Larry C. Brincefield
larkayb@earthlink.net
Sunday Evening, February 23, 2003
Title: What We Believe...About Repentance
Text: Isaiah 55:6-7
Introduction
People today tend to have the attitude that they will try to better themselves...
under their own effort, they will try to cut back on
smoking...
drinking...
overeating...
and so on.
And I’m all in favor of cutting back on things like that...
but there is an underlying problem...
and that is that people tend to think that everything is just a matter of trying to improve by human effort
Let’s look at it another way,
Let’s say there’s a man who’s been embezzling money from his employer to the tune of $200,000 per year.
Suddenly it begins to bother his conscience.
He wants to repent
And so, he decides that THIS year, he will only embezzle $100,000
and next year, he will try to only embezzle $50,000
and the year after, only 25,000
until he has gradually reduced it to zero.
Let’s say his boss catches him...
he can just tell his boss,
Hey, I became a Christian...
I repented of my sin...
before you know it, I won’t be stealing anything from you.
(Moody’s Anecdotes)
Sounds pretty ridiculous, doesn’t it?
Funny thing is though...people will actually think things like that.
But we don’t believe that way. Article 8 in the Articles of Faith reads, "We believe that repentance, which is a sincere and thorough change of the mind in regard to sin, involving a sense of personal guilt and a voluntary turning away from sin, is demanded of all who have by act or purpose become sinners against God. The Spirit of God gives to all who will repent the gracious help of penitence of heart and hope of mercy, that they may believe unto pardon and spiritual life." (2 Chronicles 7:14; Psalms 32:5-6; 51:1-17; Isaiah 55:6-7; Jeremiah 3:12-14; Ezekiel 18:30-32; 33:14-16; Mark 1:14-15; Luke 3:1-14; 13:1-5; 18:9-14; Acts 2:38; 3:19; 5:31; 17:30-31; 26:16-18; Romans 2:4; 2 Corinthians 7:8-11; 1 Thessalonians 1:9; 2 Peter 3:9) —Nazarene Manual 2001-2005
Read Text: Isaiah 55:6-7
There are 4 great commands in this passage of Scripture that we will be looking at this evening.
Body
1. Seek the Lord
Our Scripture says, "seek the Lord".
and no, the Lord is not lost...
sometimes we speak about trying to "find God"
as if it is such a difficult thing.
But it isn’t.
Last week, we talked about prevenient grace...
how the grace of God reaches out to us...
even while we are lost...
even before we are even seeking the Lord...
He is reaching out to us.
So, no, God isn’t lost...
WE are the ones who are lost...
But when we become aware of God’s working in our life...
we need to respond.
People think that they can seek the Lord whenever they want...
I suppose that in a way, that is correct.
at least for the moment, you can still seek the Lord...
but our Scripture goes on, "Seek the LORD while he may be found" Isaiah 55:6 (NIV)
There will come a day, if you haven’t invited Jesus into your heart...
if you haven’t repented of your sins...
there will come a time when you will be unable to.
And, no, we aren’t given advance warning when that time has come...
so God’s Word is giving you all the advance warning you need...
"Seek the Lord while He may be found"
Once there was a couple who won a great prize, a two week trip to Ireland.
They had a whole year to make the trip.
Well, said the wife, “Let’s not do it this summer, because we don’t want to interfere with our summer at the lake.
And we can’t go in September because that’s when the kids go back to school.”
Then it came to be late October, before anyone knew it, and the husband said, “Well we can’t go over the holidays.”
“That’s right,” his wife agreed. “Let’s wait till after the first of the year.”
However, someone told them that the days were terrible short in Ireland in January and February
and besides the weather wasn’t very good
So they said, “Well, we still have plenty of time, let’s wait till spring when we know there’ll be good weather.”
They finally made reservations for the first week in May.
The weather was supposed to be good in Ireland
and the days were long
and it was the best time in the year to go
They admitted that they were cutting it close because their prize ran out on June 1,
but they were sure nothing would go wrong.
Then the husband had a gallbladder attack and required surgery.
The doctors said he would be able to travel, oh, by the middle of June.
Per Pastor Garth Wehrfritz-Hanson’s sermon on www.sermoncentral.com From Andrew Greeley’s Internet web site
Seek the Lord, while He may be found"...
you will run out of time before you know it!
2. Call On Him
Our text continues, "Call on Him"
Okay, so you know God has been reaching out to you...
you can sense Him speaking to your heart...
you can sense the feelings of guilt..
conviction for the things you have done wrong...
what do you do now?
All you have to do is to call on Him...
James 4:2 says, "You do not have, because you do not ask God"
Just ask God...
Invite Him into your heart....
The Hebrew word hear can carry a sense of urgency...
to cry out for help...
In my mind, I picture a drowning man in the lake...
Jesus is standing in the boat with the life preserver...
Does the man decide to take his time and think about being saved?
Does he worry what his friends might think?
NO!! He desperately wants to be saved...
He cries out, "Jesus, Jesus, save me!!"
And again, our text indicates that there is a condition...
"while He is near"
He’s near now...
He is reaching out to you now...
He is speaking to your heart now...
but there are no guarentees about tomorrow...
Today is the day of salvation.
3. in Repentance, you need to Forsake your ways
Our text says, "Let the wicked forsake his way and the evil man his thoughts." Isaiah 55:7 (NIV)
This is a biggee.
When we repent, we must forsake our sinful ways...
we must turn around...
away from sin,
do an about face...
and walk with Jesus.
Brian Weatherdon illustrates it like this
Wabush, is a town in a remote portion of Labrador, Canada, in the Newfoundland Province
it was completely isolated for a long time.
But recently a road was cut through the wilderness to reach the town.
Now, Wabush has only one road leading into it, and just the one road leading out.
It still does, I checked, on mapquest.com
If you were to travel the unpaved road for six to eight hours to get into Wabush,
there is only one way you could leave---
by turning around.
Each of us, by birth, arrives in a town called Sin.
As in Wabush, there is only one way out--
a road built by God himself.
But in order to take that road,
you must first turn around.
That complete about face is what the Bible calls repentance,
and without it, there’s no way out of town.
You need to turn away from your sin...
you need to turn toward Christ...
and leave your sin behind...
no, you can’t just commit that sin 3 times a day now, instead of 10.
forsake your sinful ways...
forsake your sinful thoughts.
In other words,
the guy that tries to improve his embezzling over time...
it just doesn’t work that way..
when we are really sorry for our sin...
we repent...
and we stop sinning!
To the woman caught in adultery, Jesus said, "go and sin no more" John 8:11
4. "turn to the LORD" Isaiah 55:7 (NIV)
Now, we’ve seen 3 of the great commands regarding repentance...
Seek the Lord
Call on Him
Forsake your ways
but we aren’t done yet...
we need to "turn to the Lord"
It’s not enough to turn away from sin...
we must turn towards the Lord.
Jesus knew this. When He had cast a demon out of a man, and some of the crowd began to judge Him, He said, "When an evil spirit comes out of a man, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, ’I will return to the house I left.’ 25 When it arrives, it finds the house swept clean and put in order. 26 Then it goes and takes seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that man is worse than the first." Luke 11:24-26 (NIV)
It’s not enough to get rid of the sin in our lives...
we must fill the empty space with the Lord.
Conclusion
Repentance...
No, you cannot pick yourself up by your own boot straps...
No, you cannot pick yourself up out of the muck of sin and clean yourself off under your own effort....
No, you don’t just try to gradually improve your life over time...
You repent...
Seek the Lord
Call on Him
Forsake your ways
and turn to the Lord.
In Ancient Rome, sometimes a prisoner was forced to be attached face-to- face with a dead body,
and the prisoner would have to carry it around...
never a break..
He had to eat, with that decaying body right in front of him.
He had to try to sleep like that.
As the stench and the flies got worse,
eventually the rot and disease enveloped the living person...
until he too, was killed.
If we don’t repent...
if we don’t turn away from our sin...
it is like we are shackled to the dead corpse -- our sinfulness
Only repentance sets us free from certain death
(Paul Lee Tan’s Encyclopedia of 7700 Illustrations)
