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You may be seated and you can
turn to Jonah chapter three. It's funny that Chaz should call
me any sort of doctor seeing as he's actually getting his
doctorate in Jonah. And now I am preaching a sermon
to a guy who has literally written a book or is about to write a
book or something, about to do something really important that
I haven't done. So this is a little nerve wracking. But I want to thank you for allowing
me to be a part of this. Also, this was supposed to be
like a five-part sermon series where each of us were supposed
to like trade spaces in each other's churches, kind of creating
this space for a little bit of like a pastoral break in our
preaching rhythm. Well, somehow I'm preaching three
out of the five weeks. How did I—what's going on? I feel like I've gotten the short
stick. But actually, I've been greatly
blessed because this series has meant a lot to me. It has worked
its way into my heart and I am truly grateful for it and truly
grateful to be able to preach it here again, even in front
of such a great body of believers. Jonah chapter 3, we will be looking
at verses 1 through 10. Now the word of the Lord came
to Jonah the second time. saying, arise go to Nineveh,
that great city, and call out against it the message that I
am telling you. So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh
according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly
great city, three days journey in breadth. Jonah began to go
into the city, going a day's journey, And he called out, yet
40 days and Nineveh shall be overthrown. And the people of Nineveh believed
God. And they called for a fast and put on sackcloth from the
greatest of them to the least of them. The word reached the
king of Nineveh and he arose from his throne, removed his
robe, covered himself with sackcloth and sat in ashes. And he issued
a proclamation published through Nineveh, by the decree of the
king and his nobles, let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock,
taste anything. Let them not feed or drink water,
but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth and let them call
out mightily to God. Let everyone turn from his evil
way and from the violence that is in his hands. Who knows? God may turn and relent and turn
his fierce anger so that we may not perish. And when God saw what they did,
how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster
that he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it. This is the word of our Lord. Sometimes we wear our emotions, don't we? You've heard the phrase, he wears
his emotions on his sleeves. It's actually an old Shakespearean
phrase. The phrase is reserved for people who instinctively
allow their most intimate of feelings to be portrayed publicly. And it kind of depends. Sometimes
it's a good thing and sometimes it's a bad thing. Sometimes it's
positive in connotation when we wear emotions like joy or
excitement or love or passion. We look at a guy like that or
a girl like that and be like, man, she's great. She wears her
emotions on her sleeves. It's awesome. I think this would
probably be said of my middle son, if you guys, some of you
may know my middle son. He wears his emotions on his
sleeves, and a lot of times that looks like way too much joy and
excitement and energy and passion. But overall, it can be seen as
a good thing. It has a negative connotation, certainly, though,
as well. We would say, you gotta be careful of him. He wears his
emotions on his sleeves. Things like anger, resentment,
or impatience might carry that connotation. I have been claimed
or said to have at times worn my emotions on my sleeves. In
fact, let me bear my emotions to you. I one time, this is unknown,
so this is partly confession, part story. I actually wore my
emotions on my sleeves one time. I have only received a red card
one time in my soccer career. And that happened the day before
in this very room I was ordained to public ministry. I was playing in a soccer league,
I don't even remember the particular circumstances, but it was so
demonstrative and vehement in front of the referee that it
was a straight red, if you're familiar with soccer. If that
goes to show you how I have worn my emotions on my sleeve, that
would be a negative connotation if you're keeping score. But
I suppose wearing your emotions on your sleeve is directly tied
to which emotion is being exhibited. Yet there is one emotion that
is rarely, if ever, exhibited by us, regardless of whether
you are emotive or not. And this is especially true in
the life of most Christians that I meet, including myself. This
is the emotion, or the feeling, of guilt. And similar to it is
its close cousin, shame. You see, none of us naturally
love to express feelings of the condemnation that we feel at
times for the wrong we have done. That's guilt. And none of us
would choose to flaunt the truth we all feel deep inside that
we are actually bad people dressed up in good people's clothing.
That's shame. But biblically speaking, it is
a very dangerous place to not want to wear our feelings of
guilt or shame on our sleeves. Biblically speaking, it is a
dangerous place. to not want, desire, or actually
get about wearing our emotions of guilt or shame on our sleeve. You say, what on earth? What
are you talking about? Because to be honest with you,
biblically speaking, the people of the Bible who actually expressed
these deep emotions of guilt and shame were those who were
most often in the process of repentance. Repentance is wearing the emotions
of guilt and shame on our sleeve. Repentance, the desire when God's
glory confronts us to turn from our sin and fall into God's mercy,
is central to the rhythm of the Christian life, as well as an
important theme for the Bible and characters in the Bible,
and is especially a Christian theme for the Advent time. See, time and time again we are
brought face to face with God's good and perfect standard, the
beauty and the weight of which brings us to our needs. And like
the angel of the Lord clothed in radiant splendor who appeared
to the lowly shepherds who were then, quote, sore afraid, God's
glory humbles us to the ground, fills us with regret, and makes
us yearn for grace, which the Father gladly gives to us as
the angel so graciously goes on to explain, unto you is born
this day in the city of David a Savior who is Christ the Lord. Time and time again, God is at
work to repent us, to restore to us the joy of our salvation,
to bring us back to life as we look at, lean on, and rest in
his son. And Advent itself, along with
its close cousin Lent, is intended to be a penitential season. That's
what Advent is actually all about. We tend to think it's about lights
and chocolates and rainbows and unicorns. It's actually about
repentance. It's a penitential season, a
time when we squint our eyes and look even more intently at
our weakness, our mortality. and our failures revealed by
God's law feeling and expressing outwardly our guilt and our shame.
And doing so creates an extra sense of expectation and urgency
for Christmas morning when the grace of God will arrive in flesh
and blood in a newborn's cry from a back alley in Bethlehem.
Advent is all about repentance and repentance is all about wearing
our guilt and shame on our sleeves and receiving the gracious gift
of Christ's robe of righteousness in the story of Christmas. We find a very powerful example
of wearing repentance on our sleeve in a strange place with
an unexpected people in our Bibles, and that's the story of Jonah
and the Ninevites. That's what we have gathered
around today, which you would probably never heard in a Christmas
Advent series, but here we are. I actually think it's perfect.
I want us to read again chapter 3 verses 1 through 5, but I'll
give away my point here first. I want to look today at two particular
things. I want to show you the blessing
of repentance and what repentance actually looks like, or maybe
I can say this, what repentance instinctively does. Number one,
repentance listens to bad preaching. Repentance listens to bad preaching. The word of the Lord came to
Jonah a second time. You heard that right, a second
time. This is not the first time Jonah was asked to do something
or to say something. It says, arise, go to Nineveh,
that great city, and call out to it the message that I am telling
you. So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh according to the word
of the Lord. Jonah here in this story is a
person who is supposed to proclaim the realities of God's mercy. In fact, I can actually argue
the book of Jonah is all about the unswerving and fully suffocating
mercy of God, the drowning in the belly of a giant whale depths
of God's mercy. And no one, no one escapes God's
mercy in Jonah. It is fully comprehensive in
its scope. Everybody receives mercy at the
end of Jonah. Jonah receives mercy, praise
God. And he's probably the biggest story, part of that story. Random
pagan sailors receive mercy. Violent, treacherous Ninevites
receive mercy. And cows receive mercy. Yes, even cows. But not everybody in Jonah demonstrates
repentance. In fact, I could argue there's
one person and only one person only who doesn't demonstrate
repentance and that's Jonah, the one man who's supposed to
know all about it. Jonah was a half-hearted prophet with a
half-hearted message. He was a half-hearted prophet
with a half-hearted message. First he ran away because he
wanted mercy for only half the people. See Jonah had this scope
of Christian existence that there are good people out there and
that there are bad people out there and he had fit obviously
into the good person category and the Ninevites had slipped
for a long time into the bad person category, and Jonah only
wanted mercy for half the people. Only the good people should receive
mercy. Bad people have no business receiving
mercy from God, and so when God says, hey, I want you to proclaim
mercy to bad people, Jonah ran. He also then, because he ran,
ran into a storm. met up with some pagan sailors
who miraculously play Yahtzee trying to figure out who's gonna
be responsible for this storm and for this scope of judgment.
They find out, oh, it's Jonah. They throw him overboard. The
sailors repent and believe and they find mercy, but Jonah finds
himself sinking to the bottom, baptized in the mercy of God
through the mouth of a whale. Jonah at the bottom of the whale
in the bottom of the ocean offers up a half-repentant prayer for
mercy in chapter 2. Sure, he claims responsibility
for some of his actions, but most of it is actually pinning
it all on God. God, you're after me. God, it's
your fault. You've come after me with your
judgment. You're the bad man here. You're the boogeyman here.
He makes some half-hearted truths regarding the salvation of the
Lord, which is true, but he has no intent on trusting it or even
thinking that it's actually salvific for bad people. He goes halfway into the city
for the second time around when God calls him to go preach. You
see this in chapter three, verse three in our text. So Jonah arose,
went to Nineveh according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh
was an exceedingly great city. It would normally take three
days of journey to cross it. Jonah goes in one day, he goes
halfway through, and then he preaches a half-cocked message. It was pure judgment. 40 days
and Nineveh will be overthrown. And you might be saying, well,
maybe Jonah didn't know that God was really intent to show
mercy. Maybe he didn't know that God
was being gracious in this moment. My friends, couldn't be further
from the truth. He himself had just experienced
Jesus' entrenched mercy. Jesus' saturated mercy. He himself was spit out of that
whale. He found mercy even after half-hearted repentance. And
God says, that's like the salvation I'm going to bring to the Ninevites.
Death and resurrection. In fact, he goes, Jonah, arise,
go to Nineveh, that great city, call out against it the message
that I am telling you. We actually have it in our passage
that it's like the message that I have told you maybe, but no,
it's like the message that I am speaking to you. Yes, there is
a message of judgment. We deserve to die. See great
fish. But there's also transcendent
mercy. See spat up on shore. Now go
to Nineveh and tell them the message that I am speaking to
you, Jonah. And Jonah, with a half-hearted
repentance and a half heart for mercy, cries out, it's judgment,
people, and it's coming. And he only does half the job.
He only preaches to half the people. How do we know this? Well, go to verse six. The word
about what was going on reached the king. But it wasn't through
Jonah's lips. Jonah did half the job. Jonah was a half-hearted prophet
with a half-hearted message, but the Ninevites were full-blooded
sinners and in need of full-hearted forgiveness. This is amazing. It's actually
pretty, it kind of just happens. And he just states it right out
there in our text. 40 days and Nineveh will be overthrown.
And verse 5, it's almost soft spoken. And the people of Nineveh
believed God. They believed Him. They got it. It hit home. Jonah comes to them
with a message of judgment. People, you don't understand. Your sin costs you everything. And it hit. It landed. That message resonated in their
sinful souls. No excuses, no ifs, no buts. It resonated, it rang out. We're
doomed. This is crazy. This is a helpful
understanding for us here in this room, that judgment for
our sin, yes, the sin of this week, the sin of this morning,
the sin of this service, judgment for sin is 100% real. You guys understand that, right?
You guys understand that the sin that we commit today, the
sin that we will continue to commit today, judgment for that
sin is real and exacting. It happened or it will happen. You understand that, right? There's
no getting away. It looks all clean and nice,
but you understand judgment is coming, right? Judgment for our
sin. It's there, it's real. There's
no escaping it. Sometimes in our world, it gets
so bright and with lights and with treats and with soft clothes. It looks all nice, but you understand
judgment is coming, right? I can speak that into a room
like this and we resonate with it, right? It hits home. It hit home for them. Judgment
against your sin is real, and it might beg the question, well,
then, okay, well, what is sin? Well, then what is that? Well,
folks, to be very frank, sin is anything that is not of faith
in Jesus. Sin is anything not trusting
Jesus. And that actually maybe shifts
the goalposts a little bit. Maybe you just thought sin was
just bad things you do. That's part of it. That's one
expression of not trusting Jesus. That was what we call unrighteousness.
That's one category of no faith. But there's also another category
of no faith that looks inherently more Christian, and we call that
self-righteousness. So there's unrighteousness, there's
the bad things we do, but then there's unrighteousness, and
it's the things that we do that we think are good that aren't.
There are things that don't need Jesus to save. There are things
that we bring to God by ourselves and say, God, aren't these things
good enough? Sayings Jesus. that also would
be sin. See Pharisees. This is what we
call religion. There's a view of Christian sanctification
that is all about this kind of performance, where you merely
take your good works and bring them to God as if these things
are actually accomplishing righteousness. This kind of performance is called
self-righteous sanctification. It's all about this mechanism
in our hearts of due. One of the problems with a performance-based
view of sanctification is that it often forces us into an attitude
of self-justification and performance rather than a heart of confession
and repentance. In other words, sanctification
is not growing in your resolve to try harder next time and succeeding. That is not sanctification. Rather, sanctification is confessing
your inability to live up to God's perfect standard and repenting
of your own sin, both unrighteous and self-righteous in subsequent
attempts to self-covering and then desperately crying out for
mercy like it's your last breath. That's sanctification. The growth in the Christian life
is learning to trust in your performance, your strength, and
your righteousness less and less. and learning to trust in Christ's
performance for you, Christ's strength for you, and Christ's
righteousness for you more and more. It's about confessing and
repenting of your failed attempts to save yourself, and it's banking
everything on Christ's successful sacrifice and resurrection to
save you. It's about needing him more,
not less. It's about your growth in righteousness. It's not as much about your growth
in righteousness as much as it's about growing in your need for
his righteousness. Do you hear the difference? The Ninevites, when confronted
with the reality of their sin, yelled out, we're doomed. We've got nothing. That's repentance
and confession. That's sanctification. My friend,
when was the last time you repented like that? Do you even know where the sackcloth
is stored in your spiritual closet? Do you know where the ashes are
kept? Why not? Is it possibly because you don't
fully understand the bottomless mercy of God? Is that it? I don't
know about that. Or is it more because you're
so confident in your own self-covering that at times you just forget
to pull out the sackcloth like it's needed? This is what the Ninevites were
facing. And my friend, even though you and I are just as bad and
broken or worse than the Ninevites, like me this week, maybe you
possibly have recognized at this moment that it's possibly been
a while since you've shed a tear over your sin. let alone sat
in the ash. And really, to be honest, shame
on us. Why are we so afraid of this desperation? Why are we
so afraid of this kind of humility? True repentance is so desperate,
so humble, that like the Ninevites, that even it repents of even
its own repentance. For even in this we fall short.
Like Jonah, all of our repentance is half-hearted. True repentance
isn't about the quantity of its fullness, that is, how much of
the sin you're actually admitting and repenting of. It's about
the desperateness of its emptiness, that is, it has nothing else
but mercy. True repentance wears the emotions
of guilt and shame and turns to the unconditional mercy of
God as its only hope. Two things I want to highlight
about the Ninevites' repentance. Number one, it was fully God-fearing
repentance. In other words, it says very
clearly, they believed God. In other words, they didn't believe
Jonah. They could have picked that Jonah, right? They could
have been like, you? You, man? You're going to tell us about
repentance? Nah, listen, they didn't do that. They heard Jonah's
words as if it was the very voice of God, because it was. It was
God's truth that resonated in their heart because they feared
him at that moment. They might not have been fearing
him all along, but when the word hit, they feared God. It was
all about God. It wasn't about Jonah, but also
it was an indiscriminate repentance. Look what it says at the very
end of verse five, from the greatest to the least of these, they repented. In other words, it wasn't about
each other. They could have gone to one another and be like, I'll
repent if you repent, because you're pretty bad. They could
have done that. They could have said, you're
repenting? Come on, get out of here. You have a lot to repent
of. They could have done that, but they didn't make it about
each other. It was indiscriminate. Each one owned their own sin
and owned their own desperation. In the words of a great man sitting
here today, it's not about who is right, is it? It's about what
is right. And my friends, if God has said
that we have sin and that it deserves his full eternal judgment,
then we ought to be the first to lead in confession and repentance. Can we stop talking about the
sin out there, please? Can the church of Jesus Christ
pick up the sackcloth for the sin in here? Can we do that? Can we start here? From the least
of these to the greatest of these? Repentance listens to bad preaching.
It's totally fine with it. But number two, repentance responds
to God's judgment. This is what I want to talk about
secondly. Repentance responds to God's judgment. Verse five,
the second part, the Ninevites called for a fast. and put on
sackcloth from the greatest of these to the least. The word
reached the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne,
removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and he sat in
ashes. The first thing I want us to
see is that when we respond to God's judgment, we must embrace
our mortality. We must embrace our mortality.
The people of Nineveh immediately begin to fast. Now, I'll be honest,
I fast. I fast regularly, but it's only
for reasons related to diet, exercise, and science. I just
feel better, all right? It just helps me, right? And
I can go a long time without food or water, but it has no
direct spiritual effect if we're just doing it willy-nilly. In
fact, I actually think, biblically speaking, really, I've heard
it this way, fasting is the kale of spiritual disciplines. That's
beautiful, I love that. It's really true. And maybe,
maybe it's not so rhythmic as it is at times forced upon us,
like kale, right? It's not a rhythm we pick up
regularly and get some magic Christian juice out of it. Sometimes
it's particularly forced upon us. Maybe I can say it this way.
Fasting is oftentimes directly circumstantial, based upon what
we're going through. This is certainly true in the
biblical stories. When we experience profound grief and shame, or
when we're in the throes of lament or repentance, those are not
normally the times we gather around to throw great feasts.
I've never had prime rib at a funeral. Just never had it. When we're
grieving together, oftentimes it's often that we'll say, no
thank you, I've actually just lost my appetite. And you're
like, no, no, no, no, really, I think you need to eat. I don't
think you're doing well. They might see that maybe our
face has kind of gone gaunt maybe after several days of not eating.
Or we just look a little tired and famished and it's like, no,
I think food would actually do your body really well. Why? Because at the moment we've
probably taken on a natural fast where we feel this mortality,
where the only food we have to eat, like Job, are the tears
that fall from our face. We're kind of eating ourselves
away in our own depression. I don't know if you've ever been
there before, but that, my friends, that's the perfect time to fast.
That's the time to do it. And it's not so much this time
where we just, like, try to find mortality as if mortality finds
you. As one author says, fasting is not about creating personal
suffering and loss in order to teach ourselves we need God.
Fasting is harnessing the pain that inevitably comes when we
try to obey God in a fallen world, and leveraging our weakness as
an opportunity to hide in Christ, run to him for strength, and
to throw ourselves at the foot of his throne. So we fast because
our sin and the toll that it takes on others. We fast because
as long as we're breathing, we are not yet done sinning. We
fast because natural disasters ravage the world. We fast because
people die of starvation and thirst, lacking the necessities
of life. We fast when cancer tears through
our bodies or those of our loved ones. We fast because the entire
cosmos is groaning for redemption. We fast because Christ has not
yet completed the work he began in the manger, that he comes
to make his blessings known far as the curse is found. There will be times this Advent
season that even the best of Christmas sweets seem dull and
lifeless because of the immense grief, sorrow, and even repentance
that we feel. And my friend, that's the perfect
time to fast and pray. And may God feed your soul during
those lifeless moments. Embrace your mortality. And know
only Jesus and Jesus alone is the resurrection and the life. Remember that he ever lives above
to intercede, his all-redeeming love and his precious blood to
plead. But that his blood atoned for
all our race and now, as the living one, now sprinkles the
throne of his grace. My friend, embrace your mortality.
But also embrace your humility. Not only do they fast, they adorn
themselves in sackcloth, In a true sense, no one can really see
you fasting, spiritually speaking. And in fact, Jesus warned us
about fasting and publicly so as to be seen, maybe contorting
our face or displaying our gauntness in order to be seen. But wearing
sackcloth is actually totally visible. You can't help ignore
that reality. And this is the most crude and coarse of fabrics. It's not comfortable. You wouldn't
take your burlap sack to a tailor or a seamstress and ask them
to do a proper fitting or a proper hemming. It's a humble and base
way of living that reflects the truth that nothing matters except
the grief that I am experiencing, not even what I look like. Maybe
it would be the equivalent of guys having disheveled hair or
women going out with no makeup. That might be kind of the equivalent
today of what we go through when we speak of wearing sackcloth.
We're not caring about what we look like. We wanted to just
ooze out of us our grief, ooze our repentance straight into
our faces and into our clothing. It merely fills the base need
to be covered, much like the fig leaves Adam and Eve sewed
together in the garden. And like John the Baptist's coarse-haired,
honey-stained garment in the wilderness, it preaches a desire
for repentance and renewal, a longing for leaving this old life behind
and humbly crying out to God for deliverance. I guess all that is to say is,
like, sometimes it's alright to come to church messy. In fact,
can I encourage you? Maybe sometimes just roll right
out of bed. If your grief, if your grief is something you can't
shake, my friend, just know you're welcome to church in any condition.
You're welcome here. And the grief that you are experiencing,
God doesn't ask you to make amends for or fix up or doll up before
you come to his throne of grace and find mercy to help in time
of need. My friend, you can come in any condition. Embrace your
humility. We say this often at our church,
and I mean it, it's actually part of like what we believe
to be fundamentally true about our mission. God will often use
your confession more than he will use your competence. There's
a hurting world out there that is dying for a world without
makeup. They're dying for a world, they're dying for a Christian
world that has its hair messy. Can I just bring this into the
house? I was putting my coat up, my kid's coat up in the hallway,
and I was just kind of like rumbling through, trying to get a hanger
and rustling through. And you know what I smelled? And I'm
sorry if this was you. I'm not trying to point you.
I don't know who it was, but I smelled cigarette smoke. Honestly, you're
welcome here. It doesn't matter what you're
struggling with. It doesn't matter what kind of guilt and shame
you're wrestling with on the inside. I praise God that you're here
and there's a throne of grace for you. Whatever you're struggling
with, it doesn't matter. It could be cigarette smoke.
It could be whatever you're bringing in here that's hidden. It's not
worn on your clothes. My friend, you're welcome at
the throne of grace at any time. And there is enough mercy in
Christ to confess and repent of anything you need to confess
and repent of. And you don't have to leave.
You don't ever have to leave that. Embrace your humility. And finally, remember, the king
takes the curse. The word reached the king of
Nineveh. he arose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself
with sackcloth, and sat in ashes." If you notice, the people fasted
and wore sackcloth. You notice also in the back end
of our passage here today that the king issues this order from
his throne and his nobles demanding and commanding all the people,
and even the beasts, even the cows, to dress up in sackcloth
and to fast. Everybody should fast. Remember
their mortality. Everyone should wear sackcloth. Remember your
humility. But the king is the only one
recorded in this story who actually sits in the ashes. And his edict
does not command anyone to sit in the ashes. It's almost as
if it was reserved solely for the heart of the king. This reflects right back to Genesis
3, out of the dust you were made and to dust you shall return.
This act of heaping dust on yourself, of course, has happened several
times through the passages of scripture, biblical stories.
Job, probably most famous of all, where the king now himself
puts on the ashes and remembers the curse, embracing for himself
and for all the people the curse of sin. What a beautiful moment
here. and a representative for the
entire nation and its repentance. The king himself adorns the curse. This reflects Galatians 3.13
that Christ himself, the king of the universe, adorned the
curse by becoming a curse for us. He redeemed us from the curse
of the law by becoming the curse for us. For it is written, cursed
is everyone who hanged on a tree. Not only did he wear the curse,
he also rang out the curse from his lips, this cry of dereliction,
just like we have from the King here in verse nine. Who knows? Who knows if God will save me? Who knows if God will redeem
me? Christ from the cross, my God,
my God, why have you forsaken me? Who knows if I'm even gonna
be saved from this. The King of Nineveh cried out
in repentance with at least a glimpse of hope for mercy and deliverance. But my friend, Jesus, the ultimate
King repenter is the one who cried out in the midst of judgment,
except this King had no hope of escaping judgment. He was
not delivered. He was not shown mercy. And he
was not shown mercy for our sake. so that we might be shown mercy. He was despised, he was rejected
by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, but he
bore our griefs and he carried our sorrows and the Lord has
laid on him the iniquity of us all. He is the ultimate king
of Nineveh. Both in his living and his dying,
Jesus embodies perfectly the humility that you and I, when
faced with our sins, so often fail to embrace. It's one thing
for God to take on flesh and be made man, but for him to do
so in utter weakness as a baby, that's absolutely incredible.
He was born to an unwed girl on a cold night with less than
little renown, and he makes himself utterly vulnerable, susceptible
to the brutalities of this world, capable of even death, and Jesus
was the kind of guy you'd first pity rather than praise. This
is the king of the universe, embracing rejection from his
own people, despised by his generation, treated as a sinner, even though
he himself knew not a speck of sin. And in his incarnation,
in his living and his dying, Jesus wears humility, the weakness
and the shame, the rejection, the mortality that rightly and
only belongs to us. And he did it so that we might
receive membership in the Father's family that only rightly belongs
to him. This perfect weakness, this substitutionary
humility of Christ covers over our limp and lame shows of sorrow
and repentance. It replaces our impotent expressions
of regret, and we are free to have no faith in our own repentance,
though repent we must, but instead to have faith in Christ and his
repentance, who had been perfectly humble, weak, and frail and mortal
on our behalf. You wouldn't know it, but as
you gaze intently on the advent of Jesus with his attendant humility,
that it is used by God to move you back into the rhythm of repentance. As you look at his repentance,
it gives you a perspective on your own sin and the heart for
the motion and rhythm of your own repentance. Seeing Christ
wrapped in weakness, God's aim is to lead you to publicly confess
your own sin. You might ask, well, when does
that happen? At the very least, it happens right here in church.
God gathered us into his house to confess verbally, boldly,
and honestly, as part of the worship, that we are wretched
sinners and desperate frauds. He then causes us to respond
with joy, real and palpable joy, when you hear him say through
the voice of your pastor, the words that I'm declaring to you
now, there is no judgment in Jesus. Every piece and every
part of your sins that you have confessed are freely and forever
forgiven because of Christ, your repentant King. Maybe we can say it this way,
like in verse 10, in Christ, when God saw what they did, how
they turned from their evil way, God relented from the disaster
that he said he would do to them and he did not do it. I pray that you would make the
most of this Advent season, and I pray that you'd repent. I pray
that you would be cut to the core with grief over your sin,
that you yourself would adorn yourself with sackcloth and ashes
and even fast because of the realities of your sin. For without
Christ, you are a short time away from the judgment of God.
But as with Nineveh, you are called to repent so that you
might receive and rejoice in this. You are forgiven. That
is the clothing we now wear, the repentance and delight of
forgiveness. And as God convicts us, let us
confess. And as he brings to us life with
the gospel, let us party. Perhaps you'll sing a little
louder this Advent season. It's good to not just feel what
God works in us, but to actually express it. Just like we were
actually express our repentance, it's good to actually express
the joy of this Advent season. After all, God has gone to the
greatest of lengths to express how he feels for you. He sent
Jesus right up to your doorstep. Sure, it might feel a little
awkward, and that's okay. But Christ has already done all of
this perfectly for us, so it matters not how you come, but
that you come. And besides, even if a cow in Nineveh can do it,
why can't you? This is God's heart, by the way.
In case you're wondering about the cow, you can go all the way back to
the very end of Jonah, chapter four, verse 11. God asked Jonah very
quickly, should I not pity Nineveh, have mercy on Nineveh, that great
city in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not
know their right hand for their left, and also much cattle? God
loves him some cows. God loves him some redemption.
God loves him some mercy. And there's plenty for you. So
repent and rejoice. Let's pray. God, we ask that
you would give us hearts, that delight in the repentance that
you give us in Christ. Father, what an amazing time
to repent where we have the glad tidings all around us. We hear
of endless bliss and, Father, we walk through those doors under
the gateway of repentance. And so, Father, what a joy it
is to confess loudly and to express that even with sackcloth and
ashes. to come into church all gaunt and smelling like smoke.
Father, we get to walk in knowing we have sin to bring to the table
of which Christ has fully forgiven us and has plans to redeem us
all from. And so, Father, we get to delight
in sitting at your table. And Father, we do so knowing
that this isn't just our joy, but Father, this is joy that's
reserved for the entire world. And so I pray that you would
allow us to proclaim and outwardly express, yes, our repentance,
but maybe even in a more significant way and louder way, our joy.
And we pray these things through Christ, amen.
Clothed in Repentance
Series The Clothing of the King
Repentance listens to bad preaching and responds to God's judgement.
| Sermon ID | 1220231828596840 |
| Duration | 43:52 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday - AM |
| Bible Text | Jonah 3 |
| Language | English |
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