Repentance

 This is the message given in the United Methodist churches of the Wheatland Parish on Sunday, August 9, 2020.  The Bible verses used are Matthew 4:12-17.

            Repentance.  It’s not something we talk about very much, in church or anywhere else.  Oh, we talk about it on Ash Wednesday.  As I put the ashes on people’s foreheads, I say, “Repent and believe the gospel.”  And we sometimes talk about it during Lent.  But that’s about it.

            Now some of that is my fault, of course--after all, I’m the pastor.  I get to choose what I preach about.  But I’m not really encouraged to talk about it, either.  I wanted to choose some hymns that would go with the theme of repentance, so I looked in the topical index that’s in the back of the hymnal.  You know how many hymns I found on the topic of repentance?

            Zero.  None.  There’s not even a heading for it.  Our United Methodist hymnal has no hymns that are based on a theme of repentance.

            Now, to be sure, there are plenty of hymns about forgiveness.  We love to sing about forgiveness.  We love to talk about forgiveness, too.  We talk all the time about how Jesus died so we could have forgiveness for our sins.  

And that’s true, of course.  I’m not denying that at all.  I’m very thankful that Jesus died so we could have forgiveness for our sins.  But that does not mean we can just skip over repentance.  Repentance was very important to Jesus.  It should be very important to us, too.

In fact, our reading for today shows just how important repentance was to Jesus.  To know that, though, we need to put it into context.  We read today from Matthew Chapter Four.  In Chapter Three, we learn about John the Baptist and we read the story of Jesus’ baptism.  Then, at the start of Chapter Four, we read about Jesus fasting for forty days and forty nights and being tempted by the devil.

Then comes the part we read this morning.  Jesus learns that John the Baptist has been arrested and thrown into prison.  He moves to Capernaum to fulfill an Old Testament prophecy.  And then, we’re told, “From that time on Jesus began to preach, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.’”

In other words, when Jesus began his ministry, the very first thing he did was preach about our need to repent.  He did that before he worked any miracles.  He did that before he made any claims about who he was.  He did that even before he had gathered any disciples--that part comes right after this.  

When Jesus began his ministry, the first thing he did was preach about our need to repent.  That shows how important repentance is to Jesus.  And it shows how important repentance should be to us, too.

And in theory, it is important to us.  We’d all probably say it is.  But you know, we can be really good at making excuses not to do it.

We say, well, all I have to do to get to heaven is to accept Jesus as the Savior, right?  I mean, we say that all the time.  It’s the most basic Christian belief there is.  So if I’ve accepted Jesus as the Savior, why do I need to repent?

Well, it’s true that all we need to do is accept Jesus as the Savior.  But truly accepting Jesus as the Savior is more than just saying the words.  It takes more than just acknowledging that Jesus is the Savior.  It means truly believing that Jesus is the Messiah, the divine Son of God.  And that means that we need to take the things Jesus said seriously.  And it means we need to do them, to the best of our ability.

Again, the first thing Jesus did when he started his ministry was tell us to repent.  If we truly accept Jesus as our savior, we need to take repentance seriously.  And we need to truly repent, to the best of our ability.

So we say, well, yes, you’re right.  I get it.  I need to confess my sins to God and ask for forgiveness.  And of course, we do need to do that.  But that’s not enough, either.  Repentance includes confessing our sins to God.  It includes asking for forgiveness.  But it means more than that.

Confessing our sins to God and asking for forgiveness only really means something if we intend to make a sincere effort to change.  We cannot truly say we’ve accepted Jesus as the Savior if we confess our sins to God and ask God for forgiveness, but then we don’t do anything differently.  If we just continue to live our lives the way we’ve been living them and keep committing the same sins we’ve been committing, we have not really done anything.

The Apostle Paul confronted that situation in Romans Chapter Six.  After explaining about how God’s grace leads to forgiveness of our sins, Paul wrote, “Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.”

We talk sometimes about being “born again”.  This is really what it means.  We cannot be born again unless we have repented of our sins.  We cannot be born again unless we have resolved to stop living in sin and instead be raised to a new life in Christ.

Now, I know that for some people that phrase “born again” can be off-putting.  But understand, we’re not talking about some magical, mystical event.  A person can have a dramatic born again experience, of course--I know people who have.  For others of us, it’s more of a gradual process. But either way, being born again involves repentance.  

What repentance is, really, is a decision, a decision you and I make.  God’s involved too, of course.  We cannot do this without God.  But God’s decision is always that we repent.  Any time we’re willing to repent, God will be willing to help us do it.  So the decision really is up to us.

Repentance is a decision you and I make to stop living the way we’ve been living.  Now, that’s not to say that we’re all terrible, awful people.  We’re not.  But we’re also not as good as we could be.  We’re not as faithful to God as we could be.  We don’t serve God as well as we could.  We don’t love God and we don’t love others as much as we could.  That’s true for each one of us here.  Most definitely including me.

And so, if we’re going to truly repent, we need to stop making excuses for ourselves.  We need to truly resolve to change our lives.  We need to get rid of all the things that keep us from being faithful to God, that keep us from serving God, that keep us from loving God and loving others.

What are those things?  Well, you’ll have to answer that question for yourself.  But I can tell you what at least one of them is for me.  It may not be the only one, but it’s a big one.  One of the biggest things that keeps me from doing those things is me.

Me.  My selfishness.  My self-centeredness.  My arrogance.  My determination to do things my way, at my time.  My determination to not do things, even when I know I should, and to do things, even when I know I should not.  

Now, I’m in good company on that. The Apostle Paul went through the same thing.  He wrote about that in Romans, too, in Chapter Seven.  He wrote, “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.”

But that does not provide me with an excuse.  Because when Jesus preached about repentance, he did not include any provisions for us to make excuses.  Jesus simply said, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”

Of course, repentance does not mean that we will never sin again.  Even after repentance, we remain fallen, broken, imperfect people, people with a sinful nature.  But that does not provide us with an excuse, either.  When we fall back, when we slide back into sin, we need to repent again.  I referenced Ash Wednesday earlier.  This is why we commemorate Ash Wednesday every year--because no matter how serious we are about repenting, we will still fall back.  And so, we need to repent again.  And again.  And again.

But each time we repent, we need to be sincere about it.  We need to be resolved that this time we really are going to get it right.  That this time, we are not going to fall back.  And we need to ask God’s help in doing that.

Because that’s the only way we can truly make a change in our lives--with God’s help.  We won’t be able to do it on our own.  On our own, we might be able to make a few, marginal changes.  But to make fundamental changes in our lives, we need God.  We need God’s help to truly change and be the people we should be, the people God wants us to be.

But that’s the thing--God wants us to be those people.  God wants us to make the changes that repentance can bring.  And so, when we truly repent, when we truly make that decision to change, and when we ask God for help in doing it, God will be there for us.  God will help us.  With God, it can happen.  Because with God, all things are possible.

The first thing Jesus did when he started his ministry was to call people to repent.  The first thing we need to do if we want to truly call ourselves Christians is repent.  Even if we’ve been Christians all our lives, we still need to repent.  That’s the first step in truly accepting Jesus as the Savior.  And it’s the first step in being the people God wants us to be.