAKER_00: Whether it's pride, approval, whatever it may be, the time will come when your idol will bring you down, and you'll be exposed.
SPEAKER_00: And you'll be surprised, perhaps.
SPEAKER_00: You might think at that moment, I didn't realize that this had that much power over my life.
SPEAKER_00: That's what Hosea is saying.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 8, you're gonna lose your kings.
SPEAKER_00: Literally, they had like four kings in a very short period of time.
SPEAKER_00: Some of them were assassinated within the nation, and others were captured and taken off to captivity.
SPEAKER_00: You're gonna lose your kings.
SPEAKER_00: And then they're gonna say, Well, we don't really care.
SPEAKER_00: We don't really need our kings.
SPEAKER_00: They're trying to just cover.
SPEAKER_00: And listen to this verse 8.
SPEAKER_00: The day will come when they will say to the mountains, cover us.
SPEAKER_00: They will say to the hills, fall on us.
SPEAKER_00: These are really horrible words to think about, but we must.
SPEAKER_00: He's saying to Israel, the day will come when you will be so miserable in your new captivity, where you will be abused and mistreated by the Assyrians like you can't imagine now.
SPEAKER_00: Punishment's coming.
SPEAKER_00: You would say to the mountains, please fall on me.
SPEAKER_00: You would say to the earthquake that we've heard of, we keep hearing about these earthquakes, you would say, Let the earthquake take me now.
SPEAKER_00: My life is so miserable.
SPEAKER_00: The language is very graphic to get our attention.
SPEAKER_00: Two times in the New Testament, this phrase is used May the rocks fall on us, may the mountains cover us in the rubble.
SPEAKER_00: The first time Jesus uttered the words on his way into Jerusalem for the last time, he prophesied that soon, within decades, and we know that it was 70 A.D.
SPEAKER_00: when the Romans came in and just leveled the city.
SPEAKER_00: They slaughtered the Jews.
SPEAKER_00: It was a horrible time.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus saw that and he said, on that day, you're going to cry out, I wish I was never born.
SPEAKER_00: I wish I didn't have to deal with all this.
SPEAKER_00: But there's a second time we find this phrase in the New Testament.
SPEAKER_00: It's actually in the last book of the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: Revelation chapter 6.
SPEAKER_00: Listen to these words.
SPEAKER_00: It may be a while perhaps since you've heard these words.
SPEAKER_00: Beginning to read at verse 12.
SPEAKER_00: When he opened the sixth seal, I looked, and behold, there was a great earthquake, and the sun became black as sackcloth, and the full moon became like blood, and the stars of the sky fell to the earth, as the fig tree sheds its winter fruit when shaken by a gale.
SPEAKER_00: The sky vanished like a scroll that is being rolled up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place.
SPEAKER_00: Then the kings of the earth and the great ones and the generals and the rich and the powerful, and everyone, slave and free, hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains, calling to the mountains and the rocks.
SPEAKER_00: This is what they say.
SPEAKER_00: This is what they will say one day.
SPEAKER_00: Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who is seated on the throne from the wrath of the Lamb, for the great day of their wrath has come.
SPEAKER_00: And who can stand?
SPEAKER_00: That's going to happen.
SPEAKER_00: Those words are referring not to 70 AD, those words are referring to when Jesus comes back to judge this world.
SPEAKER_00: And there are going to be countless people who are going to understand, who are going to think exactly these things as they see the cataclysmic return of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: You think you're going to see something special tomorrow with this eclipse?
SPEAKER_00: I'm telling you, that's nothing.
SPEAKER_00: That's nothing compared to what is going to happen one day.
SPEAKER_00: A lot of people are getting all jazzed up about this.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, fine.
SPEAKER_00: This is just an eclipse.
SPEAKER_00: It happens once in your lifetime.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, we get it.
SPEAKER_00: But that's nothing.
SPEAKER_00: What the revelation is saying is going to happen on the day when Jesus returns.
SPEAKER_00: To the sun, to the moon, to the stars.
SPEAKER_00: And there's going to be two kinds of people.
SPEAKER_00: There's going to be the person that says, Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly, because you know the judgment's not coming for you.
SPEAKER_00: And then there's the other person who's going to say, fall on us and hide us from the face of the one who is seated on the throne.
SPEAKER_00: That's God the Father, and from the wrath of the Lamb.
SPEAKER_00: Usually we don't associate the Lamb with wrath right now when he's seated, do we?
SPEAKER_00: The Lamb of God, the precious Lamb of God, is not to be trifled with.
SPEAKER_00: The scriptures speak of the wrath of the Lamb.
SPEAKER_00: When he returns, it will be blessing for his people.
SPEAKER_00: It will be judgment for those who are not his people.
SPEAKER_00: The judging of deception.
SPEAKER_00: Stop putting moves on ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: But we can't do it alone.
SPEAKER_00: We'll never see this ourselves unless the Holy Spirit shows us.
SPEAKER_00: The Holy Spirit is the only one that can show me when I'm putting a move on myself.
SPEAKER_00: The Holy Spirit is the only one that can say, wait a minute, I want you to think about what you're doing.
SPEAKER_00: I want you to look at your actions.
SPEAKER_00: I want you to look at your attitudes.
SPEAKER_00: I want you to be honest with yourself.
SPEAKER_00: That's the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: You'll never figure this out on your own.
SPEAKER_00: Nor will I.
SPEAKER_00: But let's look at the last part.
SPEAKER_00: Deception confessed.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 12.
SPEAKER_00: What a precious verse this is.
SPEAKER_00: Sow for yourselves righteousness, reap steadfast love.
SPEAKER_00: Break up your fallowed ground.
SPEAKER_00: For it is time to seek the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Break up your fallow.
SPEAKER_00: Some translations translate it, your unplowed ground.
SPEAKER_00: The unplowed ground.
SPEAKER_00: No, he's not talking about your garden and your backyard.
SPEAKER_00: You know what he's talking about.
SPEAKER_00: This unplowed ground in my heart.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 13, you have plowed iniquity, you have reaped injustice.
SPEAKER_00: This takes us back to what Pastor Howell preached on several weeks ago in Galatians chapter 6.
SPEAKER_00: Galatians chapter 6, verses 6 and 7.
SPEAKER_00: We come back to these ominous words, these true words.
SPEAKER_00: Do not be deceived, God is not mocked.
SPEAKER_00: For whatever one sows, that will he also reap.
SPEAKER_00: For the one who sows to his own flesh will reap the flesh in corruption.
SPEAKER_00: But the one who sows to the Holy Spirit will from the Holy Spirit reap eternal life.
SPEAKER_00: Now those are words to study.
SPEAKER_00: Those are words to understand.
SPEAKER_00: Those are words to live by.
SPEAKER_00: We reap, yes, what we sow.
SPEAKER_00: Deception confessed.
SPEAKER_00: Break up your unplowed ground.
SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah says in chapter 4, verse 3, the hard ground of double plowing.
SPEAKER_00: That's an interesting idiom in the Hebrew.
SPEAKER_00: Your double plowing.
SPEAKER_00: What we're saying here is the hard ground gets harder.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, it needs a deep plowing.
SPEAKER_00: It needs what theologians call a, or farmers say, a plow plan.
SPEAKER_00: Repentance is deep plowing.
SPEAKER_00: Everybody with me?
SPEAKER_00: This is the point.
SPEAKER_00: Repentance is deep plowing.
SPEAKER_00: It's inviting the Holy Spirit in to see what we don't see, to confess what we need to confess, to receive the forgiveness that God is offering us.
SPEAKER_00: But it requires a deeper plowing.
SPEAKER_00: Repentance takes place when the light exposes the darkness, and we respond by admitting whatever has captured our affections other than God.
SPEAKER_00: Break up your unplowed ground.
SPEAKER_00: Notice the way the language, in the language, there's a part that you play in that.
SPEAKER_00: There's a part that I play.
SPEAKER_00: I have to invite the Spirit to show me what I'm not seeing.
SPEAKER_00: I need to confess and say, Lord, would you show me so that I can confess, so that I can acknowledge, so that the weeds will come up and the seed will grow up?
SPEAKER_00: Think of all the times in the scriptures where God talks about the sowing of the good seed, the parable of the sower.
SPEAKER_00: Don't be today.
SPEAKER_00: Don't be that person that the seed of this world, you're hearing this sermon, that the seed doesn't fall on the ground and just bounce off.
SPEAKER_00: Don't be that person.
SPEAKER_00: Don't be that person that that seed starts to grow up, and all of a sudden the cares of this world, the deceitfulness of riches, overtake and choke that seed.
SPEAKER_00: Don't be that person.
SPEAKER_00: You ask Jesus to show you.
SPEAKER_00: You ask Jesus to save you from what the enemy would do by taking the good seed that you're hearing tomorrow, today.
SPEAKER_00: Our union with Christ is precious.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus, I need you.
SPEAKER_00: I need you to be the lover of my soul.
SPEAKER_00: I need you to be the savior of my soul.
SPEAKER_00: You bought me at the price of your blood.
SPEAKER_00: I want to be yours.
SPEAKER_00: Yo only.
SPEAKER_00: No other lovers.
SPEAKER_00: Lord Jesus, would you please give me this?
SPEAKER_00: Heart.
SPEAKER_00: Would you please give me this power?
SPEAKER_00: And watch what he'll do.
SPEAKER_00: As we end, we just say the obvious thing.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus alone is the true vine.
SPEAKER_00: We're the branches.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus, you're the vine.
SPEAKER_00: You're the life-giving force in my life.
SPEAKER_00: I need resurrection power flowing in my heart.
SPEAKER_00: How about you?
SPEAKER_00: Jesus, I come to you.
SPEAKER_00: By faith.
SPEAKER_00: I trust you.
SPEAKER_00: You know how to forgive me.
SPEAKER_00: You know how to bless me.
SPEAKER_00: Rescue me from my own self-deception, Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And so we repent even this morning of trying to be the vine ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: I'd ask you at this time to take your bulletin.
SPEAKER_00: Would you turn to the confession of sin?
SPEAKER_00: Would you read silently this confession before we read it aloud?
SPEAKER_00: Would you stand?
SPEAKER_00: Reading together.
SPEAKER_00: O Father of all righteousness, your prophets of old testified to the unplowed ground in the hearts of your people.
SPEAKER_00: This day we acknowledge that the ground of our own hearts remains hardened.
SPEAKER_00: Even as we pray to you, we find it easiest to confess our most obvious surface-level sins, and even these sometimes remain rooted in our lives.
SPEAKER_00: However, though this kind of confession may prick our conscience, the plow does not cut deeply enough to turn over the hard ground of our idols.
SPEAKER_00: We confess that we need a kind of change we cannot bring about for ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: Holy Spirit, please break up our heart's most unyielding soil and guide us to deep conviction and real repentance.
SPEAKER_00: We ask for faith to look to Jesus, our righteous high priest, for our forgiveness, our cleansing, and our healing.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: And listen to what David, the prophet, knew and experienced.
SPEAKER_00: I acknowledged my sin to you.
SPEAKER_00: I stopped covering my iniquity.
SPEAKER_00: I said, I will confess my transgressions to the Lord, and you forgave the iniquity of my sin.
SPEAKER_00: Think of those words.
SPEAKER_00: You forgave the iniquity of my sin.
SPEAKER_00: And that was not just for David.
SPEAKER_00: That's for all of us who would come to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Please be seated.