Basic outline:
“It’s His Job, Right?”: We expect God to be merciful, but we forget that repentance is required.
- Jeremiah 3:12b (merciful/angry forever).
What’s It Look Like? Repentance is less a charge of emotion and more a change of direction.
- Jeremiah 3:13b (obeyed).
The First Step: Repentance requires admitting you’re guilty of specific sins.
- Jeremiah 3:13a (acknowledge your guilt).
Why It Matters So Much To God: This is so important because God see wanton sin as adultery.
- Jeremiah 3:8 (adultery), 14 (husband).
A Final, Extra Warning: The stakes are higher for Christians because guilt increases with knowledge.
- Jeremiah 3:11.
Full text:
“It’s His Job, Right?”: We expect God to be merciful, but we forget that repentance is required.
- Jeremiah 3:12b (merciful/angry forever).
- Today it’s pretty much the default setting for most folks that God is forgiving and merciful.
- Most people just presume that God will forgive their sins.
- Unfortunately and tragically, they too often presume that the forgiveness is automatic and requires nothing from them.
- In truth, God does stand ready and willing to forgive. Jesus’ death has made forgiveness possible. But it’s necessary that we repent of our sins in order to be forgiven.
- Jesus doesn’t excuse our sins; He forgives them.
- Excusing means just winking at them and saying that they’re no big deal. Forgiving means acknowledging that it’s serious and you’re guilty, but that He offers to make you clean anyway.
- God is more than willing to forgive, but we have to be willing to repent of our sin.
- Why don’t we do this? Why do we dislike repentance so much?
- I think (a) it hurts our pride, and (b) we don’t like admitting fault.
What’s It Look Like? Repentance is less a charge of emotion and more a change of direction.
- Jeremiah 3:13b (obeyed).
- Most people think of “repentance” in terms of tears cried at an altar or maybe that knot in your stomach that makes you sorry you did it.
- The core of it: an emotion.
- Now, I’m not against emotion. And I’ve rejoiced on many occasions at tears cried at a moment of decision for God.
- But the emotion is a symptom. It can be a sign that the real thing is going on.
- The true repentance is in the action.
- Repentance means to go 180 degrees in the other direction. It means a changed direction.
- There may be tears and emotion that accompany that moment of realization and the choice to turn around, but the emotion is not the most important thing. The most important thing is the action.
- One way that this is proven is that throughout Jeremiah God points to what Israel is doing (not what they’re thinking or feeling) as proof of the problem.
- We’ve often made forgiveness to be, at best, something like: “if you feel bad about what you did, ask God to forgive you and He will.”
- In that, we’ve left out the repentance part of the equation. Recognizing sin in our life should include desperately wanting it out of our life. If I ask God to “forgive” me, but I have no desire or inclination to actually get rid of that sin, it may be time to stop and reevaluate what’s going on here.
- Forgiveness isn’t just about getting rid of the guilt because I feel bad. It’s about wanting to get rid of the sin that caused the guilt.
- If sin is actually bad, the obvious next step would be that I want it out of my life.
- In truth, though, many of us as believers want to forgiven without being cleansed. We want to use God’s grace as a means for expunging our guilt without changing our behavior.
- Often we’re not really sorry for our sin, we’re just sorry we got caught. Often we don’t really want to change, we just don’t want to feel guilty anymore.
- If sin is toxic and out to destroy my life, though, I should want to do all I can to get rid of it.
- I should want to run the other direction as quickly as I can.
- Ongoing repentance has side effects: we are more humble and more pure of heart.
- Repentance isn’t meant to be a one-time salvation deal. It’s supposed to be an ongoing part of our walk of faith.
- Why? Because, unfortunately, sin is an ongoing part of our Christian walk as long as we’re in this sinful world.
- “Now, in fact, the patterns of wrongdoing that govern human life outside the kingdom are usually quite weak, even ridiculous. They are simply our habits . . .. But the replacement of habits remains absolutely essential . . .. And, generally speaking, those who say they ‘cannot help it’ are either not well informed about life or have not decided to do without ‘it.’” - Dallas Willard
The First Step: Repentance requires admitting you’re guilty of specific sins.
- Jeremiah 3:13a (acknowledge your guilt).
- Most of the time, our prayer life is devoid of any mention of our sin.
- When there is a mention of sin, it usually takes the form of a generic, catch-all “Forgive me of my sins” statement.
- That’s inadequate.
- It’s inadequate because when we make that statement we aren’t thinking of any actual sin that we’ve committed.
- Repentance needs to be specific. We need to think of the specific sins that we’ve committed and need to repent of.
- This goes along with the previous statement I made about sin being a change of direction. There can be no change of direction if I’m not specific about what the wrong direction is that I’ve been heading.
- Remember, the point of the Christian walk is to make us people who lives literally begin to look more like the life of Christ – His peace, His love, His mercy, His grace, His patience, His gentleness.
- A key part of seeing that happen is looking at specific areas where I am not like Christ, naming those shortcomings, and then actively working to change them.
- One way to put it: repent and prevent.
- Repent of your sin and then figure out how you can prevent it from happening again.
Why It Matters So Much To God: This is so important because God see wanton sin as adultery.
- Jeremiah 3:8 (adultery), 14 (husband).
- We have a low view of sin: it’s not really that big a deal.
- God has a different view: He sees it as running off into idolatry. He sees it as leaving our spouse to go have an affair.
- We have to begin to see sin as seriously as God does.
- It’s not that every single sin is akin to trying to divorce God. I guess within the analogy that would be more like everyday marital struggles.
- What God is speaking of here is wanton and serial idolatry. It’s the decision to pursue gods other than Him.
- The analogy God uses to describe this is adultery.
- We may think of God as loving us but basically unaffected by our decisions. After all, He is God. In truth, though, the Bible says that God has put His heart and His love into this thing. Our love matters to Him and our spiritual adultery hurts Him.
A Final, Extra Warning: The stakes are higher for Christians because guilt increases with knowledge.
- Jeremiah 3:11.
- Verse 11 tells us that although they’ve both messed up the northern kingdom of Israel is more righteous that the southern kingdom of Judah.
- The obvious question is: why?
- As we read the preceding verses, we see that the main difference is that Israel was the first to fall into idolatry. Therefore Judah had Israel’s example. They saw the sin, they saw God’s judgment. Having such a clear example should have woken them up. Because they had that clear warning, their guilt is greater.
- This obviously and clearly translates to the Christian’s life today.
- As Christians, we regularly hear of the need for repentance and see examples of people whose lives are being changed by God’s grace.
- The more we know of that, the more we know that we need to have that in our lives.
- We like to focus on the privileges related to being a Christian, but there are responsibilities that come along with that as well. One of those is that we know the need for repentance.
- This is just one reason why repentance is a necessary part of the ongoing Christian walk with God.
- We are new creatures in Christ after our salvation, but we still struggle with the flesh. And as we struggle, we need to confess the times and areas where we fall short.
- How long has it been since you’ve confessed a specific sin to God and resolved to do what it takes to get rid of it?
- If it’s been a while, take this morning’s sermon as your wake-up call.
