What Jesus Demands of the World - Lesson 2

Demand #2 - Repent

 

From that time Jesus began to preach, saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” —Matt. 4:17

I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance. — Luke 5:32

The men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, something greater than Jonah is here. —Matt. 12:41

Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. —Luke 13:3, 5 

Jesus began His ministry with a call for repentance. His authority over all creation was the basis for this call. We get caught up in a few problems when we go down the road of WWJD or “What would Jesus Do?” The concept is generally well motivated but Jesus speaks from a position that we can’t and did things that we can’t. He was not just a good example and sometimes He was beyond being an example and stood in the role of redeemer. 

Last week we studied the way in which Jesus confronted the Pharisees and even the disciples. We don’t confront in the same way because we are sinners saved by Grace. We are beggars who have found the Bread of Life and Living Water. We are not the Bread of Life or Living Water but we know Him and as His servants offer the Gospel to the World. We need to keep that in mind and allow it to produce the appropriate heart attitude as we communicate Christ’s demands to the world. The command to repent is something we should communicate with to the world without any air of superiority. When Jesus said, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” it came from the Son of God, the perfect Lamb of God who would take away the sins of the world and it came with all authority. When I say, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” it comes from a sinner saved by Grace simply trying to be a servant to the one who sends the message and, except of the Grace of God, I’d be just as lost as any man on earth. See, the problem? We need to always remember the person and work of Christ as we hear and communicate His commands and remember our sinfulness and the nature of our salvation. We can glory only in Christ as we communicate His commands or we’ll start to become Pharisees and we just don’t have the background to even be good Pharisees. 

You can’t make a person repent. I’m sure that the legal system would have institutionalized it if they could but you simply can’t do it. In the movie “Cool Hand Luke” the idea of a forced repentance is played with and there is even a bit of glorying in a refusal to repent. The famous line is, “What we have here is a failure to communicate” and we usually think of the Warden saying that. However, I prefer it when Luke says it because it makes the point of the film. He, Luke, would not repent. Not now, not ever, never. You could kill him but you couldn’t make him repent. So they killed him shortly after he uttered the famous line. In the end with the others remembering him for his sin, is a picture of him that was a fake so it was a lie about sexual sin, and the picture was torn and put back together with the rips forming a picture of a cross. It is not a happy film about repentance but a very truthful film about unrepentant human nature. We glory in our stubbornness and celebrate the stubbornness of those who have gone before us. 

Nothing keeps us from repenting except our desire to continue to be lord of our lives. Luke wouldn’t repent and his only prayers to God were for deliverance from the mess he was in. We don’t naturally turn our lives over to the Lordship of Christ. To repent means to change your mind. We sometimes think it means being sorry about sin or that we are trying to improve ourselves. However, we need to change the way we think, what we value, and what our purpose in living is. It is a radical change in thinking and not simply an incremental improvement in moral behavior. Only by contemplating the perfection of God will we fully understand the depth of repentance that we need in our lives. 

In Luke 3:8 we hear the words, “Bear fruits in keeping with repentance.” Then it gives examples of the fruits: “Whoever has two tunics is to share with him who has none, and whoever has food is to do likewise” (Luke 3:11).  Repentance is the inward change and the fruit shows up in actions. We are saved by faith alone but faith without works is dead (not really a living faith). Just like faith, true repentance produces fruit in this world. 

Conviction of our sins is a gift of God. When Jesus said, “I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance” (Luke 5:32), He wasn’t saying that some folks were righteous but He was saying that conviction of sin and repentance were necessary conditions to hear God’s call. The Pharisees didn’t hear God’s call because they judged themselves to be righteous. Some of us wouldn’t be bold enough to say we were righteous but we would be bold enough to say that we are pretty good people and that people in general are good. When the prodigal son repented he said, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son” (Luke 15:21). The prodigal knew that his offenses were against God in a fundamental way and the nature of sin is rebellion against God, cosmic treason, or as Piper puts it, “an assault on God.” 

When Jesus taught his disciples to pray He taught them (and us) to say, “Forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us” (Luke 11:4). Jesus drew the link for us so that we could see that our sins are against God and an offense to God in the same way that someone sins against us in this world. Sin puts us in debt to God for an offense. To belittle our offense is to forget the price that was paid for our offenses. 

Piper says, “Repenting means experiencing a change of mind so that we can see God as true and beautiful and worthy of all our praise and all our obedience.“ 

People have a natural desire to see cause and effect. Since things go well most of the time, we want to know why bad things happen. We can think when things are going well that God must be pleased with us and that repentance can be put on hold. However, all humans are sinful and have a need to repent. When a group of people came to Jesus with reports of bad things (People killed by Pilate’s massacre and those crushed by the fall of the tower of Siloam (Luke 13:1-4) Jesus warned those who brought the news that “Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish” (Luke 13:5). Everyone needs to repent and everyone needs to be born again. 

When Jesus said “perish” he meant the final judgment of God will condemn those who don’t repent. Jesus said that “The men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, something greater than Jonah is here” (Matt. 12:41). We are responsible for our response to the call for repentance and self righteousness is a strong tower that we can hide in until we perish. If a person refuses then Jesus message is “Woe to you” (Matt. 11:21). 

With the kingdom in your face and Grace being offered as the Gospel is preached, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:15). The Gospel is good news because Christ has arrived to save sinners before the judgment occurs for our sins. Who would refuse the offer? Well stubborn mankind would but the wind of the Holy Spirit will bring life to dead hearts and save sinners.   

Our task is to preach with all humility and joy (in obedience to Christ) that “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem” (Luke 24:46-47). 

 So Repent. Be changed deep within. Replace everything in your live that dishonors God or steals glory from Christ in your ways of thinking, valuing, and purposing with ways that treasure God and exalt Christ.

Demand #3 – Come to me

 

Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.—Matt. 11:28

Jesus stood up and cried out, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.”—John 7:37

Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger.”—John 6:35

You refuse to come to me that you may have life.—John 5:40

When he had said these things, he cried out with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out.” The man who had died came out.—John 11:43-44 

I am continually challenged to obey this demand of Christ day by day. I frequently stubble on a “can do” attitude and become distracted with little things that are urgent but not important. God graciously reorients our lives after salvation so that He is supreme but we allow other things to occupy the place of God. 

For some of us even the niche that once held an idol needs to be removed. For example, when Jesus said, “if you eye offends you pluck it out” then He was using hyperbole to tell us that we need to eliminate the source of the problem. When I use the term “niche” I mean the little spot in a wall that is hollowed out so that a statue or idol can occupy the spot. We may get rid of the idol but sometimes we need to remove the idols former resting place. We need to eliminate the culture and practices that led us into sin. So that, as we walk down to the altar with Christ alone seated on the throne we won’t turn aside to a favorite former idol of ours. It could be health, family, job, friends, sports, music, food, sex, hobbies, or retirement. He is to be the only thing we worship and expend our life for. Everything else is to be in submission to Him. That is the process of sanctification in which we are “sanctified” or set aside for a single purpose which is Christ. 

Our lives should show that we savor Christ and find Him to be of supreme worth. This is not supposed to be a burdensome command and Jesus tells us that “These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full” (John 15:11). We do not labor to justify ourselves before God because of our sins. Jesus carried that load for us. He said, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matt. 11:28-30). While Jesus will rebuke (strongly rebuke those who persist in sin) us when we pursue sin, we do not see Jesus abusing His authority. He is gentle in His rebuke of disciples when He simply says they are sinners and only strongly rebukes a disciple when the disciple actually is verbally opposing His mission on earth. He is patient with us. I’m still alive so that is plenty of evidence that He is patient. His demands are, in part, His yoke and burden. Christ has a yoke and burden for us but it isn’t hard. The root of understanding why it isn’t hard is to understand that He purchased your salvation on the Cross so that you can walk in a new life. 

We do have issues. We do find this walk hard at times. Jesus said, “The gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life” (Matt. 7:14). It isn’t Jesus that makes it hard. Our sin nature that opposes a sacrificial love of Christ and the world at large is opposed to Christ and values things we don’t value. Would a martyr say that Jesus’ burden was light? I think so. I think those under the altar would generally say that Jesus’ burden was light and that dying for Him was an honor. 

Jesus is the one who lifts our burdens, satisfies our souls, and gives life. Those who hate Christ and would kill my body can’t really take my life. Those in the world that hate Christ are spiritually dead, are to be pitied and prayed for, and can’t really keep life. One martyr named Jim Elliot said, “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.” He is under the altar now waiting for the rest of the martyrs to arrive and I’m sure he would say that Jesus burden was light. 

Jesus demand that we come to Him is a demand that we come and drink because, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink’” (John7:37) because “Whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty forever. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (John 4:14). He demands we come to Him because he is, “the bread of life; he who comes to me shall not hunger” (John 6:35). 

We are in desperate need and Christ sustains us. We need Him on a day to day and moment to moment basis. The tragedy of this need is our refusal, apart from a gracious move of the Holy Spirit, to admit our need and come to Him. It was the same in the first century. Jesus cried, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not!” (Matt. 23:37) and said “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life” (John 5:39-40). 

In Jesus day, as in our day, people don’t come to Christ and submit because they don’t want to come to Christ. Realize that when your heart turned to God it was in response to the Holy Spirit’s move on your heart. “The light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light . . . everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light” (John 3:19-20). So we needed that work of God on our heart. Jesus said, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him” (John 6:44) and “No one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father” (John 6:65).  For me, this is one of the greatest encouragements to evangelism that I know of. If I thought that it depended on a stubborn man and my ability to “sell” the Gospel then I would despair is evangelism. How could I pray for a person that rejected the Gospel time after time? What would I pray? Would I pray for a better argument? I guess that would be my only recourse if that were the truth. However, the truth is that God is saving folks. He is drawing people. Drawing is a Greek word with a meaning that is closer to dragging so let’s just say He is dragging people to Christ. He is granting salvation and dragging folks to Christ therefore I can pray for anyone and it doesn’t discourage me to hear them say “no” because I’m only concerned with my Father’s work on earth. 

God can conquer all our suicidal resistance and prepare the Bride of Christ. Lazarus came out when he was called and he was just as dead as those without Christ. Every Sunday, when the invitation starts, begin to pray for resurrections! Pray that God will call names, remove hearts of stone, and put heart of flesh in those who don’t know Him. When we see someone go forward and confess Christ as savior then praise God for a resurrection. You will have seen a miracle. 

For everyone who knows Christ, remember that you must abide in the Vine. This coming to Him isn’t for a moment. Coming to Him is for a lifetime and isn’t a thing to be neglected. Pray that each of us would see the truth and beauty of Christ and desire it more than anything this earth can offer.