I. We often feel as if God were gone away from us. May it not be that there is just that difference just that distinct boundary-line between absence and presence, "till they shall acknowledge their sin."
II. Consider how confession is to be made. (1) Confess to God. Let it be done with the deepest and most careful humiliation. (2) Let your confession to God particularize. Mention all the little things. Make them stand out in bold relief. It is the sum of confession. (3) When you confess sin, always do it as one who is accepting punishment. (4) At the same moment realize and do not doubt that you are laying your sin upon the true altar, the Lord Jesus Christ. (5) Try to embody that confession, and give it all the force and substance you can, by some holy act, some self-denying labour of love, some gift to God, some special act of devotion.
III. True confession to God will always be accompanied with, and will always produce, the wish to make some confession to man. To confess to man is generally a far harder thing than to confess to God partly because it brings more immediate shame and loss, and partly because men are so much severer in their judgments than God. But, to a certain extent, it must be done. The confession to God will bring with it a grace which will enable us, and make it afterwards easier, to go and confess to man.
J. Vaughan, Sermons,6th series, p. 14.
References: Hosea 5:15. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xxv., No. 1483; Ibid., Evening by Evening,p. 208; J. Keble, Sermons for Sundays after Trinity,Part II., p. 289. Hosea 5. Christian World Pulpit,vol. v., p. 222.