[Machine transcription]
Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father, from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Brothers and sisters, looking at the gospel reading today for the text of the sermon,
please be seated. A church custodian was painting the pastor’s office,
and to avoid opening an additional gallon of paint, he mixed a gallon of paint with some thinner
and was able to cover the entire office with it. But it didn’t look very good,
And the pastor wasn’t too happy with it.
And the next day when the custodian came into work, he found a note from the pastor that
said, “‘Repaint, repaint, and thin no more.'”
Repent.
It’s one of those churchy words that people don’t like to hear.
It’s a very law-sounding word, a confrontational word.
It’s convicting and usually heard in a negative connotation.
Maybe it brings to mind a guy on a sidewalk with a sign that says,
Repent, the end is near.
Or someone confronts you saying, Repent, you sinner.
Or turn or burn, maybe you’ve heard that one.
And that idea of turning, that idea of turning is a good one in repentance
because the the Greek word translated repent in the New Testament is metanoia
which basically means change. Repent means change but it’s more than that.
Metanoia means changing direction. It means turning, and not just turning from
something, not just turning away from something, but turning towards something
else. Not just turning for the sake of turning, but you’re actually going
somewhere else, particularly some somewhere else better. And that’s what
Jesus is getting at in this Gospel reading today
when he says in it, twice actually, repent.
The Roman governor Pilate, yeah, that same one,
Pilate, Pontius Pilate,
apparently he had killed some Jews
while they were doing sacrifices.
And there was this tower in the city of Siloam
that fell and killed 18 people.
and in it Jesus says repent turn or this will happen to you okay more on that in
a minute put pause on that and we’ll come back to that but in this reading
and in all of his teachings actually Jesus calls people to repent he calls us
to repent, to turn from sin, and that’s another interesting word, sin. It’s also a
churchy kind of negative word that people don’t like to hear and the New
Testament word for sin is really interesting in that it’s not just doing
bad things or doing something wrong or breaking rules or God’s commands and all
that. It is those things, but it’s more. Sin is a word often used in biblical
times for marksmanship, about missing the mark. Sin in New Testament times meant
you were missing the mark, missing the target, missing the target of God’s
commands and His standards for our living. And sin, the word for sin, is missing the
It targets so bad, it’s like you’re shooting
in the complete opposite direction.
Now, you’re that bad of a shot.
You’re not even pointing in the right direction.
The military calls this friendly fire,
that you’re shooting at your own people.
That doesn’t sound very friendly to me, if you ask me.
It’s bad because it damages your friends
and it damages yourself.
And that’s how sin is with us today. When we sin, we damage others, we damage
ourself, and we all can do those things. We all can do things that turn us away
from God and how He wants us to be. We may fail to worship on a regular basis. We
may neglect prayer and reading of God’s Word, we may get into activities on
purpose or not that aren’t what followers of Jesus should be doing,
things that miss God’s target of our behavior in life. In fact, they even put
us in the opposite direction, taking us away from God, and Jesus confronts us
to repent, repent from our sins
because we’re all guilty of sins.
We all do things that can damage others,
not just physically,
but also mentally and emotionally
by gossiping, lying, deceiving,
cheating, and just general overall selfishness
that we all have.
Does that make you a worse sinner
than any of the other people
mentioned in the Gospel reading?
no doesn’t make you any better either you’re a sinner and Jesus confronts you
to repent to turn turn from the sins that cause damage to your relationship
with God and are damaging others too and again repent doesn’t mean just stop it
stop doing wrong stop sinning it’s turning you from them to something
better it’s turning you to Jesus turning you to his forgiveness of your sins
which is just the opposite of what your sins are doing doing damage turning the
other way to being forgiven repenting doesn’t just mean stop doing something
but turn to God. Repentance is turning you to the forgiveness that God offers
from that other direction. Jesus doesn’t confront you to repent, to convict you, to
make you look or feel bad or even condemn you. Jesus wants you to turn to
Him to be forgiven. As it said in the in the Old Testament reading Ezekiel, God
does not desire that people be destroyed by death. Turning to Jesus, He’s the
target we need to be aiming at. John 3 17 says, God did not send His Son into the
world to condemn it, but to save it. And this saving, this forgiveness of Jesus
came at a price. It cost him his life. Jesus came into our world as a human to
live with us, suffer like us, and then to die for us. His death pays the penalty,
the price, the punishment of our sin, and if you will, turns the tide of punishment
of our sin into forgiveness instead.
That’s what Jesus does with his death.
He pays for all of that.
He turns us from our sin and turns us to forgiveness.
And then in his resurrection, in rising from the dead,
Jesus, he lives again and gives that life to us.
Eternal life, life beyond our earthly death.
In resurrection, Jesus turns death into life for us. When we repent, when we
repent, that’s what we turn to, the forgiveness of our sins and eternal life.
Again, God’s desire in confronting you to repent is to forgive you and give you
life and we go back to that gospel reading now we push the play button
there again I promise we go back to that gospel reading is that when Jesus says
repent he says it’s because unless you do his words you will all die likewise
you’ll die like those Galileans or those Siloam crushes okay but no we don’t have
to worry about a Roman governor trying to kill us or a tower falling on us
probably just stay off a campus the tower UT tower won’t fall on you right
no no what what Jesus is saying is if you don’t repent if you don’t turn you’re
going to die now that’s kind of a duh but what he means is you will also die
because no one is exempt in this life because of sin there is no place or
situation in life that is safe from death and Jesus wants you to be turned
from that, turned from death to life. Romans chapter 8 it says, through Christ
we are set free from sin and death. That’s really the basic simplicity of
Christianity, that because of Jesus’s work on the cross and his resurrection
from the dead he’s turned us from sin and death and turned us toward life in
repenting we’re turned from from sin and death and we’re turned to forgiveness
and life that’s the better that Jesus is turning us from in repentance that’s
the better of repentance that the better our life without Jesus just ends up in
grave and Jesus turns us to a life eternal life in heaven that’s the better
that we turn to because we need that repenting is for our benefit see
repenting is making a turn for your good it’s a 180 for your benefit and I look at
it this way, repenting is a U-turn for you, for your benefit. And I turn it this
way, it’s a Y-O-U turn. Repenting is a turn for you, for your benefit, because
God has so much to give you in repentance. Not just putting it on you,
hey stop doing what you’re doing, hey be a good girl or good boy, you know, you
don’t do that sin but more so say come here I have forgiveness for you I have
eternal life for you a y-o-u turn in repentance I mean maybe right now in
your life maybe let’s look at it this way maybe you’re driving through life
right now with a trunk full of sin baggage and you don’t like it you know
it’s wrong, you know it’s bad, you know it’s harmful, and you want to do
something about it, and what do you do? Repent. Turn. Make that Y-O-U turn to
Jesus where there’s forgiveness and eternal life. You don’t have to drive
around with this in your trunk all of your life. It’s not what God wants for
you. Or maybe you’re aiming at the wrong target. You’re aiming at the
wrong target in dealing with your sin turn around turn to Jesus so how do you
do this how do you read how do you repent maybe you’re asking maybe you’re
thinking how do I turn pastor well each Sunday is a great time for that we’re
together we turn to Jesus in confessing our sins and receiving the words of
absolution and forgiveness like like we did earlier and in Holy Communion the
the target of God’s love for us,
the body and blood of Christ,
is put into our hands and into our mouth.
And there’s daily chances, too.
You can turn to God each day in personal confession,
in prayer, in reading His Word,
and also in recalling your baptism.
I mean, it’s great, we got to see it today for Carter.
And for you, recall what happened in your baptism
that each time you do, you’re turning back to Jesus
and what He did for you here in baptism,
what He did for Carter here, and for all of us.
Recall the grace that came into your life in Jesus,
in your baptism.
And even just looking at the word repent
can help you to repent, okay?
You look at the word repent, and it works out in English.
Look at the word repent.
Again, repentance takes us somewhere.
It takes us from sin and takes us to forgiveness and we look at the word repent and it takes us somewhere the word
How does it end?
How does the word repent end?
with a T with a cross
Even the word repent reminds us that at the end of repentance is the cross is the death and forgiveness of Jesus Christ
Repaint repaint and thin no more. That was a joke, right? Okay
But it’s no joke of God calling you to repent and sin no more. He wants you to
turn away from the danger of sin, from death, and to turn to forgiveness in life
in Jesus. May we all make that turn and receive that grace of Christ. Amen.
Now may the grace of God which goes beyond all understanding keep our
hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord, amen.
