Judg 10:15+16 And the sons of Israel said to the Lord, "We have sinned, do to us whatever seems good to Thee; only please deliver us this day." So they put away the foreign gods from among them, and served the Lord; and He could bear the misery of Israel no longer. 
	This morning we are continuing with that absolute need within every one of the Children of God to come before The Lord with the view of His eyes upon us. We know that, in Christ, we are covered by His Righteousness. That is the gift of God in the salvation that He made ours through the giving of His Only Begotten Son. He died our death on the cross and then He raised us up in victory with Him in His resurrection. That is set in place and sealed by the indwelling Holy Spirit for all of eternity. That is the course of our redemption forevermore. 
	What we are dealing with, however, is that focus of how we now live our lives as the Children of God to His glory on this earth. It is the outworking of the redemptive power of God within us, causing us to want to be rid of all those stains and impurities of who we once were in our old nature of sin. We need to come to the point in our walk with the Lord when we are not satisfied with just the fire insurance aspect, to be so crude, of our salvation. Rather, we desire and thirst to know God in the fullness of Who He is. 
We want to have a living relationship working in our lives with the Lord in which we commune with Him more and more as each day progresses. We want to understand, to some increasing measure of our abilities, how to live in the victory of Christ to the honor and the praise and the adoration of God because of Who He is and What He has done and what He will do for all of eternity! There should be that focal yearning within our beings that needs to grow into the maturity as men and women of God whose lives count for Him! We seek for His splendor to be evidenced in such a way as to add to all the vast and endless praise and adulation and veneration of the Lord God Almighty, Jehovah, Creator of Heaven and Earth, Our Savior and Our Lord!
For that to take place there needs to be a willingness to face the truth of who we now are in Christ Jesus. This is in order to be enabled to repent from our sin and to ask the Lord to cleanse it away from us as He wills and for us to obey as He does so. We do not concentrate on the sin and the outworking of that old nature, now put to death at the cross of Christ. Rather, we put all our effort and dedication and consecration into the way in which the Lord will work to bring forth His cleansing power in our lives. We learn to consistently and reverently obey the Holy Spirit as He opens the Word of God livingly in us.
The outworking of this repentance is highlighted for all in 2 Chron 7:13+14. This is the call of God to His people to humble themselves and to pray unto the Lord and to turn from their wicked ways. It is not enough to just know that there is a work that needs to be done in us! We need to be part of that work through our humble obedience as the Lord directs. This is the only means by which there can be any manifested operation of God in our lives and in our communities as His people.
2 Chron 7:13+14, If I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or if I command the locust to devour the land, or if I send pestilence among My people, and My people who are called by My name humble themselves and pray, and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, will forgive their sin, and will heal their land. 
    	When this turning unto the Lord with all our heart and mind and soul takes place, then we can see the operation of God being manifested in ways beyond all our comprehension. Consider what happened in the heart of Asa, King of Judah, as recounted in 2 Chron 15:1-9. 
Asa did good in the sight of the Lord and counted on the Lord to go before Him. He tore down the idols and restored the altar of the Lord. As a result many people from the Northern tribes came to Judah because the witness of the Lord was evident. This was a cleansing process of repentance and obedience in which there was a healing in the Lord that was the direct result.
	2 Chron 15:1-9, Now the Spirit of God came on Azariah the son of Oded, and he went out to meet Asa and said to him, "Listen to me, Asa, and all Judah and Benjamin: the Lord is with you when you are with Him. And if you seek Him, He will let you find Him; but if you forsake Him, He will forsake you. And for many days Israel was without the true God and without a teaching priest and without law. But in their distress they turned to the Lord God of Israel, and they sought Him, and He let them find Him. And in those times there was no peace to him who went out or to him who came in, for many disturbances afflicted all the inhabitants of the lands. And nation was crushed by nation, and city by city, for God troubled them with every kind of distress. But you, be strong and do not lose courage, for there is reward for your work." Now when Asa heard these words and the prophecy which Azariah the son of Oded the prophet spoke, he took courage and removed the abominable idols from all the land of Judah and Benjamin and from the cities which he had captured in the hill country of Ephraim. He then restored the altar of the Lord which was in front of the porch of the Lord. And he gathered all Judah and Benjamin and those from Ephraim, Manasseh, and Simeon who resided with them, for many defected to him from Israel when they saw that the Lord his God was with him. 
	In consideration of another of the monarchs of Judah, we have King Manasseh, who did evil in the sight of the Lord. He was misleading the people of Judah away from God, until the point at which Jehovah turned Manasseh’s heart back to Himself through the plight of Manasseh’s captivity and torture at the hands of the Assyrians. This is recounted in 2 Chron 33:9-16. Repentance was needed in the hearts of God’s people. The Lord used the Assyrians to bring this forth as evidenced even in the heart rending of the political power of that day. Manasseh, in his repentance, even ordered the people to serve the Lord God.
    	2 Chron 33:9-16, Thus Manasseh misled Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem to do more evil than the nations whom the Lord destroyed before the sons of Israel. And the Lord spoke to Manasseh and his people, but they paid no attention. Therefore the Lord brought the commanders of the army of the king of Assyria against them, and they captured Manasseh with hooks, bound him with bronze chains, and took him to Babylon. And when he was in distress, he entreated the Lord his God and humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers. When he prayed to Him, He was moved by his entreaty and heard his supplication, and brought him again to Jerusalem to his kingdom. Then Manasseh knew that the Lord was God. Now after this he built the outer wall of the city of David on the west side of Gihon, in the valley, even to the entrance of the Fish Gate; and he encircled the Ophel with it and made it very high. Then he put army commanders in all the fortified cities of Judah. He also removed the foreign gods and the idol from the house of the Lord, as well as all the altars which he had built on the mountain of the house of the Lord and in Jerusalem, and he threw them outside the city. And he set up the altar of the Lord and sacrificed peace offerings and thank offerings on it; and he ordered Judah to serve the Lord God of Israel. 
    	In the Book of Job, Chapter 33, verses 26-30, we have highlighted the manner of the repentance of mankind before the Lord. God will listen when humanity calls out to him in earnest humbleness of heart and being. When there is that which springs forth from seeing the base and vile and despicable nature of humanity juxtaposed to the Holiness and the Splendor and the Majesty and the Purity of God, and the earnest desire is expressed to change, God hears and responds to us, His creation.
	Job 33:26-30, Then he will pray to God, and He will accept him, That he may see His face with joy, And He may restore His righteousness to man. "He will sing to men and say, 'I have sinned and perverted what is right, And it is not proper for me. 'He has redeemed my soul from going to the pit, And my life shall see the light.' "Behold, God does all these oftentimes with men, To bring back his soul from the pit, That he may be enlightened with the light of life. 
       	The Psalmist, in Ps 26:2+3, brings this forth in the course of how we are to ask the Lord to try us, to test us, to examine us and to cleanse us from all our unrighteousness. This is not a prayer which we utter lightly. It will bring forth the earnest measure of the power of God in all His Omnipotence and Omniscience to cause us to see how much we need His cleansing power at work in us. This was what was in evidence in Manasseh as we just read, including even the testing and trial by the torment and torture of the Assyrians which caused him to call out to God.
	Ps 26:2+3 Examine me, O Lord, and try me; Test my mind and my heart. For Thy lovingkindness is before my eyes, And I have walked in Thy truth. 
 	The fruit of this testing and trying by the Lord is declared to all in Prov 28:13. Prov 28:13, He who conceals his transgressions will not prosper, But he who confesses and forsakes them will find compassion. 
God will respond with all His cleansing work, by the Holy Spirit in operation. We need to cling to the fact that we are the objects of the Lord’s compassion, even as He may bring us to the precipice of seeming disaster and destruction. In that perilous trial and tribulation of cleansing, as the Lord examines us and tries us, He will prove Himself Omnipotent! He will prove Himself Omniscient! He will prove Himself compassionate! The entire purpose of this cleansing work of God is in order to have a people who are completely devoted and dedicated to being the expression of the Love of God to all those around us.
    	Next hear the voice of the Lord through the Prophet Jeremiah, in Jer 18:5-8, as He declares that He has the freedom and the ability and the compassion to work with His people. He will mold and make us the very best witnesses of His truth and His love and His holiness through all the means at His disposal. He is the Omnipotent Potter, working with and forming His people into those vessels who will show forth His glory throughout the realm that He has created. Every work of His hand is precipitated by the heart with which His people are willing to turn from their evil ways and seek His Holiness with complete repentance in our core beings.
	Jer 18:5-8, Then the word of the Lord came to me saying, "Can I not, O house of Israel, deal with you as this potter does?" declares the Lord. "Behold, like the clay in the potter's hand, so are you in My hand, O house of Israel. "At one moment I might speak concerning a nation or concerning a kingdom to uproot, to pull down, or to destroy it; if that nation against which I have spoken turns from its evil, I will relent concerning the calamity I planned to bring on it. 
    	This is further delineated for us by another Prophet of the Lord, the Prophet Ezekiel. He was also dealing with the House of Israel, calling forth for the repentance that is necessary in every Child of God. This lament for the people of God is recorded in Ezek 18:29-32, as we are shown how much it means to God that none would perish but that all would accept the salvation that He freely offers. He pleads with His people to choose to repent and thereby choose life instead of death.
	Ezek 18:29-32, "But the house of Israel says, 'The way of the Lord is not right.' Are My ways not right, O house of Israel? Is it not your ways that are not right? "Therefore I will judge you, O house of Israel, each according to his conduct," declares the Lord God. "Repent and turn away from all your transgressions, so that iniquity may not become a stumbling block to you. "Cast away from you all your transgressions which you have committed, and make yourselves a new heart and a new spirit! For why will you die, O house of Israel? "For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone who dies," declares the Lord God. "Therefore, repent and live." 
    	The 14th Chapter of Hosea continues that call for the people of the Lord to repent from their wickedness and to seek to honor and to obey the Word of the Lord. There should be a rending of our hearts unto the plan and the purposes of God to have His perfect and wonderful way in our lives. Let us read it together with that desire to have our lives please the Lord now and evermore.
	Hos 14, Return, O Israel, to the Lord your God, For you have stumbled because of your iniquity. Take words with you and return to the Lord. Say to Him, "Take away all iniquity, And receive us graciously, That we may present the fruit of our lips. "Assyria will not save us, We will not ride on horses; Nor will we say again, 'Our god,' To the work of our hands; For in Thee the orphan finds mercy." I will heal their apostasy, I will love them freely, For My anger has turned away from them. I will be like the dew to Israel; He will blossom like the lily, And he will take root like the cedars of Lebanon. His shoots will sprout, And his beauty will be like the olive tree, And his fragrance like the cedars of Lebanon. Those who live in his shadow Will again raise grain, And they will blossom like the vine. His renown will be like the wine of Lebanon. O Ephraim, what more have I to do with idols? It is I who answer and look after you. I am like a luxuriant cypress; From Me comes your fruit. Whoever is wise, let him understand these things; Whoever is discerning, let him know them. For the ways of the Lord are right, And the righteous will walk in them, But transgressors will stumble in them.   
    	This call for repentance and turning away from wickedness was the ministry of John the Baptist, as he was preparing the way of the Lord. This is recorded for us in Matt 3:1-3. 
His was not an easy message to receive. It served to pierce the hearts of those who were willing to see themselves in the light of the Holiness and the Glory of Jehovah. There was a turning away from sin within the listeners of his message. They realized that something needed to change in the hearts and lives of Israel. The Kingdom of God was proclaimed! The reality of it was not a message that we want to hear, but it was what we need to hear!
	Matt 3:1-3, Now in those days John the Baptist came, preaching in the wilderness of Judea, saying, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." For this is the one referred to by Isaiah the prophet, saying, "The voice of one crying in the wilderness, 'Make ready the way of the Lord, Make His paths straight!'" 
	We conclude with the message as it was proclaimed by the Apostle John in 1 John 1:5-10. Our walk with the Lord is predicated on the manner in which we want Him to be the course of our lives. If we truly desire to know Him in a growing depth of relationship which transcends any other in our lives, we must honor Him and obey Him and seek to have Him cleanse us from all our sin as each day proceeds. 	
	1 John 1:5-10, And this is the message we have heard from Him and announce to you, that God is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth; but if we walk in the light as He Himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us. 
	It is not enough to just say that we love the Lord! We need to show that love for God by asking Him to examine us, to try us, to test us, to reveal what is necessary for Him to remove from our lives! This is in order to be more and more those men and women of God in whom there is a continual and obedient honor and reverence for the Hand of God to operate in us to His Glory on this earth. That requires confession of sin, repentance from sin, and obedience unto God against that sin. So be it!
And the sons of Israel said to the Lord, "We have sinned, do to us whatever seems good to Thee; only please deliver us this day." So they put away the foreign gods from among them, and served the Lord; and He could bear the misery of Israel no longer. Amen. 

This morning’s benediction is Hos 14:2. Take words with you and return to the Lord. Say to Him, "Take away all iniquity, And receive us graciously, That we may present the fruit of our lips. Amen.