Amen. Amen. Good evening. I was going to ask you how you were doing, but I think you just answered my question. So you can be seated. Glad you're here. Welcome to those of you joining us online. Pardon me for drinking some water.

All right. Let's get to the word two chapters again tonight Josea chapter 7 and 8 as we make our way through this book this

interesting book for lack of a better word.

I do have to warn you though that the two chapters that are before us this evening are ones that though make for a very tough read,

remind us of how that God always longs to forgive us.

He's always looking for a way to forgive us. And as we're about to see, Israel remains steeped in unspeakable wickedness,

but God remains at the ready to heal them and forgive them.

And it's for this reason that I chose this title, which as by now, I hope you know,

is synonymous with the takeaway when we do these expositional studies verse by verse through God's

word. I always like to extract, for lack of a better word, from God's word, the main thing.

What is it, God, that you want us to see in this study, these chapters? What is it that

you want to show us? I mean, this is here for a reason. Why is it here? And that's usually my

prayer when I prepare and also when I teach.

And I think this is the main lesson of these two chapters, is the forgiveness of God.

I'm going to take it a step further and suggest that God desires and longs to forgive us more

than we even ourselves long for him to forgive us. He's a forgiving God. So that's the takeaway. That's

the main theme, the main thing. And that's the takeaway that's the main theme the main thing and that's why i chose the title but

i did so with the hope that especially those that are crushed unnecessarily i I might add, under the weight and guilt and condemnation of sin.

My hope is that will we go our separate ways tonight after the Bible study that we all leave here, myself included,

because I'm not sinless. Is that shocking? You knew that. I'm a sinner too. Maybe we should

clear this up. Anybody here sinless just before we move any, don't you tear. Don't you tear it.

Okay, good. So we've established that we've all sinned Romans 3. Okay. So I include myself in this.

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