Repent

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.