The Call to Repentance: Turning Back to God

True repentance goes far beyond merely feeling guilty or apologizing - it represents a complete transformation of heart and mind. Originating from the Greek word 'metanoia,' it describes a military-style about-face turn, symbolizing a total change in life direction. This transformation involves turning away from sin while moving toward God, resulting in freedom from guilt, renewed purpose, and restored relationship with God. When we genuinely repent, God responds with immediate forgiveness, celebrating our return and transforming our brokenness into beauty.

Transcript

So over the last few weeks, we have talked a lot about ways that the church and ways that Christians have gotten and continue to get faith wrong. And so as we're moving into the Lenten season, I hope that we recognize that God desires us as followers of Jesus to actually follow the Jesus that we say we believe in, to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God. As much Micah 6, 8 reminds us. And now that we're fully into the Lenten season, I think that it's appropriate that we as a church and we as individuals spend some time learning about and kind of focusing on how we can be better at doing the things that Jesus asks us to do, how we can learn to follow Jesus closer and become better witnesses of Christ for the world. So throughout the remainder of Lent, we're going to be looking at some traditional Lenten themes.

So we're going to talk about fasting and, and prayer and sacrifice. And this morning, we're going to be talking a little bit more in depth about repentance. So many of you were here for our Ash Wednesday service, and that's when Lent began. Ash Wednesday is exactly 46 days before Easter. There's 40 regular weekdays, and there were six Sundays.

The season of Lent is a time of preparation for Easter and a reminder that God requires us to repent of our sin and. And the same sin that condemned Jesus to the cross. I want to just take a second and be very clear here. Repentance isn't about just guilt. Repentance is about grace.

Turning back to God is the first step towards spiritual renewal. So repentance is actually the act of intentionally turning away from the way you've been acting, the way you've been living your lives, and turning back to God. So you may not know this, but the word repent comes from the Greek word in the New Testament. It simply means to turn around. And the word in Greek was basically a word used by soldiers.

It's a military term describing a soldier, basically making an about face, turning a 180 right. That's kind of the history of the word repentance. At times, it's been translated from the original Greek, which is the word. It's metanoia is the word which means to change your mind. So it can either be to turn around or to change your mind.

So fundamentally, it means to change your mind completely about something that's to do with the way you think. You've been thinking one way, now you turn. You think the opposite of that original way. It's kind of this changing of your mind. Right?

So if you look up the word repent in your dictionary today, you're not going to find out about the history of the Greek. But today I've looked up the definition in two different dictionaries because I think that the more options we have, I think the better. So the Cambridge dictionary says to repent is to be very, very sorry for something bad that you've done in the past and wish that you hadn't done. I think that's kind of a super over simplification there, like, sorry, I've done bad things. The Webster's Dictionary says repentance means to turn from sin and to dedicate oneself to the amendment of one's life.

So it's not just recognizing you've done something wrong and wishing that you've done something better. It involves action. Right? You have to not only think differently, you have to respond to that and you have to turn yourself around. There's a beautiful article on Christianity.com and the author goes a little bit further when he's talking about repentance.

He says, this repentance is a change in how I think that leads to a change in how I live. When you really change your mind about something, it will change how you think about it, how you talk about it, how you feel about it, and how you act about it. I'm suggesting that true repentance is more than just a mental game. Repentance is a decisive change in direction. It's a change of mind that leads to a change of thinking, that leads to a change of attitude, that leads to a change of feeling, that leads to a change of values, that leads to a change in how you live.

That, I think, is a better definition. Repentance is something that we are constantly, as believers in Jesus, we are called to repent. We're reminded of this repeatedly throughout Scripture. There's this entire section of the Old Testament called the Book of the Prophets. Right, the books of the prophets.

It's a section that is all prophetical books. It's Amos and Ezekiel and Daniel and all the prophetic words. And I think oftentimes we skip those books because we don't feel like they really resonate with us anymore. We're not worried about the Babylonian empire coming into take over. We're not really worried about the plague of locusts coming to destroy all that we have.

Life is a little different. And so I think oftentimes we discredit what their words are for God's people. And I think when we forget about the prophets. We're forgetting about something very important. We may not be facing imminent destruction because an invading army or a horde of locusts or a famine.

But I believe that when God speaks through the prophets, we still should be listening. God's words are not bound by time or by situations. So when God speaks to the prophets, we should still consider God's Word with an open heart. Today, as a matter of fact, God speaks to the prophet Joel during a time of trouble in Israel. So, speaking of locusts, there was a horde of locusts that flew into Israel and just ate everything up.

And the people thought they were all going to die because it wasn't like today. You could just go to the grocery store. Well, they've eaten all my wheat, so I'm just going to go pick up some bread at the grocery store. That's not how it worked. Their lives were dependent on what they grew.

And now all of Israel is facing destruction because of this hoard of locusts. And God speaks to the prophet Joel, and you can follow along. In Joel, chapter 2, verses 12 through 15, it says this even now, declares the Lord, Return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping and with mourning. Rend your heart and not your garments. Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love.

And he relents from sending calamity. Who knows he may turn and relent and leave behind a blessing, grain offerings and drink offerings for the Lord your God, Blow the trumpet in Zion, declare a holy fast, call a sacred assembly.

God's people had messed up, and so he's calling them to get back on track when they've messed up. And I believe that throughout scripture, God isn't just calling those people, but through the echo of time, God is calling us to continue to repent as well, to get back on God's right track for our lives. For some of us, we might need to be rerouted. Our lives might begin to look a little bit like this. Starting route to home.

Rerouting. At the next stop sign, turn right. Rerouting. Make a U turn, then take the first right onto West New Orleans Street. Rerouting.

Make a U turn. Rerouting. Make a U turn. Rerouting. Turn left, then take the first left onto South Hemlock Avenue.

Rerouting. I think you get it right. If you've ever follow your GPS somewhere that you've never been, oftentimes we get that Rerouting or recalculating right when we take a wrong turn I believe that God is always trying to work on helping us recalculate, a way to get us back on the right track. And all we have to do is follow the instructions.

But I want to remind you, when we talk about repentance, it's not just about. It's not just about behavior. It's not a fix for the way we act. Repentance is a heart reset. God isn't looking for perfect performances in our lives.

He's not looking for us to pretend like we've got it all together, to pretend like we don't commit sin. He's looking for honest hearts in his people. And oftentimes I think if we think we can just fix our behavior, if I just act better when I'm out in public, that that's enough to be considered repentance. But God is calling us to be changed from the inside out. King David recognizes this in one of the Psalms that he wrote to God when he felt that God was far away.

In the book of the Psalms, chapter 51, verses 1 through 10, David writes this. Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love, according to your great compassion. Blot out my transgressions. Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgressions and my sin is always before me.

Against you you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight. So you are right in your verdict and justified when you judge. Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time that my mother conceived me. Yet you desired faithfulness even in the womb. You taught me wisdom in that secret place.

Cleanse me with hyssop and I will be clean. Wash me and I will be whiter than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness. Let the bones you have crushed rejoice, Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquity. Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.

Do not cast me from your presence or take your holy spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit to sustain me. These are words that I feel like I'm not eloquent when I say things like this, but I've said things like this in my life where I feel like I have lost my way and I'm far away from God. David was speaking for me too, in those moments. Right, David?

Psalm. Here is a great reminder that God moved and is moved by sincerity, not just outward acts. It's not just the sacrifices that impress God. It's a heart change that leads to new life that God desires for all of us. Has your smartphone ever, like, gone haywire?

I sometimes am, like, in the middle of something, and all of a sudden it just stops typing. And then I'm shaking my phone, I'm knocking on my phone, I'm tapping my phone, and it doesn't do anything until three minutes later, all of a sudden, like, all the words that I've typed just show up randomly. Right? And in those moments when your phone gets so janky and so messed up, the only option, what do you do, Kim? Turn it off and you turn it right back on.

Right. I don't know what sorcery it is that fixes those things, but turning your phone off and turning it right back on sometimes fixes it. You can't close the apps, you can't stop typing. Or yes, phone Sabbath. I like that.

Friends, the same thing is true for us sometimes. We get so far removed from God's plan for us, from God's desires for our lives, that we need to reboot our spiritual life so that we can get our lives back on track.

Repentance is something that happens from the inside. We talked about it over the last few weeks that the Pharisees, especially In Matthew chapter 23, when we're talking about the seven woes that Jesus spoke to the Pharisees because they were the religious leaders who were just beautiful and fancy and they did all the right things on the outside when they were in public, but their hearts were far away from God. Jesus calls them out. Specifically, they focused on their own righteousness, but missed the fact that their actions didn't support what they believed about themselves. We have to be careful that we don't end up looking like the Pharisees, that we don't think that we're better than we really are.

When our hearts are right, when our insides align with God, the rest of our lives will too. So repentance is clearly more than just saying sorry. It's about a change in your direction in life. Right? So real repentance is less about what we confess and more about what we change.

In Luke chapter 15, verses 1 through 31, it says this. Well, you know, we're not going to read the whole thing because this is a story of the prodigal son. It's a story that we've all heard. But I want to read this to you. It comes in verse 17, when the prodigal son had come to his senses.

He said, how many of my father's hired servants have food to spare? And here I am, starving to death. I will set out and I will go back to my father and say to him, father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. No.

Make me like one of your hired servants. So he got up and he went to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and he was filled with compassion for him. And he ran to his son. He threw open his arms and he kissed him.

The prodigal son isn't saved by recognizing that he's a sinner. He could have stayed in that land. He could have been eating the slop that the pigs were eating, right because he longed to just have that kind of food. He was starving to death. He had lost his way.

He was far from anything he'd ever known. It wasn't just recognizing that he was sinful that changed the prodigal son's story. It was turning around and going back home to dad.

Dad, I'm coming home. I'm moving back in. Get ready.

It wasn't recognizing the error that was the problem. It didn't solve the situation. His repentance and turning back to his father, who loved him is what changes the outcome of that story. For the prodigal son, just like for us, repentance is a required action. Turning from where we are and going back a different direction is essential.

Have you ever been lost?

I see way too few women shaking their heads. Come on, ladies. Kidding, kidding.

It's funny because it's sexist. No, just kidding. So, listen, I think there's this terrible idea that men don't stop and ask for directions. We don't have to because we already know where we're going. Right.

Thank you. All right, I got to read this story to you. I'm digging a hole. All right. Daniel had always loved hiking.

The mountains, actually, for Daniel, were his escape. It was a place where he could go and clear his mind. He would go out into the mountains and find peace. One autumn afternoon, he set out on a trail that he had never explored before. The golden leaves crunched beneath his boots as he climbed higher, enjoying the crisp air and the quiet solitude of the mountains.

Confident in his sense of direction, Daniel decided to take a left marked path, thinking it would be, you know, a nice little jaunt to get him back to the main trail. The familiar landmarks he had noted earlier, strangely, were nowhere in sight. Every path ahead seemed to lead deeper into the wilderness. And of course, his phone had no signal. So eventually, panic started to creep in.

He walked faster, hoping that if he just kept going forward, he would eventually find his right way. But the more he pressed on, the more he became lost. The trees became denser, the air colder, and reality finally set in. He was definitely walking in the wrong direction. Then he remembered some advice that he got from park ranger.

One time the park ranger told him, if you ever get lost, don't keep walking. Stop, think and turn around. Daniel took a deep breath. Instead of pushing forward blindly, he retraced his steps. It felt kind of counterintuitive, right?

Oftentimes when we turn around and go back from the direction we came, it feels counterproductive, like we're going backwards. The same was true for Daniel. He thought he wasn't making any progress, but after a while, he felt like he saw some familiar things. A fallen tree he had passed hours earlier.

Eventually, hope surged within him. He kept going, step by step, following the path that he had once ignored. As darkness began to settle in, he finally stumbled back onto the main trail. Relief washed over him. His panic subsided.

But he remembered if he would have continued in the direction he thought that he was right in, he would have gone further and further astray. Further from safety. Lost. The only way out of his lostness was to turn back. So, like Daniel, we often think that moving forward, pushing ahead, is the right way.

We think it'll get us to where we need to go. But when we're spiritually lost, the only way to be found again is to turn around, turn right back to God. True repentance isn't about stubbornly pressing forward in the wrong direction. It's about realizing we need to turn to the path that he set before us. Isaiah chapter 30:21 says, Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you saying, this is is the way.

Walk in it. Daniel's story is a reminder that turning around isn't necessarily failure. It's not backtracking. It's the first step to being found.

Repentance isn't just about what we leave behind. It's about the joy of what we step into. Acts chapter 3, verse 19 says, Repent then and turn to God so that your sins may be wiped out. That times of refreshing may come from the Lord. Man, what a beautiful promise that is.

If we repent of our sins, that God will refresh us.

There's a story I want to share with you about a young man who got caught up In Hollywood, he was a talented young actor who was known for his incredible acting skills and being a pretty charming, good looking guy. However, behind the scenes, this young man struggled with drug addiction and personal demons that threatened to derail his promising career. In the late 1990s and into the early 2000s, this young actor's life spiraled out of control. He faced numerous arrests, stints in rehab, and even time in jail. His once bright future seemed pretty bleak, and many in the acting industry had written him off as kind of a lost cause.

However, with the support of his family, friends, and a newfound determination, this young actor embarked on a journey of redemption. He turned his life around. He committed to sobriety and worked tirelessly to rebuild his life and his career. And it wasn't easy, but his resilience and unwavering spirit shown through. Any guesses?

I see a lot of you guys talking. Who do you think it is? Dang it. All right, you know the rest of the story. I'm just not even going to tell it.

So. It was in 2008 that his hard work finally paid off. This struggling actor was cast as Tony Stark and one of the best and highest grossing film franchises in the history of the world. He's freaking Iron man, bro. Right?

The role was a perfect fit for Robert Downey Jr. And his portrayal of that particular character won the hearts of millions of people. His performance was a testament to his talent and the strength of his personal character. He was able to repent of the life that he had led and was able to change the direction in his future. And over the years, Robert Downey Jr.

Has continued to thrive, both personally and professionally. He's become a symbol of hope and redemption. Friends, this is a story of redemption that we should look to when we feel like our lives are getting out of control. There's always hope. Always.

I have met people who feel like sometimes they've gone too far and that there's no hope for me. I can't get past my personal record. I can't get, you know, past the broken relationships. I can't get past the loss of friendships and family members that won't even let me in their homes anymore. It is never too late.

Have you ever heard of the Japanese word kitsugi?

Kitsugi is a Japanese word known as golden repair. It's the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery by mending the areas of breakage with lacquer, dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver or platinum. Kintsugi is a general concept of highlighting or emphasizing imperfections, visualizing Mends and seams as an additive or an area to celebrate or focus on, rather than the absence or missing pieces. Right, friends? I don't know if you've ever broken a vase.

My grandma was in there. It's fine. Just kidding. That's awful.

You guys are glad you didn't go on vacation, right? Okay.

This serves a purpose when it's whole, doesn't it? You can put water in it, put flowers in it. It's pretty. It's nice.

You guys, sometimes when we don't serve the purpose we've been created for, we're just like a base that has lost its purpose, right?

You guys are so scared right now.

Roman wants to see it. Roman, this is for you, buddy. Now, if this cuts anybody, I apologize. Now, all right? No, it's fine.

I am not actually on drugs.

This is a beautiful art that when your life looks like this, Roman liked it, so it might look like there's no hope, right?

Sometimes it feels like our lives will never be put back together. And even if you use super glue, and I've tried, you're going to have gaps. You will never be the same, right? You will leak out of the good stuff that was put inside of you. This is why this kintsugi is so important.

I got to make my own little piece of kintsugi last night. This is actually broken. I actually broke this and actually repaired it.

This becomes something different, right? You can look at a broken face, which I'll clean this up before you guys come up for communion, but you can look at a broken vase and you know that it doesn't serve its purpose, right? You can look in a broken and repaired vase and you think, man, that's really nice. But with Kintsugi, the golden way, right? The flaws become stories.

The pieces that were broken become the highlight. It becomes a testimony about this peace, right?

The same is true for us.

Our lives can be shattered and broken messed up. We can feel like we've done everything absolutely wrong. But there is an opportunity for us to be healed. And not just healed in a way that fixes the brokenness. Healed in a way where our brokenness becomes the most beautiful piece of who we are.

God wants this to be our lives. None of us are going to enter heaven perfectly fit, right? All of us are going to look a little broken, a little messed up. But when we turn back to God, God fills in those pieces rather than leaving us broken and in a state of disrepair. We become something much more beautiful.

When we allow God to act in our brokenness. Than we would on our own. Look at that.

Friends, we don't have to be ashamed of our brokenness anymore.

Our brokenness becomes for us a highlight of what God can do and is doing to make us new. A broken vessel glued back together in this kintsugi process may bear scars, but once it's fully repaired, it is way more beautiful, in my opinion, than it was when it was first created.

And I want to be clear. God's forgiveness for us is immediate and complete. He doesn't hold grudges in our lives when our lives look like junk, God doesn't hang on to that. When we repent of our sins, when we turn our hearts and our minds back to God, when we shift who we are and go back to the way God has prepared for us, God restores us fully. First John, chapter one, verses five through ten, says this.

This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you. God is light. In him, there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him, and yet we walk in darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth. But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another.

And the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin. If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. Hear this, okay? If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claimed we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his words are not in us.

If we confess, he's faithful and will forgive us, and he will purify us from all our unrighteousness. If you guys are anything like me, I remember every single thing that somebody has ever done to me to make me mad. Right? I remember, guys. I remember all of it.

I remember it. I'm just kidding. It's not you guys.

God doesn't hang on to grudges like we do. Praise God. Right?

It is important for us to be people of spiritual renewal. It's important for us to have a deeper intimacy with God. And we can only do that by turning away from our lives of sin. And let me be very clear. None of us are ever going to be perfect.

We are moving on towards perfection and love. Right? That's a beautiful quote from John Wesley, but, man, it's really hard to get there. God is asking us to look like love in the world. He's asking us to turn from the evil intentions that humanity has.

Our disobedience, our anger, our anger, and also our anger to turn from those things back to God. And when we do, we experience God fully.

As we are embarking on this Lenten journey over the next couple of weeks, let's not just acknowledge our brokenness. Let's embrace the renewal that repentance brings to that brokenness.

As a reminder, turning back to God brings freedom. Freedom from guilt and shame. Psalms 103:12 says, as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us. When we repent, God forgives us completely, lifting the burden of guilt. We've talked about that over the last few weeks.

We no longer have to bear the burden of our guilt anymore. We also have the freedom of the power of sin. Romans 6:22 says, but now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness and the result is eternal life. Life sin enslaves, but turning to God breaks its hold and leads us to true life. And we also get set free from fear.

Second Timothy 1:7. It reminds us, for God gave us a spirit of not fear, but of power and of love and of self control. When we turn back to God, we no longer have to be afraid of judgment. We no longer have to be afraid of failure or the unknown because we get to rest in God's love. True freedom, friends, isn't about just doing whatever we want.

Freedom isn't necessarily just free will. Freedom is about being who we were created to be without the chains of sin or guilt or fear holding us back. When we repent, when we turn back to God, it opens up that door to freedom. And as a reminder, when we leave this place today and we are all repenting and moving out of, you know, the sin in our lives, I want to remind you that God rejoices over our repentant hearts. Luke 15:1 through 7 says this.

Now the tax collectors and the sinners were all gathering around to hear Jesus. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, well, this man welcomes sinners to eat with him. Then Jesus told them this parable, suppose one of you has 100 sheep and loses one of them. Doesn't he leave the 99 in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and he goes home.

Then he calls all of his friends and neighbors together and says, rejoice with me. I have found my lost sheep. I tell you that in the same way, there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99 righteous persons who do not need to repent.

God's call to repentance, it's not about punishment. It's an invitation to be restored. So, friends, let's take some time over the next few weeks throughout Lent to be restored to God's purpose for our lives. Let's pray.