A Call to Repentance

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Transcript:

Well, if you’ll take your Bibles out tonight and turn with me to Joel chapter 2, Joel chapter 2, right there in the Old Testament, toward the end of the Old Testament, about halfway through your Bible, Joel chapter 2, we’re going to continue on with our study of the book of Joel, and tonight we’re going to talk a little bit more about the subject of repentance, because in the previous two parts of the book of Joel that we’ve studied, God has really used the prophet Joel to send a warning to the nation of Israel about what is going to happen if they don’t change their ways. And it centers on God allowing them to be overrun by an army of locusts, grasshoppers, who are going to eat everything. And that’s only going to add to their difficulty.

It’s going to be sort of the final straw that’s going to break the country because they’re already going to be dealing with some difficulties in terms of drought and fire and other things passing through. And this This plague of grasshoppers, this plague of locusts, is really going to be the final kick that knocks them out. They’re going to have nothing left, and they’re going to endure some serious suffering, not because God was mean, not because God particularly got his kicks out of seeing Israel suffer, but because God was using this as a chastening opportunity to get Israel’s attention, to get them to understand the wrong that they were doing, and to get them to turn their hearts back to him.

And it’s really no different other than sort of the scope of it. It’s no different than sometimes, you know, we will discipline our kids in that way. You know, I’ve had to swat Charlie’s little behind to keep him from, he’s not too little.

He’s big enough to try to stick his fingers in a light socket, so he’s big enough to get a swat on his behind, so he’ll learn danger. I take no particular joy in having to chasten my children that way. but sometimes you’ve got to come in with a consequence to get their attention, to get them to pause long enough to realize the gravity of what they’re doing and to get them to change course.

And that’s what God is doing with these grasshoppers, with these locusts. And he’s given them a ton of warning. And by the way, he’s also using that plague of grasshoppers, as I’ve told you over the last couple of Sunday nights that we’ve been in this book.

He’s using that plague of grasshoppers to point them to the day of the Lord because the day of the Lord really is the theme of the book of Joel. And he’s warning them that if you don’t repent now, you’re going to face this invasion of locusts, which, by the way, if you think that’s bad, think about the bigger judgment that’s coming if you don’t repent. And so hopefully for Israel, the idea is that they would see how bad things are about to be and realize that they need to change course because the final judgment at the day of the Lord is going to be even worse.

and they would rather see the day of the Lord as a day of salvation as opposed to a day of judgment. And that really depends on which side of the Lord you’re on, whether you have repented and whether you’ve received his mercy or whether you’ve rejected his mercy and remained in rebellion. And so we move on from those first two passages we’ve looked at where he really outlines what is going to happen to the nation of Israel to now we get into the middle of chapter 2, starting in verse 12, and there’s a call all of a sudden to repentance.

and it’s been hinted at in the previous passages, but now God comes out and explains that this is his goal for them to turn and repent. And so we’re going to pick up in Joel 2, verse 12 tonight, and we’re going to look at just a few verses here in the middle of Joel 2. And he starts in verse 12 and says, Even now, this is the Lord’s declaration.

Turn to me with all your heart, with fasting, weeping, and mourning. Tear your hearts and not just your clothes. and return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in faithful love, and he relents from sending disaster.

And who knows? He may turn and relent and leave a blessing behind him so you can offer grain and wine to the Lord your God. Blow the horn in Zion.

Announce a sacred fast. Proclaim an assembly. Gather the people. Sanctify in there.

Aged, gather the aged, gather the infants, even babies nursing at the breast. Let the groom leave his bedroom and the bride her honeymoon chamber. Let the priests, let the ministers weep between the portico and the altar. Let them say, have pity on your people, Lord, and do not make your inheritance a disgrace, an object of scorn among the nations.

Why should it be said among the peoples, where is their God? All right, so this is a call. This is an outward, overt call for the people of Israel to repent.

As I said previously, it’s been hinted at. We see signs through the previous passages where it’s God’s will for them to repent, and Joel has said things along those lines. Even then, I cry out to the Lord.

But now, starting in verse 12, he comes right out and calls for it. Remember when I say Joel calls for this stuff, he is a prophet and so he’s speaking on behalf of God. So if Joel says it as a prophet, then God is saying it.

And Joel, starting in verse 12, comes right out into the open and says this is what God wants. He wants you to repent. This is a call for the nation of Israel to repentance.

And it starts there in verse 12, even now this is the Lord’s declaration, turn to me with all your heart with fasting and weeping and mourning. And that’s basically what repentance is. And I hope you’ll forgive me for repeating myself, but I feel the need to explain repentance every time we talk about it.

Number one, because we don’t hear much about it in a lot of preaching today. We don’t hear repentance discussed. And number two, when we do hear repentance being taught, I think sometimes there’s a confusion about what it actually is.

And so I feel the need to explain it every time until we understand it, because it took me a lot of yours to come to terms with what does repentance actually mean? You know, some people will not talk about repentance at all, even in terms of salvation, and I think they’re missing something. Other people talk about repentance in terms of salvation, and they’ll say repentance means turning away from your sin.

Like, you stop sinning, and Jesus is Lord of everything, otherwise you’re not really saved, and that comes dangerously close to having to earn your salvation, as far as I’m concerned. But it all begins to make sense when we understand what repentance is. The Greek word that’s translated as repent is metanoeo.

You don’t need to know that. It’s not on the test what the word actually is, but the word means a change of mind. That doesn’t mean it’s enough for an intellectual change to take place, but it’s really about a change of our perspective.

A repentant person will have changed their mind about God and will have changed their mind about their sin. It doesn’t mean that we are now suddenly immune to sin because I’ve repented. I’m a repentant sinner, and so I will never sin again, although that’s certainly the goal. We know we will always fall short of that.

A repentant sinner, instead, we have to contrast with the natural sinner. The natural sinner is like the pig who wallows in the mud and enjoys it. I’m not putting anybody down because we were all born in that boat.

We were all like that pig. We wallowed in the sin, and we enjoyed it. We loved it.

We when you sin, I hope there’s a moment afterwards where you think, what have I just done? I’ve let God down. How did I do this again?

And somewhere we’ve gotten the idea too that repentance means you’ll never commit the same sin ever again. I think you can be genuinely repentant and still struggle with the same sin, but that’s the key. Struggling against the sin, not wallowing in it.

See, the natural sinner says, here’s my sin, I love it, and I don’t care what God says. The repentance sinner says, here’s my sin and I hate it the way God does because my mind has been transformed to where I know he’s right and I’m wrong. This is wrong.

And I hate this. Even though sometimes I fall into it, I hate it. Okay, the repentance sinner has changed their mind.

Their mind has been changed toward God and toward their sin. And I think I’ve explained it to you before as saying the natural sinner loves their sin and hates God, where the repentance sinner loves God and hates their sin. That’s the difference.

So repentance, we need to be clear. Repentance is a change of mind, a change of heart, a change of perspective toward God and our sin. Now, does that mean you walk away totally unchanged and that’s all right now?

No, because a repentant sinner will do their best as the Holy Spirit enables them. They will do their best to turn from their sin. But that turning from sin is a result of repentance.

There will be a godly sorrow. There’s a difference between godly sorrow and worldly sorrow. Sometimes we can feel worldly sorrow over our sin because we got caught, right?

I’ll ask my kids sometimes, are you sorry because it was wrong or are you sorry because you got caught? Worldly sorrow says, I’m sorry because I feel bad because I’m having to endure the consequences. I got caught.

Godly sorrow says, consequences or not, I feel guilty over this. I feel sorrow over this because I have sinned against God. I have transgressed and committed an offense against the God I love.

What is wrong with me? That will be a result of repentance. So I don’t want anybody to take this and say, oh, the pastor says as long as I change my mind about sin, I can do it as much as I want.

No, that tells me you’ve never really repented. But I just want to be clear, the turning from sin and the godly sorrow, those are the result of repentance. But repentance itself is a change of mind.

And it’s that change of mind that enables us, It’s that repentance that enables us to come to the Father through faith in Jesus Christ. Because the unrepentant sinner says, what do I need him for? I love my sin. Where the repentant sinner says, I hate this sin and I need God’s forgiveness.

And me cleaning up my act isn’t enough. I need Jesus. It’s that repentance that drives us to seek his mercy that’s not deserved.

So that’s how all of that fits together. And I think it’s important that we understand what repentance is. I think it’s important that we teach repentance toward God, and I think it’s important that we teach repentance in its proper biblical meaning.

Otherwise, we can easily, like I said, we can easily get off in the woods of either ignoring repentance altogether or teaching repentance as though you have to clean up your life when you come to Christ. Otherwise, you haven’t really been saved, which is, as I said, a little dangerously close to having to earn your salvation. We come to Christ through that changed mind. We believe in him.

We put our faith in him. And he does the cleaning up and enables us to turn from our sin. So God was calling the nation of Israel to repent.

Come to that place where you’re broken over your sin and you realize God is right and we’re wrong. That this sin we once embraced is something we need to resist because now we embrace God instead. We love God and hate our sin instead of where we were before.

He’s called on them to repent. Turn to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, with mourning. Come, repent before the Lord.

But he was also telling them that he wanted to see a true inward repentance. You probably know from experience, sometimes people can be outwardly repentant and inwardly rebellious, right? Sometimes you can say the words, I’m sorry.

Sometimes we do this. You can say the words, I’m sorry, and you know you don’t mean it. I’m going to turn around and I’m going to do it again, and I’m going to do it even harder.

All right? I can say the words, and I can put on a great show of repentance and make you think everything’s hunky-dory. And inwardly, I’m just as rebellious as I was before.

And we sometimes can try to put on that show when it comes to the things of God, too. But he wanted to see a true inward repentance rather than this outward feigned put-on show. All right?

And the distinction is subtle because what he’s looking for is evidence of repentance. And we show evidence of repentance through what happens outwardly. But eventually it becomes clear even to us, and we’re not nearly as observant and understanding as God.

It becomes clear even to us whether somebody’s genuinely repentant or they’re just putting on a show. And if we can eventually figure it out, God can figure it out. But he told them in verse 13, he said, tear your hearts, not just your clothes.

Now that sounds like a bloody mess until you realize what he’s talking about here. When somebody was repentant, people in that part of the world, especially in that time, were a lot more emotional than we are. I think it’s part of the influence of British culture on our culture that we tend to be a little more reserved than people in some other cultures.

When somebody was upset, I mean, when we’re upset, we may cry or we may go off and be alone. There are some cultures where you’re upset, you scream in the middle of the street, and you tear your clothes. And that was the sort of thing they did.

When somebody was truly repentant, they would tear their clothes, and they would put on sackcloth, a potato sack, basically. They’d put on burlap and wear that around and put ashes on their face, wallow around down in the dirt because they are really upset over what they’ve done. They are trying to show their repentance.

And God said to the Israelites, don’t just go through the show of tearing your clothes and putting on sackcloth and ashes. Don’t just go through the outward show. It’s your heart that needs to be torn.

If your clothes are torn, that’s great. If you’re showing it outwardly that you’re repentant, that’s great. But what I really want to see is on the inside, evidence of repentance.

So God was looking for more than them just putting on a show. He wanted to see true evidence of repentance. And the end result of that true inward repentance would be that they would actually turn back to God.

Because you can easily rip your clothes and roll around in the dirt and cry and sling snot everywhere and then go right back to your idols the next day. But God said, if you’re tearing your heart, not just your clothes, the end result would be that they would actually turn back to Him. He says that in verse 13 because he told them, excuse me, tear your hearts, not just your clothes, and return to the Lord your God.

This inward repentance would show up that they actually would turn toward God. It wouldn’t just be the show and then the next day back to the same old idolatry. That things are going to be different from now on.

We are going to walk with the Lord like we haven’t been doing. And that’s going to be evidence of the repentance. That we really have understood that God is right about this and this sin of idolatry is wrong.

Evidence that we really believe that, that our minds really have been changed, that our focus, our perspective, our hearts really have been changed on this, is that we’re going to turn and walk with God in the way that we should have been doing all along. So God called Israel in the book of Joel to repent. But there were some things that they needed to understand in order to be able to repent.

They needed to understand the deadly effects of their sin. We have to understand that our sin is wrong. It’s not just an alternative.

It’s not just another viable option. It’s not just a choice. But when God says no and we do it anyway, it’s sin and it’s wrong.

And we can apply that to all sorts of things that go on in society. We can apply that to things that go on even in the lives, in the hearts of church people. God says these things are wrong and we try to justify it.

But we’ve got to understand that anytime we sin, it’s an offense against God because we’re rejecting him and his standard and saying, I’d rather do what I want instead. And we see that in verse 13, he says, this is something to tear your hearts over. This is something that should rend your hearts.

This is something that you should recognize for the gravity of the situation that it has. And even in saying in verse 13 that God is slow to anger, that says there’s something here that would make God angry. We need to realize that when we sin, it’s an offense that bothers God.

And the world likes to think God’s just loving and accepting. He is that. But God is also holy.

And God’s not obligated to accept just whatever kind of behavior we’re willing to give Him. This is true for believers and it’s true for the world as well. We need to realize that sin is something that is an offense against God.

And so for them to repent, they needed to understand the deadly effects and consequences of their sin. Because if they didn’t realize that, then what in the world do we need to repent from? If it’s just another choice that God’s okay with, whatever it might have been, in their case, idolatry.

But if my sin is just another choice God’s okay with, then why do I need to repent? We’ve got to understand what a big deal it is. But we’ve also got to understand, they needed to understand the gracious nature of God.

Because that’s the only reason repentance is any good, is because God is willing to forgive. We see His gracious nature here. It says in verse 13, for He is gracious.

He is gracious and compassionate. God is both of those things. Sometimes when we think about the Old Testament, we don’t necessarily think of God in those terms. But the same God who showed grace to his people, the same God who gave people centuries to repent in the Old Testament, is the same God who was gracious enough to send his son to be the ultimate sacrifice for our sins.

We see his grace on display. If we know where to look, we see his grace on display all throughout Scripture. It’s that he is gracious, he is compassionate.

God is slow to anger. Yes, even in the Old Testament, God was slow to anger. Remember back to the book of Obadiah that I taught on earlier in the fall, late summer.

And we talked about God’s destruction of the Edomites. For a thousand years, God had been trying to get the Edomites to repent. It took a thousand years before God stepped in and unleashed judgment on them.

God’s a whole lot more patient than you or me. It says He’s slow to anger. God is angered over sin, but God is also so merciful that He’s willing to give us space and grace to repent.

He’s abounding in faithful love. He’s not just abounding in love when we’re lovely, when we’re lovable, but He’s abounding in faithful love. His love continues faithful toward us even when we mess up.

So how can God be angry and love us at the same time? Again, I refer you back to parenting. How can you be angry with somebody and love them at the same time?

And I don’t think it’s by accident that God describes himself as a father. I’ve learned, I’ve gained more understanding about the character of God from raising children than from listening to any sermon. All right, because when God describes himself in his word as a father, I begin to understand how that works.

He can be angry with our sin and still love us. His love toward his people, it abounds and it’s faithful even when we’re unlovable. And he relents from sending disaster.

So why would Joel tell them to repent? Because they served a God or sometimes didn’t serve a God, but they were bound to a God who is gracious enough that he’s willing to forgive. Even when they had done everything they could to shake their fist at God, God was still there saying, you know what, if you just come back and repent, all will be forgiven.

If you’ll just come back and repent, I’ll take you back. Yes, this sin is serious. It’s a big deal. It’s got to be punished.

But if you’ll come back and repent, I’ll take care of that. If it weren’t for a God like that, no amount of repentance would matter. We’d just be begging and pleading with somebody saying, nope, nope, you blew it.

But he’s a gracious God. We see not only his gracious nature, but his merciful response, which shows up in verse 14. It says, who knows?

Who knows? He may turn and relent and leave a blessing behind him. so you can offer grain and wine to the Lord your God.

Now, I’ve wondered about that verse. He might turn and relent. Who knows?

He might do it. He might change his mind. From our perspective, I don’t believe God ever changes his mind.

But from our perspective, the best way for our finite minds to understand, it would be to us like God was changing his mind. But God might change course from what he’s told us if we’ll just repent. And he says that you may have grain and wine to offer to the Lord your God.

And I’ve wondered about that, like I said, because thinking this is a sign of God’s grace, that he might turn from what he’s announced as his plan, and might give you blessings just so you can turn and give those blessings back to him. I know God is merciful, so I’m trying to understand how this works. And here’s how I’ve got it worked out.

I’ll tell you, this is my opinion, because I’m not sure that this is what this means, but this is what I think it means. that God might turn and bless them so abundantly, not that he would give them a little bit of grain and wine and then they’d have to take that grain and wine to give an offering, but that God might bless them so abundantly and turn with grain and wine that they had not only enough to support themselves, but they would have enough left to resume the temple rites. That’s my understanding of this.

Study that for yourself. I might be wrong. But to me, it looks like the prophet Joel is saying, You know, God might, God might, if you repent, relent from sending this disaster, and he might bless you abundantly.

He might bless you abundantly, as abundantly as he was going to judge you. Because one of the things that God said was that they were going to be so impoverished that they wouldn’t even have anything to offer at the temple. So I think this is, in contrast, is saying God might bless you more than you can imagine.

You’ll even have enough left to take to the temple. And this is something we see throughout the Old Testament in various places. that God loved it when people came back and repented, even without God having made a promise that if you’ll repent, then I’ll do this instead.

You know, like sometimes I have to negotiate with my children, okay? It all goes back to parenting. Sometimes I will negotiate with my children.

All right, you’ve both earned a spanking here, but whoever tells me the truth, if you’ll tell me the truth now, I know you’ve lied up until now, whoever tells me the truth will not get the spanking, and you know, we have to kind of go through this thing. I will relent if you’ll do the right thing. But God delights in the Old Testament when people didn’t even get that negotiation.

God wasn’t even telling them, all right, I’ll relent if you’ll do the right thing. But when people were so repentant that they didn’t have to make a deal with God, they just were going to repent. And they said, maybe he will relent or maybe he won’t.

But either way, we’re going to repent because God is right and we’re wrong. We saw that with the Ninevites. I’m looking forward to preaching through the book of Jonah if the Lord tarries long enough.

Because I’ve realized some things about the book of Jonah here lately. Here’s the big scoop I figured out about the book of Jonah. Jonah didn’t refuse to go to Nineveh because he was scared of the Ninevites.

Jonah refused to go to Nineveh because he hated the Ninevites. He was kind of racist toward the Ninevites, if you want to get right down to it. It wasn’t that he was scared of what they’d do to him.

He was afraid they might repent. He was afraid they might turn to God. I’ve taught that wrong.

And the Ninevites, it’s interesting, the Ninevites had this, these pagan people had it right more than the prophet of God did, because Jonah’s perspective was on himself and what he wanted. The Ninevites came along though, and his begrudging preaching to them, and the Ninevites, without any negotiation from God, just said, we’re repenting, and maybe God will turn away his wrath, maybe not, but we’re still going to repent because he’s right, and we’re wrong and this is the right thing to do. And what did God do?

He spared the Ninevites. That’s the kind of thing God loves to see. When we’re not repenting because we’ve made some kind of deal and it’s going to work out well for us, but when the people turn and repent to God because we know that He’s right, because we feel it in our hearts, we have this conviction, He’s right, our sin is wrong, and whether we still have to face the consequences for what we’ve done or not, we’re going to repent because we want to be right with God.

That’s what He’s calling them to do. And Joel said, maybe, maybe God will relent. But still there’s this need here for repentance.

And we see him outline in this passage who it was that needed to repent. In verse 15, he says, blow the horn in Zion, announce a sacred fast, proclaim an assembly. One of the things that they were going to do as evidence of repentance was they were going to do it in public.

And I don’t mean put on a show in public. I mean, they were genuinely going to come in public and confess and repent. That doesn’t sound comfortable, does it?

They were going to go and air the dirty laundry in public. They were going to get together, all the people from the nation who could, were going to gather in this solemn assembly and repent together. Imagine if we said we’re going to have a church-wide day of repentance and we’re going to come together and we’re going to talk to each other about the sins we’ve committed over the last year and air the dirty laundry and really get right with God.

How many are showing up that day? We like to hide those things and we like to repent and deal with them secretly, don’t we? Because that’s more comfortable.

But they were going to be so gripped by their need for repentance that they weren’t going to care who knew about their idolatry and the sin in their heart. They were coming together. And by the way, I’m not suggesting that we have to do this.

This was a specific call to the nation of Israel. We can go directly to the Father through Jesus. But they were told, you know what, as I’ve heard people say, lead with your mistakes.

Get out there and just let’s lay it out all on the table. I was reading about a pastor today who, in the midst of all these scandals, he’s developed a group of people around him that they talk about the problems they face in their spiritual life. They are very open with each other.

He’s developed a group of about five men around him, and they’re just totally transparent with each other about their spiritual condition. And he said, it’s to the point, and this is where I wanted to get, it’s to the point where if somebody came and said, Brother so-and-so, I know a secret about you, he could honestly say, you don’t know anything about me that these other five men don’t already know. That’s what they were doing.

Because when you get it all out in the open, when nobody’s hiding anymore the sins that they’ve committed, when nobody’s hiding the struggle anymore, it makes it a lot harder to go back to your home and resume your secret idolatry or whatever it was, because everybody knows. Everybody knows what to be watching for. They were going to hold each other accountable.

And they were going to say in public what they were repentant for. That’s some serious business. Again, I think it’s important to be open about our struggles and our failures and our shortcomings.

It’s not healthy for us as a church to come in on Sundays and put on a mask and act like we’re all just perfect little people. We all know that’s not true. At the same time, I’m not saying we need to have a criticism session where we all have to openly tell everyone.

But I’m telling you, if people decide I’m going to start confessing publicly, that’s a good indication they’re serious about being repentant. So again, I’m not saying that that is a prescription for us. I’m saying it’s a description of how repentant they were, that they were getting serious about bringing this sin out into the open and letting sunlight be a disinfectant here.

The whole nation needed to repent. Everybody had stuff to repent from. And we see in verse 16 that he says, Gather the people, sanctify the congregation, assemble the aged, gather the infants, even babies, nursing at the breast. He said, everybody in the country, from the oldest to the youngest, nobody here is exempt.

We’re all in this together. Now, I know that the babies had not consciously done anything for which they needed to repent or could repent. We’re all born sinners, but they hadn’t at that point started consciously exercising that job description.

But that’s a way of describing there’s nobody in the nation of Israel who was exempt. There’s nobody in the nation of Israel who could say, no, I’m good enough. He talks about the priests and the religious leaders of the country.

They needed to be involved too. Everybody, everybody was to come and repent. And I think sometimes we’ll hear a message, maybe from me, maybe from somebody else.

And our thoughts are, and I’ve done this when I’m sitting out in the pews, our thoughts are, oh, I’m so glad so-and-so’s here. They need to hear this. Right?

Well, he said, you get the aged together all the way down to the nursing infants because it’s not they need to hear it. Everybody in Israel needs to know I need to hear it. This repentance is not for somebody out there.

This repentance is for me. And then I love the way verse 16 ends. Verse 16 ends by saying, Let the groom leave his bedroom and the bride her honeymoon chamber.

You drop everything and get yourself to where you’re going to repent. I mean, this is pretty important if you’re saying leave your honeymoon. I can tell you the last time I missed church without being sick was on my honeymoon.

We left the church after the wedding. We were headed to Santa Fe. We drove that night to Amarillo, and we were so exhausted because it was such a long day.

We had talked about getting up and possibly going to church somewhere in Amarillo the next morning before we hea

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