Heading In The Right Direction Series

3. This is important because in the passage we’re about to read, God addresses Israel and Judah separately and what we’re going to see is that these two nations, while both involved in sexual sin, are at very different places spiritually speaking.

G. Let’s look at this beginning in vs 6 "During the reign of King Josiah, the LORD said to me, "have you seen what faithless Israel has done? She has gone up on every high hill and under every spreading tree and has committed adultery there. I thought after she had done all this she would return to me but she did not, and her unfaithful sister Judah saw it. I gave faithless Israel her certificate of divorce and sent her away because of all her adulteries. Yet I saw that her unfaithful sister Judah had no fear; she also went out and committed adultery. Because Israel’s immorality mattered so little to her, she defiled the land and committed adultery with stone and wood. In spite of all this, her unfaithful sister Judah did not return to me with all her heart, but only in pretense," declares the Lord.

The Lord said to me, "Faithless Israel is more righteous than unfaithful Judah." This is God’s Word.

H. This is a very interesting passage. Both Judah and Israel are caught up in sexual sin, but God deals with each very differently. As we are going to see next week, His message to rebellious Israel in this chapter is to return to Him--which is what we mentioned earlier.

1. Three times in the later verses in this chapter God says to Israel, Return to me. We’ll talk about that next week--what repentance looks like and why it’s so powerful.

2. But interestingly enough, that’s not His message to Judah. They actually have another problem that has become a barrier to them returning to God.

3. What is their problem? Religion. You heard me right. The thing that is keeping Judah from experiencing God’s transforming mercy is not their sexual sin. It’s religion.

4. What do I mean by religion? Religion is a basic approach to God that says, "I can make myself acceptable to God by my own effort. I can reform myself. Through trying hard and self effort, I can be holy."

I. Now every world religion, other than Christianity, is based upon this idea. If I do enough good things in this life, God will accept me. That’s religion.

1. But what this passage and other passages in Scripture indicate is that all of us, including us believers in Christ, are vulnerable to this as well.

2. When needing to deal with areas of sin in our lives, like sexual sin, we can easily drift into an approach that is rooted in self effort. That’s rooted in trying harder.

3. We make promises to God, ’I’m never going to do this again. I promise. I’m going clean up my life. I’m going to do better. I’m serious about this stuff this time.’

4. Now it’s not that we aren’t sincere, but the problem is, this doesn’t work. It is rooted in religion--I can make myself acceptable if I just work at it hard enough.

5. And what’s so dangerous about religion is that it actually keeps us from experiencing the one thing that can truly transform us--the mercy of God. It actually keeps us from repentance.