People have heart attacks because over many years, their arteries harden. It takes time. And the same’s true when we allow our hearts to harden against God. It doesn’t happen overnight … takes time. But Jesus … Jesus has a sure fire way to cure that. It happens in an instant. It’s called a change of heart.

 

The Hardening of the Heart

Hey, great to be with you again today. And today we are continuing in our series about having a powerful deep relationship with Jesus. The series is called “There’s a Knock at the Door.”

Now, last weekend I was really blessed to have a great break. I love doing what I do; I really love being able to spend these few minutes with you on the programme each week but you know something, I really love having a rest. I like that break over the weekend. You know, you work hard all week – at least I do – generally they are long hours. And although when you love doing what you do (it doesn’t feel like work) come the end of the week, have to tell ya, I’m ready for a rest.

And one of the highlights of my weekend is waking up on Saturday morning and planning a date with my beautiful wife. Now that our kids have grown up we are able to just go out on a little date on a Saturday morning to a coffee shop – mostly it’s only toast and coffee. But it’s something we do for us. We chat, we read the paper, we just spend time together. I’d have to say, it’s the most special time of the week for me.

But before you get the idea that we are a perfect couple, with a perfect marriage, let me tell you, I am not a perfect husband – as much as I’d like to be. And sometimes, Jacqui isn’t the perfect wife. I can be such an insensitive clod sometimes and that can bruise Jacqui’s feelings. And yet, even though we are two imperfect people – sure we are trying to honour God; sure we are doing our best to love each other – but despite our imperfections, we love each other and our relationship is intact and hopefully growing deeper and deeper with the passing years.

So how is that? How is it that two imperfect people can grow in their relationship? Well, here’s what I try to do in our marriage: whenever I get it wrong; whenever I’m insensitive or I make a mistake or I don’t take Jacqui’s feelings into account, whatever it is, that kind of cuts me to the quick. When I realise I’ve done wrong – and hopefully I’m making fewer mistakes these days than I was say five years ago – but when I realise I’ve made a mistake, I say "Sorry" and I try to mend my ways.

Now saying "sorry" isn’t something that comes naturally to me and learning to say "sorry" has been one of the hardest things for me to do in my life, because "sorry" is about humbling yourself. "Sorry" is about admitting that you have made a mistake. "Sorry" is about taking the first step to mend a relationship and yet, as we live our lives together, Jacqui and I, best we can, making mistakes, saying "sorry", pulling each other closer, the relationship grows.

If on the other hand we just made mistakes and never ever said "sorry", never apologised, never had a softening and a changing of heart, tell you what, the relationship would pull further and further and further apart. And that’s how divorce happens! Because hearts grow first lukewarm, then eventually hard and cold and it takes time – but before you know it, there’s no love there anymore; there no relationship there anymore.

Now the reason I have shared that with you today, is that it’s a powerful metaphor, if you will, or a parallel, in understanding the relationship between God and ourselves. Last week on the programme we spent some time understanding this concept of Jesus knocking at the door of our hearts. He loves us more than a man or a woman can ever love one another. He loves us with a powerful, tender, sacrificial love and yet you and I, whilst once we may have been on fire for Him, have this ability to grow lukewarm in our relationship with Him.

Let’s just take another look at what He has to say about that: Revelation chapter 3, beginning at verse 15. Jesus says:

Look, I know your works; you are neither cold nor hot. I wish that you were either cold or hot. So, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I am about to spit you out of my mouth. For you say, “I am rich, I have prospered, and I have need of nothing.” You do not realize that you are wretched, pitiable, poor and blind, and naked. Therefore, I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire so that you may be rich; and white robes to clothe you and to keep the shame of your nakedness from being seen; and salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see. I reprove and discipline those whom I love. Be earnest, therefore, and repent. Listen! I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice, open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me. To the one who conquers I will give a place with me on my throne, just as I myself have conquered and sat down with my Father on his throne. Let anyone who has an ear listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches.

As I said, we have spent quite a bit of time taking a look at what Jesus is saying to us through that passage, but the bit that I would like to unpack this week on the programme is the bit about repentance. Because, to tell you the truth, when I first became a Christian – almost twenty years ago now – I remember those Christians talking about repentance. And can I be perfectly honest with you here? I thought to myself, ‘What! I mean, it sounds like a word from the 1950s. It’s a kind of religious, moralising kind of word; it’s an old fashioned concept being spouted by an out of date irrelevant church. Repentance? Oh, give me a break!’ Not sure how you react to the word but me, every time I still hear it today, it has that kind of feeling of a "religiousy" kind of word to me.

And yet its meaning is anything but that. Can I go back to what I shared with you about Jacqui and myself earlier? In our imperfection, the only way we keep our marriage relationship together; the only way we keep growing in our love for one another; the only way we get to look forward to our special date on Saturday mornings and being together, is constantly to repent. Constantly to admit that we have done wrong; to admit we gave failed; to apologise to one another; to mend our ways. And that right there is exactly what repentance is.

And so when Jesus is calling those of us whose hearts have grown lukewarm towards Him; those of us who have become distracted with all the trinkets and baubles this world dangles before us, what is it He says? What does He call you and me to do? He is saying to us, right here and right now, “Be earnest therefore, and repent.” Literal meaning of that original word for repent, here it is, word for word from my Greek lexicon:

... to change one’s mind for better; heartily to amend with the abhorrence of one’s past sins.

In other words, to get a grip; to realise that what we are doing is wrong; to have the guts to admit that to ourselves and having had that change of heart, to change what it is that we are doing. Now isn’t that exactly what I have just described in our marriage relationship before? Isn’t that what keeps a marriage together? Absolutely, it is! So ‘repenting’ isn’t some old fashioned religious word, it’s one of the most – in fact, let me say this – it’s the single most important thing in maintaining healthy relationships and growing strong relationships.

And the thing I love, or one of the things I love most about Jesus is, He doesn’t want us to be religious with Him; He doesn’t want us to go through the motions with Him. He wants a relationship; He wants to fellowship with us. He wants to come in and have a meal with us. And so the key to unlocking that door from the inside is you and me having an earnest change of heart. The key to that relationship is taking that knock at the door seriously; to be earnest, because Jesus is standing there knocking, wanting to be close to us – being earnest and having a change of mind, a change of heart, a change of ways, because He is stands and He knocks.

 

The Whole Point of God’s Kindness

As I said earlier, this series of messages is called, "There’s a Knock at the Door". And of course, all the messages are available online if you have missed any of them, at www.christianityworks.com Now the whole point; the crux of what we are hearing Jesus say to us in all of this is that because we live here in this physical world, with all its distractions, our hearts can grow lukewarm towards Him and that is the one thing He doesn’t want to see happen. What He wants is a close, intimate, personal relationship with each one of us. Let’s just have another listen to this powerful word from Revelation chapter 3, beginning at verse 15. Let’s just listen to this as though Jesus was saying it to you and to me. He says:

I know your works; you are neither cold nor hot. I wish that you were either cold or hot. So, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I am about to spit you out of my mouth. For you say, ‘I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing.’ You do not realize that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. Therefore I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire so that you may be rich; and white robes to clothe you and to keep the shame of your nakedness from being seen; and salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see. I reprove and discipling those whom I love. So be earnest and repent. Listen! I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me.

Do you know the whole point? Relationship not religion!! And our part in that relationship is this earnest repenting thing that Jesus talks about. And we will unpack that some more because in a sense, that’s our small part in this transaction.

I was reading something interesting the other day; something else that Jesus said when He was walking the dusty roads of first century Israel. He actually explained what the purpose or one the key purposes of all His miracles was. Now of course, these miracles of healing brought amazing blessing and relief to one or two people who were involved each time. Okay, sometimes it was a lot more than one or two people but if you are blind and He gave you back your sight, I mean, can you imagine? If you were an ostracised an outcast leper and He healed you of your leprosy, I mean, can you imagine what it would have been like to be able to back to life with your family and your friends again?

So there was an immediate blessing to the recipients of those miracles. But those miracles were meant to speak something into the wider community. They were meant to illicit a response from the wider community. Have a listen to what Jesus says about this. We are reading from Matthew chapter 11, beginning at verse 20:

Jesus began to reproach the cities in which most of his deeds of power had been done, because they did not repent. “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the deeds of power done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I tell you, on the day of judgement it will be more tolerable for them than for you. And you, Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven? No, you will be brought down to Hades. For if the deeds of power done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. But I tell you that on the day of judgement it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom than for you."

At that time Jesus said, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and you have revealed them to infants; yes, Father, for such was you glorious will.”

Now, Jesus is having a real go at some pretty major cities here, so what’s He on about? Well, He is saying, "Look, you have seen with your own eyes the miracles I did in your midst and still you wander off on your own merry way, ignoring my Father who sent Me. You look back on the cities of Sodom and Tyre and Sidon; cities that you know perished because of their evil and you scorn them. But if they had seen the miracles you’ve seen; if they had seen the blessing of God poured out on them the way it’s been poured out on you, gotta tell you, they would have repented a long time ago. You think you are clever," Jesus is saying, "you think you are an advanced community with all your commerce and your wealth and all the stuff that is going on, that the blessing of God came close to you and you still have not repented; you still have not had an earnest change of mind."

Well, there is a reason for that – because somehow He, in His wisdom, God reveals Himself to those who are prepared to humble themselves and admit they are wrong; those who are like little children. But from the proud – those who think they have all the answers; those who look down their noses from their positions of wealth and power – from those people He hides Himself. And as we have seen, repentance isn’t some 1950s religious concept … repentance means to have a change of heart; a change of mind; to be honest enough to admit that what we are doing is wrong; to turn away from the wrong and back to God and start living a life pleasing to Him.

In fact, this whole thing was right at the heart of Jesus’ message – it’s what He came to tell us. From the very commencement of His public ministry, we are told that:

Jesus began to proclaim, “Repent for the Kingdom of heaven has come near.

Matthew chapter 4, verse 17.

Why? Is it because He wants to wreak havoc on us? Is it because God is somehow some despotic God who wants to punish us? No! Whom did He send? Jesus! What was Jesus doing? He was showing kindness and love and mercy and power by healing people. Just think about that! He did a few other miracles – water into wine, feeding the 5,000 with a few fish and loaves, walking on water, stilling a storm – but by far the greatest number of Jesus’ miracles were healing people and casting out demons. He came to bless and to save, not to punish and condemn.

But there was and remains a point to all this blessing. The point is that it should bring us to our senses; the point is that we should take notice of God … this God who loves us and wants to bless us and wake up to ourselves and admit to ourselves our wrongs, turn away from those wrongs and turn back to Him. In fact the Apostle Paul gives us a neat, powerful, executive summary of what Jesus was saying to those unrepentant cities. Comes from Romans chapter 2, verse 4:

Or do you despise the riches of God’s kindness and forbearance and patience? Do you not realise that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?

Now, we, by and large, we want God’s kindness. We, by and large, want God’s blessing. We by, and large, want God to show up when we are in the schtuck and we need pulling out. But more often than not, the last thing we want to do is to repent – to turn away from the things that we know are wrong; to give our lives … our whole lives, every part of our lives – our hopes, our dreams, our gifts, our abilities, our time, our resources, our finances, our thoughts, our sexuality, our everything, our all in all – over to Jesus. But unless we do that, how else do we expect a rich, powerful relationship to happen with God, through Jesus? How do we expect to live in the blessing of God? The whole point of God’s kindness towards us is to get us to have a change of mind, change of heart, a change of life; to repent and bring our lives back to Him.

Does Jesus come to us with a carrot or a stick, you might ask? Well, what He is saying to those unrepentant cities; what He is saying to you and me, here and now, in this place, is that He comes to us first and foremost, with blessing, with deeds of power, with love, with healing, with kindness, with forbearance, because as A.W. Tozer once wrote, "God just doesn’t have mercy, God is mercy". And as the Bible tells us, God doesn’t just have love, God is love. But He also warns us that one day … one day there is a stick coming; one day it will be too late; one day judgement will fall, but for the time being, Jesus stands at the door and He knocks.

 

This Ain’t for the Next Guy

There have been times when I have listened to some preacher carrying on about repenting and changing our ways and all that stuff – a bit like I have been over the last twenty minutes or so – and you know the thoughts that would most commonly spring to my mind? I’d start thinking of all the people I knew who needed to do some serious repenting – all the people who had offended me; the people who rubbed me the wrong way; those sinners over there, boy do they need to repent something fierce – if only they would repent, my world would be such a better place. I wonder if there isn’t a bit of that in all of us.

This must be for the next guy because I’m practically perfect in every way! And so as we come towards the end of our time together today, I just feel to speak into this for a moment.

The more grey hairs I get on my head, the more I’ve come to realise that for most of us, our default position is that we are pretty perfect and so this call for repentance can’t possibly be for us. It must be for that person over there. I definitely know they need to repent.

At least, that’s how I started my walk with Jesus nearly twenty years ago. But since that, what I have experienced is like … like God peeling the layers of the onion back as He goes deeper and deeper and deeper in dealing with the sin in my life; in healing me from the sin that’s robbed me of life. The more He does that, the more aware we become of our own sinful nature.

In fact, it’s something you see in the writings of Paul the Apostle. He wrote almost half the Books in the New Testament. And it’s the ones that he wrote towards the end of his time where he shows a much greater awareness of his own sinfulness than in the earlier ones. I mean, by the time he is about half way through writing the various epistles over a period of years, this is what he writes about himself in the Book of Romans – Romans chapter 7, verse 18:

I know nothing good dwells in me; in my flesh. I can will what is right, I just cannot do it. For I do not do the good that I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells in me. So I find it to be a law that whenever I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. See, I delight in the law of God in my innermost self, but I see in my members another law at work with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of sin and death?

They say that the first step in dealing with alcoholism is to admit that you are an alcoholic. That’s why at every A.A. meeting a person will stand up and say, "Hi, my name is Fred, I’m an alcoholic." And the same is true of any sin. The first step is always admitting our sin – being real with ourselves; being honest with ourselves; not cutting ourselves yet more slack; not coming up with yet more excuses.

Have you noticed how good we are at excusing our own sin? Have you noticed how we rationalise our own sin away? How we say, "Well, you know, I was tired," or "Ah, that person just annoyed me and I couldn’t help it. Aw well, it doesn’t really matter, I’ll sweep it under the carpet."

Friend, that’s what we do! And so we continue on in our sin, not realising that the whole point of God’s kindness towards us is that He wants us to repent. The whole point of God’s kindness is to give us a new life that each day, more and more and more, is freer from the consequences of our sin – each day it becomes a better life; a more enjoyable life; a life with more impact for good; a life with more impact for God. Do you see?

So I just wonder whether today isn’t the very day that we need to let God’s Word be like a mirror to our face. Whether today isn’t the day that you and I finally say to ourselves:

Wretched man that I am!” or “Wretched woman that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of sin and death? Thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Friend, God is calling us to a frank admission and in our frank admission, if we cast ourselves on the grace and the mercy; on the unmerited favour and kindness and forgiveness of God, there is the answer. Because as surely as God made little green apples, unless and until we do that, the ravages of our sin will continue to tear our lives apart.

Come on! Let’s have God’s Word as a mirror to our face. The ravages of our sin; the consequences of our sin are going to tear our lives apart until we finally repent; until we finally go to God with the admission that we are wrong, that we can’t help ourselves and that we need His power to change.