In a collection of cartoons by Bill Watterson, entitled The Essential Calvin and Hobbes, ornery little Calvin is talking to Hobbes, his friend the stuffed tiger, about what he has done to little Susie. Calvin says, “I feel bad that I called Susie names and hurt her feelings. I’m sorry I did it.” But when Hobbes suggests that maybe he should apologize to her, Calvin ponders the thought for a moment and says, “I keep hoping there’s a less obvious solution.”
We often think that we would like to heal our relationship with God, but at the same time we keep hoping there is a less obvious solution. This morning I would like for us to look at what should be the obvious solution to having a relationship with God. But sometimes, we in the church assume everyone knows how to come into a relationship with God and never really spell it out in simple terms. We talk around it and never get to the core itself. So, today I want to get back to thebasics.
There are four essential steps in our relationship with God, and the first one is: There must be genuine confession. If there is one thing which is more essential than anything else in our relationship with God, it is honesty. That is why confession is important. When we come before God we come admitting who we are and what we have done. When King David sinned, he prayed, “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions. Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me. Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you are proved right when you speak and justified when you judge” (Psalm 51:1-4). That is a good prayer because it is an honest prayer.
Today, psychology has become the new religion. Instead of admitting our guilt, we analyze our guilt and qualify it. We figure out why we are not guilty because of what someone else has done to us. We are not guilty by reason of insanity. That is not just a plea by criminals, it is an excuse ordinary people use all the time. They say, “I am not responsible for what I have done, because of the psychological and emotional scars from my past.” We talk about how our actions were understandable, and how we could not help doing what we did. We even argue that we were justified, and that if people only understood where we have come from they would agree. But confession means that I understand that I was wrong and that what I did was a sin.
There is something else important in this matter of confession. Confession must be specific. For the past several years we have seen a President who is quintessential artful dodger in the matter of admitting guilt. He can lie. He can redefine the simplest of terms. He can even say that he was guilty of something, but never quite say what that was. He can put a spin on sin to make it sound acceptable. But he is not so different from most of us. We want to dance around the truth of our guilt and argue about definitions. We hedge and dodge and redefine our sin. We put a spin on it. And even though we might admit that perhaps we were guilty of something, we never quite get around to saying what that something was. Oh, we may have done some wrong things, but it wasn’t all that bad, especially when you compare it with what others have done. But when we come before God, there must be honesty. We have to tell the truth about ourselves. That is what confession means.
But more than confession is necessary. The second point is that: There must be genuine repentance. Confession means that I am honest to God about my sin. Repentance means I turn from that sin. I abandon it and walk away from it. I will have nothing more to do with it. I walk away from my sin and I walk toward God. There has been a total change of direction in my life.
Repentance is a military term meaning, “about face.” It is a total change in thought and behavior in how we think and act. It is an emotional reaction. We are full of sorrow for what we have done, and now we find our former behavior repugnant. But it is also more than just an emotional reaction. New emotions have led to new behavior. We actually live differently as a result of real repentance. There are actually two words in the New Testament for repentance. One is metamelomai. It means that we regret what we have done. We are sorry over having been caught, or we regret the consequences that our bad behavior and poor decisions have brought about. We are sorry for the mess our lives are in. But it does not necessarily mean that this results in a change of behavior. The other word for repentance is metanoia. It means that there is not only regret, there is change. There is an about face in our thinking and the way we live. There is a completely new way in which we think about sin and the way we think about God. Both concepts are used by Paul when he wrote, “Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death” (2 Corinthians 7:10). The people who belong to this world may regret the mess sin has brought into their lives, but they have no intention on changing the way they live. They still think that sin is the only way to go. Sin equals fun, and living for God equals boring restrictions and limitations.
Even religious people seem to miss this point. When John the Baptist began to preach, the most religious people of the day were the Pharisees. But he said to them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance” (Matthew 3:7-8). Somehow these people, though very religious, had not shown evidence of a genuine turn around in their lives. They thought so highly of themselves that they could not imagine they needed to repent. Like them, we feel that we don’t have a need to repent like those people who never come to church. We are the good people.
Real repentance is important because it determines whether or not we have a relationship with God. It determines where we will spend our eternity. The Bible says, “Do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, tolerance and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness leads you toward repentance? But because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God’s wrath, when his righteous judgment will be revealed” (Romans 2:4-5).
A company called Genuflex in Venice, Italy has recently manufactured a state-of-the-art confessional booth for Roman Catholic Churches. It sells for $6,250 U.S. dollars. It has a sign to show whether it is occupied or vacant. It is finished in walnut with leather seating. It is soundproofed, and can be equipped with a hygienic filter between the priest and penitent. It even has its own heating and air-conditioning system. It may have been manufactured in Italy, but it is so American. We want to repent in comfort. We don’t want there to be any inconvenience or embarrassment. We want repentance to be polite, quick and easy. But repentance is never easy, because it demands facing our sin so that there is a complete turn around in our lives.
We need genuine confession and genuine repentance, but the third point is that: There must be genuine faith. There are two dangers in confessing our sins to God. One is feeling that they are so trivial that God should merely excuse them without our asking. But the second danger is that we might confess our sin, but feel it is so serious that it cannot be forgiven. We are so overcome by the guilt of what we have done that we cannot believe God could forgive us. But if we do not believe that God can forgive us, what does that say about the love and faithfulness of God? What are we saying about God when we will not believe that we are forgiven? We are saying that our guilt is bigger than his grace. Our sin is bigger than God’s ability to forgive. We are saying that he is more interested in punishing us than loving us. The Bible says, “And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him” (Hebrews 11:6).
What if I said to one of my granddaughters: “I love you and I want the best for you,” but she would not believe me? What if she spilled milk at the table, and she thought I would always be angry at her because of it? What if she colored on my favorite book, and even though she told me she was sorry, she would not believe me when I told her I forgave her? What would that say about who she thought I was? How could we continue to have a good relationship if she would not have faith in me? Even though I would want a good relationship with her, her lack of faith in me would block that relationship from her end. A similar lack of faith will block your relationship with God. Trust his love for you and believe that if you have genuinely confessed your sin, and genuinely repented of your sin, that he has genuinely forgiven you for your sin. You don’t have to suffer for a certain amount of time. You don’t have to prove you are sorry by feeling guilty until he finally decides that you have suffered enough. It is over. Your sins are forgiven. And you must believe it.
There must be genuine confession. There must be genuine repentance. There must be genuine faith. But finally: There must be genuine obedience. Again there are two dangers here. The first danger is those who realize they were saved by grace, but now feel they have to keep their salvation by doing good works. Their ongoing relationship with God is based on their achievements. They never feel good enough because they never quite satisfy God. Karl Barth, the famous German theologian, in his book Call for God put it poignantly: “Whether the achievement of a man’s life is great or small, significant or insignificant, he will one day stand before his eternal judge, and everything that he has done and performed will be no more than a mole hill, and then he will have nothing better to do than hope for something he has not earned: not for a crown, but quite simply for gracious judgment which he has not deserved. That is the only thing that will count then, achievement or not.”
The second danger, however, are those who would say, “Oh, now I am living by grace. It does not matter how I live.” No, obedience is the proof that our hearts have been changed by the grace of God. John wrote, “This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin” (1 John 1:5-7). We read this in Hebrews, “If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God” (Hebrews 10:26-27). James said, “In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead. But someone will say, ‘You have faith; I have deeds.’ Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do” (James 2:17-18).
Sometimes children are diagnosed with ADD: Attention Deficit Disorder. It is a disorder in which children, and even adults, find it difficult to concentrate and are often unable to complete normal tasks because of it. They are so easily distracted that they cannot stick with anything for very long. Perhaps we as the church have what could be called IDD: Intention Deficit Disorder. We intend to obey God and live for him, but we are so easily distracted by other things that we fail to carry through on our intentions. But Paul wrote that on the last day, “God will give to each person according to what he has done. To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor and immortality, he will give eternal life” (Romans 2:6-7).
It was Dietrich Bonhoeffer who said, “Only those who obey can believe, and only those who believe can obey.” Faith and obedience are inseparably linked. Do you remember when the group Milli Vanilli won the Grammy Award for an album which sold several million copies? The lead song was “Girl You Know It’s True.” The only problem was that they did not sing a note on the entire album. They were pretending. The songs were all dubbed and they lip synched their way through the video. If you are going to make an album, you not only have to move your lips, you have to sing. Don’t be a Milli Vanilli in your faith. Don’t fake it. Don’t live a lie. Don’t say one thing and do another. Don’t live a life that is dubbed while you lip sync. Make your Christianity real. Don’t just talk the talk, walk the walk. Match your actions to your faith.
If you are going to have a relationship with God, then you must have made a genuine confession and genuinely repented. You must have a genuine faith and a genuine obedience to match. If that is not true for you, then you could not be in a better place. Here is where you can make things right. God can meet you here and now. All you have to do is call upon him today.
I invite you to pray with me the prayer you see upon the screen today. This can be your day if you pray this prayer and genuinely mean it:
My loving God, I confess to you today that my life has not always been what it should have been. I know what my sin is, and I am not only sorry for my sin, I turn from it and turn to you in this moment. Cleanse my heart, oh God, and make me new. Give me a heart that will follow you. Thank you for forgiving me and coming into my life. I believe you and trust you. I give you my love and everything I have and am. In the name of Jesus Christ I pray. Amen.
Rodney J. Buchanan
January 21, 2001
Mulberry Street United Methodist Church
Mt. Vernon, OH
www.MulberryUMC.org
Rod.Buchanan@MulberryUMC.org
IN SEARCH OF A RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD
1 John 5:11-15
“I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life” (1 John 5:13).
If we are going to have a relationship with God:
1. There must be genuine __________________________ .
2. There must be genuine _________________________ .
3. There must be genuine __________________________.
4. There must be genuine __________________________ .
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION (Jan. 21, 2001)
1. What are the benefits of having a relationship with God?
What are the steps necessary to complete before we can enjoy such a relationship?
2. Are these steps a one time thing or a lifestyle?
3. *Read Hebrews 10:26-31. What does this verse say about someone who does not keep her/his relationship with God current?
4. *Read Matthew 3:1-8. What is the difference between confession and repentance? Why is confession inadequate by itself?
5. *Read 2 Corinthians 7:10. Even in repentance there are two types of regret. One is regretting that you did something because you were caught or because it caused you trouble. The other type is a regret that results in a change in behavior. How does this scripture apply to this? Why is the first type of regret inadequate?
6. Read Isaiah 59:1-2. Why is repentance important according to this verse?
7. *Read Hebrews 11:6 and James 1:6-8. What happens if a person asks God for his forgiveness, but does not believe that God actually forgave her/him?
8. *Read James 2:14-18. What happens if a person believes that God has forgiven him/her, but does not follow up that faith with loving obedience?
* Priority questions
