Who exactly is supposed to repent? A sermon from Matthew 3:1-12

Sometimes distant friends and family who know I’m preaching on a particular subject ask me to post the sermon on my blog. Here is a recent one on becoming acquainted with Jesus anew.

Introduction

Here is a brief history lesson helpful in setting perspective on the subject of repentance.

The American church isn’t a fixed entity, but a dynamic one. Some things might be emphasized for a while, and then another, then it might shift back again. This is particularly true with sermons about repentance. Over the centuries, the American church shifted from emphasizing Judgment to sermons emphasizing Grace. Perhaps it is shifting back yet again.

Consider the First Great Awakening–largely experienced in New England and among the Reformed and Congregationalists in the 1740′s. Many reported palpable experiences of fearing the fires of hell and repented of their waywardness. The First Great Awakening indelibly imprinted the need for personal salvation as a distinctive mark of North American Christianity.

One of the pre-eminent preachers of that day was Jonathan Edwards. His sermon Sinners in the hands of an angry God is so well known and had such an impact that it remains an example of early American literature studied in both English and History classes. Here is a brief excerpt:

“Every unconverted man properly belongs to hell; that is his place; from thence he is. “Ye are from beneath” (John 8:23). And thither he is bound; it is the place that justice, and God’s word, and the sentence of his unchangeable law assign to him.”

Jonathan Edwards preached that salvation is to escape hell. God provides this escape for us in spite of how evil we are.  According to Rev. Edwards, the Christian barely gets out.

You can find a similar tone in the 90th Psalm.

“For all our days pass away under your wrath; our years come to an end like a sigh. The days of our life are seventy years, or perhaps eighty, if we are strong; even then their span is only toil and trouble; they are soon gone, and we fly away.”

Now consider how we preach on repentance in our modern era. Since the 1740’s, we moved from barely escaping hell to barely being able to escape the love of God. This is particularly true in two almost conflicting streams of Christianity–mainline churches, who for some the word sin has fallen into disfavor, and among the health and wealth congregations focused on getting all the good things God wants to give his children. In both cases, talking about sin or the need to repent is not useful.

Norman Vincent Peale and his emphasis on the “power of positive thinking” was a key influence on this direction. Preachers like Joel Osteen, in particular, stand in this tradition of claiming God’s promises and experiencing God’s favor as a central practice of the Christian life—almost a modern spiritual discipline. Toward the end of his long life, Norman Vincent Peale was asked by many to re-establish his credibility as a preacher of the gospel, and not just as a “think positive” and “get motivated” public speaker. He agreed and wrote a book called The Positive Power of Jesus Christ (1980).

Here is an excerpt from a .pdf file I have of the manuscript:

“I witness to anyone, anywhere and at any time about the spiritual, mental and physical renewal available to any individual through faith in the life changing and positive power of Jesus Christ.”

Can you hear the contrast? Where Jonathan Edwards’ morbid theology has us barely escaping hell, such language has almost entirely disappeared from the language of Rev. Peale. He has us barely being unable to avoid the love of God.

Looking to the Scripture

It isn’t my intention to criticize either of these emphases. Both have an ample supply of Scriptures to back up what they emphasize. And even though the American church has shifted on the whole to emphasize the love of God over the judgment of God, both streams have many followers today. I suspect some of each could be found in many congregations–some wanting the preacher to emphasize sin, and others wanting her or him to emphasize forgiveness.

I offer this little replay of history to invite us to start with Scripture rather than our preference or upbringing, setting aside our preconceived ideas and trying to be proven right. It is important to do this because with this sermon we begin a series on Getting Reacquainted with Jesus, drawing largely from Matthew’s gospel. As we do, the first subject we encounter is this theme of Repentance. We need to consider the subject with open eyes and ears rather than expecting to simply have confirmed what we believe we know already.

Observations from the text (Matthew 3:1-12):

1. Matthew wants us to know that John the Baptist’s ministry was predicted by the prophet Isaiah, even to the point of what John’s preaching would contain. We can also note that John’s ministry begins at a time when people were especially ready to hear and respond to it. The Messiah was being watched for.

2. John’s preaching, and later the preaching of Jesus (see Matthew 4), called people to repent. The key difference between them is that when John the Baptist said the kingdom of heaven has come near he referred to the ministry of Jesus about to get underway. When Jesus said the same thing he referred to his own ministry.

In both cases, the call to repentance means turn around and stop doing what you do that alienates you from God.  Why? Because God is near and making it possible to be in relationship with God all over again. I hope you see this important, two-sided expectation in the simple sermon John and Jesus preached: Repentance implies that sin exists and that we commit it. Their sermons inform us that God forgives sin and we should receive this incredible offer from God. In other words, it isn’t a matter of barely escaping hell OR barely being able to escape the marvelous grace of God. Both are true and both are expressed together rather than one over the other.

3. A good number of the people being preached to were religious, pious even. First John, and later Jesus, reserved their harshest words for them, and it seems because they were the most resistant to repentance. It seems once you’ve begun to be virtuous and to take on a committed religious lifestyle, it becomes easy to notice the problems among those who do not instead of your own besetting or new issues. The result can be a hardened heart lying underneath a religious veneer.

Insights for our use

So, if we wish to be reacquainted with Jesus, we must become familiar with the message that introduced his ministry, which happened to also be the same message he offered as he began his ministry—a message of repentance. You can’t claim to be acquainted with Jesus and what he offered, but choose to remain ignorant of or willfully refuse to engage the subject.

To be familiar with this message, we need to know the answer to the question who exactly is supposed to repent?

Answer: Everyone.

It is so easy to point to people committing sins other than our own and demand that they repent. It is so easy to look at others with whom we are in conflict and demand that they repent first.

Let’s look to the Scriptures for some further insight (Romans 3:21-26).

All too often only verse 23 is pointed out as a means to remind us that we are sinners. This is often coupled with Romans 6:23 to show us that the wages of these sins are eternal death–a means to show we barely escape hell.  But this was not Paul’s message, just as it was not John the Baptist’s or Christ’s. Rather, Paul emphasizes both the penalty of sin and the grace of God equally as John and Jesus did.  When the verses around Romans 3:23 are shared together you learn the apostle Paul taught that all of us sin, and that this problem is overcome in what Jesus brings.

To be acquainted with Jesus then, is to hear him tell you that you sin and that God forgives your sin. Jesus invites you to repent of it and receive all the fruits of this forgiveness.

It also means that if we are a church acquainted with Jesus Christ that this is the message we preach–not half of it alone, not emphasizing one part over the other, and not placing a priority of pointing out the sins of others because we are too busy admitting and repenting of our own.

This brings up a second question:

To be familiar with this message of repentance preached by Jesus and John we need to know the answer to the question, from what exactly are we supposed to repent?

Answer: Everything.

It is so easy to try to create degrees of sin. We place the sins we are NOT committing as the worst ones on the list and consider the ones of which we are guilty as the minor infractions. We bring others’ sins before God and point out how horrible they are while overlooking, justifying or otherwise explaining away our own. Again, let’s look to the Scriptures for further insight, again turning to Paul’s letter to the Romans (1:16-32).

I have found this particular passage to be of immense help in dealing with issues facing the church in what I can hardly believe has been twenty-seven years of ministry.  It hasn’t mattered whether it was divorce/remarriage, couples living together, or today’s seeming hot button issues of gay lifestyles, or what I consider to be the much deeper issue of widely available pornography, Paul’s perspective holds true even now.

In Romans 1 the balance of the gospel is again present, although Paul works in reverse order beginning with God’s forgiveness. After stating his joy in God’s great love, Paul tells us what it is that God forgives. And what Paul offers is a declension of sins, a stair-stepping downward into depravity, if you will.  It goes like this:

• Giving up God for our own glory and faux wisdom.
  • Engaging in non-normal sexual practices, primarily as a means to fill the void left by not acknowledging God. That is, what God is not allowed to fill we try to fill with other things, primarily through human encounters.
    • Harsher and ever more creative uses of evil, to the point of deliberately mistreating others–something beyond just using others for our own ends as before.
      • And at its worst: recruiting and training others in the practices of evil.

I draw two insights from this.

First, every possible sin flows from rejecting God. You cannot read this passage of Scripture and escape its reach. What you have done are doing and will do can be found here.

Second, what we often label as the “worst sins,” the apostle Paul identifies as the “first sins.” Sinful lifestyles often begin in the sexual realm and just get more decadent from there.

Out of fear I am covering too much material in a short amount of time, let me also quickly mention without showing you other passages that for the true follower of God, repenting of everything also means reprenting of what others have done–even sins committed against you. Consider Daniels’ prayers for his people. And Nehemiah’s. Remember too Jesus’ prayer for the Father to forgive his executors as he hung from the cross, and Stephen’s echo of this same prayer as he was stoned.

Bringing it home.

So, becoming reacquainted with Jesus means Repentance.

Your repentance.

Your ONGOING repentance.

Your expectation that you will never be far from admitting your sin and seeking a better way as you celebrate yet again that God forgives you . . .and those who sin against you.

It means openly discussing sin, and a readiness to admit your own, not as a sick means of taking glory in it, but as a means to move beyond it.

It also means offering this grace you received rather than withholding it–joining Jesus in his ministry of preaching the gospel.

It is right and proper, then, to ask you from what it is you must specifically repent, with a renewed awareness that everyone here needs to.

Come.

Receive the forgiveness of God.

-mark l vincent