Repent – sounds like such an … old-fashioned word. And yet – all it really means, is to have a change of heart. A change of mind. To turn away from the muck that’s ruining our lives, back into the embrace of a God who loves us beyond words.

 

A Call to Repent

Today is a big day on the programme; a huge day on the programme. We have been chatting so far over the past few weeks about the heart that Jesus has to be close to us. The reason He came; the reason He did all those miracles; the reason He blesses us; the reason He is knocking at that door right now. You and I, we are so often just – I don’t know – bumbling our way through life, kind of believing in Jesus, kind of believing in God but really, honestly, a bit lukewarm.

You know, life is busy, things are okay and then Jesus comes along and says:

Look, I know your works; you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either cold or hot. But because you are lukewarm; you are neither cold nor hot, I am about to spit you out of my mouth because you are saying to me, ‘Look, I am rich, I have prospered. I don’t need anything. But you don’t realise you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind and naked. So 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 a salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see. I reprove and discipline 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 and I will eat with you, and you with me.

See, Jesus wants us to have real gold; real purity; real vision – He wants us to get real with ourselves; He wants us to admit that we are not well off, we are not prosperous, that we are poor and pitiable and naked and … Come on, let’s get real with ourselves.

But as I can attest, repenting ain’t an easy thing to do. The reason is, it’s about pride. To repent – to have a change of heart; to turn our lives over to Jesus once and for all – we have to admit to ourselves that who we are, who we have become, how we are living our lives falls so way short of the mark.

Now, is Jesus only looking for people who are failures? No! But there comes a point where despite any outward success we may have and lots of people have lots of successes – we need to admit to ourselves that, yes, there is a God and yes, some of the stuff we are into isn’t pleasing to Him and yes, if we want to lay hold of this amazing life He has for us, then it’s time to change our hearts and our minds and our lives and our ways.

And that immediately brings up this prospect of, well, "If I have to change some things in my life, then I have to give things up for Jesus! Man! This God, I’m sure He doesn’t want me to have any fun in life." That’s how it felt for me way back when. And I look back on that now and think to myself, "Well, how could I have thought that; how could I have had that idea?" But that is knowing what I know now and I didn’t know those things back then.

I didn’t have the benefit of walking with Jesus for the past twenty years and realising how much fun He does want me to have – even though sometimes the going gets tough. I mean, I can’t deny that. I didn’t realise back then how those few things that I was clinging on to – my pride, my selfishness, my anger (they were my big ones) – were robbing me of life.

Now, I don’t care if you are someone who has never in their wildest dreams imagined giving their lives over to Jesus, or someone whose struggling with that and you are right at the moment, wondering whether that’s what you want to do, or someone who has been warming the pews of a church with your backside for the last half a century or more, we all have stuff. Listen – we all have stuff that we want to hang onto that is not pleasing to God.

And here’s my favourite executive summary of that stuff. You may have heard me pull this one out before and the reason I pull it out from time to time is that this executive summary of stuff that God calls sin, kind of whacks you in the face and brings you to your senses. Here it is – it comes from the contemporary Message translation of the Bible. It is Galatians chapter 5, verses 19 to 21. Paul writes to the Galatians:

Look, it is obvious what kind of life develops out of trying to get your own way all the time: repetitive, loveless, cheap sex; a stinking accumulation of mental and emotional garbage; frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness; trinket gods; magic-show religion; paranoid loneliness; cutthroat competition; all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied wants; a brutal temper; an impotence to love or be loved; divided homes and divided lives; small-minded and lopsided pursuits; the vicious habit of depersonalising everyone into a rival; uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions; ugly parodies of community. I could go on. This isn’t the first time I have warned you, you know. If you use your freedom this way, you will not inherit the kingdom of God.

Now, I’m kind of pretty sure you recognised one or two of those things in your own life – temper, loveless, competitiveness, de-personalisation … all that garbage. And if we are going to be honest with ourselves – as tightly as we hang onto those things; as much as we justify let’s say, our anger; as much as we have been duped into believing that those things are essential for our lives – actually, the things in that list are just ruining our lives.

If we are overly competitive; if we always have to win, how many relationships are we going to have? How rich are our lives going to be? The bottom line is that God only asks us to give up the things; to repent of the things; to turn away from the things that are ruining our lives. Isn’t that a powerful insight? Sin is the stuff that ruins our lives – sin in the stuff that robs us of life and that’s what the devil wants for us:

The thief comes only to steal, kill and destroy but Jesus came that we may have live and have it in all its abundance.

So today, I believe Jesus wants a few of us to repent – to have a change of mind and a change heart and a change of life about some of the muck that we are hanging onto in our lives. Let me come back to the centrepiece of what we have been sharing together and talking together on the programme these last few weeks. Jesus is saying to us:

Be earnest, therefore, 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; I will eat with you, and you with me.

And my prayer for each one of us today is that the Spirit of God is writing His truth and His love and His mercy and His grace on our hearts right now. I’m believing that there are a good few of us whom Jesus is calling right now to repent. You can feeling Him knocking at the door of your heart; you can hear His voice and His Word – you just know He is calling you to a place of giving up those few bits of muck that you have been hanging onto for dear life, duped by the devil into believing that they are essential for your existence, when all along … all along, like a cancer, they have been spreading throughout you, making you sicker and sicker. I believe there are men and women and children listening to this message right around the world today, whose hearts are fit to break as you have heard God’s Word. You have grieved at the realisation of the sin you have been clinging onto.

Well, before we pray a prayer of repentance – a turning point prayer together – God wants you to know this from His Word – Second Corinthians chapter 7, verse 10:

Godly grief produces repentance that leads to salvation and brings no regrets, but worldly grief produces death.

Father God,
We have heard you speak to us today. We are cut to the quick over our rebellion against you. Forgive us we ask, in Jesus name. We believe Jesus is Your Son, that He died for us, that He rose again. That when we put our trust in Him we are completely forgiven. We’re sorry for all that we’ve done. We accept you Jesus, as our Lord and Saviour, at this very moment in an earnest change of heart and change of mind. From this moment forward everything we are, all that we have, every hope, every dream we give to you. From this moment forward we live our lives for you and with you and in you. In Jesus name we come.
Amen.

 

Taking the Tough Decisions

That’s powerful stuff and if you prayed that prayer, you are going to be so blessed in your life. The devil will come after you, sure. Become part of a Bible believing church. Be encouraged by fellow believers and God is going to do some amazing things with your life.

Now look, sometimes in life we do have to take some tough decisions because repenting once is not where it is at. We need to repent over and over again because we are always making mistakes.

I saw a man interviewed recently on the News, from somewhere in the U.S. A heavy piece of machinery had fallen on his foot, way out in the middle of nowhere and so, since nobody was going to be able to find him and since he would surely die if he stayed where he was, he cut his toes off with his pocket knife. So, that’s a tough decision.

And we, day by day, need to make some difficult decisions. And there’s one decision that the vast majority of us try to avoid. It’s a decision we need to take … one we desperately need to take, almost on a daily basis but one which we almost avoid, because it feels a bit like … cutting our toes off!! Can you guess what that decision might be? Here it is: it’s deciding that we have made a mistake; it’s admitting to ourselves and to other people that we were wrong. We hate being wrong, most of us. Sometimes we are wrong over big things, sometimes we are wrong over little things – but the idea of admitting that you are wrong, cutting your losses and moving on, can be a hard one to come to grips with.

And so, having just spoken about repentance – that big act of turning away from sin and turning to Jesus – I want to talk now about our ongoing life in Christ because as I said, repentance is something that needs to happen over and over again. And the quicker we can come to our senses and admit we are wrong, cut our losses, move on, the better things are.

When we discover and act on failure quickly, it is by far the best policy and in fact, it’s something you find in the Bible. Have a listen with me to this familiar story, to most of us. Luke chapter 15, beginning at verse 11:

There was a man who had two sons. The younger of them said to, ‘Dad, give me my share of the property and all that belongs to me.’ So the father divided the property between the sons. A few days later the younger son gathered all he had, travelled to a distant land, and there he squandered his property in dissolute living. When he had spent everything, there was a severe famine and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed his pigs.

He would gladly have filled himself with the pods that the pigs were eating; but no one gave him a thing. Then he came to himself – he came to his senses and he said, ‘How many of my dad’s hired hands have enough bread to eat and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger! I know what I’ll do, I will get up, go to my dad and I will say to him, 'Dad, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am not worthy to be your son anymore; treat me like one of your servants.’

So he set off and went to his dad. But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him. Then the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ But the father said to his slaves, ‘Quick, bring out a robe – the best one – and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost but now he is found!’ and they began to celebrate.

You and I are often like that young man – we make some stupid choices in our lives. Have you made some choices and found yourself wearing the consequences? Me too! And just like it’s hard to admit that we are wrong and say sorry to someone, even over little things, it’s about ten thousand times harder to admit we are wrong and turn back to God. Because like the Prodigal Son we have some pretty low expectations of who God is and what He is like. Remember what the Prodigal Son said:

I’ll get up and go to my father and say to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am not worthy to be called your son any more; treat me like one of your hired hands.’

Let’s give the young man in the story some serious credit. Even though he has this low set of expectations of his father, he still comes to his senses and goes back. And as we saw in the rest of the story, dad was standing by the letter box waiting for his lad to come home. He races out, kisses him, blesses him, dresses him, throws a party, they kill a fatted calf (which is an incredible honour) they whacked the sound system on high and they partied!

The young man delivered his pre-rehearsed speech but his father didn’t utter a single word of condemnation – nothing, because his father was absolutely over the moon that his son was back. And the whole point of Jesus telling us that story was to say, "That’s what My Dad is like. That’s what God is like. You don’t have to have low expectations. He is waiting with open arms to welcome you back and to receive you."

So to anyone who is sitting in some smelly old pig pen, starving at the moment, struggling with the decision of admitting that they are wrong and trying to think, ‘Can I possibly turn back to God?’ For anyone who is wondering whether they should stop the loss, crystallise the loss, cut their losses, go back to the blessing. This is what Jesus has to say to you today:

Come to your senses the way the young man in the story came to his senses. Repent; turn away from the life that is robbing you of the treasures that your Father has planned for you in His house and come back to God. No condemnation, no punishment, no lecture, no wagging a big stick – just a Father; your Father in heaven who is standing out there by the letter box, craning His neck, waiting to see if your are coming back over the hill to Him today – just a Father who wants to dress you and bless you and throw a party because you are back.

As we are going to see soon, this is what’s going to happen the moment one sinner repents, the moment one sinner comes back to his Dad through an earnest change of heart and change of mind and change of life – heaven is going to stop, because friend, it’s party time.

 

A Time to Party

I made some decisions in my early twenties that caused me to turn away from God. It wasn’t exactly the same as that young man, that Prodigal Son in Jesus parable that we looked at earlier, but the idea was pretty much the same. I, like that Prodigal Son walked away from God’s blessing and found myself spiritually and emotionally, in a dark and desperate place – just as that son did amongst the pigs, starving.

And the problem is, we can get used to that place; we can get used to the smell. We accept it because the alternative is admitting that we are wrong; the alternative is cutting our losses and going back to the place where we know the blessing will be. It’s a bit like the man I mentioned earlier in the programme, who was caught; pinned under the heavy machinery and to save himself, had to cut his toes off – it feels a bit like that.

See, when I did that, I believed in Jesus but I started to live a life that didn’t honour God – I walked away. I decided to live my way, in a sense, like the Prodigal Son who demanded his inheritance from his father and then headed off to live THE LIFE. At least that’s what he thought! And little by little, life descended to a point that was lower than low; even though I had money and a big house and a nice car but again, that’s not what life is about. Those aren’t the things that make us happy. And like the Prodigal Son, I stayed there because I had low expectations of God. I always kind of knew God was there but I was afraid to turn back and had too much pride to turn back. So I lived in that rotten place for a good couple of decades before I finally came to my senses. Crazy now, but that’s what I did.

Now, along with this story of the Prodigal Son – in fact, just before that story – Jesus tells two much shorted stories and I would like to have a look at those right now. Because I know that, well, the decision to turn our lives around, away from our stupid mistakes and their consequences and back to God – they can be tough decisions. And the best way I know to make it easier for you, whatever part of your life needs turning back to God today, is by sharing God’s Word with you because there is such power in God’s Word – power to change lives as the Holy Spirit lifts the Word off the page and writes it on our hearts.

So, as we have a look at those two short parables that Jesus told, I’m believing that some lives are going to be restored and healed and turned around today. The first story is this – Luke chapter 15, verse 1:

Now all the tax collectors and the sinners were coming near and listening to Jesus. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This Jesus fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.” So Jesus told them this parable: “Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and he rejoices and he comes home, he calls his friends and neighbours together, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.’ Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people who need no repentance.

What’s the context of this situation He is speaking into? The self-righteous, pious, holier-than-thou, religious hierarchy were having a whinge that instead of spending His time with them, this miracle man Jesus, was hanging around a bunch of sinners. And so He tells this story about a lost sheep which spoke right into the agrarian culture and mind-set of the day.

Being a shepherd was a big deal. A shepherd protected his sheep with his life. If you had a hundred sheep in your care, you did not come home at night one sheep short. You did whatever you had to do to go find that lost sheep and bring it back to the fold. That’s just how things were.

And Jesus is saying, in effect, "Well, God is like that. I came to find that one lost sheep; that one sinner and bring them home. That’s the whole reason I’m here – not to hang around with the people who are well but to hang around with the people who need my help." And by the way, just in case you don’t get it (and quite obviously they didn’t get it) He says in Luke chapter 15, verse 7:

I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety nine righteous people who need no repentance.

See, that’s the heart of God for you and me. When you and I have blown it and we know it, He comes out looking for us. Perhaps that’s exactly what He is doing right now with you, as you hear His Word today.

Um, still a bit hard to get a handle on? Here’s the second story that Jesus told. Luke chapter 15, verse 8 – He says:

Or what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbours, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.’ Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over just one sinner who repents.

So guys, Jesus is saying, just in case you didn’t get it the first time, here it is again: imagine this woman, she loses what to her, was a large sum of money – a silver coin. She turns the place upside down, she finds it – okay, she still had the nine, but imagine her joy at finding the tenth one again.

Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels over just one sinner who repents.

And then finally of course, the story of the Prodigal Son that we looked at earlier. But the bit that we didn’t look at was the bad reaction of the brother – the older brother – who sees this snooty kid who went and blew his inheritance and dishonoured his father and when he comes back from a hard day’s work in the field, he discovers that, not only has that brat returned, but the old man was throwing him a party! Not surprisingly, he doesn’t react too well to that and has a tantrum and he refuses to come inside.

Well, wouldn’t you? So … so what does dad say to this older brother in Jesus parable? Luke chapter 15, verses 31 and 32:

The father said to the older brother, “Son, you were always with me and all that is mine is yours but we had to celebrate and rejoice because this brother of yours was dead and has come back to life again; he was lost but now he is found.

Do you see? Three times the same thing – do you get it? Has the Holy Spirit got it through to us yet? If you are hanging out there wondering whether you should turn back; whether you should repent; whether you should turn away from your sin and come back to God through the grace and the mercy and the sacrifice and the love and the forgiveness you have in Jesus Christ, God is speaking to you today. “Come home to Me, I love you, I love you, I love you. Come home to Me. I can’t wait to have you back. In fact, child, heaven is ready for you. Heaven is ready to have a party.”

My friend, Jesus today, is standing at the door of your heart and He is knocking. Will you answer? Will you open the door? Will you let Him in? Will you come back?