Repentance
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Revive: Repentance
March 10, 2019
Introduction
This morning, we are continuing our series, “Revive.” This series is meant to prepare our hearts for our upcoming revival. Our revival is April 7-10. Don’t pencil these dates on your calendar; write them with a permanent maker. Make it a priority to be here each service during our revival.
During this season of revival, we want God to renew us. We want righteousness restored. We want to see lost people saved. We want our revival to spread to our city and uplift our city. God can make these things happen. But revival starts inside our hearts.
Today, we are going to be looking at again.
Read Text
In , we find two ingredients for revival: Prayer and repentance. We talked about prayer last week. I want to encourage you to keep praying for revival. Pray for revival to start in your heart.
Today, we want to focus on repentance.
Illustration: Sandra Bullock won the 2010 Best Actress Academy Award for her portrayal of Leigh Ann Tuohy in The Blind Side. The sensational film chronicles a Christian family who took in a homeless young man and gave him the chance to reach his God-given potential. Michael Oher not only dodged the hopelessness of his dysfunctional inner city upbringing, but became the first-round NFL draft pick for the Baltimore Ravens in 2009. At a recent fund-raiser, Sean Tuohy noted that the transformation of his family and Michael all started with two words. When they spotted Michael walking along the road on a cold November morning (the movie depicts it as nighttime) in shorts and a T-shirt, Leigh Ann Tuohy uttered two words that changed their world. She told Sean, “Turn around.” They turned the car around, put Michael in their warm vehicle, and ultimately adopted him into their family.
Turn around — that’s what repentance is all about. It’s turning from our sins to God.
. Turn from your evil ways — repentance is about turning from the path of sin and turning toward and going down the path of God.
Repentance is all about turning our lives around. We need repentance in our church.
Let’s face it. We all mess up. It’s kind of like what Paul says. Those things I know I shouldn’t be doing; I do them anyway. The things I should be doing; I don’t know. We all mess up. We all sin. We all backslide. We all drift away from God. We all stray from the commands of God.
We need repentance is this church. Without this repentance, we will never experience revival. Revival requires repentance.
1. No Condemnation but an invitation
Repentance is not condemnation but an invitation from God. The message of repentance steps our on our toes, but it’s not meant to beat us up. The message of repentance should convict us of sin, but it doesn’t condemn us because of our sins.
Repentance is an invitation to experience something good.
Illustration: If I were to invite you to my house, would I serve you leftovers that had been in the fridge for over a week. Would I make you wash your own plate and silverware? Would I serve you cold coffee from that a morning with a stale dessert? Would we watch a documentary how glue is made instead of watching the LSU ballgame?
NO!!! If I invited you to my house, I would give you a hot meal, hot coffee with a fresh dessert. Kim and I would clean up the dishes. Against my better judgement, I would turn on the LSU ballgame.
A invitation is about experiencing something good. Repentance is an invitation to experience something good. Repentance is an invitation to experience forgiveness and healing.
Repentance is an invitation to experience God’s love, mercy, and grace. Repentance is an invitation to change the course of our lives, to move from sin to God. Repentance is an invitation to experience God sent revival.
Repentance is invitation to experience something good. Revival requires repentance. How do we experience repentance in our lives?
2. Steps to Experiencing Repentance
A. We must acknowledge our sin.
Remember, the story of David and Bathsheba. David has an affair with Bathsheba. She ends up pregnant. To cover up his sin, David has Bathsheba’s Uriah killed on the battlefield. David marries Bathsheba and goes about his life as if he had never sinned.
God send the prophet Nathan to David. Nathan tells David about a poor man who had one little lamb. The lamb grew up with the poor man’s kids. The lamb was a member of the family. Living next door to the poor man was a rich man with a flock of sheep. A traveler shows up at the rich man’s house. The rich man didn’t want to kill one of his lambs to feed the rich man. So, he went and killed the lamb of the poor man.
David was outraged at the actions of the rich man. Nathan said to David, “David, you are that man. You took from Urriah and had him killed. David, you have despised the commands of God. David had to come face to face with his sins. Look at what David writes about this experience in .
(KJV) For I acknowledge my transgressions: and my sin is ever before me.
Often, we are like David. We sin, then we go about our lives as if we have never sinned. We don’t acknowledge our sins. We don’t seek to get our sins right before God.
I am saying today that we need to come face to face with our sins. We will never experience revival without first acknowledging our sins.
B. We must get serious about sins.
Remember the story of Jonah? God called Jonah to go to Nineveh to preach a message of repentance to them. Jonah wanted nothing to do with Nineveh. If Nineveh were in this direction, Jonah went in this direction. He boarded a ship. There was a terrible storm. Jonah realized the storm was from the Lord and the only way to save the crew was to thrown him overboard. Jonah is swallowed by a big fish. Jonah experiences repentance in the belly of the whale.
Jonah goes to Nineveh. Nineveh was know for their wickedness, evil, violence, and sin. His message: Yet, 40 days and Nineveh will be overthrown.
(NKJV) So the people of Nineveh believed God, proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest to the least of them.
(NKJV) But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily to God; yes, let every one turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands.
The people of Nineveh got serious about dealing with their sins. They dresses in sackcloth, sat in ashes, and fasted. I want to talk about fasting for just a moment. Fasting is our spiritual habit for the month of March.
Richard Foster: In a culture where the landscape is dotted with shrines to the Golden Arches and an assortment of Pizza Temples, fasting seems out of place, out of step, with the times.
We don’t want to put down the fork. Fasting is abstaining from food for set amount of time for the purpose of praying and repentance. The amount of time for a fast varies from 12 to 24 hours to 3 days. We even see in the Bible supernatural fasts where people fasted for 40 days. If you have never fasted, I generally recommend starting with 12 or 24 hours.
There is also a modern fast where people give up something besides food. A great example of this is the lent season. People may give up desserts, soda, facebook, video games. This type of fast is generally done for 21 or 40 days.
In Jonah, the people of Nineveh were fasting because they realized the seriousness of their sins. They realized that their sin was going to destroy them if God didn’t intervene.
Today, we are way to casual about sin. The view of most today is that sin is no big deal.
Illustration: No big deal vs big deal.
We need to realize just how serious our sins. Until we get serious about our sin, we will never experience revival. You may have noticed in the bulletin this week that I challenged every one to fast twice during the month of March: one fast to pray for our revival and the other fast to repentance.
Why? We want to get serious about revival. We want to get serious about our sins. Until we get serious about our sins, we will never experience revival.
C. We must be broken before God.
Let’s talk about Peter for a moment. Peter confidentially told Jesus that he would never deny him. If everyone else fell away, he wouldn’t. Jesus could count on Peter. Jesus told Peter that before the rooster crows, you will have denied me three times.
Peter denied Jesus thee times.
(NKJV) And Peter remembered the word of Jesus who had said to him, “Before the rooster crows, you will deny Me three times.” So he went out and wept bitterly.
Peter wept. Prideful Peter was broken before God. Peter was broken over the sin his life.
When was the last time that you and I were broken before God over the sin in our lives?
The reason brokenness is beautiful is because of how God can use it in our lives. It is something that can draw us near to Him. Brokenness can make room for a contrite heart and repentance to bring us back into fellowship with Him when we have miserably failed. It is not lovely in and of itself, it is not the end of the journey, it is not a cute hashtag to put on a picture of a dirty house. It’s not a word to use when you want to feel “authentic”. Standing alone, it is messy and sad. No, the beauty in spiritual brokenness is found in where it brings us.
To experience repentance, there must be brokenness.
(AMP) For godly grief and the pain God is permitted to direct, produce a repentance that leads and contributes to salvation and deliverance from evil,
D. We must change.
Repentance is not just about acknowledging and confessing our sins to the Lord. Repentance is not just about realizing the serious of our sins and experiencing brokenness before the Lord. Repentance is ultimately about a change, a change in direction, a change in lifestyle. Repentance is about turning our back on sin and start living for God again.
Conclusion
The small band of church leaders had been praying earnestly for revival in their community—a village on the Isle of Lewis, the largest isle of the Outer Hebrides, just off the coast of Scotland. They were particularly burdened for the young people of the island who had no interest in spiritual matters and scorned the things of God.
For 18 months they met—three night2s a week, praying through the night, right on into the early hours of the morning, beseeching God to come and visit in revival. But there was no evidence of any change.
Then one night, a young deacon rose to his feet, opened his Bible, and read from : “Who shall ascend into the hill of the L ord? or who shall stand in his holy place? He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart . . . . He shall receive the blessing from the Lord” (vv. 3–5, kjv).
Facing the men around him, this young man said, “Brethren, it seems to me to be just so much ‘humbug’ to be waiting and praying as we are, if we ourselves are not rightly related to God.”
There in the straw, the men knelt and humbly confessed their sins to the Lord. Within a short period of time, God began to pour out His Spirit in an extraordinary awakening that shook the entire island.