His Heart for Sinners

How can I hand you over, O Israel? How can I make you like Admah? How can I treat you like Zeboiim? My heart recoils within me. My compassion grows warm and tender.

I will not execute my burning anger. I will not again destroy Ephraim. For I am God and not a man, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath. And then turning now to the New Testament, to the Gospel of John, reading from chapter six, commencing at verse 37.

All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me, I will never cast out. For I have come down from heaven not to do my own will, but the will of Him that sent me. And this is the will of Him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that He has given me, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in Him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. This is the word of the Lord.

So as many of you already know, my family and I, we just moved down to Gold Coast recently, and we're struggling to secure property. So we're living in a caravan right now. Now that is an ongoing prayer point, so please be praying for us that the Lord would provide us with permanent accommodation. But one of the perks of living in a caravan is that you don't have like a full-fledged sewage system.

So if you use the toilet, it goes into, many of them, what's called a cassette, which is a box that you need to empty and dispose of those contents in the end. You know about that, boys, don't you? Because it's a bit of an ongoing joke with the boys. Whoever's least like Jesus that day when I'm emptying it has to come and help me, and any spillage that occurs is theirs to clean up essentially. So it sort of helps dad, you know, not get his hands too dirty, I guess.

Maybe I should be serving them a bit more, but anyway, so they come up with me and as it is with boys often, we have a bit of a silly sense of humour. We actually think this is hilarious now. We're all kind of chuckling and like one of the boys wants the other one to have to clean it. We think it's funny. All the while, we're just like holding our noses and it's just the smell is disgusting. It's putrid.

It's vile. And the reason I share this is sewage does that to us, and I just wonder, is our sin like sewerage to God? Does our sinfulness as God's people have the same effect on Him? Does He kind of find that we stink and wants to close His nose and turn away and He's revolted by us? Is there a time where Jesus will eventually give up on us?

If we keep on sinning so much, so badly and don't change, will He eventually go, you stink, this is too much, I'm walking away? Or maybe you're here, you're visiting, you're coming to learn a bit more about whether Jesus is who He claims to be, and your question is not whether Jesus will keep you in. Your question is whether He'll welcome you at all. I've talked to many people outside of church that say if they're going to come for the first time, the roof will cave in because they've lived such a bad life. And maybe you think, well, I've lived such a bad life, like, how would He welcome me at all?

Well, we're gonna be looking at these questions as we look at Jesus' heart together this morning. The reason we're talking about this is because we're in a three-week series called The Heart of Christ. We're looking at Jesus' heart for us. We're peeling back the layers and asking, who is He really? And last week, we kicked off the series looking at His deepest heart.

We looked at a text in Matthew 11, the only text in the Bible where Jesus explicitly tells us what's going on inside of Him, what His heart is, and He said, I am gentle and lowly in heart. I'm not sugar happy. I'm not gonna fly off the handle. I'm meek. I'm gentle.

I'm humble. I'm accessible. This week, we're gonna drill down a little bit further and look at His heart for sinners. And specifically, we're going to ask two questions. How does God feel about His sinful people?

And secondly, will Christ ever let go of His sinful people? So let's start with the first question. How does God feel about His sinful people? So this brings us to the text in Hosea that Rob just read for us earlier. Hosea was a prophet, that's someone who speaks God's word to God's people, and he was a prophet in the Northern Kingdom of Israel.

He prophesied during the eighth century BC. That wasn't too long before the Northern Kingdom was going to be destroyed by the Assyrians, and so when I talk about the Northern Kingdom as Israel, that can get a little bit confusing because by this point in Israel's history, the nation had split into two kingdoms. There was a Northern Kingdom, sometimes confusingly called Israel, sometimes called Samaria, sometimes called Ephraim, as it does in Hosea 11, and then there's the Southern Kingdom, which is often called Judah. And the Northern Kingdom, all those kings were basically wicked, and we're coming towards the end of the Northern Kingdom's time, and they are desperately wicked as a people. We'll learn about that in just a second.

And Hosea prophesies or speaks God's word to them. Let's take a look at what God says through him in chapter 11. So Rob read it for us, so I'm not gonna read every verse again, but in verse two, we saw that God said, the more they were called, the more they went away. They kept sacrificing to the Baals and burning offerings to idols. Now at this time in history, the Northern Kingdom was at its most prosperous.

It had enlarged its borders. The rich had plenty of wealth to enjoy, but the kingdom was desperately wicked. God is not exaggerating when He says, the more they were called, the more they went away. Amos was another prophet who spoke during this time, and he describes a little bit of the state of Israel during this period. We read about it in Amos 2, where it says, thus says the Lord, for three transgressions of Israel and for four, I will not revoke the punishment because they sell the righteous for silver.

They sell the needy for a pair of sandals, those who trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth and turn aside the way of the afflicted. A man and his father go into the same girl so that my holy name is profaned. They lay themselves down beside every altar on garments taken in pledge. See, this gives us just a little picture of how desperately wicked this nation was. Now going back to our passage in Hosea, it's no surprise then that in this passage, in chapter 11, God promised judgment.

He declared that Assyria would destroy Israel and take them into exile, which is what happened in 722. He says in verse five, Assyria shall be their king, because they have refused to return to me. The sword shall rage against their cities, consume the bars of their gates, and devour them because of their own councils. My people are bent on turning away from me, and though they call out to the Most High, He shall not raise them up at all. You see, we can stop here and just look at it.

The truth these verses tell us is that if you refuse to return to God, if you go on resisting Him, if you spurn His grace, He will eventually judge you. Now I'm not talking about if you're wrestling with sin and you're stumbling through the Christian life. That's a normal part of the Christian life. 1 John 1:8 says, if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves. We're always going to wrestle with sin all of our lives.

But if you've made peace with sin in your life, if you are not bothered when you stray from God's word, if you don't really care and take these things to Jesus and repent and ask Him for forgiveness, you will eventually come under God's holy judgment. But like I said last week, the judgment of sinners is not something He enjoys. In Ezekiel 18, God says, for I have no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Lord God. So turn and live. God's judgment is good and righteous and holy, but it's not something that gives Him pleasure.

In Lamentations, it says that He does not afflict from His heart. Instead, we get to see God's heart in what comes next in Hosea's prophecy. We get to see how God feels about His sinful people. Even when they're as wicked as the Northern Kingdom of Israel, remember this people that we're talking about, they were selling each other into slavery. They were sexually perverse.

There was all sorts of rotten things going on, and we get to see how God feels about these people. And to answer the question from the beginning, sin is like sewage to God. It's probably worse than that. In places like Proverbs 6, it says that there are things that the Lord hates that are abominations to Him, things that we might think are normal, like lying, that we think, oh, it's not that big a deal. It says in Proverbs 6, they're abominable to Him.

So, yes, sin is like sewage to God. God finds these things abominable, so surely this wicked Northern Kingdom of Israel must have been an abomination to Him. Surely, He must be happy to wipe them off the face of the earth. Well, let's see how He feels about His sinful people in verses eight to nine. He says, how can I give you up, O Ephraim?

Another name for Israel. How can I hand you over, O Israel? How can I make you like Admah? How can I treat you like Zeboiim? Those are two cities that were destroyed along with Sodom and Gomorrah, absolutely destroyed.

So, how can I make you like Sodom and Gomorrah, essentially? My heart recoils within me. My compassion grows warm and tender. I will not execute my burning anger. I will not again destroy Ephraim, for I am God and not a man, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath.

Now don't be mistaken. God did judge the Northern Kingdom. The Assyrians did come in 722 and destroy the kingdom and take them into exile, and they ceased to exist as a political identity from that time on. But what God is doing here is holding out hope to them in the aftermath. He's saying, I will not again destroy Ephraim.

They would be judged, but He's holding out hope to them. And we really get to see God's heart in these verses. He doesn't take pleasure in punishing even a nation as wicked as the Northern Kingdom of Israel. His heart recoils within Him. His heart grows warm with compassion.

His heart grows tender. He's like a father or a mother that loves their child that has just gone desperately wrong. And they may have to discipline their child. They may have to do what is severe and difficult, but it just breaks their heart because they love their child. They don't want to cause them pain, but they love them too much to just let them keep going astray.

That's a picture of God's heart here. See, no matter how far we go astray as His people or how badly we sin, you never stop being His beloved son or daughter. He will never get to the point where He's like, I'm sick of you. I'm actually gonna enjoy punishing you now. He never gets to that point, for He is God and not a man.

See, that's the reason He's so compassionate to His people. He says, I will not again destroy Ephraim, for I am God and not a man, the Holy One in your midst. You see, God says it's His holiness that stops Him from coming down in utter wrath on His people, and we tend to think the opposite. We tend to think that because God is holy, He must be even more severe with us. But He says, no.

Stop creating me in your own image. I am not like you. My patience doesn't run thin eventually. My steadfast love never ceases. I am not like you.

I am holy, and this is why I hate seeing my people in pain, and this is why I will not again destroy Ephraim. We really get to see God's heart even for the most sinful of people. This is radical and scandalous that God is so loving and compassionate to a people like this in the Northern Kingdom. The true God who speaks to us through His word tells us how He feels about His sinful people. Even when we have committed the most heinous crimes, we are His children, and He doesn't want to destroy us.

He loves to give us what we do not deserve because He is the holy God. Now it's not that God gives us a licence to sin. Paul deals with this in the book of Romans. You can go and read Romans 6, where people are like, if God's so gracious, shouldn't we just keep sinning? And Paul deals with that in that chapter, so you can study that chapter in your own time if you want.

But essentially, he's like, no, if we've died to sin, been given God's Spirit and He loves us, why would we wanna keep sinning? We're not slaves to that anymore. So knowing God's grace doesn't make us sin more. It's actually God's kindness which leads us to repentance, Romans says. It's actually the grace of God which has appeared that teaches us to say no to ungodliness, it says in Titus.

He is the holy God. Now maybe you're in a time in your life where you're secretly wrestling with sin, or you're struggling with an addiction, and you're kind of wondering whether God has already given up on you, and you're desperately trying the try harder strategy. You know, I come here again on Sunday. I'm gritting my teeth. I'm really serious this time.

I'll get myself clean, and then I'll know that God loves me, that He accepts me. What if I told you that if you trust Jesus, you couldn't be any more loved by God than you are right now? You're His son. You're His daughter. He's committed to you.

When you put your trust in Jesus, the New Testament talks about you being in Christ. You're hidden in Him. You're hidden in the Beloved One. You're hidden in the Righteous One. So when the Father looks at you, He couldn't see you as any more righteous or beloved.

There's a pastor in America called JD Greear that says, if you are in Christ, there is nothing you can do to make God love you more, and there is nothing you have done that makes Him love you less. I love those phrases. I used to pray them for years. Now if you're here and you're listening to this and you're thinking, this is good that some of the other people here are hearing this because they're probably struggling and they've got addictions and things like that, but I'm like, I'm a decent person, I come to church every Sunday, I serve, I give, you know, I'm not addicted to anything major, maybe a little bit of chocolate here and there, but, you know, like, I'm okay. I don't really need God's grace.

Now if that's you, I just want to let you know that you're in a very dangerous place spiritually. In the book of Hebrews, it talks about the deceitfulness of sin. Sin deceives us. It's like this inbuilt defence mechanism. Sin will always try to tell us that we're decent people.

None of us are naturally gonna say, I'm very sinful. I really need a saviour. That's a work of the Holy Spirit. That's a miracle of God when you're like, I actually really need Christ. So if you don't feel like you need Christ, you think you're leading a fairly good moral life, then I plead with you just to ask God, please convict me of my sin and help me to know how deeply I need Christ, because God will not convict you in order to shame you.

God only convicts you in order to heal you. In Hosea 11, we see that God loves and pities His sinful people, even when they're doing the, you know, the not so acceptable sins we would absolutely dread to have done. But my next question is, will that go on forever? Because He did judge them in a measure. He did let them be destroyed by the Assyrians, and so maybe His compassion is growing warm for them, but maybe there is a point where His love finally breaks?

Well, let's ask that next. If we keep misbehaving, will Christ ever let go of His sinful people? Well, let's look at John 6:37-40, which Rob read for us earlier. Now the context here is they come to us in John's Gospel. John is establishing Jesus' identity for his readers, and it's in a context where these crowds, Jesus has just told these crowds that He is the bread of life.

He is the sustenance our souls need. He is the way to eternal life. But these crowds don't believe in Him. They don't trust Him. And instead of getting worked up about this, Jesus is totally calm.

He gives them His non-anxious response. He knows that His Father's mission will succeed, and this is His non-anxious response to the Jews who don't believe. So He says in John 6:37, all that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me, I will never cast out. This is an extremely comforting verse. Let's just break it down.

First of all, Jesus says, all that the Father gives me will come to me. If the Father has set His saving love on you, you cannot outrun it. This verse is a clear example of what we call the doctrine of election, the teaching of election. Election just means to choose. The doctrine of election teaches that God, in His mercy and love, has chosen to save many sinners from the judgment they deserve.

It means that our salvation is by grace alone. See, Jesus' salvation that He's purchased for us at the cross, it doesn't start with grace. It's not like, okay, well, if you trust in me, I'll save you by grace, but then you continue on, you work hard, I'll see how you go, and maybe you'll get there in the end. No. It's grace from beginning to end.

He chooses to save some mercifully, and He chooses to keep us all the way to the end. That's another doctrine called the preservation of the saints, that God will preserve His people. Now these days, doctrines like election are cause for debate and confusion, but the Bible doesn't give them to us to spark controversy and debate. The Bible actually gives them to us to comfort us deeply. They're trying to tell us that you cannot outrun His love for you, that He will pursue you with His saving grace even through rebellion, to save you not just from judgment, but from the power of sin.

Jesus says that all that the Father gives me will come to me. But here's the flip side. Even though it's true that only those the Father elects or chooses will be saved, it's also true that only those who come to Jesus will be saved. You must come. You must believe and trust in Jesus if you will be spared God's judgment.

That's why Jesus said next, whoever comes to me, I will never cast out. See, it's only those who come to Jesus that He will not cast out. But what does it mean to come to Jesus? Because the Jews that He was speaking to in John 6, they had physically approached Him. They had come to Him, but they didn't believe.

They didn't trust. Well, what Jesus is looking for is our faith and trust in Him. He said earlier in this chapter, this is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent. You see, to come to Jesus means to come to Him in faith, to believe in Him. It's only those who come to Jesus that He will protect.

Jesus says that all that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me, I will never cast out. I love that line. In the original Greek language, Jesus denies the possibility of casting us out in the strongest terms imaginable. In the original Greek, when you're reading it, He basically says, I will not not cast out. I will certainly never cast out.

I used to think this was a reverse way of Jesus saying that He will always welcome those who come to Him, but the Greek word for cast out means to force to leave. So He's saying, I'm not gonna force anyone to leave who comes to me. In other words, He's not saying that He will never stop someone from coming to Him, although that's true. He's saying He'll never force someone to leave who comes to Him. He'll never cast out His sinful people.

He'll always keep us in. He will keep us until the day of the resurrection, and that becomes very clear in the verses that follow that we'll read again in just a moment. He's saying here that His heart will not grow tired of us and our issues. He's saying that we can't exasperate Him so much that He'll push us out of the family. He will keep us right until the day of salvation.

And the reason we can trust this is because Jesus says it would be unthinkable for Him to do otherwise. He says this in verses 38 to 40, for I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of Him who sent me. And this is the will of Him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that He has given me, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in Him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. Don Carson, a brilliant Bible scholar, explains this for us.

He says, those whom the Father has given to the Son will be preserved to the end, and he will be resurrected on the last day. In other words, if any of them failed to achieve this goal, it would be the Son's everlasting shame. It would mean either that He was incapable of performing what the Father willed Him to do, or that He was flagrantly disobedient to His Father. Both alternatives are unthinkable to Him. You see, if you've come to Jesus, it's utterly unthinkable to Him to cast you out.

The heart of Christ will not even consider it. Once you're in the family, you're in. God will not unadopt you no matter how messy you are. He may discipline you in love. He's committed to your Christlikeness.

He doesn't give you a licence to sin. He loves you too much to do that, but the same love that wants your holiness is the same love that will never let you go. Dane Ortlund, I mentioned him last week. He's inspired some of the series. He's written a beautiful book called Gentle and Lowly. He imagines the kind of conversation that we will have with Jesus when we hear this promise.

"No, wait," we say, cautiously approaching Jesus. "You don't understand, I've really messed up in all kinds of ways." "I know," He responds. "You know most of it, sure, certainly more than what others see, but there's perversity down inside me that is hidden from everyone." "I know it all." "Well, the thing is, it isn't just my past, it's my present too."

"I understand." "But I don't know if I can break free of this anytime soon." "That's the only kind of person I'm here to help." "The burden is heavy and heavier all the time." "Then let me carry it."

"It's too much to bear." "Not for me." "You don't get it. My offences aren't directed towards others. They're against you." "Then I'm the one most suited to forgive them."

"But the more of the ugliness in me you discover, the sooner you'll get fed up with me." "Whoever comes to me, I will never cast out." If you're a follower of Jesus, you can stop doubting God's commitment to you. His faithfulness has never been dependent on yours. And yet we struggle to believe God won't turn away from us when we are confronted with our continual stumbling into sin.

One of my favourite Christian artists, King's Kaleidoscope, it's led by a guy called Chad Gardner, and he wrote this song called "You and I Again." And he says in the lyrics, could you carry all my shame? Since I never seem to change, could you? Will your feelings ever fade? Could you think of me the same?

Now could you? And the answer is, God can. Christ's heart for you, Christ's love for you has never depended on your moral performance. His love for you is steadfast. And that means if you're here and you're seeking and you're not sure about Jesus yet, there's nothing stopping you from coming to Him but yourself.

He will never turn you away. It doesn't matter the life that you've lived or what you're currently in. If you come to Him, if you turn away from that life and say, I need you. I need your help. Please forgive me.

He will never turn you away. You are welcome to come to Christ. Jesus says, whoever comes to me, I will never cast out. If you have sincerely believed in who Jesus claims to be, Jesus will be with you through the ups and downs. You'll never exhaust His love for you.

You'll never out-sin His grace. You'll never wring Him dry. So circling back to our first question as we land. How does God feel about His sinful people? He still loves them.

He loves you. He loves me. His love is never exhausted by our mess and brokenness. His love does not mean He turns a blind eye to sin. No.

His Son had to die for it. But His love is not diminished by your sin. The second question, will Christ ever let go of His sinful people? The answer is no. It is unthinkable to Him.

It is not His Father's will to lose us. It is not the Son's will to lose us. It is not the Spirit's will to lose us. Nothing can ever separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. The heart of Christ will never let go of His sinful people.

Let's pray together. Jesus, we are just in awe of your mercy. Your heart is better than we could imagine. Thank you that you love to give us what we do not deserve. Jesus, we ask that your grace and your kindness will do your work in us so that we might be a people that exude your grace and kindness to one another and to all those who come and seek a saviour.

Jesus, we surrender to you, and we pray this all in your name. Amen.