Coast Bible Church - United: Forgiveness - Audio

Forgiveness can't happen without confession and confession can't happen without admitting guilt and admitting guilt can't happen without acknowledging wrongdoing. Forgiveness brings about maturity in a relationship; it creates a kind of trust that says I'm with you even though you're not perfect.

Duration: 33m
Broadcast on: 27 Nov 2022
Audio Format: other

Our series is United, and the image that sums up United is from Predator, one of the greatest films of all time. It shows what we are created to be. That this is when Dutch meets Dylan after many years, and they're reunited, and you can see that nothing's changed between them, that they're ready to do the dirty work of the United States government, and potentially kill some aliens. Really what we've been learning is friendship, and friendship not just between people, but also between spouses. Friendship, of any sort, is really built out of the image of God. God is triune, God is Father, Son, and Spirit, and the union, or what we call the intro-trinsarian relations between Father, Son, and Spirit, are the image by which we, as human beings, are supposed to relate to each other. And so we've been seeing how that works out. Now this week where our topic is forgiveness, and that's not something that the Father and the Son and the Spirit have to worry about, because they're never in disharmony. The oneness of God is absolute and complete. There's never a time where the will of the Father and the will of the Son is out of sync. There's never a time when the Spirit is not empowering the Son to do the will of the Father or have the Father glorify the Son. It's something that we deal with. And yet, I think you'll see that there is an element to which the trinsarian relations do set the pattern for how we've forgiven. So in order to see that, we're going to take a look at Hosea. Hosea 11, if you're not familiar with the book of Hosea, it was the basis of Francine Rivers redeeming love. The story of Hosea is there's a prophet who God calls to marry a prostitute. And what happens is that Hosea does marry the prostitute, but she keeps, Gomer, I think her name is, she keeps going back into prostitution. She keeps leaving him and applying her trade. And God commands Hosea to keep taking her back. Like even though she's broken the covenant of their relationship, God says this is an image of me and Israel. Like Israel keeps going after foreign gods and yet every single time when they're ready, when they're ready to repent, I'm going to bring them back. And so this is the culmination where the prophet is speaking for God or God speaking through the prophet. I've shown that this is poetry, that's why it's all those indents. This is Hebrew poetry. The prophecy is, so don't be confused by that, that's just why the indents are the way they are. "Returno Israel to the Lord your God. You've stumbled because of your iniquity. Take words with you and return to the Lord. Say to him, 'Take away all guilt, accept that which is good and we will offer the fruit of our lips. A Syria can't save us, will not ride upon horses. He will say no, we will say no more our God to the work of our hands to idols. We're not going to call idols or God anymore. In you, the orphan," Israel's saying, "We're orphaned now. We're orphaned, you've left us and you, the orphan, finds mercy."

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