Text: Luke 3:1-14
Beloved
in Christ, last week we heard that Christ came two thousand years ago and will
come in great glory sometime in the future. We also heard that He comes to us
today through His Word, so that we can rejoice in His past coming and look
forward to His return. And so we are not surprised to hear today that repenting
has always been the primary way to prepare for His coming, then and now. John
the Baptist called His fellow Jews to repent before Christ began His ministry.
And we read John’s call to repentance today because we need to repent before
Christ returns in glory.
But
“repent” and “repentance” are tricky words. We use them all the time in the
church, and we can sort of figure out what they must mean from the context. But
whenever we guess a word’s meaning, there is always the danger we might overlook
some important nuance it has. That is why we are often told to look up an
unfamiliar word in a dictionary to make sure that we fully understand it. In
the same way, we ought to make sure that when we come across a word in the
Scriptures that we are using it in the same sense that the Scriptures do.
If
you talk with most people, they will say that repenting means “feeling bad
about something” or, to be more specific, “feeling sorry for some wrong thing
you have done.” They have a point. Repentance does involve those sorts of
things, but it also involves a lot more. Plenty of people are very, very sorry
for what they have done, but they don’t know much about real Christian
repentance. It might be helpful to know that the Greek word for “repentance”
literally means “a change of thought.” Now part of genuine repentance involves changing
your attitude from thinking that sin is okay to thinking that it is wrong. But
there is much more that we need to change our minds about.
You
could say that “repentance” means “rethinking” something that we had thought
was already a settled matter. And so today I invite you to rethink the matter
of repentance. Instead of putting repentance into a tiny little box and saying
it applies only if you have done some big, stupid mistake, I urge you to think
of it as a big part of a Christian’s life. A Christian ought to realize that their
sinful nature not only gets them to misbehave, but also to think wrongly about who
God is and whether He can be trusted, what determines the standards of right
and wrong, what counts as progress, what the good life looks like, where hope
is truly to be found, and a thousand other matters. We are born with a selfish
attitude, and that in and of itself would be enough to distort the way we look
at things. But then the errors in our minds are compounded by the way that
other people get us to look at things wrongly. We are taught such things as “God
doesn’t intervene in people’s lives” or “prayer doesn’t work” or “you can do
anything, if you put your mind to it”—and thousands of other foolish
sentiments. We have to unlearn such things and instead learn the wisdom that
comes from and is the holy, Christian faith. Therefore, the chief part of repentance
is turning from unbelief to trust in God. Knowing oneself as a sinner is, to be
sure, an aspect of repentance, but knowing God as our Savior is an even more
important aspect.
And
so part of being a Christian is to rethink everything in light of God’s Word. Now,
that rethinking process often starts with morality, and so repentance usually
begins with being sorry for some recent sin we’ve done. If we are going to be
led into a different way of thinking, it is usually because we discovered
something that the old way of thinking just couldn’t explain. Now our selfish
nature has tried to convince that we are perfect and that there is nothing
seriously wrong with us. But when we have clear evidence to the contrary—when we
see that we have done something that we would be angry about if it had been
done against us—then we don’t know what to think or say. We are saddened by the
situation and are open to rethinking our whole life.
Now
both John the Baptist and Jesus encountered many people who were at a
crossroads because they had seen their entire life fall apart. They hadn’t
aspired as children to become the town drunk, the village prostitute, the hated
turncoat who collaborated with the Roman enemies. But each and every one of them
realized that they had sinned in these flagrant ways and nobody in their town
liked them. So they assumed that God did not love them, either. There are many
people today who are in the same situation. They have hit rock bottom. A
serious addiction, a broken marriage, trouble with the law, or some other
serious problem has shown them reality and they are ready at last to
acknowledge it. Maybe that is you today. It is right that you are sorry for those
sins and that you look to God for forgiveness. But, come, let me show you and
all people an even deeper repentance, an even deeper way of rethinking your
life.
You
see, repentance isn’t just for the convicted criminals or the social outcasts.
It is for everyone. There were many respectable people who went to see what
John was doing. They thought that it would be good to see all the evildoers get
a good tongue lashing for their misdeeds. But instead John turned on them and
said, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to
come? Bear fruits in keeping with repentance.” In other words, if you
think that you have to be a convicted felon before you are called to repent,
think again! Sure, some people may sin flagrantly, but don’t forget that you
are cut out of the same cloth as the rest of humanity. If they have sins to
repent of, so do you. Just because your sins are more socially acceptable or
more easily hidden doesn’t mean that you have nothing to repent of, too.
Now
you might think that all this rethinking about our lives means that ethics is
horribly complicated. Not at all. When John was asked about what people should do,
he said to share with those in need. He told people to do their work honestly
and not for greedy gain. He didn’t tell people to quit their work and hole up
in a monastery, but rather to do their work and not abuse their office. It was
as simple as that. And yet sin prevents us from doing what is rather simple.
That
is why we need to rethink something else: what makes people God’s people. We
naturally assume that being good makes us dear to God and so our good behavior
makes us His people. Or maybe we need to come from a long line of godly people.
But John warns us to rethink. “Do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We
have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you, God is able from these stones to
raise up children for Abraham.” Now we usually hear this as a warning:
shape up because the right ancestry doesn’t make you right with God! And that
is true. But there is a deeper truth as well: God turns stones like you and me into
His beloved children.
Yes,
we were stones. Even the children of Abraham were stones. The Old Testament reveals
that idols are made of useless stone. As Psalm 115 tells us, “They have
mouths, but do not speak; eyes, but do not see. They have ears, but do not
hear; noses, but do not smell. They have hands, but do not feel; feet, but do
not walk; and they do not make a sound in their throat.” Okay. We
understand that. Idols are senseless hunks of stone. But there is one more
thing the psalmist wants us to know about these idols: “Those who make
them become like them; so do all who trust in them.” And so we are not
surprised to hear God tell Isaiah that the Israelites “keep on hearing,
but do not understand; [they] keep on seeing, but do not perceive.”
They have become as senseless as blocks of stone. Worshipping stone has turned
them to stone, so much so that the prophet Ezekiel refers to their heart as no
longer being made of flesh but of stone.
But
Ezekiel foretold that Christ would come and remove our hearts of stone and put
hearts of flesh in us. We cannot take our stone-cold hearts and make them living
and warm. But God can change stones and the stone-hearted into children of
Abraham, indeed into God’s own beloved children. That is because while we were
becoming more and more like the idols we worshipped, that is, more stone-like,
Christ (the true Son of God) became like one of us. He became a full human
being, albeit without sin.
More
than that, He lived a holy life, died in our place, and rose again. And He
poured out His Holy Spirit into us so that we might be transformed from stone
images of the idols we worshipped into a living temple of the true God. Consequently,
when we think about ourselves and what it means to be a human being or when we
think about God and how we stand in relation to Him, we no longer think from
our own vantage point, but from the perspective that comes from knowing Christ.
This
new perspective does not come easily. That is why we gather again and again to
hear God’s Word and deepen our knowledge of it. Even things we have heard
dozens of times need to be heard again, since it is difficult to rethink
everything in accordance with His Word and it may take several times before it
sinks in. Therefore, beloved in Christ, let your life be one of continual
repentance—of rethinking of what you had known of sin and grace and coming to
know those things from God’s perspective. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
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