Today is the second Sunday of Advent. Traditionally, the second Sunday of Advent belongs to John the Baptizer…the one whose job it was to announce the imminent coming of the Christ.
In all four Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—the ministry of John the Baptizer prepares the way for the ministry of Jesus Christ.
In all four Gospels, John the Baptizer is identified as the one who is prophesied in Isaiah 40. “A voice of one calling: ‘In the desert prepare the way for the Lord; make straight in the wilderness a highway for our God.” (Isaiah 40:3)
The King is coming!
The King is coming! Prepare the way for the Lord; make straight in the wilderness a highway for our God. Fill in the valleys. Level the mountains. Smooth out the rough ground, because the King is coming.
Preparing for the coming of the King means taking on a huge civil engineering project.
Preparing for the coming of the King means going over every inch of the road with a fine tooth comb. Every boulder that has fallen into the road must be removed. Every place where the pavement is cracked must be repaired. Every pothole must be filled in. Even the loose gravel and sand that has accumulated must be swept away.
That is the message of the prophet Isaiah. That is the message of John the Baptizer. That is the message of Advent.
When the crowds came out to see John, he told them: The King is coming! Prepare the way. Repent.
In all four Gospels, John the Baptizer preaches a message of repentance and offers a baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
Repentance is a churchy word. You don’t hear it much outside church circles. “Normal” people don’t usually talk about repentance.
Repentance simply means turning away from sin.
Hmmm…sin is a churchy word too. You don’t hear it much outside of church circles. “Normal” people don’t usually talk about sin.
Sin, at its core, is anything that turns us away from God and the path that he would have us follow. Alternatively, sin is anything that keeps us away from God by barricading our way into his presence.
Repentance means turning away from that which turns us away from God. Repentance means taking down the barricades that keep us away from God.
Sin breaks down our relationship with God.
Repentance prepares us for restored relationship.
Repentance is about preparing the way for our Lord, for the King.
It’s no accident that John the Baptizer links the idea of building a highway in the wilderness for the coming of the King and the idea of calling individuals to repentance.
When the King comes again—which is what Advent is all about—every valley shall be filled, every mountain and hill shall be made low, the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth. The injustice of this broken world will not last forever. Things will be made right. Everything that obstructs justice will be removed. Everything that corrupts will be made right. That is a promise.
This isn’t just a promise for the distant future. This isn’t just a promise for society. This is a promise for you and me too. For every person who accepts the Lordship of the King, the Lordship of Christ, the Holy Spirit is active, bringing about this promise for us.
The Hebrew word used most often in the Old Testament to talk about repentance is ‘shuv’. It means to turn around, to return. It means to stop going in the wrong direction and turn back in the right direction. It means to stop going away from God and turn around so that we can go towards God. In Malachi 3:7, the Lord of hosts says to his people: “Return to me [shuv to me] and I will return to you.”
In the New Testament, the Greek word most often used to talk about repentance is ‘metanoia’. It means to change your mind, to be converted from one way of thinking to another way of thinking. In Luke 24:46-47, Jesus tells his disciples to preach repentance and forgiveness to all people—metanoia and forgiveness. In Peter’s first two sermons in Acts 2 and 3, the call to metanoia—to repentance—figures prominently. In Acts 17 and 26, it’s Paul who is preaching of metanoia to the philosophers and kings.
If you’re like me, when you think about repentance, when you picture repentance, you picture that first big major turning...when someone whose life is completely away from the Lord, someone who doesn’t know the Lord, someone who has rejected the Lord, someone who is living completely out of the path that the Lord would have turns for the first time, comes to know the Lord and receives Him as King, as Lord, as Savior. They turn for the first time, they repent, and their life begins to change as God’s grace works on them.
That’s valid. That’s repentance. But repentance also has to do with the little (and not so little) changes and turns that those of us who are seeking to walk with the Lord continually have to make. It’s not a one-time thing, at the beginning of the relationship, but it’s a program of maintenance throughout the relationship. And that’s the piece of it that I want to talk about most today.
Picture it this way.
In this life, God desires for us to walk in perfect fellowship with him, in perfect relationship with Him. This involves several things.
To walk in perfect fellowship with God means keeping our eyes turned toward him. Anything that causes us to look away because something else has drawn our attention disrupts our fellowship with him. Anything that causes us to look down or close our eyes in fear or shame or despair disrupts our fellowship with him.
To walk in perfect fellowship with God means walking without hesitation or stumbling. Anything that causes us to trip or blocks our passage disrupts our fellowship with him.
To walk in perfect fellowship with God means walking the path that he sets before us. Anything that causes us to turn to the left or to the right and step off of the path disrupts our fellowship with him.
In this life, we are broken people living in a broken world. Our walk will be disrupted. It is unavoidable. We will encounter things that draw our attention in another direction. We will experience things that cause us to look down or close our eyes in a spiritual sense. We will make choices that take us off the path God sets before us. We will be sideswiped by others’ choices in ways that threaten to knock us off the path God sets before us. Our path will be strewn with obstacles. We will trip, and even fall. We will come up against barricades that block our way entirely.
Our God is gracious. He forgives. Through Christ, he does not hold against us all the times we turn away or trip or hit a wall. Our God forgives.
Our God desires that we return to the path. That’s where repentance comes in. Repentance is about our will to return—our regret for the disruption, our decision to turn to him, our will to look to him and follow his lead once again.
Repentance is about preparing the way for change, turning to face a new direction, re-orienting ourselves completely from aiming in one direction to aiming in a whole new direction.
Repentance is not just feeling sorry, although that’s part of it. Repentance is about realizing you’re heading in the wrong direction, admitting it, regretting it, making a decision to turn, and then turning—all by the grace of God and with his help. If I admit I am heading in the wrong direction, but neglect to turn around, I will keep on heading in the wrong direction.
Not just any sorrow is godly sorrow. I can be sorry that I got caught. I can be sorry that I made myself look bad. I can be sorry that I caused trouble for myself. I can be sorry that I was hurt or made uncomfortable by what I did or did not do, by the direction I went in.
Godly sorrow, the sorrow that leads to repentance, is something different. Godly sorrow isn’t directed toward myself, it’s directed toward God. In godly sorrow, I am sorry that I caused God to grieve, that I turned away from him and went in another direction. In godly sorrow, I am sorry for the pain that I caused God. I am sorry for the price I am causing God to pay to retrieve me from my sin. In godly sorrow, I’m more concerned about God than myself.
Repentance is the outcome of godly sorrow.
Repentance is a change of mind that results in a change of direction.
Repentance means turning away from actions that are not pleasing to God…such as gossiping about your brothers and sisters in Christ, or engaging in unethical business practices at work.
Repentance means turning away from inaction that is not pleasing to God…such as neglecting to come to the aid of someone in need or neglecting to come together in worship on a regular basis.
Repentance means returning to the road that God sets before us.
Repentance also has to do with keeping the road in good repair.
Every time I have an unworthy thought…of lust or hatred or revenge or greed…it’s as though a piece of gravel is strewn along my path. I can wrestle the thought down and go on. But if I do not also act to sweep that gravel away, eventually there will a lot of gravel on my path. My risk of slipping increases, especially when I’m caught in stormy weather. And if I do fall, my risk of getting hurt increases. Gravel cuts, and when it gets embedded in the skin it can get infected.
In this broken world, I cannot completely prevent the gravel of unworthy thoughts, and that type of thing, from littering my path. But I can seek to keep my path swept clean. I can identify the gravel, name it, surrender it to God, and be forgiven. God’s forgiveness, as it acts upon me, sweeps away the gravel.
Repentance has to do with keeping the path swept clean.
Gravel that is not swept away can accumulate. Boulders can be formed that way. When my path is strewn with boulders, I risk more than slipping. I risk being brought to a halt altogether in my journey with God, in my journey of being healed, of being shaped, of growing, of serving, of becoming more trusting.
Repentance can take care of boulders too. God’s grace has tremendous power. It’s harder though. Not harder for God, but harder for us. If we can, it is better to take care of the gravel as it comes.
Bear with me as I stretch this metaphor some more.
Every time I fall victim to the unloving words and actions of others, it’s as though a chip is carved out of the pavement along my path. It’s not even my sin, but my path is disrupted. For example, when a spouse is on the receiving end of demeaning words or even a silent glance of ridicule or hatred, it’s as though an axe has come down on the pavement leaving a dent. The bigger the blow, the bigger the broken place. Regular, repeated, intense hurt—whether it’s betrayal or neglect or shaming or physical harm or any kind of abuse—can be like the action of a jackhammer, throwing bits of pavement hither and yon as a gaping hole is formed. Even subtle hurts, none of them large, when they happen over a long enough time period can be like the slow destructive action of freezing and thawing water. Potholes have been known to form in roads that way.
Potholes, formed abruptly or slowly, make it difficult to travel without stumbling. Potholes that turn to sinkholes can impede the journey altogether.
Water tends to gather in potholes, too. If it is not drained, it eventually turns nasty and smelly.
In this broken world, I cannot completely be protected from falling victim to the unloving words and actions of others. But I can be attentive to the broken places. I can identify them, I can name them, I can surrender them to God, and I can forgive. With God’s help and with the help of others and time, I can identify them, I can name them, I can surrender them to God, and I can forgive. In that process, in my forgiveness, the grace of God comes in and heals the chips, the dents, the potholes and even the sinkholes.
Repentance has to do with repairing the breaches too. In this case, it’s called forgiveness—releasing the debt and choosing to lay down the bitterness.
Repentance in this way— turning unforgiveness to forgiveness—can open the little stuff and the big stuff to God’s healing. For the sinkholes, it’s just harder. Not harder for God, but harder for us. So if we can, with God’s help and the help of our brothers and sisters, it is better to take care of the broken places as they occur.
Repentance is not something we have to do just once, and then we can forget about it. Throughout our lives, we take wrong turns. Like Paul, the good we want to do we do not do, and the evil we do not want to do we do. Throughout our lives, we take wrong turns and go in the wrong direction. Throughout our lives, we face times when we need to turn around and change direction. Throughout our lives, we fall victim to the unloving words and actions of others. Throughout our lives, obstacles come to our path—through our choices and caused by the choices of others.
So repentance isn’t something we just do once and forget about it.
Also, throughout our lives, as we grow in Christ, sometimes boulders come to our attention that we didn’t even know about before. Maybe the boulder was always there, but we didn’t recognize it, we just adapted our walk to go around it or alongside it. Or maybe we didn’t realize we were stuck up against it. Sometimes the boulder is so large that we can’t go around it. Our walk just stops when we come up against the boulder, and we conclude that this is where the road ends…there is nothing beyond.
But then one day, Jesus opens our eyes to see the boulder, to notice that it is not supposed to be there, to begin to hope that this is not where the road ends…there is more. Repentance is our part of opening our hearts to God’s work of clearing away those boulders.
Advent is a time of preparation.
Prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in the wilderness a highway for our God. Every valley shall be raised up, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, the rough ground shall become level, and the rugged places a plain. And the glory of the Lord will be revealed.
