SIN IS SELF DESTRUCTIVE!

 

Sunday, January 24, 2021

 

SIN IS SELF DESTRUCTIVE!

 

Hos 14:1-2

14 O Israel, return unto the Lord thy God; for thou hast fallen by thine iniquity.

2 Take with you words, and turn to the Lord: KJV

 

Hos 14:1

14 Return, O Israel, to the Lord your God.

Your sins have been your downfall!  NIV

 

           Most people prefer to do what seems right and most beneficial to themselves. In other words, they want God to let them alone so that they might continue in their sin. We have removed both guilt and repentance from modern worship because those things are uncomfortable, but sin is self-destructive.

 

           Warren Wiersbe says this about Hosea 14: “God pleads with His people to return to Him and forsake the sins that were causing their downfall (Hos 14:1). He had already told them to plow up their hard hearts and seek the Lord (10:12) and to turn to God for mercy (12:6), but now He talks to them like little children and tells them just what to do. (from The Bible Exposition Commentary: Old Testament © 2001-2004 by Warren W. Wiersbe. All rights reserved.)

 

           I’ve seen it many times. A person addicted to drink finds himself in the hospital because he has crashed. A morally lax young woman discovers that she is infertile because of her past and would be a mother but now her arms are empty. Sin has consequences and that should restrain our choices, but it does not. Even the desire for wealth, which most of us subscribe to, “pierces one through with many sorrows.” (See James 5)

 

           We grow weary of being reminded of these things so, we abandon the guilt trip and set out on the road to Vanity Fair. Self-indulgence is, in reality, self-destruction. We make foolish decisions politically and wonder why there is chaos and gross discomfort. We make morally unwise decisions and wonder why there is not love. We ignore healthy choices and wonder why we are sick.

 

           Hosea does not moderate his message. He urges his people to return to the Lord because their sins have been their downfall. Pain is a great teacher and a reminder that the choice most recently made was not well thought out.

 

           The word “reprobate,” in Romans 1:28, is the Greek adokimos which literally means “unapproved and worthless.”  On a test, it is marked heavily with red pencil. It is a wrong answer. It is the inability to think in such a way as to arrive at the truth.

 

Dear Lord, do not abandon me to my own faulty thinking. Let me not destroy myself with my own choices. AMEN