Banner of Praise Ministries
Rev. Dr. Levi Howard Wright
“The Urgency of Repentance”
TEXT: Isaiah 55:6-7 “Seek ye the Lord while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is near: Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.”
ASSOCIATED TEXT: Matthew 3:2 “Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”
BACKGROUND: It is interesting to note the tremendous emphasis that is placed on repentance in the New Testament. The word repentance occurs fifty-six (56) times in the New Testament. Thirty-four (34) times it is used as a verb, and twenty-two (22) times it occurs as a noun.
The church has failed to be the force in the world that it should be because it has misunderstood the primary demand of the Christian faith for repentance.
We need to recognize the revolutionary significance of this primary demand which is essential for the Christian life.
The call to repentance and faith should not be looked upon and considered as a threat but as an invitation.
The call to repentance is not a call to a morbid, remorseful way of thinking.
The call to repentance is an invitation change to one’s basic fundamental attitudes about God, self, things, and others.
To have erroneous ideas concerning any of these great areas of thought or relationships is to be out of balance.
To think right about God is also to think right about self, things, and other human beings.
I. THE EMPHASIZED PLACED ON REPENTANCE.
1. John the Baptist preached repentance.
The New Testament opens with a trumpet blast from John the Baptist.
He called people to repent, to radically reverse their thinking about God and His demands.
John insisted that people must not assume that because they were members of the nation of Israel this gave them the position of privilege in the plan of God.
He emphasized that genuine religion was a personal response to God that expressed itself in moral conduct and in compassion toward other human beings.
He illustrated this by insisting that those who possess an abundance share with those in need (Luke 3:11).
He insisted that tax collectors should not be greedy and required more than the law required. He insisted that soldiers cease to be violent and aggressive toward helpless people.
John the Baptist called for a radical reversal of the inward ideas of people with reference to God, self, things and others.
2. Jesus Christ emphasized repentance.
A. Jesus began his ministry emphasizing the imperative need of repentance in (Mark 1:15).
The first recorded message that fell from lips of our Lord and Savior was the call to repentance and faith.
Literally he urged the people to come a proper to attitude toward God and to respond to Him with a loving trust that involved cooperation.
Throughout his ministry Jesus was continually seeking to change the attitudes of people toward God.
He recognized that unless there is a change of inner attitude there can be no change in outward conduct.
2. Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ concluded his ministry by emphasizing repentance (Luke 24:47).
As our Lord gave the Great Commission he emphasized that his servants should go out into the world and encourage people to change their basic inward attitudes and come to a proper attitude toward God..
3. The Apostle Peter emphasized repentance on the Day of Pentecost.
The basic task of Peter and the other followers of the Lord on the Day of Pentecost was to try to bring about a change of attitude in the minds and hearts of their listeners.
They sought to interpret what God had done in the crucifixion of Jesus Christ and his triumphant resurrection from the dead.
They declared that God had appointed Jesus Christ to be Lord of all. They urged their listeners to repent, to change their attitude.
As a results of this change of attitude, they would experience forgiveness and receive the Holy Ghost.
The outward expressions and symbol of this inward change was to be a submission to baptism (Acts 2:38).
4. The Apostle Paul preached repentance (Acts 17:30-31)
A. In sophisticated scholarly Athens the Apostle Paul preached Jesus Christ as one who was crucified but who had conquered death and the grave.
On the basic off the resurrection of Jesus Christ he encouraged even, commanded that people repent.
B. When Paul visited with the leaders of the church at Ephesus as he returned to Jerusalem, he declared that he had emphasized the necessity of repentance toward God, and faith toward our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ (Acts 20:21).
5. Jesus encouraged the churches of Asia Minor to repent (Revelation 2-3).
A. In these seven epistles to the churches of Asia Minor we learn that repentance in not just an initial act by which one responds to God and receives the gift of forgiveness and eternal life.
It is also a journey, a pilgrimage from mind to flesh to mind to the Spirit.
B. There is an initial change of mind that results in faith and trust and cooperation that the New Testament refers to as conversion.
We are in error if we believe that this is the only repentance that we are called to participate in.
C. Repentance is both an act and an attitude. It is a journey in which we continually seek the mind of Jesus Christ and search to know the will of God for every area of life.
D. The New Testament emphasizes the absolute necessity and tremendous importance of repentance.
E. If you have never changed your mind from an attitude of revolt to submission then look at the cross and decide to entrust your life into the Lord hands.
F. If you have ignored Jesus Christ, then look at the cross and recognize his love for you and respond to him with trust.
G. If you have never faced the issues of eternity, then look at the empty tomb that Christ conquered and recognize that God want to give you the gift of eternal life. Jesus Christ deserves to be your Lord.
You need Him as Savior and Lord. Decide today to let him become the loving Lord and leader of your life.
INTRODUCTION
A vast number of men and women today have become lulled into an attitude of lethargy (the condition of being very tired or sleepy; lack energy) when it come to their spiritual condition.
They seem drugged with a moral laxity.
They have a spiritual indifference and seem to have a blind obsession for the approval of people.
Having itching ears, they have been sung to sleep by false teachers.
They are in a spiritual stupor and have lost all sense of the urgency of repentance. Repentance of sins is not an option ----but it is indeed an urgent necessity.
II. The urgency of repentance has arisen from the availability of God Grace (Isaiah 55:6).
A. God’s grace is promised today. The prophet Isaiah urged the people to repent, and seek the Lord while he should be found and while he was yet near.
The fact that Christ is available today is all the reason why you should come to him right now.
1. God is available today to those who call on Him. To those who are concerned enough to turn to Him.
David said in Psalms 145:18 “The Lord is nigh unto all them that call upon Him”.
Jesus Christ is a courteous God, he will not force his way into your life.
But he does stand at the door and knock. And whenever you invite him in or (call upon him) he will enter your life because he knows that he is welcome.
2. God is available to those who sincerely want him.
You must be sincere if you want Christ as your Savior.
The prophet Jeremiah said in Jeremiah 29:13 “Ye shall seek me and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart”.
God is available right now to all who are sincere about coming to him.
A. God’s grace is not promised for tomorrow.
This clearly implicated by the prophet Isaiah when he said in Isaiah 55:6 “Seek ye the Lord, and find him while he is near”.
The prophet seems to be saying that there is a time when God may not be found or when he may not be near.
B. The prophet Amos said in Amos 8:11-12 “Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of the hearing the words of the Lord: And they shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east, they shall run to and fro to seek the word of the Lord, and it shall not find it”.
C. There are two reasons why the availability of God’s grace is not promised for tomorrow.
The first reason relates to you and the second relates to God
1. The first reason why God’s grace may not be available tomorrow is because of the blinding power of sin, he has not promised to be available tomorrow.
You can say no to the voice of God so often that in time you may fail to hear his call or you may fail to see his hand extended in forgiveness and you cannot feel his divine touch of love.
a. The writer of the epistle to the Hebrews said in Hebrews 3:13-15 “But exhort one another daily, while it is called Today; lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. For we are made partakers of Christ, if we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast unto the end.
Your conversion to Jesus Christ, which occurred in days past, is proved to have been genuine by perseverance in the days to come.
This means that continuance in the faith is a test of the reality of your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.) While it is said, Today IF YE WILL HEAR HIS VOICE, HARDEN NOT YOUR HEARTS, AS IN THE PROVOCATION (Rebellion).
b. David said in Psalms 95:7-11 “For he is our God; and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand.
Today if ye will hear his voice. Harden not your heart, as in the provocation, and as in the day of temptation in the wilderness; When your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my work.
Forty years long was I grieved with this generation, and said, It is a people that do err in their heart, and they have not known my ways. Unto whom I sware not enter into my rest.
2. The second reason God does not promise to be available tomorrow because of the depleted of God patience.
In Genesis 6:3 the Lord said, “My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be a hundred and twenty and years.
a. A clear example of the depletion of God’s patience is recorded in the 16 chapter of Numbers..
After warning the people again and again that his patience was wearing thin and after calling them to repentance, scores of times God drew a divine line of demarcation and said, “To step beyond this line is to deplete my patience.”
Three times this warning was ignored before Israel finally got the message.
Datham and Abiram were swallowed up in an earthquake, 250 leaders were consumed by fire, and 14,700 died of a plague. Finally they learned that to deplete the patience of God is a dangerous thing.
III. The urgency of repentance is taken serious by God’s Word.
A. You may laugh and joke about sin but it is no laughing matter in God’s Word. The Bible classified us as wicked and unrighteous in Isaiah 55:7 the prophet Isaiah said, “Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the Lord and he will have mercy upon him and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.
B. The same Word of God clarifies the penalty of sin in Romans 3:23 when the Apostle Paul said “ The wages of sin is death.” Repentance is the only way to solve the sin problem. Repent and turn from sin (forsake), turn to God (return unto him), and receive forgiveness(and he will abundantly pardon).
IV. The need to repent is urgency because life is so short.
A. Job said in Job 14:1-2 “Man that is born of woman is of a few days, and full of trouble. He cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down: he fleeth also as a shadow, and continueth not”.
In 1936 an Oklahoma insurance company turn down 80,000 applicants. It turned down some because of hereditary disease problems. It turned others because of their age, occupational hazards, or personal health problems.
Nevertheless, 8,700 of those whom the company did insure died within the first twelve months of coverage.
A. Just because an actuary’s table says you should live many years does not guarantee that you should live to pay the second premium on your life insurance policy. Simply because a cardiograph says your heart is in perfect condition does not mean you will live to walk out of the doctor’s office to your car. Cardiographs only record history; they do not predict the future.
B. The short of life may catch you unprepared because of a preoccupation with other times as it did the rich foolish man that went to hell. The brevity of life may catch you unprepared because of your refusal to face the fact of death.
C. This brief life that we live today is the only chance afforded. Hebrews 9:27 says, “And it is appointed onto men once to die, but after this the judgment.”
There is no second chance after death but only the judgment because you have sufficient opportunities to repent in this life.
D. All mankind will live in eternity. The question is not whether one lives after death but rather where one lives after death.
In St John 5:28-29 the Apostle John said “Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice.
And shall come forth, they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation.”
CONCLUSION
The day of the Lord’s return will be unexpected.
The Apostle Paul said in 1 Thessalonians 5:2 “For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night.”
He also said in 2 Timothy 4:1-4 “I charge thee therefore before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and his kingdom. Preach the Word; be instant in season and out of season, reprove, rebuke, exhort with all long suffering and doctrine. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall turn unto fables.”
Many years ago in a small town in the Midwest a young lawyer was on his way to work early one morning.
The quietness of the hour as he walked to work was shattered by the clatter of horse hoofs and the rumble of wagon wheels.
As the lawyer looked down the street he saw a team of runaway horse pulling a wagon.
The rider in the wagon was desperately trying to stop and bring the horses and wagon under control, but to no avail.
The lawyer knew that at the end of the street was a flimsy barricade beyond which was a deep ravine.
He knew that if the horses were not turned, they would surely pull the man to his death.
So at the risk of his own life, the lawyer rushed out into the path of the horses, grabbed the reins, turned the wagon, and saved the man’s life.
The wagon turned over, but the man was not seriously hurt. He dusted himself off and thanked the lawyer and went on his way.
Twenty years later the scene had changed. The little town had grown into a fair size city.
The lawyer had become a respected judge now. In this judge’s court room a man had been tried for murder and had been convicted.
Prior to formal sentencing the judge asked the accused man if he had any last words to say.
The man indicated that he did have something that he wanted to say.
He approached the judge’s bench and said, “Judge don’t you remember me?
And the judge looked him in the eyes and said, “No, I don’t remember having met you anywhere prior to this trial.”
But, Judge, the man answered, don’t you remember saving a man’s live by turning a team of runaway horses twenty to twenty-five years ago?
Oh, yes, replied the judge, “I remember that as if it was only yesterday.”
Well, Judge, I am that same man, said the accused man. “You were my savior then. Can’t you be my savior now?
The Christian Judge dropped his head, and when he regained his composure he said, “Yesterday I was your savior, but today I must be your judge.”
When Jesus come again, how will you meet him as Savior or only as Judge? Amen. Amen
