Tag: repent

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Luke Luke 4 Mark Mark1 Matthew Matthew 4

A light in the darkness

The gospels

I mentioned yesterday the question of why God allowed John the Baptist to go to prison. We don’t know for sure, but perhaps one reason was to get people’s eyes off of John and solely on to Jesus.

For right after John went into prison, it says that Jesus returned to Galilee to begin his formal ministry. In doing so, Matthew tells us he fulfilled the words of Isaiah who wrote,

Land of Zebulun and land of Naphtali, the way to the sea, along the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles– the people living in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned. (Matthew 4:15-16)

It’s amazing that the Pharisees totally missed this passage as they disparaged Jesus’ background. (John 7:52)

But here we see one of the reasons Jesus came. We were living in darkness, separated from God by our sin, condemned to death. But in Jesus, a light dawned.

Hope sprang anew as he showed the way to the Father. He declared to the people,

“The time has come…The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!” (Mark 1:15)

That is our message to this day. The King has come. His kingdom is near. Both in the fact that it is working in the hearts of all who believe in him, and in the fact that Jesus will come again to establish his kingdom here on earth forever.

And so we are called to repent. To repent is to turn around. To change our way of thinking. To stop living for ourselves and start living for God. To put aside our distrust of God and to follow him wholeheartedly.

A big part of that, of course, is to believe in the good news of Jesus Christ.

That God became man, becoming one of us. That he died on a cross to take the punishment for our sins, and that he rose again. And that if we will only put our faith in him, trusting in him as our Lord and Savior, we will be saved from eternal hell.

That’s the message Jesus came to bring.

Now there are two questions we all must ask.

First, have you put your faith in Christ? And if you have, are you continuing to pass on the message Jesus came to give?

How about you? Can you say yes to both questions?

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Jeremiah

Bringing evil upon ourselves

Jeremiah

Why is this happening to me? People often ask that question when bad things happen in their lives.

Sometimes, bad things happen because we are caught in a world corrupted by sin. But sometimes, we bring evil upon ourselves. That’s what the people of Judah did.

In this passage, God warns them of the coming judgment through Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon. That he would come and besiege the land, and leave Judah in ruins (6–7).

And the people would have no one to blame but themselves. They had hardened their hearts against God’s message, from the king, to the priests and prophets, all the way down the people.

God said of them,

They (the Babylonian army) surround her like men guarding a field, because she has rebelled against me.

Your own conduct and actions have brought this upon you. This is your punishment.

How bitter it is! How it pierces to the heart. (Jeremiah 4:17–18)

And again,

My people are fools; they do not know me. They are senseless children; they have no understanding. They are skilled in doing evil; they know not how to do good. (22)

Even when disaster overtook them, they refused to repent, prostituting themselves to other gods. And so Jeremiah asked,

What are you doing, O devastated one?

Why dress yourself in scarlet and put on jewels of gold? Why shade your eyes with paint? You adorn yourself in vain. Your lovers despise you; they seek your life. (30)

It’s amazing how little changes over the centuries. People harden their hearts against God and suffer the consequences of their own sin. Yet instead of repenting, they continue to live a life that would destroy them.

How about you? Are you that way?

Are there things that you’re doing that are destroying your marriage, your relationships, your career, or your life?

Despite seeing what damage you’re doing, are you persisting in your attitudes and actions?

Or will you repent?

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Isaiah

Trying to plug up the holes

Isaiah

So often we look at our lives, and we see the mess we’ve made of it. Maybe it’s in our marriages. Or in our other relationships. Or in our finances. And so we set out to plug up the holes in our lives.

But every time we plug up one hole, another leak springs up, and as a result our boat continues to sink.

That’s how it was with the people of Judah. In this passage, they saw a siege coming, so they tried to do everything they could to prepare. Almost everything.

They gathered their weapons, they tried to repair the breaches in the wall, and they made sure water could come into the city, while blocking it off from their enemies.

But while they did all that, they failed to deal with their biggest problem: their sin.

Isaiah wrote,

The Lord, the Lord Almighty called you on that day to weep and to wail, to tear out your hair and put on sackcloth. (Isaiah 22:12)

In other words, the reason God allowed the Assyrians to attack was to get the people to turn back to him. To repent of their sins and start worshiping him again.

But instead, they continued in their sinful ways, saying, “Let us eat and drink for tomorrow we die.” (13)

Whether that was said in mockery of Isaiah’s warnings, or in resignation, the result was the same. The people refused to turn back to God, and so God said,

Till your dying day this sin will not be atoned for. (14)

What do we take from this? It’s all well and good to see the problems in your life, and to try to deal with them.

But our biggest problem is an attitude of rebellion against God. And until we deal with that problem, leaks will continue to spring up in our lives. And eventually we will sink.

So let us stop trying to plug up the holes in our lives by our own wisdom and efforts, and turn to God. Repent of your sins, and start doing things his way.

If you will do so, not only will you find that your boat has stopped sinking, but that your boat will be made completely new, capable of navigating any problem you might go through.

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Micah

Non-rock-a-boatis

Don't rock the boat

Famous cult expert Walter Martin once noted a serious problem within the Christian church. He identified it by its Latin name, “non-rock-a-boatis.”

In other words, “Whatever you do, don’t rock the boat. Don’t say anything that will upset anybody.”

Unfortunately, too many churches suffer from this affliction. They are so worried about what people will think, that they soft-soap the gospel of Jesus Christ and the Word of God.

I remember one time, my pastor talked about sexual purity and how God’s plan for us is to save sex for one person that we are totally committed to for life. He also talked against living with your partner before you get married.

The next week, attendance dropped, and it took several weeks for it to get back to normal. It seems that his message struck a very uncomfortable chord among those who heard. But it was a message that people needed to hear.

Micah certainly had no problems rocking the boat. He tore into the leaders of the country who were acting unjustly towards the people. He then tore into the “prophets” who only said what people wanted to hear, saying,

This is what the Lord says: “As for the prophets who lead my people astray, if one feeds them, they proclaim ‘peace’; if he does not, they prepare to wage war against him.

Therefore night will come over you, without visions, and darkness, without divination.

The sun will set for the prophets, and the day will go dark for them. The seers will be ashamed and the diviners disgraced. They will all cover their faces because there is no answer from God.” (Micah 3:5–7)

Micah then said,

But as for me, I am filled with power, with the Spirit of the Lord, and with justice and might, to declare to Jacob his transgression, to Israel his sin. (Micah 3:8)

That’s the type of people we need to be. When people are in sin, we need to tell it to them straight. And if it offends them, so be it.

I’m not saying that we should be screaming at them, “You are going to hell!”

As I’ve mentioned before, there are far too many people who seem to take a perverse pleasure in that message. It almost seems like they take pleasure in imagining people burning in hell.

But God doesn’t take pleasure in people going to hell. He weeps over it. And so should we.

But it’s not enough to weep. We need to warn people. And sometimes that means rocking the boat and telling them what they don’t want to hear.

Micah did so, and we find in Jeremiah 26:17–19 that this message he gave in chapter 3 caused King Hezekiah to repent.

Isaiah was another prophet that didn’t hesitate to tell the truth. And between Micah, Isaiah, and the other prophets, they were able to make a difference.

How about you? Are you afraid to rock the boat? Are you so afraid of how others will react, that you fail to give people the whole counsel of God?

The whole counsel of God is this: that there is forgiveness of sins through Jesus Christ. But for those who reject that gift, there remains only judgment.

Let us not fear to rock the boat in the name of Jesus.

On the other hand, let us not just rock the boat just for the sake of upsetting people. But let us rock the boat in the love of Jesus, that people might repent and be saved.

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Isaiah

Struck to be blessed and to be a blessing

Isaiah

I grew up to a lot of spankings when I was a kid. Well, maybe not a lot, but a lot more than I want to remember.

It was never very pleasant, but as I look back on it now, I’m thankful for the discipline that my dad brought into my life. It’s definitely made me a better person.

God does the same thing with us. He often brings discipline in our lives, not because he’s an angry God, but because he really wants to bring blessing into our lives.

For the first half of this chapter, we see God raining down judgment on Egypt, just as he did in Moses’ time. But in the middle of the prophesy, the tone suddenly turns.

In that day, five cities in Egypt will…swear allegiance to the Lord Almighty…

When they cry out to the Lord because of their oppressors, he will send them a savior and defender and he will rescue them.

So the Lord will make himself known to the Egyptians, and in that day, they will acknowledge the Lord…

The Lord will strike Egypt with a plague; he will strike them and heal them. They will return to the Lord, and he will respond to their pleas and heal them. (Isaiah 19:18, 20–22)

After that, God talks about how he would work in the lives of their oppressors, the Assyrians. And he says of them and Egypt,

The Egyptians and Assyrians will worship together. In that day, Israel will be the third, along with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing on the earth.

The Lord Almighty will bless them, saying, “Blessed be Egypt my people, Assyria my handiwork, and Israel my inheritance.” (23–24)

It’s really amazing to me when I think about it. Usually these kinds of words are said only of Israel. But here, God shows that he embraces all who turn to him.

Yes, God will strike us when we sin. But his desire is that we would turn to him that he might heal us.

Not only that, he wants to bless us. And he wants us to be a blessing on this earth to everyone that we touch.

Is God bringing discipline into your life right now? Are things tough as a consequence of some sin in your life? Then turn to God and repent.

It’s not his desire to strike us; it’s his desire that we repent.

It’s not his desire to curse us; it’s his desire to bless us.

It’s not his desire that we be a curse to the people around us, but that we would be a blessing.

So as the writer of Hebrews said,

Do not make light of the Lord’s discipline, and do not lose heart when he rebukes you, because the Lord disciplines those he loves, and he punishes everyone he accepts as a son. (Hebrews 12:5–6)

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Isaiah

Something worse

Isaiah

We get a peek at the timeline in this passage, and find that Ahaz has just died as Isaiah writes this. But it’s probably not of Ahaz’s death that Isaiah writes about in verse 29.

The Philistines were probably rejoicing at the death of the Assyrian king who had caused much suffering among them.

But Isaiah warned them that although this particular king would no longer cause them grief, their troubles were not at an end. Rather it would only get worse.

His son would take over from where his father had left off, and in addition, famine would hit the land. As a result, the Philistines would be wiped out from the earth, and there was no hope for them.

On the other hand, the people whom the Philistines had caused much harm to over the years, the Israelites, would find refuge and safety in Zion once more (Isaiah 14:30, 32).

What can we learn from this? God often brings discipline in our lives in order that we might repent.

One of the reasons he sent the Assyrians against the Philistines (and the Israelites, for that matter) was that in their suffering, they might turn from their sins and turn to God. But when the Philistines refused to repent, they were utterly destroyed.

The only reason why God spared the Israelites was because of his own promises to Abraham and their forefathers, that their descendants would continue on forever, and that the Messiah would come from their line.

But anyway, the warning Isaiah gave the Philistines of greater judgment is similar to a warning Jesus gave a man he had healed.

The man had been lame for 38 years, but Jesus healed him. When Jesus met him later, he told the man, “See, you are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.” (John 5:14)

In other words, “You thought your prior affliction was bad? Don’t just rejoice that you’ve been healed. You have a much deeper problem. Your sin. And unless you repent, something worse will happen to you.

“Your lameness was a temporary affliction. Hell, on the other hand, is forever.”

What do we do with the warnings of God? Do we ignore them? Or do we heed them?

May you heed the warnings of God that you might find life, and escape the eternal punishment that is to come to those who refuse to repent.