Sermon Tone Analysis

BY PASTOR GLENN PEASE

A mother calling to her son shouted, "Johnny, tell your sister to get in the house out of the rain."

"I can't mom," came the reply.

"And just why can't you?" demanded his mother.

"Because we are playing Noah's Ark mom, and she's one of the sinners."

We like to make the distinction between the sinners on the outside of the ark and the saints on the inside, and it is a legitimate distinction.

But in so doing, we tend to cover up the reality that the saints inside are still sinners.

Sinners saved by grace, but nevertheless sinners.

Noah didn't take much time before he demonstrated that after the Ark landed.

Failure to be aware of this reality led the Pharisees of Christ's day, and self-righteous saints all through history, to feel that the message of repentance does not apply to them.

Repentance is only relevant to those sinners outside the ark.

It is a message you can preach at the mission, but it has no place in the sanctuary of the saints.

Billy Graham said, "I have been shocked to find that the theme proclaimed so emphatically by the prophets and apostles is scarcely mentioned by contemporary preachers."

I must confess that it is not a topic I would be preaching on this morning if I was not going through the book of Mark systematically.

One of the major values of expounding scripture systematically is that it makes you look at subjects that you would otherwise ignore, and in so doing you make many new discoveries.

I have always thought of repentance as a rather negative subject, and not one that Christians would have any reason to get excited about.

That is due to the fact that I have never heard the subject truly expounded, and I suspect that is true for most of us.

We are all victims of our culture where the only time we ever hear the word repent is in a context of scolding lost sinners.

We have such a limited and distorted view of the word and its meaning that we have lost its Biblical content, and in so doing have lost a basic element in the good news of the Gospel.

My task will be to try to restore to this word its Biblical content so that we can appreciate it as a positive experience for sinners inside the ark.

In other words, see that repentance is not just for the lost anymore.

The lost only have to repent once to end their lostness, but the saved have to repent innumerable times.

Repentance rightly understood is more relevant for the Christian than for the non-Christian.

To achieve our goal of understanding we will look at three aspects of repentance: The message of repentance, the motive of repentance, and the meaning of repentance.

Let's begin first with-

I. THE MESSAGE OF REPENTANCE.

Mark tells us that the very first message that Jesus preached was that the kingdom of God was near and, therefore, people are to repent and believe the good news.

This was the same message that John the Baptist had been preaching.

But John was now in prison.

His voice was silenced, and so Jesus steps into the gap and goes on preaching the same message of repentance.

So we see that the New Testament begins with this primary message-repent.

As we move into the ministry of Jesus, we come to a point where He sends out His 12 chosen disciples to preach, and Mark 6:12 tells us that their message was to be that people should repent.

Then we go to the very end of His ministry, and we listen to the last message Jesus gave His disciples before ascending to heaven.

In Luke 24:46-47 we read, "He told them, this is what is written: The Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in His name to all nations...."

We see clearly that repentance is not merely an introductory message that Jesus used to get started.

It was the message He had all through His ministry, and the message He gave to His church to take into all the world.

Repentance is not a side road, but rather, it is the main highway, and the very essence of the Gospel.

When we get into the book of Acts we see that, sure enough, this was the message the Apostles took to both the Jews and the Gentiles.

New Testament preaching was repentance preaching.

Peter in his most successful sermon ever at Pentecost concluded in Acts 2:38, "Repent and be baptized, everyone of you, in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven."

Repentance and forgiveness of sins go hand in hand.

Without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sins, but it is also the case that without repentance there is no forgiveness of sins.

No one can be either saved or sanctified without repentance.

There can never be any positive movement of the sinner in the right direction that does not start with repentance.

The first step toward God that a sinner makes is the step of repentance.

Three other places in Acts reveal Peter preaching repentance, and when Paul takes over as the dominant preacher of the book of Acts, the message does not change.

To the Greeks in Athens he said in Acts 17:30, "In the past God over looked such ignorance, but now He commands all people everywhere to repent."

In Acts 20:21 Paul said, "I have declared to both Jews and Greeks that they must turn to God in repentance and have faith in our Lord Jesus."

There is more of Paul's preaching repentance as well, but to top it all off, the final proof that repentance is a key message of the New Testament is the preaching of the resurrected and ascended Christ.

We have His message to the seven churches in Rev. 2 and 3, and would you believe it, the key theme in his message to his own people is repentance?

To the church of Ephesus he laments that they have forsaken their first love and in Rev. 2:5 he commands, "Remember the height from which you have fallen!

Repent and do the things you did at first.

If you do not repent, I will come and remove your lamp stand from its place."

In four other churches he also calls for repentance.

The last is the church of Laodicea.

Rev. 3:20 is a verse we are all familiar with-"Behold I stand at the door and knock.

If anyone hears my voice and opens the door I will come in and eat with him and he with me."

But I wonder how many have ever memorized the verse before this?

Verse 19 says, "Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline.

So be earnest, and repent."

The evidence is overwhelming and conclusive.

Repentance is a key message of the New Testament from start to finish.

It is the message most needed by lost sinners and by loving saints.

The idea that once you become a Christian you no longer need to repent is impossible to defend from Scripture.

The message of repentance is the most relevant message there is for everyone on earth.

So here we are again at a peak of importance.

Marks Gospel is fast and brief, but it is a Gospel of such quality that every paragraph deals with a subject of supreme importance.

You have John the Baptist, the greatest of men.

You have the baptism of Jesus the greatest event, for there Jesus became God's anointed.

You have the temptation of Jesus, the greatest of battles, for there Jesus won the right to set Satan's captives free.

Now we have the first message Jesus preached, and again, it is the greatest, for it is the very essence of all that will ever be preached in His name.

Having concluded this, we need to move on and look secondly at-

II.

THE MEANING OF REPENTANCE.

The Greek word simply means to change your mind.

If we can grasp this basic meaning it can help us restore the value of this word and the experience of it to our lives.

This experience has become a neglected subject in modern preaching, and not just by liberals but by the evangelicals as well.

The reason for this is the narrow meaning given to the word.

It brings images to our minds of some fanatic with a sign saying repent for the end is near.

Or it makes us think of people going through agonizing emotional upheaval.

We do not like this kind of emotional crisis in our culture.

So because of a very limited concept of repentance, we have pushed it into a closet and have buried this subject out of sight.

It is not that this narrow view is not part of the truth, for it is.

Repentance can be an overwhelming emotional experience.

The problem is, that is only a part of the truth, and we have made it the whole.

Most of the repenting we need to do as Christians does not demand a great deal of emotion.

It is foolish if we think that the main goal of the New Testament preaching was to provoke emotions in people.

It is not, for the goal was always change.

Change is the key idea.

That is what Jesus is after.

If I have a neighbor who peals out of his gravel driveway everyday and sends rocks flying into my yard, and I tell him the problem he is creating for me, I do not really care if he feels deep regret, or just shallow feelings of being sorry.

All I really care about is that he will change his behavior and stop this offensive conduct.

If it takes deep emotion to get him to change, then deep emotion is something I have to work at.

But the goal is not his guilt feelings or the depths of his regret.

The goal is change of mind that leads to change of conduct.

That is what repentance is.

Repentance is not so much something you feel, but something you do.

You often do it because of what you feel, but it is not true repentance until the doing is done.

Deep feelings of remorse over ones sin is not in itself true repentance.

The world is filled with people who feel absolutely rotten about things they have done, and the consequences drive them to tears.