Sermon from March 2, 2008
Many of us have been around churches a long time. We call ourselves Christians, and we are. Do you ever ask yourself, “How am I doing as a Christian? How am I supposed to be doing?” I don’t think we pastors often give sufficient help in answering those questions.
I’d like to give that kind of help in the series of seven sermons that begins today. I have shamelessly used a variation of a very good book title by Stephen Covey (Seven Habits of Highly Effective People) as the title of this sermon series: Seven Habits of Highly Effective Christians.
The seven habits will give us goals to shoot for and standards to measure by. The clarity of these habits is designed to cause us discomfort. It is easy to think we are doing well as Christians, just because we have warm religious feelings, such as we might have after hearing certain music or a particularly heart-warming story.
Our feelings are free to stay, but we will no longer mistake them for real progress in Christian maturity. The seven habits make demands on us. We will have to make decisions about our lives, how we look at life and how we live. They will show us our deficiencies. They will also introduce us to new levels of joy and hope, because they will bring us closer to God. I think it is time we looked at the first habit of highly effective Christians – repentance.
Repentance As Turning and Sorrow
Let’s be clear about what repentance is. Repentance expresses itself in human experience in an act and in an emotion. The prophet Jeremiah illustrates the act in Jeremiah 8:6. I have listened attentively, but they do not say what is right. No one repents of his wickedness, saying, “What have I done?” Each pursues his own course like a horse charging into battle.Jeremiah pictured the people of God going headlong in a direction of their own choosing, which was displeasing to God. When the prophet called them to stop going in that direction and to turn in the direction that would please God, they refused. They pursued their course of action like a warhorse charging into battle.
I once ended up going east on the Schuylkill Expressway to Philadelphia, but I needed to be going to Scranton on the Northeast Extension. How that happened is another story. I can only say that it happened before we came to live in the Delaware Valley. Even so, it was my own fault.
I remember the sinking feeling, when I realized that I had taken the wrong road. I did not want to admit it to Carole. Like a horse charging into battle, I scrambled to find some way that I could just keep driving and somehow get us going again in the right direction. A number of miles went by before I gave in and acknowledged that the only way to get to Scranton was to turn around and retrace our steps.
The act of repentance is to turn around and go back to God. That is the great need of thousands of people in our neighborhoods. It may be the great need of your life. These thousands of people have often become victims of their own success. The cares of the world, the delight in money, and the desire of other things (Mark 4:19) have choked the word of God in them.
They haven’t blatantly rejected God, and they would be quick to tell you they haven’t rejected God; they have simply drifted away from God, like a boat that has come loose from its mooring. It’s time to back paddle and turn the boat around and head for home. The act of repentance is to turn around and go back to God. A significant factor in this act of repentance is the emotion of repentance. You can see it here in verse six.
It comes out in the question, “What have I done?” When our eyes are opened, and we see how foolishly we have acted and how badly we have hurt other people and how unworthy we are of God – in such moments the power of that question comes home to us: “What have I done?”
That summer day, when I gave in and admitted that I had taken the wrong road, I felt embarrassed. I even felt angry and defensive. It showed on my face and may have showed in my voice. Later, I felt ashamed of my anger and felt sorry for it and apologized to Carole.
There is a wonderful expression of the emotion of repentance in the New Testament. Look at 2 Corinthians 7:9-10. Yet now I am happy, not because you were made sorry, but because your sorrow led you to repentance. For you became sorrowful as God intended and so were not harmed in any way by us. Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death.
Worldly sorrow means you’re sorry you got caught, but you don’t really think you did anything wrong, and you have no intention of changing your behavior. The Bible calls worldly sorrow a kind of death, because it doesn’t cause us to turn around and go back to God. It just confirms us in our old ways. It is profoundly self-righteous.
The highly effective habit of repentance acknowledges that I have taken a wrong turn in my life, and I am sorry for that, and I turn back to God. That leads to salvation and leaves no regret. I think you now have a good working idea of repentance.
We are ready to take another step in coming to terms with the highly effective habit of repentance. Several times I have used the expression, turn back to God. I need to say more about what that means.
Turning Back to God
Let’s look first at Mark 1:15. This verse summarizes Jesus’ message. “The time has come,” he said. “The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!” Believe the gospel of Christ. The gospel is the power of God to waken godly sorrow in our heart, to stop our drift away from God, to stop us from pursuing our own course like a horse charging into battle.
That’s why I say to you right here, right now: Repent and believe the gospel. Believe in Jesus Christ. He became one of us. He lived for years in obscurity. He earned his keep as a carpenter. When He went public, he healed the sick, made the blind to see, the lame to walk, the mute to speak. He raised the dead. He proclaimed release for the captive. Then, in an act of unjust cruelty men put Him to death by crucifixion. Three days later, He came back to life with an indestructible body. He will someday come again into our world and put things right.
He is the most powerful way God can say, “I love you. Turn to me by believing in my Son. Let the enmity and distance between us cease. I am prepared to have you back into my household as my child. I am waiting. Turn around and come home.”
The gospel teaches us that repentance is first about turning to God. If we forget that, then turning away from our sins will be drudgery and finally an impossibility. It will cause resentment and an irritable self-righteousness.
Turning to God puts human behavior in its proper light. Let me show you what I mean in Acts 26:20. The Apostle Paul in Roman custody was speaking in his own defense before a Roman official. He said this: First to those in Damascus, then to those in Jerusalem and in all Judea, and to the Gentiles also, I preached that they should repent and turn to God and prove their repentance by their deeds.
Once again, there’s the central idea of repentance: turn to God. And there’s the proper connection between repentance and our behavior: let them prove their repentance by their deeds. Let them prove they have turned to God by their deeds. Let them prove they are sorry for their sins by their deeds. Anyone can say, “I have turned to God.” Anyone can say, “I’m sorry.” Show me! Walk the talk! Luke 3:8 illustrates this: “Produce fruit in keeping with repentance.”Now, look at verses 10-14. “What should we do then?” the crowd asked.
John answered, “The man with two tunics should share with him who has none, and the one who has food should do the same.”
Tax collectors also came to be baptized. “Teacher,” they asked, “what should we do?”
“Don't collect any more than you are required to,” he told them.
Then some soldiers asked him, “And what should we do?” He replied, “Don't extort money and don’t accuse people falsely – be content with your pay.”
John the Baptist’s answers were very specific. Our behavior will be very specific. The highly effective habit of repentance toward God will work itself out in those personal relationships, or we have to conclude that our repentance is only lip service. That’s another way of saying, “Prove your repentance by your deeds.”
Confession
I hope you are beginning to sense that repentance is not a one-time event. It is exactly what I have called it, a habit. It is a habit for a lifetime because of another unfortunate habit of a lifetime. Back in January, I called attention to a hymn we sing: “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing.” I pointed out how difficult some of its language is. But one line in that hymn captures memorably and painfully this other unfortunate habit of a lifetime: “Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it; prone to leave the God I love.”
The closer we get to God, the more keenly we feel how prone we are to leave the God we love. Many times, like the prodigal in Jesus’ parable, we need to come to our senses, leave the pig sties of our sins, and set out again to go home. And every time, we find the Father waiting for us on the road, throwing dignity to the wind, and running to embrace us and welcome us home with festive joy.
This brings us to an important discipline in the highly effective habit of repentance – the discipline of confession. 1 John 1:8-9: If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.
Do you remember an old movie from the ‘60s called “Love Story?” One line summed up the point of the story. It was even set to music. “Love means you never have to say you’re sorry.” It was the story line of the sexual revolution of the 1960s, and the message was, “You don’t have to be sorry for having sex outside marriage.”
We see the business version, when someone sues a corporation and reaches an out-of-court settlement for millions of dollars with no any admission of guilt.
If we hold attitudes like that, verse eight says we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. We can do better than that. Walking in God’s light does not mean sinless perfection; it means keeping short accounts. It means taking responsibility before God, confessing our sins, and turning our lives back toward God.
The Pastoral Center of Gravity
Highly effective Christians practice the habit of repentance. I’d like to encourage this habit in our lives in three different ways. The first way takes us back to something I said in January about the value of public worship.
Repentance means turning around and going back to God. Repentance is an act of worship. Worship precedes ethics. Don’t belittle the enormous power of being here, doing these acts of praise, week after week, and year after year. Just being here says powerfully that God has priority over politics, work, war and leisure. That gives glory to God.
The flip side of that is that by being here, doing these acts of praise, week after week, and year after year, we regain our perspective on what matters most in life. The content of a worship service surrounds us with that perspective and reinforces the priority of God in our souls that gives substance to our profession that we are going back to God.
Second, once a month in our worship together, we practice the act of confession. It provides the opportunity to listen to the immediate concerns of our conscience. If we don’t stifle our conscience, it will function very well to bring before our minds the sins we need to confess.
But don’t restrict the act of confession to Communion services. Your conscience is as ready to function as is an involuntary muscle. Pay attention. At the end of your day or at a quiet moment of the day, turn your wandering heart back to our Father’s house, and confess your sins. And remember to call the sin by its proper name. I find it bracing to say aloud in my prayers the name of the sin I am confessing.
Third, people sometimes ask if God will forgive them, when they commit the same sin over and over. Do you remember the saying of Jesus in Luke 17:3-4?So watch yourselves. “If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him. If he sins against you seven times in a day, and seven times comes back to you and says, ‘I repent,’ forgive him.” I can’t imagine our Father in heaven asking us to do that for our brother and not doing the same for us.
Within every human soul lives the dark and dangerous. I don’t know about you, but I know that I walk near the edge of a cliff, and any day I could fall off. Actually, I have another picture of the dark and dangerous within.
Have you ever seen a herpetologist milk a venomous snake, a krait or cobra or rattlesnake? They do it, because from the venom they make anti-venom that saves people’s lives. But one careless moment, and the herpetologist could be in trouble.
The danger within is like that. That’s why Isaiah said, “I am a man of unclean lips.” That’s why Peter said, “Get away from me, Lord. I’m a sinful man.” Repentance takes seriously the danger within. It turns us toward God as the only safe place.
So, how are you doing as a Christian? How are you supposed to be doing? You now have a standard to measure by, an achievable goal to aspire to. In a most godlike act, I now leave this sermon with you to your obedience. The habit of repentance will make you a highly effective Christian.
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, Brandywine Valley Baptist Church. All rights reserved.
