Last week we began a new series called What Shall We Do? Responding to What God has Already Done for Us. Really that question is a very biblical question because it comes out of the Bible. It is the question that the crowd collectively asked Peter after he gave the sermon of his life on the day of Pentecost, also known as the opening day of the church. They heard the gospel message. Their collective response was “What shall we do?” Although the wording of the question may change today when somebody hears the gospel first spoken, or spoken several times at a church, or possibly through TV or the internet, or over a cup of coffee, really the question is still very similar. What should I do with this? What is the next step? In other words, what should I do based on what God has done for me. Although the wording of the question may change a little bit, the response should the same. As Peter says in Acts 2:38 “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” When somebody acts on that as we saw in the book of Acts, it kind of enters the person into what we collectively refer to as the salvation experience. Entering into the place where you know you have assurance of eternal life, which is good, but more than that you start on the pathway of discipleship that brings you to a place where you begin to experience the kingdom of God not simply down the road but begin to experience it right now in a very real way.
We are going to look at a lot of passages in the next few weeks, but I want to remind you that really we said the salvation experience is broken down into two parts. This is not perfect, but basically we have the part that man plays and the part that God plays. The part that man plays is collectively referred to as conversion. It involves repentance. It involves faith. And it involves baptism. We see that as the pattern in the New Testament. We also see that God plays a part. Obviously, God has been playing a part all through a person’s life, but we see that once that person goes through that conversion, God steps in and does a number of things. We don’t know the exact order, but the person is immediately reconciled to God. Their sins are forgiven, they are reconciled with God, and then what happens is we believe that God gives the person the Holy Spirit. That really becomes the person’s power for living and to be able to do the ministry that God has called the person to do on earth.
Today, we are going to start by looking at man’s part. We are going to start with the first part, which is known as repentance. Depending on your age and church history, when you say the word repentance, different images come to mind. Some people that grew up in a legalistic church envision the fire-and-brimstone pastor telling the people to repent. They need to repent. For me, when I hear the word repent, it reminds me of my college days. It reminds me of somebody going around a college campus. We used to call them Jesus freaks. We used to call them hippies. This was back in the 80s. I remember walking around the campus of Portland State University in Portland, OR. It was at lunchtime and this was before I was a Christian. At lunchtime we would see a guy with a big board saying “Repent, the end is near.” He would be shouting at the top of his lungs. Then all of a sudden somebody else would begin to engage him and they would get in this shouting match back and forth. Now I don’t know if any converts were made, but I do know that he made a lot of people mad and upset. I don’t know if that technique works nowadays. Whatever the case, we know that this word repentance has a lot of negative baggage attached to it. We have to accept the fact that it is a very biblical word. If it is a biblical word, it makes sense to begin to unpack it a little bit so we can get a better understanding of what it is and what it is not. That is what we are going to do in the remaining minutes. We are going to go through this word and begin to unpack what it is and what it isn’t. Repent is found both in the Old Testament and the New Testament. In the Old Testament, it has a couple different senses. One has to do with a feeling of deep sorrow. Extreme sorrow or even grief. In that sense, we even see that God himself repented at one time. Most of you are familiar with the story of Genesis and the fall of man. Following the fall of man, Adam and Eve were excluded from the garden and things got really ugly really fast. So much so that it says “The Lord saw how great man’s wickedness on earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time.” It sounds very familiar to the environment we are in today. The narration goes on by saying “And it repented the Lord that he had made man on earth and it grieved him at his heart.” This is the wooden translation. This is King James Version, which is sometimes difficult to read, but I wanted to show you just because they use the word repented. But really what the author is saying here is it just made God deeply sorry for creating man. We know in the Old Testament that the word repent has a sense of deep sorrow.
But we also know in the Old Testament that the word repent really is more in line with what we think about it. About somebody turning from their sin. We see that all the prophets were very fond of this word repent. Especially because they were dealing with the Israelites who often would go back to idol worship. You would have a prophet like Ezekiel out there speaking for God and saying something like “This is what the sovereign Lord says: Repent! Turn from your idols and renounce all your detestable practices.” So here we have the word repent which is basically saying separate yourself from your sin. Stop behaving like this. Those are two examples of many in the Old Testament that make us aware that the word repent can mean a couple different things depending on where it is found. It can mean a sense of deep sorrow or it can mean you need to separate yourself from sin.
What we see is that these two senses carry on into the New Testament. We see repentance associated with sorrow in the story of Judas. Most of you know the story of Judas and that Judas was one of the original 12 disciples of Jesus but Judas decided he was going to turn Jesus in to the Roman authorities for 30 pieces of silver. He was going to betray his friend, confidant, and his Lord Jesus for 30 pieces of silver. We read that when Judas saw that Jesus was condemned, he repented and brought the 30 pieces of silver to the chief priest and elders saying “I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent blood.” He was feeling, according to the King James Version, repentance. There are a lot of translations that will not use the word repentance here. Not because it is an old-sounding word, but rather they just don’t think that repentance is the true sense of the original word here. The original word is metamelomai, which is Greek, which means to feel regret as the result of what one has done. To feel sad about. To feel sorry. They would say that repentance doesn’t fit here with Judas. They would reserve the word repentance for another Greek word, metanoia, to change one’s way of life as the result of complete change of thought and attitude with regard to sin and righteousness. Now we know Judas was sad. He regretted what he did, but we don’t really see a changed life there. We just see a guy who regrets something he did. So much so that he went out and hung himself.
But we know also that the disciple Peter was different. The disciple Peter betrayed Jesus also, not once but twice. But we also see him returning back. Changing his life so much so that he became one of the greatest apostles in history. The sense of a changed life is a sense not only that is carried farther into the New Testament into the book of Acts, but we see Jesus using the word repent in this sense of a changed life. When Jesus stepped foot on this earth and he began his ministry, some of the earliest words says this “The kingdom of God is near. Repent (metanoia) and believe the good news.” Or in this case, I do prefer how The Message puts it because I think The Message gets to the true meaning of the word. The Message paraphrases this exact passage as “God’s kingdom is here. Change your life and believe the message.” (Mark 1:14-15) We see that the word repent can take a sense of being sorry for something, but the real sense of repent involves a change of the will. A change of behavior that results in a totally different sort of life. A lot of people go through life with regrets, remorse, and feeling sorry for doing things. Some kids feel sorry or are sad because they did something that got them a spanking. Some husbands are sad because they did something that they ended up sleeping on the couch that night. Then there are people that are sad because they did something and they ended up in jail. Those are me-centered kind of regrets. It is all about what happened to me. I got punished. I slept on the couch. I ended up in jail. That is really what Paul would refer to as worldly regrets. What we are looking for here is really Godly regrets or Godly sorrow because Paul says “Godly sorrow brings repentance (metanoia) that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death.” (2 Corinthians 7:10) This is an interesting passage because it is basically saying when you have Godly sorrow, true sorrow that results in a change of will and change of your heart, you are then entering deeper into the salvation experience. You are entering deeper into your relationship with God, the kingdom of God, and the life that goes with it.
Having said all that, that is a little bit of background of how the word repent shows up in the Old Testament and the New Testament. I can see by the look on your faces you are a little bored, sleepy, and confused. So what I would like to do is take the last few minutes and see if I can put it in very simple terms. I imagine that many of you have a car that periodically goes out of alignment. You have a good car and you hit a pothole and the car goes out of alignment and you have one tire going this way and one tire going that way. That is not good on the tires and it is not good on mileage or anything like that. You have to get it realigned so both those tires are running parallel down the road now. Really what we can do is we can think of repentance as realigning your story to God’s unfolding story. Just to back up a little bit, we know that God has a story. I hope you know that God’s story is pretty much contained within all these pages of the Bible. It is a great story, but sometimes I think we forget that there is an overarching story to it. We get so caught up in slicing and dicing all the little passages in there that we miss the fact that we have one big grand narrative. One good story. We have history. His story is contained in the pages of the Bible. When you forget that, it is good to be reminded of it. Sometimes it is good to even pick up a children’s Bible because they often present the Bible just as one long story. Starting with Adam and Eve and going on to Jesus and ending up in heaven. It is a pretty easy story to begin to follow. So contrary to what people think, you have 66 books out there. Some people think they have 66 books out there with a bunch of different authors and one day somebody came along and took a bunch of those books and pasted them together and called it a Bible. That is kind of true, but it is really not. What we have in the Bible is a very cohesive book that was written over 7,000 years but contains pretty much the same story. It contains God’s story.
Let’s say this is God’s story in simple form. God’s story starts at creation, starts at the fall, and it goes on to the cross, and it goes on into eternal life. For simplicity, let’s say that is God’s story. So God’s story just like any story has different scenes, different characters, and it has a plot line. This is pretty much the plot line. I have heard somebody say that the Bible is really simply one long story. It is a story from tree to tree. If you read the book of Genesis you see in 2:9 where it talks about that Adam and Eve were not allowed to eat from the tree of life. The next place the tree of life shows up is in Revelation. At that point, believers are allowed to eat from that tree of life that they might live forever. So we see the Bible as one long, great story. What is amazing is when Jesus entered onto the earth and died for us on the cross that was really our invitation to enter into the story with God. To enter into God’s story so that we might have that life eternal that is promised. Jesus said “I have come that they will have life, and have it to the full.” Jesus didn’t say I come that they might have their sins forgiven. That is a bonus, but he came for one purpose: that he might bring us life. The opportunity to step into God’s story that we might be able to begin to experience that eternal life. That is really what the invitation is. God is saying come on in to my story. Come in and realign your story with my story. If we are honest with ourselves, many of us have a story that is maybe a little bit out of line with God’s story. We like talking about stories around here. Many of you have gone through the Post-It Note timeline, which is basically seeing your story laid out before you. It is a good positive thing because it is not just about beating yourself up for the sins of your past but seeing how God has been at work in your story all your life to lead you to someplace.
But it is different for nonbelievers. It really is different. It is different because they have a story too. But their story starts out like any other story. They have birth. Then they walk along through life and, depending on their circumstances, all of a sudden they find themselves way over here. Then they grow up into a teen and those teenage years can be rough years and they end up really doing a lot of crazy things. Or they get to a point and they get married but a few years down the road they get divorced. Then they change careers and they are going back this way. Or they get an addictive behavior and go this way. They are just walking around. It looks like this zigzagged line that is going on here. But you know what? As confusing as it is, it really doesn’t matter at all because all unconverted people are headed to one place: eternal death. I don’t even have to say hell. They are headed to the grave and that is it. In fact, that is the best thing they could hope for. That that is it. I went through my zigzagged life, ended up in the grave, and I am done. Hopefully, there is nothing else beyond that because if there is, they might be in a heap of trouble. So I am not making this stuff up, and I am not trying to be negative. It is just reality. Unfortunately, some people don’t want to face that reality, but that is the reality for everyone who lives a life apart from Christ. So what happens is ideally somebody would come along and tell them God’s story. Tell them the good news of Jesus Christ that we talked about for several weeks. So much so that someone begins to think about their life, reflect on their existing life, and say the zigzagged life I am living really doesn’t compare to what God is offering. How do I get in on this? The answer is the R word: repent. Repent and be baptized. Repentance is the magical thing that brings us back in line with God. Repentance is that realignment that we talked about. It actually brings us back to the point where our past is still there with the zigzag, but we are now on the same trajectory toward not eternal death separated from God, but we are now on the path of eternal life with God. Your life has been realigned with God’s story. With His story, and it is an amazing thing.
Now depending on how zigzagged your life had been, this realignment might be quite simple, maybe not a whole lot of adjustments or it could be an extreme realignment. An extreme adjustment like we see in the story of Dolores Hart. Does anybody know the name Dolores Hart? Dolores Hart was an actress in the late 50s and 60s. A very popular actress. Acted with Robert Montgomery and Anthony Quinn and even Elvis Presley. At the height of her career, she was one of the most in-demand actresses in Hollywood. But what happened at some point, as we are going to see in this little trailer from her documentary, she went on a retreat and began to reflect on her life as compared to the God life. She quickly went from being Dolores Hart the actress to Dolores Hart the nun. That is a really fascinating story. If you have access to YouTube it is a 36-minute documentary. It is an amazing and fascinating story, but more importantly to me it is a perfect illustration of repentance. We define it as realigning your story to God’s unfolding story. So you have Dolores Hart who was at the peak of her career in Hollywood full of fame, fortune, and the lifestyle that went along with it. Like she said, she went to this retreat and the grace of God just came on her in a mighty way. That is what he does. She could have ignored that. She could have said this is just a fleeting fancy, but she didn’t. She chose to repent. She chose metanoia. She chose the changed life. That is what she did. Like she said, because of that, her life has never been the same. Everybody is not going to experience that type of dramatic change, but if you have accepted Christ and you see absolutely no change, you might want to consider whether you really accepted Christ. There has to be some change or you are just feeling sad. So repentance includes sadness, but it is not always this deep level remorse like Job had when he put on the sackcloth and ashes and beat himself down. It is not so much that. It is a sorrow that you have failed to live up to the life that God intended for you. You need to decide whether you are going to step into that life because it is a better life than you had before.
Now I know there are probably some people here that about this time are saying that is fine. I can’t call myself a Christian, but I do have Christian values. Isn’t that really what matters? I try to live my life with Christian values. I don’t cheat on my taxes. I don’t cheat on my spouse. I follow the Ten Commandments. Or as the old saying goes, “I don’t drink, I don’t chew, and I don’t run around with those who do.” Whatever you want to call it. In other words, I look pretty good on the outside. I would say that is good. That is commendable, especially in a world that we know is full of so much evil. So it is good that you are practicing Christian values. But that is not enough. We are told way back in 1 Samuel that “The Lord does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” You have to hear this. This is key to Christianity and spiritual growth. You can look phenomenal on the outside. You can play all the games. You can look like a Christian in so many different ways, but if your heart is not right, you really haven’t repented. It is the heart that Jesus tells us is the part that needs the deepest change. That is the part that can really mess you up if you do not keep a check on it. He says way back in Matthew “For out of the heart come evil thoughts.” And then he goes on to say “murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft.” Why would he start with evil thoughts and then jump into murder and sexual immorality? Did it ever occur to you that maybe he is not just talking about the act of murder? He is not just talking about the act of adultery or sexual immorality. We know that if we go back and look at the Sermon on the Mount we would see that Jesus says if you have any bitterness today, if you have any anger in your heart right now going on around somebody inside of this room for whatever reason, the color of their skin, their political affiliation, their religious background, you have murder in your heart. What about lust? Anybody stare too long at a woman this week or stare too long at a man? If that is going on, he is saying you have committed adultery in your heart. That is the part of you that needs to change. We are not just talking about exterior change. We are talking about interior change. We are talking about not just realigning your life but realigning the heart that goes with it. This is one reason that repentance is not simply a one-time thing that is reserved for the really bad people that need to confess God is Lord and drop down on their knees and claim they are a sinner. It is not a one-time thing. It could be a daily thing. Not just for the non-Christians but for all Christians. Repentance is simply changing where you are at on the inside and getting back in line. Christians have an advantage because their life has been restored. They are back on this trajectory. They know where they are headed when they die. Praise God. But every Christian hits potholes in their life that knocks their heart out of line. It happens to me daily. Where did that thought come from? Where did this thing come from? Why I am thinking this thing? Why am I not showing compassion when this person is really hurting? Why do I have an attitude about this person when I read about them? Where is that stuff coming from? It is a bad heart. It is an ongoing daily examination of your thinking. That is why I go back to the idea that the first step is awareness. So many of us live in denial. We think there is nothing wrong with me. Everything is going right. I am okay. You are okay. We are all good. We are not all good. I hate to say it. I am not beating people up, but I am just saying we are not all good on the inside. We all have stuff. We all have these out-of-alignment hearts. That is why spiritual formation is so critical in a church. Some of you people don’t engage in any spiritual formation. I don’t know how you expect to change. Some of you have never gone to a class. Some of you never engage in anything whatsoever. And you expect to change. Or I would say maybe you don’t want to change. Whatever the case, you cannot do it on your own. You do it in community with each other as you practice what is called the spiritual disciplines of life. You do it not to beat yourself down with sackcloth and ashes or whatever you want to call it. You do it because you know that God has something better for you. You choose to step into that life. You choose to step into that kingdom life.
In summary, the thing to leave with is that repentance is not just about being sad about your sin. It is not just for the unconverted. It is something for everybody. It is a practice that we have to practice on a regular basis, on a daily basis, and sometimes on an hourly basis. We do it not because we want to beat ourselves up that we are a bad person but because we want to align with the best that God has for you. We have to be certain that if God loves us, he wants the best for us. Like Dolores Hart or millions of other Christians, we have to periodically examine our life and put our life under the spotlight and begin to say how is my life matching up with the life that God wants to give us. If it is not matching up, then I need to do something about it. I need to quit going that way and go that way. Get myself back in line with God so that I may begin to experience the kingdom, not just down the road, but the kingdom right now. In close, a guy by the name of Dallas Willard says it best. When he is talking about repentance, he says “Repentance is getting a thought beyond your thoughts.” In other words, don’t just think the immediate thoughts. “Thinking about your life in the light of the fact of God’s immediate presence and the availability of his kingdom, then changing your life so as to enter into it.” Thinking periodically about the presence of God. That he wants to invite you into it. Thinking about your own life. Then deciding and changing your life to enter into it. Let us pray.
