Is Repentance a Dirty Word? Part 3
(Nurturing a Repentant Heart)
Isaiah 1:18-20
Richard Tow 8/7/16
We have been talking about repentance. In our last two messages we saw the nature and importance of repentance. The question we want to address today is how to repent. How do we nurture a repentant heart? Is there anything we can do to accommodate the Holy Spirit’s work of convicting us of sin and leading us into truth? To answer that question from the Bible, turn with me to Isaiah 1:18-20. God is issuing an invitation to the people of Israel. He has already talked with them about the superficiality of their religion. In previous verses He has pointed out their unfaithfulness and the consequences of those choices. Now He comes to them in our text with a call to repentance. Isaiah 1:18 “Come now, and let us reason together," Says the LORD, "Though your sins are like scarlet, They shall be as white as snow; Though they are red like crimson, They shall be as wool. 19 If you are willing and obedient, You shall eat the good of the land; 20 But if you refuse and rebel, You shall be devoured by the sword"; For the mouth of the LORD has spoken.”1
How to nurture repentance in the heart: the first thing God tells them to do is:
I. COME
A. They must come to God with the need. You and I need soft, tender, repentant hearts. We cannot produce that on our own. We need God to work that in us by His Spirit.2 We must come to God for that. Paul says in Phil 2:13”for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure.” There are things we can do in response to God’s grace in our lives; but we must never forget our dependence on the Holy Spirit. He is the One who convicts the world of sin; He alone can lead us into truth.3 God invites us to come to Him because He wants to help us. He is not sitting in heaven with folded arms passing judgement on us. He is reaching out to us in love, inviting us to receive His help. The simple thing He tells us to do is “come” to Him with the need.
Jesus expressed the invitation this way in Matthew 11:28-29 “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29 Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” Where does a person find peace of mind? How does a person get rid of all the frustration and anxiety life seems to bring? By coming to God as the only one who can bring that peace. Jesus said, “…My peace I give to you; not as the world do I give it to you….” The world tries to find peace in external circumstance. The peace Jesus gives is something that springs up from within. It is something experienced when all is right with God, the heart is fully repentant, and the person is fully trusting the Lord with everything.
But notice in Matthew 11 there is something for us to do: “Come to Me” says Jesus. This invitation (one that He is issuing to us this morning) comes with a promise in James 4:8 “…Draw near to God and He will draw near to you….” Have you ever stopped to think how wonderful that promise is? A commitment from God Himself: if you will come; if you will draw near to Me, I will draw near to you. God said to Israel, Isa 45:19, “I have not spoken in secret, In a dark place of the earth; I did not say to the seed of Jacob, 'Seek Me in vain'….” When God tells people to seek Him, He has good things in mind for them if they will simply come to Him in that way. I like the Living Bible on this verse, “Isa 45:19 “I publicly proclaim bold promises; I do not whisper obscurities in some dark corner so that no one can know what I mean. And I didn't tell Israel to ask me for what I didn't plan to give!....” So if we are to have a repentant heart, we must come to God for that—come to the One who is more than willing to give it.4
B. We must come “now.” Look at Isaiah 1:18 closely, “Come now, and let us reason together." Everything we get from God we receive in the now. Our good intentions for the future get us nothing. It is only in the now that we do business with God. Sometimes we want to ease our conscience a bit by saying “I will do that tomorrow. I will get that right later on. Someday I’m going to do that.” We don’t want to say “no” to God; yet, we are unwilling to say “yes.” So saying “someday” seems like a better alternative. But the “someday” has an eerie tendency to never come, especially when it comes to turning from sin to God. The sin takes more and more possession rather than less. It gets harder and harder to do, rather than easier. “Come now….”; not later. 2 Cor. 6:2 “…Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.” Is there something you keep putting off, hoping it will simply go away? Is there a relationship problem that needs to be addressed now?5 Is there a besetting sin that needs to be addressed today, not later? , “Come now, and let us reason together."
C. We must come to God with an open mind, a willingness to hear what He has to say. Too much prayer is me telling God what I want. It’s not wrong to do that. But I’ll come to the answer much quicker if I’ll listen to God about what He wants. “…let us reason together”: that seems like a strange thing for God to say when you think about who He is. He is the sovereign Creator of all things. He has the power and the right to simply tells us how it is with no reasoning at all. Yet, He lovingly stoops to reason with you and me.
What does reasoning have to do with repentance? Everything! Metanoeo, the Greek word for “repent”, means to change one’s mind.6 For repentance to happen a person has to come to a different conclusion than he or she once had. The reasoning process is crucial. We have to come around to God’s way of thinking about the matter.7 “…let us reason together” Once the thinking is right; the behavior will follow.8
There is a tendency for people to view repentance as an emotional process. Certainly emotions can be involved. But emotion is a fruit of the thought process. Emotion does not drive thinking; thinking drives emotion. If you think about something pleasant, pleasant emotions will follow. If you think about something unpleasant, unpleasant emotions will follow. Have you ever dwelt on something hurtful someone has said to you? Did that make you feel happy or angry? Repentance begins with the thought process. Only when a person changes his mind has he repented. So God says, “I want to reason with you. I want you to understand this the way I understand it. Because once you really see it right, you can then choose the right direction and stick with it.
Have you ever had the Holy Spirit reason with you? You know He is speaking to you; it makes you uncomfortable when it’s not what you want to hear. Yet you can’t get away from it. In your spirit you know it’s right; but your mind wants to rationalize what you’re doing. You wrestle with the whole thing until one of two things happen. You either harden yourself against what God is saying and get some relief that way; or you submit yourself to what He is saying and come into agreement with Him in your mind and heart. 9
How do we nurture a repentant heart? We don’t go it alone. We come to God and open our hearts to what He has to say.
II. CONSIDER: (this is part of the reasoning process). Consider what?
A. Your sin!
Isaiah 1:18 "Though your sins are like scarlet, They shall be as white as snow; Though they are red like crimson, They shall be as wool.” The color red here stands in contrast to the white purity of God’s holiness. Are my sins like scarlet? Are my sins red like crimson? We have a tendency to rationalize, justify, and minimize our own sins. As a professional mediator I have watched disputants do this hundreds of times. When they tell what has happened they make sure you understand the ill-intent of the other party in all their action. Yet they were only defending themselves; they were only doing what anybody else would do in similar circumstances.
So the question at this point is: will I stop justifying my own actions? Will I get honest about my own selfishness; and will I acknowledge that my sins are like scarlet and red like crimson? If I spend my energy explaining to God why it’s so hard; if I am focusing on the wrong things others have done, I may be worse off than I was at the beginning. Jesus said in Matt. 7:3-5 “And why do you look at the speck in your brother's eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye? 4 Or how can you say to your brother, 'Let me remove the speck from your eye'; and look, a plank is in your own eye? 5 Hypocrite! First remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye.”
How do we remove the plank from our own eye? Through this process of repentance that we’re talking about this morning. If we get sidetracked and focused on the sins of others, we’ll never get the plank out of our own eye. If we deny the presence of that plank, we’ll never make much progress. It’s very, very difficult to get honest enough with ourselves to recognize the plank in our own eye. That’s why we need God’ help in all of this.
Have you ever had somebody give you more truth than you wanted to hear? My four-year-old grandson told me the other day, “PawPaw, you have a big stomach.” Well, adults have been too polite to say it that straight. But in his pure innocence, William helped me face the fact that I like to eat a little too much.
How do you respond when someone addresses one of your faults? Is the response humble and honest or is it prideful and defensive? If God tells me my sins are as scarlet, how do I respond to that? If I am to nurture a repentant heart, I have to consider my sins. I may need to take a long hard look at those sins—not just a general “I’m sorry for my sins”; but addressing them one by one as the Holy Spirit brings each one to mind. The fourth step in the AA Twelve Step Recovery Program is to make a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. My observation is that this is the “do-or-die” step in the program. It requires the person to be specific about each sin, because a broad, general repentance does not resolve the problems associated with those sins. Sometimes confession to others and restitution are needed. But progress is not made unless sins are dealt with specifically.10 It takes time to do that. We have to be willing to wait before the Lord and give Him opportunity to talk to us about what we’re doing. We have to be willing to get into the word and see how our actions and attitudes line up with Scripture.
Hosea said to Israel, “…Break up your fallow ground, For it is time to seek the LORD, Till He comes and rains righteousness on you” (Hos 10:12). NIV says “break up your unplowed ground.” Notice that was something He told them to do. Only He could rain righteousness on them. But they needed the process of plowing the hard ground of the heart; they needed to go through a process of repentance. That needed to happen in preparation for the rain that would follow. We are usually unaware of the need for repentance without some interaction with the Lord.
In Mal. 3:8 God stunned Israel when He told them they had robbed Him. “Will a man rob God? Yet you have robbed Me! But you say, 'In what way have we robbed You?' In tithes and offerings. 9 You are cursed with a curse, For you have robbed Me….” Here were God’s people living under a curse, robbing God of what was rightfully His—and they weren’t even aware of the sin. They certainly did not realize the magnitude of their sin in the eyes of God.
Remember Jesus’ interaction with His church in the book of Revelations. He told the Church at Laodicea to repent. They thought they were fine. They didn’t even know they needed to repent. In their estimation they were rich and increased with goods and in need of nothing (Rev. 3:17). The Church at Ephesus probably thought they were fine. They were doing lots of good things. Yet they had left their first love, and Jesus told them to repent. Simply assuming I have no need of repentance since there are no gross, obvious sins in my life may be a mistake.
I remember the first day Jeanie and I went to the Brownsville Revival. We became extremely agitated, arguing with one another. It didn’t make sense until both of us realized we were under conviction. We had been pastoring and serving God; but when we got in the heat of a real revival we came under conviction and had to repent.10 People are sometimes reluctant to do this because they feel it will bring them under a cloud of condemnation. But the purpose is to bring the matter to a complete resolution under the guidance of the Holy Spirit and faith in the finished work of Christ. God has provided a way for us to face our sins successfully (1 John 1:9).
The result of that was: new levels of intimacy with God and fresh anointing for ministry. But repentance was the key for getting there. Boyd Packer wrote, “Repentance is the key with which we can unlock the prison from inside. We hold that key within our hands, and agency is ours to use it.”11 Consider your sin at three levels.
(1) Its impact on God Gen. 6:6 talks about the grief God experienced because of the sin in Noah’s day.12 We are told to not grieve the Holy Spirit (Eph. 4:30). My sin affects the God who loves me. My sin cost God His only begotten Son. My sin called for Jesus’ crucifixion on the cross. Think about the suffering Jesus endured to put away sin. Look at the wounds in His hands and feet. Look at the strips and bruises on His back. Consider the blood that flowed from His head as they forced the crown of thorns on Him. Watch the water and blood flow from His side; and then tell me that your sin is no big deal; it’s just a preference. Sin is not a neutral thing. It is red like crimson. It is an affront to a loving, holy God. It is rebellion against the throne of God.
(2) Its impact on others. Have your children been affected by your sin? What about your grandchildren and future generations? David’s sin with Bathsheba affected his children. Can I dismiss something as insignificant when it works havoc in the ones I love most? No, this should cause me to hate the sin that has robbed me and them of God’s best. No man is an island.13 We affect everyone we come into contact with in some way or another. My sin affects others. If a person has the plague, whether he intends to or not, he may give that deadly disease to other people. So what I do is not just my business. It affects lots of people who in turn affect lots of other people.
(3) Consider its impact on you. You will reap what you sow. That’s a guarantee straight from Gal. 6:7. In Haggai 1:5 God tells Israel to "Consider your ways!” Then He points some things out to them beginning in verse 6. “You have sown much, and bring in little; You eat, but do not have enough; You drink, but you are not filled with drink; You clothe yourselves, but no one is warm; And he who earns wages, Earns wages to put into a bag with holes." It’s like the question Dr. Phil often asks, “How’s that working for you?” Perhaps the most profound way sin affects people is the change it works in who they become. You and I are becoming something that we will be forever in eternity. Sin is deceitful in that it has a hardening influence on the soul.14 The more we go against conscience, the more calloused that conscience becomes. The more we resist the conviction of the Holy Spirit, the more difficult it becomes to repent. The heart simply becomes harder and harder. It happened to Pharaoh; it happened to Balaam; it happened to Judas. Sin changes a person for the worse.
In Jer. 2:5 God asked Israel, "What fault did your fathers find in me, that they strayed so far from me? They followed worthless idols and became worthless themselves” (NIV). They became like the thing they followed. KJV says, “…they are gone far from me, and have walked after vanity, and are become vain?” If I follow after vanity, will I become a vain person? Is that what I want to be? Pondering these kind of questions can help us decide whether we want to live in a sin or turn from it. To break up the hard soil of our own hearts we should also spend time to
B. Consider God’s goodness.
He is “not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance” (2Peter 3:9). Look at the offer He makes in our text in Isaiah 1:18 “"Though your sins are like scarlet, They shall be as white as snow; Though they are red like crimson, They shall be as wool.” What an offer! Complete forgiveness and cleansing. You don’t have to work it out. You don’t have to make it happen. It doesn’t matter how red, how terrible or shameful the sin is, He will make it white as snow. Many times God would speak to Israel through His prophets and ask them, “What have I done that would cause you to turn from Me and not trust Me and not obey Me?”15
Think about God as your Creator. Do you not owe Him complete obedience on that basis alone? He is the One who gave you life. Out of His goodness, He created a planet where you could live, and breathe, and have your being. He gave you people to care about who would also care about you. He put beautiful color in His creation so you could enjoy it more fully, birds to sing for you, and puppy dogs to cuddle.
Think about God as your Redeemer. He could have left you to yourself. But He came out of heaven, walked the streets of Jerusalem, laid down His life on a cross that you might be with Him forever. It seems to me that ought to stir some gratitude in our hearts. He laid it all down for me; that ought to inspire some sacrifice on my part.
Think about Him as your coming King. Will it not be an awesome day to see Him in all His glory? To behold the King of Kings and Lord of Lords! Think about Him as your coming Bridegroom. Do you not want to stand pure and pleasing before Him that day? Will it not be worth it all to see Him in His beauty? Don’t you want to bring as much honor to your groom as possible on that day? Now is the preparation for all that. Now is the time to wash our garments and prepare them for the great event.
If we will take time to think about these things16 we will be inclined to turn from sin and set our affection on things above.17 Too much entertainment is a distraction from what really matters. It takes time to ponder eternal issues. They that wait on the Lord will realize important things and repent. How we spend our time matters. What we choose to focus our thoughts on matters.
During the Pentecostal movement people would tarry for the Holy Spirit. On the one hand, that was based on a theological misunderstanding. The 120 had to tarry in Jerusalem to wait for the Holy Spirit to be poured out on the appointed Day of Pentecost. The Spirit has already been poured out; and we don’t have to tarry for that reason. On the other hand, they got it right as a practical matter. As they tarried for the Holy Spirit, God dealt with them about sin and enabled them to break up fallow ground. The repentance was a preparation for receiving from God. Plowing the hardened ground takes time before the Lord. You don’t just rush up to the altar; get it; then go beat the Baptists to the restaurant. It takes time to consider the things that need to be pondered, if we are to nurture a repentant heart.
III. CHOOSE: What course will you take?
Everything up until now is just preparation for the crucial thing: choice.
A. Two alternatives are presented in Isaiah 1:19-20, “If you are willing and obedient, You shall eat the good of the land; 20 But if you refuse and rebel, You shall be devoured by the sword"; For the mouth of the LORD has spoken.” God does not remove from these people the power of choice. But He reasons with them concerning the consequences of their choice. One alternative is to be “willing and obedient.” That choice takes them in a direction blessing: “You shall eat the good of the land.” The other alternative is to “refuse and rebel” (go your own way and do your own thing). That takes a person in the direction of judgment and destruction. “You shall be devoured by the sword."
I’m amazed at how people will ignore God, turn down His appeals; and then, when the consequences of that lifestyle come down on them, they are baffled as to why it happened to them. They don’t say at that point, “I have gotten myself in a terrible state. I have not been obedient to God; I have gone my own way; and this is the consequence of that choice.” If they would acknowledge that, there might still be hope; the heart might soften and repent. But if they chalk it up to bad luck or if they blame God, there can’t be much hope. God sent Jeremiah to confront Israel with the consequences of their choices. Their response is basically, what did we do wrong. Jer. 16:10-13 "And it shall be, when you show this people all these words, and they say to you, 'Why has the LORD pronounced all this great disaster against us? Or what is our iniquity? Or what is our sin that we have committed against the LORD our God?' 11 then you shall say to them, 'Because your fathers have forsaken Me,' says the LORD; 'they have walked after other gods and have served them and worshiped them, and have forsaken Me and not kept My law. 12 And you have done worse than your fathers, for behold, each one follows the dictates of his own evil heart, so that no one listens to Me.”
I gather from that verse that it is serious business for a person to follow the dictates of his own evil heart and not listen to God. When judgment floods America because of choices that have been made, don’t be surprised if you encounter the same response from people that Jeremiah got. “Why is this happening to us? Where is God when we need Him? What have we done that is so wrong?” God is no man’s puppet. He gives opportunity to get it right. Take it or leave it. If you’re willing and obedient you will eat the good of the land. If you refuse and rebel, there is another end result. The choice is yours and God will honor that choice.
B. The big danger you and I face is the same one the Pharisees faced in Jesus day: the danger of thinking we’re ok but other people need to repent. No, there are depths of repentance that we have never touched upon. There are levels of repentance that would open the kingdom to us like never before.
Repentance is not just a one-time thing. It is a way of life. Jesus taught us to pray daily “And forgive us our sins, For we also forgive everyone who is indebted to us. And do not lead us into temptation, But deliver us from the evil one" (Luke 11:4). Repentance is a daily matter. Ask God to give you a repentant heart.18 It’s very valuable. Jesus made this promise in Luke 11:9-10 "So I say to you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. 10 For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.” Lord, give us a deeper level of repentance and a greater outpouring of Your Holy Spirit!
Invitation
NOTES:
1 All Scripture quotes are from the New King James Version unless indicated otherwise.
2 Ezekiel 36:26; Psalm 51:10
3 John 16:8-11, 13; 1 John 2:27
4 Luke 12:32
5 Matthew 5:23-24
6 NT:3340 (from Thayer's Greek Lexicon, Electronic Database. Copyright (c) 2000 by Biblesoft)
7 Isaiah 55:7-11. Notice the instruction on repentance in verse 7.
8 Proverbs 23:7
9 In Acts 26:14 Paul mentions Jesus saying to him “It is hard for you to kick against the goads.” I take this as a reference to the conviction of the Holy Spirit going on in preparation to his conversion. Saul of Tarsus repented. On the other hand, Balaam did not repent in response to God’s dealings in his life (Numbers 22-24, 31:16).
11 Boyd K. Packer, “Who Is Jesus Christ,” Ensign and Liahona, March 2008.
12 In Ezek. 6:9 God said that He was broken-hearted (Heb. Word shabar) because of the unfaithfulness of Israel.
13 Romans 14:7
14 Hebrews 3:13; Titus 1:15
15 Isaiah 5:3-4; Jer. 2:5; Ezek. 16; Micah 6:3
16 Phil. 4:8; Joshua 1:8; Psalm 77:11-12
17 Col. 3:2
18 In Psalm 51:10 David prayed, “Create in me a clean heart and renew a right spirit within me” (KJV
