Hear, ye, hear, ye. Our Lord’s call to repent and
believe the Gospel has not been declared null and void. His
summons to repentance and faith is just as imperative, just as
critical, today as it was nearly 2,000 years ago when He went into
Galilee preaching the Good News of God. The times we live in may
have changed, but in Christ the time for repentance and faith is
still here. Now is the favorable time; now is the day of
salvation, the Scripture says. Now; not later. When Jesus
returns in glory it will be too late.
We Americans tend to think of ourselves as a
sophisticated people. After all, American technology has
eliminated many of the problems that bedeviled our ancestors.
There are good things about that and also bad things. Many
diseases that once threatened entire populations have been
virtually eradicated in our country. We’ve attained a standard of
affluence and comfort that would make Caesar’s mouth water. On
the other hand, we’ve rewritten ancient moral codes, and have
largely thrown-off the standards of morality that guided our
grandparents. We’ve invented for ourselves a god who doesn’t
judge, who makes no demands, and has no expectations except that
we each pursue happiness in whatever way personally seems best.
Forget, Hear, O Israel, the Lord thy God is One. We
want a god who tells us, Whatever makes
your boat float.
So Jesus’ command that we, today, repent and
believe the Gospel may strike us as strange and outmoded. After
all, to repent means to recognize that you’re in the wrong before
God. It’s an acknowledgement that you’ve been going your own
wrongheaded way instead of His way. To repent means you’ve been
brought face to face with the awful consequences your sinful folly
deserves. It’s to see things as God sees them. It’s to suddenly
know that you’re a poor, helpless sinner instead of the captain of
your fate and the master of your soul you’d always imagined
yourself to be. It’s to turn from darkness to light. From death
to life. To repent is to lay aside all the comforting lies you’ve
told yourself and to listen to God for a change and believe Him.
Even if it hurts – which it most assuredly will.
What we think doesn’t count at all when compared to
what God thinks. Scripture says our thoughts are not His
thoughts, nor His ways our ways. Even though the summons to
repentance and faith may seem foreign and outmoded to us, it’s
still demanded by God. For example, in the book of Ezekiel God
addresses us and commands us to repent: Thus says the Lord
God: Repent and turn away from your idols, and turn away your
faces from all your abominations. . . I will judge you, . . .
every one according to his ways, declares the Lord God. Repent and
turn from all your transgressions, lest iniquity be your ruin.
Turn from sin and turn to Me, God says. Turn from
your folly and hear My instruction. Turn from the way of darkness
and death and walk in the light of My salvation.
We Lutherans have a slogan we love to repeat and
all too frequently love to ignore. That slogan is Sola
Scriptura, which is Latin for “Scripture alone.” What that
means is that all the doctrines we profess to believe, teach and
confess, are to be drawn from Scripture, the Bible, God’s Word.
We aren’t to elevate human reason above the Word of God. We
aren’t to exalt our opinions and preferences above the Word of
God. God’s Word is the final authority. If we recognize any
authority above the Scriptures, we’re Lutheran in name only.
We’re Christian in name only too.
If we take Sola Scriptura seriously we must
also take God’s Word seriously when it calls us to repentance.
I’m called to repent. You’re called to repent. And it’s not just
a one time thing, a one shot deal. The entire life of the
believer is to be one of repentance. Those words of
Luther launched the Reformation. All of us who have been baptized
into Christ are called to live lives of daily contrition and
repentance. Recognizing our sin, we are to drown the old Adam
with all his sins and evil desires – we’re to kick him in the
teeth and send him out the door. As those who have known the
grace and mercy of God in Christ Jesus, we do this so the new man
in Christ might arise to live before God in righteousness and
purity forever.
What is your sin? I could name my sins before you
and keep you here until mid-afternoon. I suspect you could do the
same. We look at the Commandments in order to know our sin. How
have you and I failed to fear, love and trust in God above all
things? Have we used His Name wrongly, by cursing and swearing?
Have we failed to use His Name at all by neglecting our prayers?
Have we despised and neglected His Word by telling ourselves He
really doesn’t mean it when He tells us not to forsake the
assembling of ourselves together around His Word and Sacraments?
Have we despised authority, thinking there’s no authority
in heaven or on earth greater than ourselves? Have we hated our
brother or sister? Have we lusted, stolen, told lies? Have we
coveted, been jealous because God has given our neighbor something
He hasn’t given us?
All of us have sinned against God in thought, word
and deed, by what we have done and what we have left undone.
That’s what the confession at the beginning of our service says.
Let’s not say it if we don’t believe it. Why act like the
penitent tax collector when you really think like the
self-righteous Pharisee? But remember this: even though we may
not take our sin seriously, God takes it seriously. In fact, He
hates it. Now you don’t hate a speck of dust, something
insignificant. What you hate is a terrible disease that’s killing
someone you love. What you hate is a rank injustice that imperils
the well-being of the downtrodden who have no voice of their own.
The fact that God hates our sin shows how awful that sin is. And
the fact that He sent His Son into the flesh to take our sin away
by dying on the Cross shows the stark and gruesome reality of our
sin. The Son of God wasn’t crucified so He could be memorialized
in a pretty, pastel Cross to hang on your bedroom wall. He was
nailed to the Cross to pay for our sins and snatch us out of the
jaws of death and hell.
The destruction God threatened to bring upon the
city of Nineveh in today’s Old Testament reading is something we
all deserve, because we’ve all flouted God’s Word and ways. It’s
certainly something our society deserves with its sins of
euthanasia, abortion and other assaults upon God’s gift of life
and family. Forty more days and Nineveh will be destroyed,
Jonah preached in the streets and squares of the city.
The fact that God was willing to wait forty days before unleashing
His judgment is evidence of His great mercy and compassion. The
fact that He has not yet brought judgment upon our nation and
planet is evidence of His mercy. As the Scripture says,
The Lord is patient toward you, not wishing that
any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.
The greatest evidence of God’s mercy and compassion
is the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. There our Savior was
crucified for the sins of the whole world. There the judgment
that should have fallen upon Nineveh fell on Jesus instead. There
the judgment that should have crushed you and me crushed Jesus in
our place. You could put it this way – instead of wiping us out,
God wiped out His own beloved Son. Instead of annihilating us in
the nuclear blast of His wrath, God’s annihilating wrath consumed
Jesus as He made atonement on the Cross for the sins of all
mankind. You and I are forgiven because Jesus took our place
under the wrath of God.
This is the Gospel we are called to believe and to
share. It’s the Gospel that motivates our concern for the infirm
and the elderly and the unborn. God is for us – He’s merciful and
kind and compassionate and forgiving, and proves it by the Cross
of Christ. Repentance now has a goal, and that goal is Jesus.
Faith knows Him as the Lord our Righteousness, our Rock and our
Salvation. Faith knows that Jesus’ death and resurrection and the
forgiveness found in Him are the only real Good News there is in a
world full of bad news. Faith sings, Jesus, Jesus, only Jesus,
can my hearfelt longing still. And faith follows Jesus in the
way of discipleship, just as Israel followed the Lord God through
the wilderness as He led them in a pillar of cloud by day and a
pillar of fire by night.
Your Baptism is the Holy Spirit’s call to follow
Jesus, just as surely as our Lord called Andrew, Simon, James and
John. It’s God’s call to take up your Cross and walk in the way
of the Cross you were marked with in Baptism. Baptism is God’s
call to be with Jesus where He makes Himself available to you – in
His Word and Sacraments. Preaching and water and bread and wine
are the masks behind which Jesus is present for you and your
salvation. His saving death is there in these Means of Grace.
His life is there. Your life and death are there too, taken up
into Jesus to be protected by Him forever.
It’s true. It’s true if the modern-day
sophisticates we live among believe it or not. This is the only
life there is – in Jesus. It’s the only salvation there is. The
only forgiveness there is. Accept no substitutes. Don’t be
deceived by any counterfeits. Repent and believe the Gospel each
and every day of your life, until the Lord ushers you into that
heavenly day that will never end. For as the Scripture says,
You have died and your real life is hidden with Christ in God.
Through repentance and faith, we show we take that
seriously. We show that we take God at His Word.
In Nomine Patris. . .
