Trending in Nineveh--Sackcloth

 Read Jonah 3

Jonah was on the shore.  He had his toes in the water…

Actually, chapter 3 begins with business.  The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time.  Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim the message I give you.

His time in the belly of a great fish reconciled Jonah, at least in mind, to God’s purpose for him.  He went to Nineveh.

It was a big city.  It took 3 days to cover all of it.  Jonah went around the city proclaiming, “You guys have 40 days to repent of your evil ways or you're done for.”

The people believed Jonah and started fasting and wearing sackcloth.  These were not God’s Chosen People but somehow, they knew to wear sackcloth when they were repenting.  They may not have been God’s Chosen People but they knew of God’s ways.

They knew that they had gone way off course.  God could not be happy with them.  Numbering them with Sodom or Gomorrah seemed like the logical thing for God to do.  The people repented by fasting and wearing sackcloth.

Sackcloth would not be a standard wardrobe item for these gentile people.  That was something that the Israelites did.  Wouldn’t you like to go back in time and invest in burlap bags when you heard that Jonah was running away from God?

What difference would selling a few burlap bags make?  Probably not much but selling 125,000 or more would turn a tidy profit.  That would be every person in Nineveh. How would that be possible?

When Jonah’s words reached the king of Nineveh, he decreed that everyone would fast and everyone would wear sackcloth.  This was not just for the people but for their livestock as well.  Perhaps this gives us insight into what it is for the whole creation to groan in hopes of reconciliation that we know today in Christ Jesus.

You just don’t see a lot of cattle or sheep adorned in sackcloth, unless you were in Nineveh when Jonah was.  Wow!  That’s going all out on the participation.

The king thought that if God saw this, maybe he would relent.  We repent and God relents.

He did!  Destruction was not delivered to Nineveh, at least for another hundred years or so.  Eventually, the Medes and Babylonians would lay waste to the city, but for this time, God had spared them.

God sent Jonah.  Jonah delivered God’s message.  God had mercy on Nineveh and forgave them.  God has always been a God who desires none to perish.

That’s chapter 3.  Jonah was reconciled to the will of God at least in his mind while he was in the belly of the great fish.  We will get a glimpse into Jonah’s heart in the next chapter.

For now, let’s just celebrate that Nineveh repented and was not destroyed.

You might think, yeah, but it didn’t last.  It didn’t.  The great city of Nineveh would be gone in little more than a century.  So did it make a difference?

I look at our country today and what do I see?

Hatred. 

Division.

Orwell’s ministry of truth is no longer fiction.

Denying history in favor of the narrative to be advanced.

Contempt for anything godly. 

Movements to declare multiple genders.

Killing children in the womb and killing those who make it out of the womb but succumb to senseless violence.

The sanctity of life has been forgotten.

Platitudes for the most profane music.

Death of dialogue.

And of course, the ubiquitous misuse of your and you’re.  Some of you were ok with the first few examples but offended by my grammar Nazi example.

The world that you know does not worship God.  Evil abounds.  The stench of this nation’s wickedness has risen to God.

We would be well served to fast and put on sackcloth—every one of us, including our animals.  We have something better than sackcloth.  We are called to confess.  We have already repented, but still miss the mark on a recurring basis.

Many of us do confess daily or weekly, but we are surrounded by a culture that would not hear Jonah’s words but surely needs to repent.

But Nineveh was eventually destroyed.  So, what’s the point?

I would take a 100-year reprieve in this country right now.  I would covet a century of godliness. I would sing Hallelujah for this nation to return to God, even just to get my children’s children through their lives in a godly land.

I would love to see my children’s children pass the godliness baton to their own children.

I know that eternity with God is promised to me, but I would rejoice beyond measure in the wholesale repentance of my nation.

Imagine being the king of a wicked people and deciding that everyone would repent.  They would at least do the outwards signs of repentance.  Imagine wholesale repentance.

What would we repent of?

Not being white.

Not being black.

Not being born male or female.

Not of having a job.

Not of paying your bills.

Not of trying to make a living and support your family.

Not of any of the things that the world would tell us to discharge.

We must all repent of rebelling against God.  We must all repent of a me-first culture.  We must repent of unclean hearts and minds.

We must repent of our sin.  Many have but so many more have rejected God and the stench of that rejection has risen to heaven.

The twin gods of Apathy and Ambivalence rule in this country. 

We have hope for ourselves and our families.  We are people of hope.  We believe and we confess and we get back in our race of faith, but our country is in peril. 

I long for wholesale repentance, but perhaps it must come at the loss of luxury and liberty.  I like being able to go where I want and have a vehicle to get me there.

I love to go to the store and complain that out of the 40 different types of bread, they didn’t have my favorite.

I love to complain about the heat or the cold from the comfort of my sheltered abode, then complain about my gas or electric bill.

Jonah is not coming to America, but we are charged—commissioned—to take the good news to the world.  Most of that ministry will take place in America.

I am thankful for eternity with my loving God.  I would love another 100 years in a country that loved God and served him.

If the pagan, evil king of Nineveh can call all of his people to repent, I have hope that America could do the same.

As we draw nearer the time when God’s Spirit is poured out upon this sinful world, I pray that his Spirit is irresistible.

I also pray that people repent of the ways of the world now and come to God.

So many people pray that God will bless America again.  I pray that people will repent for repentance must precede God’s forgiveness and his blessings.

I pray that we as a nation can repent better than Nineveh.  Maybe I should invest in burlap. 

I will read something directed at God’s Chosen People, but I pray it applies to us.

If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.

Amen

Are Ash Wednesday and Lent for me?

 

Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of Lent, a period to focus on turning away from the ways of the world and seeking the ways of Christ.

Ash Wednesday has only been a common practice of the church for a millennium and widespread in this nation for half a century.  Ashes are traditionally associated with repentance and sometimes with mourning.  But we have repented and seek to draw closer to God.  Why should I participate?

It has nothing to do with your salvation.  It’s about that ongoing battle with the old self and focusing on living as the new creation you are meant to be.

Jesus never participated in an Ash Wednesday service.  He had no need to repent or to model repentance as he had modeled servanthood.  Realize, it’s an old but modern tradition as far as the church goes.  It should remind us to cast off everything that hinders and seek the Lord with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength.

If it doesn’t seem right to you, then don’t participate but do not disparage others who are trying to grow closer to God. 

All should seek to grow closer to God and Lent offers a special time to do this just as you worship at a specific time in the assembly with other believers, so too is there a special time to make a surge effort to turn away from the evil in the world and seek God, his kingdom, and his righteousness above all thins.

Some fast during this period.  We are counseled not to fast as the Pharisees did, with long faces announcing to the world that they were obeying God.

Some seek to lift burdens and oppression from others who are worse off than we are.

Some partake of a form of sacrifice usually by giving up a food item or something that gratifies us.

Some just pray more, give more, or judge less.

It is a shared time with individual worship and service as people are led to participate.

For this year, I suggest the following three things over and beyond your current service and worship.

Give up half an hour each day of things that are usually not fruitful—television, Facebook, watching videos, and the like.  You might want to give up things not so easily measured in time:  complaining, disparaging others, insistence on your own way. 

Give a food offering every time you enter the church building. 

Give an offering to the Goat and Two Chickens offering.

You may choose something else or nothing at all but these are three things that we could do together. Because during Lent we suspend our weekly offerings to support Martha, you may want to make a special offering for her.

At the end of this period, we will have a special day to celebrate the resurrection.  We should celebrate the resurrection of the Lord and our life eternal every day, but will have a special celebration on Sunday, 4 April 2021.

John 1 - Part 4

Read John 1

In this part, John speaks to those gathered and then answers some questions from the religious leaders who had been selected to find out what was happening at the Jordan River, somewhere near Bethany.

Realize that if you were reading Mark’s gospel instead of John’s, this is where his story begins.  Mark doesn’t even give us a one sentence Christmas Story.

John testifies that the One who comes after him is greater than he is by a whole bunch.  The One who comes next has been around since the beginning. 

And then John talks about grace and blessings.  Humankind has enjoyed both grace and blessing from the Lord all along.  But God was kicking things up a notch.  The One whose place is at the right hand of the Father had set aside that place for a time and came into the world.

The law was given through Moses, but grace and truth come through Jesus Christ.  This is the first instance in John’s gospel where he refers to our Savior as Jesus Christ.

The grace and truth of Jesus surpassed John and the law.  The glory of God revealed in Jesus Christ surpassed everything and everyone who was now or had come before.

But the priests had some questions.  Are you Elijah?  John said no.  Are you a prophet?  No.

Well then, just who are you?  We have people to whom we must answer.

I am the voice of one calling in the desert:  Make straight the way of the Lord!  Most would have recognized those words in that day.  They were of the prophet Isaiah.

Now the Pharisees stepped up to bat.  Why do you baptize if you are not the Christ or Elijah or a prophet?

John replied, my baptism is only of water.  Elsewhere we get a little more of an answer that this water baptism was for the forgiveness of sins and that the One who came after him baptized with the Holy Spirit.  In one account he charged the religious leaders to produce fruit worthy of repentance.

But in John’s gospel, the focus is on a warning, sort of a heads up.  The One that he is preparing the way for is already here.  He has been among you and you have not recognized him.

OBTW—I am not even worthy to tie his sandals.  For the following that I have acquired—surely the reason that you have ventured from your comfortable places to see me—that following is nothing compared to what is to come.  I am not even worthy to be a servant good enough to tie his sandals.

The religious leaders had been looking for the Christ.  He was here among them but they did not recognize him.  You would think that a 12 year-old kid amazing the teachers in the temple almost 20 years before might have tipped them off, but no.

They only paid attention to the parts of scripture that they wanted to see.  They wanted the King of Kings and they wanted him to fit into their pharisaical box.   In our time we would say that they rejected the full biblical witness and only saw what fit their expectations.

We shouldn’t show too much disgust for them.  We still do this today claiming one scripture over another as it is easier than continuing to search for the full biblical witness given to us.  It is much less work to adopt a doctrine that fits your comfort zone than to let the word of God which is alive and active do its work.

Back to John’s gospel.  Jesus was coming.  John was preparing the way.  He wasn’t fixing potholes in the road.  He was calling people to repentance. 

Those who should have been most prepared to recognize him were not.

This was the state of our fallen and sinful and rebellious world as that day came to an end, but joy would come in the morning.

We live in a different time.  The preparation that we make to receive the Lord is in our hearts.  We don’t get baptized to get ready to receive the Lord.  We are baptized when we receive him, first with the Holy Spirit and publicly with water.  We must have hearts of repentance to receive the Lord when he comes into our lives.  Many have done this.  Many know this joy.

John the Baptizer is not out at the river today calling people to repent and be baptized, but we who have received Jesus as Savior and Lord are here and we are calling.  We call people to repent and believe the good news.  We are commissioned to this task in this time.

We are called in our commission and our discipleship to prepare the way for the Lord to come into so many hearts.

Amen.

Do the things that you did at first

Read Revelation 2:1-7

Last week we examined Paul’s words to the elders in Ephesus.  He told them that he had given all that he was and could be to them while he was with them.  Now it was their turn to lead and shepherd and defend the gospel against all attacks.

We consider the church in Ephesus and get a snapshot of this body’s life at some point after Paul’s counsel.   We will leave the angel of the church and the seven churches of this letter for another day and proceed directly to Christ’s counsel.

So let’s get to it.  What about Ephesus?  They had good deeds, they worked hard, and they persevered.  It sounds like they were running a good race.

On top of that, they did not tolerate wickedness.  They defended the gospel against those claiming to come with authority but who twisted the words of the Christ.  There were even some really bad actors out there called the Nicolaitans and the church sized them up as enemies of the Lord and stood against them.

It’s not that they hated these people but they hated what they did.  Jesus said, “Me too.”

As you read this first part, it sounds like the beginning of the citation for a meritorious service medal and then we come to what we translate as the word yet. Yet, I hold this against you.

That sure messes up the award ceremony.  Yet, I hold this against you.  Hold what against them?

You have forsaken your first love.

Think of the days and weeks and months after you were saved.  Some would say that you were on fire for the Lord.  Everything somehow was about sharing the love of God that you knew in Christ Jesus.  You were singing and living, All to Jesus I surrender.  All to him I freely give.

You were in love with the Lord.  The story varies some with each person, but there was something very special in the beginning.  It’s something that is hard to sustain and easy to lose or let atrophy.

It’s something that can move from passion to intellect almost unnoticed.  A church body can go from passion to programs and think they are doing just fine.  Programs are great until they leave the passion for loving God and each other behind.

It seems like a church can be doing everything the right way without doing the right things.  A church without love for God and love for each other at its core is hollow, but not hopeless, for there is counsel.

Repent and do the things you did at first.

We have been talking about repentance for a few weeks.  Most of the time we think of repenting and turning away and leaving behind the evil ways of the world. That’s exactly what we should do.  I think most here have done that and are on their journey of discipleship striving to please the Lord.

We want to please the Lord.  We want to love the Lord.  He first loved us!  He sent his son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.  We live in the mercy and grace and favor of the Lord and we want to passionately respond in love.

 But do we sometimes just get into a, drift into, find ourselves in more form than function?  Are we saying the right things and doing good things but leaving out the passion we had at first?  How would we know?

Is Sunday worship where you are supposed to be or where your heart tells you that you have to be?

Do we rejoice with everyone who comes through our doors?

Do we see the face of God in everyone we meet, even the ones ranting against him?

Do we long for people to know the peace that we know?

Do we have a contingency plan if this Jesus stuff doesn’t work out or all we all in?

When we say The Lord’s Prayer together, is it rote recitation or does knowing the words help us communicate?  Does knowing the words help us commune with the Lord?

Do we ever just go through the motions in worship, or on Wednesday night, or in life?

Do we try to put God’s word into formulas?

Do we try to fit God into a box?

Do we want everything to fit into our own understanding?

Have we forsaken our first love and exchanged it for some equation about life?

Do we take life for granted or have we learned to number our days?

What if, we find ourselves drifting away from the passion that we once had?  We are told there is a cure.  Repent and do the things that you did at first.  These are not new things to learn but resumption of the passion you had in the beginning.

We have a consciousness about us that warns us about sin.  We try to stay away from those things that are not pleasing to God.  But what about the less than obvious stuff.  What about one day becoming like another?

What about just wanting to get through the song instead of making it an offering to God?  Is there a dichotomy between what your lips are singing and a joyful sound?

What about, “Oh man, another Wednesday night?”

What about, “Gotta have that dollar for Martha or a for a goat and two chickens?”

What about, “Gotta make my tithe?”

What about, “Gotta read my Sunday school lesson?”

How many times do we just go on to the next thing?

There is something special about life.  There is something special about love.  There is something special about God’s love for us and how we respond to it.

If we have lost what is special, then get it back!  Repent and do the things you did at first.

Is there a reward in the age to come?  Of course, there is.  Your will enjoy paradise!  That’s cool beans.  We know that part.

But what about now?

I will tell you from experience that life lived with purpose and passion far exceeds one lived just to make it to the next day.  We are designed for so much more than existence.

God knew us before he formed us in the womb.  We are fearfully and wonderfully made and we know what to do.  Do the things we did at first.  Do the things we did when we first came to Jesus.

I like to prepare for worship.  I send out the worship bulletin at the beginning of the week so others can prepare as well.  Being prepared for worship does not deprive us of spontaneity, it facilitates it.  Preparation facilitates passion.

I like to look for blind spots.  I can’t always see my own blind spots but God has put us together as a body so we can help each other, not to condemn our shortcoming but to help us navigate out of them.

I love an editor.  They will challenge you.  I remember about 25 years ago; I sent an article to the U. S. Naval Proceedings.  It is the premier professional journal for the Navy and Marine Corps.  This was the best article that I had ever written.

The editor called back and said we like it.  Cut 250 words.

What?  There was not a wasted word in the whole thing, or so I thought.  I took the challenge and discovered how much better it could be after cutting out those words.  Realize that you don’t just pull out words here and there.  You rewrite and rewrite and review and rewrite.

That would suck the life out of you unless you had a passion to write.  The second and third and twenty-third rewrite had as much passion as the first.

I love a real editor who knows his stuff.  They renew the passion that led you to write in the first place.

Jesus gives us life and life abundant and life eternal.  If we need to rewrite something in our lives, we do it with the same passion that we wrote the first draft of our response to his grace.

The result is that we are on fire without burning out.  The passion for our Lord and for each other continues.  There is no form over function in our programs.  Their function is to share the love of God.

Some of you may not relate to my writing illustration.  I get that.  There are few of us with that passion, but most of you can relate to some form of athletic competition.  You played football or basketball.  You ran track or played baseball or softball.

In the beginning, you had an eagerness to learn and do better, but at some point, you felt comfortable about your skills.  You went from game to game with confidence but without improvement.  Thank the Lord for that person who is losing both their hair and their voice known as the coach.

Praise the Lord for the person who sees what we need to work on and challenges us work on it with renewed passion.

I know that you have all seen terrible coaches that can only scream at you when you make a mistake.  Move those images out of you mind and replace them with one who sharpens your skills, who challenges you to do the best that you can with your skill set.

You don’t always have to learn something new.  You just need to apply the same passion you did at first to those basics that come into play game after game.

Sometimes we have bad habits.  What do we do?  Repent and do the things you did at first.  Sometimes it takes a coach to see those habits.  Drop the bad habit and get back to basics with the passion you had when you started.

How many of you have ever played on a team that the day before you called and cancelled the game because your opponent was too tough?  Who does that?

Nobody does that.  Some teams probably should do that if all they can do is worry about how badly they are going to lose.  Many, and I would venture to say most, take to heart what their coaches say and put passion into improvement.

It’s not that you have a bad team or a bunch of bad skills; it’s that you need some passion on some of the basics—passion like you had at first.

We have been saved from sin and death.  We will spend eternity with our Lord. This life that we live now is our discipleship or the fullness of our salvation.  We need counsel more than we need condemnation.  We need coaching more than we need counsel. 

So when we hear, you have lost your first love, we don’t hang our heads and mope around.  We get ready for the correction.  In this case, it’s drop the bad habit do the things that you did at first. 

We are teachable.  We are coachable.  We hunger for being able to live every day with passion without burning out.

Let’s love one another with the same passion that kids go camp with.

Let’s spread the gospel with the same passion that we share when school is closed for weather.

Let’s hunger for God’s word with the same passion that we have for a steak dinner.

Let’s learn to live each day with the same passion for the Lord that we did at first.

Let’s turn away from things that we are only doing in form and return to the things we do with passion.

Repent and do the things we did at first!

Love like we first loved!

Amen.

Fruit worthy of repentance

Read Matthew 3:1-12

Complying with rules is one thing.  Producing fruit is another.  Fruit is a product of something, often a plant or tree.  We have heard the fruit of the womb, meaning offspring. 

We can think of the Fruit of the Spirit as what comes of living by the Spirit that is within us.

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.  Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.  Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.  Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other.

John the Baptizer noted the presence of the religious leaders, specifically noted are the Pharisees and Sadducees, and he called them out.  You bunch of snakes!

Who gave you a heads up that the wrath of God is looming over you?

The Pharisees and Sadducees had not come to John to repent and be baptized.  They wanted to see what was drawing people all the way out to the Jordan River. Surely the news of what John was doing had reached far beyond his limited place of ministry.

John knew who had come to see him.  These were the upper crust of the religious society that prevailed over the Hebrew people.  The Romans were their political masters, but these self-righteous men would use God’s rules to enslave his people far more than the requirements of the godless regime that governed them.

They were to have been the shepherds of Israel, but they did a terrible job of pastoring the people entrusted to them.  What did they have to worry about?  They were the top tier of the Sons of Abraham Club.

John boldly addressed these men who were used to getting the grand treatment, being given the best seats at events, and who otherwise considered their status more than their mission.  He charged them to produce fruit worthy of repentance.

Not only do you need to repent, your actions should demonstrate that you have.

To repent is to turn away from and leave behind something.  In this case, it is to turn away from a godless lifestyle and leave it all behind—not only the rules of the world to include rules of the world masquerading as religion, but the thinking and status afforded by playing by the rules of the world.

To repent was to be a part of a wholesale exchange—body, mind, soul, and spirit.  Everything was left behind and exchanged for the ways of God.

This would have been a hard sell for the Pharisees and Sadducees.  They were the enforcers of the rules upon others.  They wrote the administrative law if you will. 

Do you know that our national legislature has written very little of our law?  They write more than enough and make the verbiage and syntax confusing and voluminous, but it is the administrative agencies that draft and implement most of our law and regulations. 

We don’t even get to vote for or against the people who write these laws.  There’s something to think on in the week to come, just in case you are running short of things to contemplate this week.

It’s all done with good intentions, or so that was the original intent.  Administrative law filled in the gaps in the law that was legislated.

So too the Pharisees and Sadducees filled in the gaps and noted exceptions and in so doing essentially embalmed the Law of God given through Moses.  These men surely did not come to see John so they could repent.  They came in self-interest.

We like it when the Pharisees and Sadducees get their comeuppance, but John’s command to them should hit us center mass as well.  Produce fruit worthy of repentance.

Produce fruit, not commentary or armchair quarterbacking.  Get on the playing field and do something productive.  And that’s your dose of mixed metaphor for today.

Our lives should demonstrate that we follow the one true God.  We don’t do things to receive acknowledgement from men but to please God.

Some will see that we do good and that we follow God.  Later in his gospel, Matthew notes that this brings glory to God, but we are little concerned about what the world thinks about us.

We produce fruit in keeping with repentance and this pleases God.  John was offering a baptism of repentance, but he said that this is just the beginning.  One is coming after me who is much greater and more powerful than me and he will baptize with the Holy Spirit.

So, what is fruit in keeping with repentance?

The first and foremost is receiving Jesus not only as our Savior but as Lord as well.  Jesus is Lord!  We outwardly signify his lordship with baptism. 

It’s not Jesus and the Sooners or the Cowboys or our political party.  Jesus is Lord.  It’s not Jesus and this committee or that doctrine.  Jesus is Lord.  We have not really repented until we come to grips with this simple statement.

Repentance must not only include that which we turn away from but that which or whom we turn to and follow.  Our first fruit of repentance is receiving Jesus as Lord.

Turning away from evil and seeking good is noble.  It is a form of repentance.  I will turn away from the bad and seek the good.  It is noble but not sufficient.  We must seek after the Lord.

Just trying to be a good person is not enough!  That sounds critical of those seeking good.  It might be but it’s honest.  When we turn away from evil and seek good, we are still our own master.  We are doing this because it’s how we see things.  We are our own lord.  We get to be the Pharisee.

We become susceptible to sitting on the sidelines and criticizing those who are following Jesus.  The first fruit of our repentance must be to receive Jesus as our Lord.

Jesus is Lord!

Everything after that is our discipleship or the fullness of our salvation.  The rest of our fruit will come out of our discipleship.  That will include turning away from evil and seeking what is good.

It will include the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

It will include being the salt of the earth, that all may taste the goodness of God when they encounter us.

It will include being the light of the world, that people will see how we live and by such witness bring glory to God.

It will include embracing the ways of the Lord as our own.  It will be putting his words into practice.  It will be loving one another.  It will be being known by our love.

But it all starts with repentance.  We must be willing to give up the ways of this world—mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

Receiving the Lordship of Jesus is now a part of our identity.  His yoke is easy and his burden is light, but now it’s our yoke and our burden.

Producing fruit worthy of repentance is first turning away from the world and seeking God through Christ.  Then we live out our salvation in such a way as to bring glory to God.

Narrow is the way which we come to Christ but abundant are the ways in which we may live for him once he is Lord.

Here it is in Okiespeak:  You can’t straddle the fence.

Repent, put God first by making Jesus Lord of your life, then produce fruit worthy of this fantastic relationship.

We will do good and it will be to God’s glory.

We will love one another and it will be to the glory of God.

We will be known by our love and put a smile on God’s face.

Let this be a bumper crop year in producing fruit worthy of repentance!

Amen.

An Ash Wednesday Message about Repentance

Repent and believe the good news!  Those words and some ash on your forehead and you’ve got an Ash Wednesday service.

Before we get to that part, I want to take you back almost 3,500 years to the land of Egypt.

God’s Chosen People were enslaved.  They entered the land with welcome.  They were few in number and settled in the land of Goshen—hill country.  But as they grew in number, they were perceived as a threat to Egypt and were made into slaves for over 400 years.

God sent Moses and some convincing plagues to deliver his people.  They come out of Egypt with more than the clothes on their backs.  They have what they need for the trip to the Promised Land.

The Pharaoh changes his mind and wants his slaves back.  The Egyptian army has God’s Chosen People trapped against the Red Sea, but God performs a miracle and parts the waters and his people cross on dry land.

The Egyptians try to follow but God closed the Red Sea and destroyed the pursuing army.

So the people got out of Egypt and are on their way to the Promised Land and are so excited that they don’t even complain, right?

No, they complained.  Many wanted to go back to the slavery that they had asked God to deliver them from.  What?

God stopped the Egyptians from pursuing, but now some want to get back to slavery.  It’s comfortable.  They knew the life.

In the wilderness, they had to trust Moses and trust God.

There was a generation that did not make it to the Promised Land

But 40 years later—I’m skipping a lot from those 40 years—but want to get to the Promised Land, Joshua leads his people into the land.

They had to cross the Jordan—probably when it was at flood stage—but again God parted the waters.

To get to the Promised Land, these people had to leave Egypt—leave slavery behind completely and enter completely into the Promised Land.

Even if your tribe had some land before they crossed the Jordan, their warriors had to cross the Jordan.

Let’s move the clock ahead to where the most important thing in our life is a relationship with God through faith in Jesus.

How did I start?

Repent and believe the good news!  Those words and some ash on your forehead and you’ve got an Ash Wednesday service.

Repent is an interesting word.  In the Hebrew, it most often means to turn away from or to return to.  So what that means to us is that we turn away from evil, from the world, from anything that rejects God.

We return to God.  He wants us back.

In the Greek, the word that we translate as repent is to change your mind or to change your inner self.  We are exchanging who we used to be prior to having Jesus as Lord for who we are now a new creation.

What should we know about repentance?  We are to turn away from the world and return to God.  That sounds like what I have heard all of my life, but that alone denies that what we turned away from isn’t following us everywhere we go.

The world does not want to give us up.  The world wants us back.

Think about this.  We say NO to drugs.  Are people still getting hooked?

How about smoking?  Tobacco ends with me, right?  Kids are still getting hooked.  Why?

Drug dealers and cigarette manufacturers want these new customers.  Their old ones are dying.

So they become more clever.  Cigarette packaging starts looking like juice packaging or something friendly.  They still have the warning labels that say these things kill you.

Drug dealers and tobacco companies need a continuing supply of new customers.

The world wants a continuing supply of people who choose the ways of the world over God.  We must turn away from the world.

When we turn away, we are to leave our old thinking, old paradigms, old models behind and receive and embrace the new.  We receive the mind of Christ and we live as a new creation.

We have to completely let go of the old and completely receive the new.

We can’t be tethered to who we were.

We can’t let who we were hold on to us.

Who we were is not who we are and not who we will be.

We must truly repent.  We must turn away from and give up who we were.

We must return to God and be who he wants us to be and living life his way is not a burden to us.  It’s not something we have to do.  It’s something we are glad to do because of his grace.

God forgave us when we didn’t deserve it.

It is time to die to who we were and live as who he made us to be.

It is time to repent and believe the good news.

Amen!