There is no substitute for the preaching and teaching of God's Word. Each weekday on enjoying the journey, Scott Pauley leads us in a brief study of Scripture.

Today, on the weekend pulpit, we are happy to share a full-length Bible message given through Scott's pulpit ministry. These messages were recorded live in a local church or gospel event in recent days. It is our prayer that the message will be a help to you today. Give God the glory and praise for it.

I want you to open your Bible with me in the Old Testament to the book that we're studying,

and that's the little book of Josea.

If you have a Bible ribbon or a marker, you may just want to mark

Josea Chapter 14 because we're camping here. We're staying here for about three days this week.

And I want you to get familiar with it. While you're finding your place in Jose

Chapter 14, may I I ask how many of you

started reading Josea today would you raise your hand you started oh that's wonderful good

did anybody go all the way through it today I'm curious oh wonderful it only takes about 25

minutes something like that 14 chapters long and I hope you'll do that today tomorrow Tuesday perhaps beyond that but at least

during this meeting and ask the Lord to use it in your life in an amazing way he's using it in

mine let's begin again on hoseed chapter 14 verse 1 this is the verse we studied this morning

oh Israel return unto the Lord thy God for thou hast fallen by thine iniquity.

Paul is just a moment, and may I remind you, we are not Israel.

You may be a Jew, but I would venture to say that most people in this room are Gentiles.

And even if you are a Jewish person the principle remains the same and that is this

God wants his people to be close to him and the one thing that prevents that is our sin might

I say it this way we get in God's way and we get in our own way and so the the Lord says, if you're going to be close to me,

then we've got to deal with your sin. He's dealing here with what is commonly referred to in

scripture as repentance. And I just want to pause a moment and say to you that I believe in repentance.

I believe that when people come to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ,

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