The Call For Repentance

The Call for Repentance

If you have your Bible, open it to Jeremiah Chapter 3. The pastor’s family was invited to Easter dinner at the Wilson home. Mrs. Wilson was widely known for her amazing contributions to church potlucks. Everyone was seated around the table as the food was being served. As usual, it was a feast for the eyes. When the pastor’s youngest son, Peter, received his plate he started eating straight away. 'Peter, wait until we say grace,’ insisted his embarrassed father. 'I don’t have to,’ the five-year-old replied. ‘Of course, you do, Peter,’ his mother insisted rather forcefully. ‘We always say a prayer before eating at our house.’ ‘That’s at our house,’ Peter explained, ‘but this is Mrs. Wilson’s house, and she knows how to cook.’

Today, we are going to look at something that is crucial for ourselves, our church, and our nation. The Call for Repentance. Before we dive into the scriptures, I want to define what repentance is. Repentance is reviewing one's actions and feeling contrition or regret for past wrongs, which is accompanied by commitment to and actual actions that show and prove a change for the better. In modern times, it is seen as involving a commitment to personal change and the resolve to live a more responsible and humane life. In other words, being sorry for one's misdeeds.

It can also involve sorrow over a specific sin or series of sins that an individual feels guilty about, or conviction that they have committed. I want y`all to keep that in mind for later. Let us look at Jeremiah Chapter 3 starting in verse 10.

READ JEREMIAH 3:10-11

To give you a little background knowledge of what is happening here, the nation of Israel is currently split into two different kingdoms. They were split into Judah and Israel with Judah being the Southern Kingdom and Israel being the Northern Kingdom. We will not take time to read it, but in Jeremiah Chapter 2 and the first part of Jeremiah Chapter 3, Israel completely walks away from God and becomes like the world and becomes worthless. They become this nation full of lawlessness, evil, and sin. Verses 6 to 9 in chapter 3 show us that the Southern Kingdom of Judah saw what Israel had become and instead of drawing closer to the Lord, they decided to follow in the footsteps of Israel. They became just like them and according to verse 12, Judah ended up becoming worse than Israel. This is where we are at in Chapter 3... two nations that have completely distanced themselves from God and have chased after the world. Look back at verse 10.

READ JEREMIAH 3:10

Judah did not return to God. Instead, they acted like they did. The nation of Judah did not have true repentance from the heart but instead, they performed empty actions and said worthless words.

Listen folks, repentance is more than asking God for forgiveness. You were forgiven at Mt. Calvary on that cross. Repentance is asking for forgiveness and then turning from that sinful action and not doing it again. Judah asked for forgiveness, but they went straight back to the action that they were doing beforehand. There was no heart in it. Like the nation of Israel, we are called to true repentance. A repentance in which we turn from our sin and instead turn to Christ. The beginning of Chapter 4 shows us what true repentance looks like. Let us start with verse 1.

READ JEREMIAH 4:1-4

Here, Jeremiah lays out 6 things we must do to be in true repentance.

1. Remove the Distance

Look at verse 1.

READ JEREMIAH 4:1

God speaks to Jeremiah to tell the people of Israel about true repentance and the first thing Jeremiah says is to return to God. That was true back then, and that is still true today. True repentance requires you to run back to God. We will not take time to read it, but in Luke 15 we see the parable of the Prodigal Son. To summarize the parable, a man had two sons. The younger son approached the father and said that he wanted his inheritance right then instead of waiting until the father passes away and getting it the right way.

The father gives him his inheritance and the son leaves the family and leaves the town and goes on this long journey far away. He then wastes his inheritance by partying and blowing the money and when the dust settled, he was broke, homeless, and hungry. He was desperate to the point that he ate the food that was meant for pigs. In the middle of his sin, shame, and regret, he decided to return home to his father to be one of the workers so he would at least have food and a place to sleep. He begins to walk home and as soon as the father got a glimpse of him, the father ran to the son with open arms and welcomed him back home into the family.