Repentance that renews precious fellowship with our incomparably wonderful God ultimately furthers our joy. Just as we cannot enter into true repentance without sorrow for our guilt, we cannot emerge from true repentance without joy for our release from shame. - Bryan Chapell
I have been enjoying for some days now a careful study of the book of Nehemiah. As a matter of course, I will begin preaching this Sunday a brief series from the book. In its context, it is glorious narrative of God's redemptive and restorative desires for all of us. When we look at the book in its historical context we see a cast of luminaries of Biblical history involved in the climax that is described in this great book of history. Names like Jeremiah and Ezekiel - who prophesied the captivity of Israel beginning with the invasion of Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, even though many of the "happy prophets" of the day branded them as gloomy Gusses and doomsday crackpots.
Daniel and his friends Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, Ezekiel, and Esther were all carted off to far away lands and became part of the storyline that would be the eventual restoration of the nation. Included in this remarkable historical timeline would also be names like Ezra, Zechariah, and Zerubbabel, among others.
I am not a little bit bothered that the issue of repentance from sin seems to be rather hastily minimized in this hyper-grace generation. Repentance is the pathway to the joy of the Lord in Nehemiah's day. As the people of God heard the reading of the Law of Moses, their hearts were overcome with grief because of the tremendous cost of sin upon the nation. Their hearts were grieved by sin, their own sin as well as the sin of their fathers and that grief spurred them to action, to a change. They began to return to the principles of the Law which had been laid down to Moses and as they did, and only then did the cry go out in chapter 8 that they should no longer grieve, but now celebrate because the joy of the Lord belonged to them.
We are told today that repentance is simply and only a change in the way one thinks. In other words, there is nothing wrong with our behaviors, the problem is in the way we think. I would suggest, and ask you to consider if repentance, true Godly repentance is only a matter of changing the way one thinks about things, or does true repentance result in a change in my actions as well? This is not law. This is not legalism - this is common sense.
We certainly have changed the way we think. As a result, the home is in ruin, divorce is "normal" in the body of Christ, our children are leaving the church by the multiplied thousands, fathers are no longer the spiritual leader in the home, acceptance of "alternative life style" is openly accepted if not promoted and so-called christian leaders are living abhorrent and licentious life-styles as they fleece the flock, robbing widows and weak minded men of valuable resources to support their own opulence - and one dare not expose or censure one of these lest they be accused of division and hatefulness. All in the name of the Grace of God. This is not the Grace of God - this is the putrid flesh of the Old Man of Sin justifying its rebellion and self-absorption under the guise of enlightened spiritual living.
God calls us to come out and be separate and then gives us the grace to do so. He commands that we strive toward His holiness (though because of our flesh we can never fully attain it in this life), and then gives us the grace to so strive - and the twin gifts of confession and repentance to sustain us and restore us when we fall short of that holiness.
When one teaches (as I was recently instructed) that we no longer must repent of sin, but simply "change our thinking" about sin, and God, and grace - we rob men of the shortest and most blessed route back to true fellowship with God. The honest confession (agreement with God) of my sin, and genuine repentance of that failure of the flesh, turning away from my sin an toward God leads to "joy unspeakable and full of glory." The prodigal came home, practicing his words all the way, "Father I have sinned against you an against Heaven." He didn't just change his mind - he changed his address, he changed his direction, he changed his posture before his father and was forgiven and received with great joy.
I once talked with a man who had abandoned his wife and children to run off with a younger woman. I had appealed to him on numerous occasions that he needed to come back hom, ask his wife's forgiveness, and be restored to his family and to God. He refused to hear me over and over again. Some time later he called me on the phone, remorseful for his sin and sorrowful about his situation. He said he had repented of his sin. I said to him, "You have not repented." I went on to ask him where he was and who was with him. He named the name of the young lady with whom he had been living. She was sitting across the room in their apartment. I suggested to him that when he had truly repented he would put her in the car and take her home to her parents and he would return to his family and seek to be restored to them. This action alone would constitute true repentance.
Many are praying for revival in our land. If we do not remember from whence we are fallen and repent from our sin we will see no revival. Revival will not come upon us in a wave of laugher but in a flood of tears. Revival will not come to us spiritual drunkenness or shaking or falling down on the ground in a trance. These things are not revival and they will not bring revival. If anything, such illusions of grand spirituality in the midst the reality of spiritual famine will lull us to sleep even further, to live in the fantasy that all of our meetings, and shoutings, and growling, gold dust and prophetic frenzy indicates the presence of God, while are homes are in disorder, our marriages are on the garbage heap, our children are drifting farther and farther away and the world is becoming less and less interested in our message. It may in fact indicate the exact opposite. It may be that the presence of God has departed and we are left with the frenetic energy of the flesh trying to recreate the power that has long since departed.
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