Repent Series

While we were on vacation last week, we were able to spend time with family, including all six of our grandchildren. We shared three pounds of fresh cheese curds and Beth gave me some cherry brats for Father’s Day.

We also attended a community festival complete with face painting, food vendors, and artisan crafts. As we walked around, we noticed a booth promoting a church. I went up to the volunteers and was immediately offered free coffee and cherry coffee cake. I declined because I had eaten too many cheese curds.

I wanted to encourage these church members for living on mission in their community but since I didn’t know much about their denomination, I started with a simple question, “What does your church believe?” A man quickly got up and handed me a brochure and answered, “We’re just middle of the road. We’re a bit like Presbyterian, Lutheran, and Methodist…only different.” I waited for more, but it never came. This was the only message he was prepared to give. I was offered free coffee and cherry coffee cake one more time.

As we walked away, I wondered why these church members didn’t have more to say about the gospel or about their doctrinal distinctives. I was surprised we weren’t even invited to their services.

They offered coffee but no communication about conversion. Their message was muddled. When I read their brochure, I discovered they are the oldest congregation in their community, and proud of their picturesque building. This made we wonder if they were more interested in their past than they were in reaching people in the present.

This week, Gallup reported that belief in God in our country has dipped to 81%, the lowest ever recorded. Why is that? Could it be the church in general is not acting like the church? Have we lost our message? Have we grown lukewarm?

During our summer series we’re calling “RE,” we’re defining key biblical terms and concepts which begin with the letters “Re” to keep the gospel message fresh in our lives. Our topic today is “Repent.” This is a word you generally won’t hear at a community festival. Unfortunately, it’s not talked much about in church either.

Repentance gets a bad rap in our culture and in the church, but we must come back to its central importance. All the prophets preached it, in one form or another. John the Baptist proclaimed repentance in Matthew 3:2: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” The first sermon of Jesus recorded in Mark 1:15 contained a command to repent: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”

When Jesus sent the apostles on a short-term mission trip in Mark 6:12, we read these words: “So they went out and proclaimed that people should repent.” In Luke’s version of the Great Commission in Luke 24:47, Jesus emphasized “that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in His name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.”

In Matthew 3:8, John the Baptist preached repentance must affect behavior: “Bear fruit in keeping with repentance.” In a similar way, the Apostle Paul proclaimed in Acts 26:20: “…they should repent and turn to God, performing deeds in keeping with their repentance.”

I’m reminded of Jack the painter who often watered down his paint to make it go further. When a church decided to have their building painted, Jack gave the lowest bid. Before climbing the scaffolding, he thinned his paint. When the job was almost finished, the skies turned dark and a tremendous downpour gushed from the heavens, washing off the thinned paint and knocking Jack to the ground. He quickly got to his knees and cried out, “Oh, God! Forgive me! What should I do?” In reply, he heard these thunderous words, “REPAINT! REPAINT! AND THIN NO MORE!”

Steven Cole defines repentance as “a change of mind that results in a change of one’s entire life.” Charles Spurgeon said, “Repentance is to leave the sins we loved before…by doing so no more.” One girl in Sunday School put it like this, “Repentance means feeling sorry enough to quit!” Charles Stanley adds, “Regret, grief, and remorse accompany repentance but are not evidence of it, if there is no change in behavior.”

At its core, repentance is a change of mind, which leads to a change of heart, resulting in a change in behavior. Repentance is a decisive change in direction. One pastor captures it this way: “True repentance affects the way I live and if it doesn’t affect the way I live, it’s not true repentance.”

Here’s the main idea: Repentance means turning from sin to the Savior, resulting in a change of attitude, affection, and action.

Since it’s too easy and unfair for me to critique another church in another community while on vacation, let’s look at what Jesus had to say to a church in Revelation 2:1-7. Remember from our series on the Book of Acts, the Apostle Paul spent three years preaching and teaching in Ephesus. The church grew under his leadership and influenced most of Asia.