Repent and Turn Back

The speaker gives an update on his life, mentioning his past as a pastor and his wife's upcoming retirement. He also talks about his mission trip to Malawi, where he supported a national crusade for repentance. He shares a story about the devastation caused by Cyclone Freddie and emphasizes the importance of repentance in turning away from sin and turning back to God. He references scripture passages from Acts and Ezekiel to support his message. to you. For those who may not be as familiar with me, I had served as pastor here between 1986 and 1993, so just a few weeks ago in August marked 30 years since I'd completed my work here, and that's hard to believe that time has gone by so quickly. Just to give you a quick update, Linda's not with me today because she has obligations at our church, the First Brethren Church. She's still working up in Elkhart for an accounting firm and is hoping to retire next May. I think she's a little envious because I got to retire last year, and so she can't wait. Our son Roger, who you remember, is going to turn 39 in November. He lives down in North Webster and he works in the communications industry and fiber optic splicing and all. Our daughter Kathy, who was born a month after we moved to Napanee, is going to be 37 soon. She and her husband live over on Marion Street nearby, so not far away. I retired in January of last year after working at the prosecutor's office, so I've had a lot more free time to do some things that I really care about in trying to serve the Lord. One of them was a chance to join on a mission trip over to Malawi in Africa. In Malawi, if you're not familiar with where all the countries are, I certainly wasn't until we went, it's kind of in the southeastern part of the continent, and it's south of the equator, so they're on different seasons than we are. Malawi is a small country. When you look at a map, you can see some of the ones that have a bigger land mass, and Malawi doesn't always show up real well. It is a tiny little country. But I had a chance to join a group of 41 people from the United States with the Time to Revive ministry that went over in June and supported an effort that pastors in Malawi had. They planned a national crusade for repentance through the whole nation, and so we were there to support them, and we had a variety of other activities that were going on at the same time. And, Carl, you can change the slide here. This is from Malawi, and this is an example of what almost stopped us on our mission trip. In February, there was Cyclone Freddie that swept in from the Indian Ocean. It hit Mozambique and then on into southern Malawi, and there were sudden downpours of rain. The terrain in southern Malawi, as I was describing to someone else, is kind of flat and rolling, but you see these conical-shaped mountains off in the distance that are solid rock. And that water, the rain, hit the side of the mountains and rushed down, and it swept away houses and churches and villages and farms. And in this case, there was a stream under a bridge, and it just washed that whole bridge out. So we were concerned at first we might not be able to go in June, but by June, we were able to travel there, although they still have a long road ahead of them in reconstructing. When I was in the southern city of Blantyre in Malawi, it was very close to this region where that bridge was washed out. It was where some of the heaviest rains hit. We were having lunch with some pastors, and I talked quietly with the local pastor next to me, and I asked him, were you affected by Cyclone Freddie? And he said his home and his church were okay, but he was involved in a recovery effort. He was helping to locate bodies buried in the mud, and he said that he and the team he was on found about 20 different people. So it was a terrible devastation for them to go through. But the reason that I'm showing you this picture today is really an illustration of what I want to talk about for today, which is the issue of repentance. If you were driving down a road and you came up on a scene like that, and we can look at that picture of the washout again, and you came up on a scene like that, you would realize right away there's no way you could drive any further. You'd have to stop, turn around, and go the other way. And you would hope that you found a safe road to drive on, and you didn't run off a washout like that, which would be a terrible thing to run into. The question is, what would you turn back to? I think there's a spiritual comparison, and it's in that issue of repentance, and that's what I want to talk about today. The scripture for today comes from Acts chapter 26, verses 19 through 20. I want to read that for you now. So then, King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the vision from heaven, first to those in Damascus, then to those in Jerusalem, and all Judea, and then to the Gentiles. I prayed for each that they should repent, and turn to God, and demonstrate their repentance by their deeds. I want to talk for a little bit about the background or the context of this scripture passage. These are words spoken by the Apostle Paul, who was known as Saul growing up until he became a Christian, and among Gentiles was known as Paul. Paul had been a Jewish religious leader, a Pharisee, meaning he was very highly educated in his faith and in scripture, which for him is what we would call Old Testament. He, as you read in the book of Acts, very clearly knew several languages, was able to read Hebrew, and was familiar with Greek, and probably knew some Latin as well because of the culture that he was in. He was very zealous in his faith, and he felt that these followers of Jesus Christ that he was hearing about and seeing were a cult, a sect, were an offense to the Holy God who he worshipped and who he had studied very carefully. So Paul was one of those who persecuted the early Christians, and in fact at one point in time he was on his way to Damascus in Syria to hunt down Christians and to arrest them, to persecute them. It was on that journey to Damascus that Paul had that vision of a blinding light and met with, was encountered by the risen Lord Jesus, and that experience turned Paul around and made him realize Jesus was actually the Messiah that they had been looking for. And as Paul said later on in Scripture, he counted everything else as a loss. All of his education, all of his position and formality, all of that was a loss for the sake of knowing Christ, and from there on followed where Jesus Christ led. As a result, Paul went on several missionary journeys, and he spread the news about Jesus Christ, not just in the land where he lived, but far and wide. The book of Acts chapter 21 tells about a time when Paul was back in Jerusalem and he went to worship at the temple, and there were people who were opposed to him and stirred up crowds against him, and so Paul was arrested. Acts chapter 23 tells us the Roman authorities then transferred Paul to the city of Caesarea, which was off to the west on the Mediterranean Sea, and it was for his safety and also to be able to meet with government authorities. There Paul had the chance to speak to the governor, Felix. More than two years later Paul was still in captivity in Caesarea. The position of governor had changed over. Now the governor was Festus, and during that time King Agrippa came to visit Governor Festus, and Paul had the chance to speak to both of them. That was the situation in which Paul spoke the words, which are our scripture lesson for today. Paul was describing to King Agrippa his background and his encounter with Christ and his calling and how he responded. One of the things that Paul said, as we heard, is that he preached that message of repentance. Now I want to talk about the meaning of that word repent and repentance. In the Old Testament, as you may be familiar, that was originally written in the Hebrew language. We read it as a translation into English. The word that we have translated into English is shov, which means turn back. It really literally is what that action is called for, spiritually to turn away from sin to turn back to God. There was one Bible scholar named Warren Quonbeck who said, Israel owed obedience to God, fell under judgment when it strayed, and it only recovered his favor by renouncing sin and turning back to him. Repentance. Repentance is a renewal of life. It demands a new heart and a new spirit. The scholar referred to the prophecy of Ezekiel in the Old Testament, chapter 18, verses 30 through 32, as an example. I want to read that for you. It says, and this is the prophet Ezekiel speaking on behalf of God to the people of Israel. He said, Therefore you Israelites, I will judge each of you according to your own ways, declares the Sovereign Lord. Repent. Turn away from all your offenses. Then sin will not be your downfall. Rid yourself of all the offenses you have committed and get a new heart and a new spirit. Why will you die, people of Israel? For I take no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Sovereign Lord. Repent and live. Now there are some major points in this scripture passage that are useful to remember. One is that repentance in our spiritual sense means turning away from sin. Two, that act of repentance is how you get a new heart and a new spirit in you. Thirdly, repentance therefore leads to life because you have that new heart from God. The New Testament, as you may know, was written in the Greek language because that was common in the world at that time. So the word that we translate as repent or repentance in the Greek language is metanoeo and just simply means repentance or turn away, turn back. The Bible scholar Warren Quonbeck, who I mentioned before, noted that in the New Testament, John the Baptist continues the prophetic demand for repentance. So we heard, for example, how the prophet Ezekiel had called the people to repent. Now John the Baptist arrives as a forerunner of Jesus Christ and he has that same message, to repent, to turn away from sin, and to turn back to God. So one example of John's preaching is in the Gospel of Matthew chapter 3 verses 1-2. In those days, John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea and saying, repent for the kingdom of heaven has come near. And then a little further on, John said in Matthew chapter 3 verse 8, produce fruit in keeping with repentance. Then Jesus arrived on the scene and he carried on that same message when he began preaching and he pointed to himself as the Messiah. So, for example, in Matthew chapter 4 verse 17, it says there, from that time on, Jesus began to preach, repent for the kingdom of heaven has come near. So we have the same message as the prophet Ezekiel, John the Baptist, and now Jesus himself preaching that message of repentance. Another example of Jesus' preaching is in the Gospel of Luke chapter 5 verses 31-32. There it says, Jesus answered them, it is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. So the theme of this scripture is that people need to recognize they are sinners in need of repentance. The Apostle Paul himself carried on this same message of repentance. Again, we have that message passed down, the prophets like Ezekiel, John the Baptist, Jesus himself, now Paul. We saw in today's scripture passage, Book of Acts chapter 26 verses 19-20, Paul said, I preach that they should repent and turn to God and demonstrate their repentance by their deeds. Now when we went to Malawi in June, 41 of us Americans, we were supporting an effort that was organized by pastors in Malawi to hold a national crusade for repentance. They had big rallies in four different cities and hundreds if not thousands of people at each rally. And the theme for that whole crusade was this scripture passage that I'm talking about today from Acts chapter 26 and that message of repentance. There was a call to the people of Malawi to repent, to turn around, to come back to God. One of the blessings is that the president of Malawi, Lazarus Chakwera, is himself a Christian, in fact, an Assemblies of God preacher. So he was very supportive of this whole effort and sent some of his staff to help support the effort and to help us Americans as we were traveling in Malawi. We were given T-shirts and Carl has the slide up there and those of us on the team were wearing them from time to time. On the front side, that kind of squiggle on the left is the shape of the Malawi nation. And Revive School is a Bible study program that's part of the Time to Revive ministry that many of the people in Malawi had already been studying. On the back of the shirt, and that's the picture on the right, is the scripture passage for today from Acts chapter 26, verses 19 through 20. So it was a visible reminder of that call for repentance. When we were running around in big crowds of people, the shirts helped to identify us, but it was almost like we were walking billboards as well for that message of repentance that was part of the crusade. Those shirts, I had three of them, turned out to be a good teaching tool for me even after I got back to the United States. July 5th, I was wanting to work on my bicycle, needed some parts for it, and I didn't need to spend a lot of money on this old bike so I went up to Wal-Mart to get some bicycle parts. And that's our local Wal-Mart up in Goshen area. The date was important, July 5th, right after Independence Day, July 5th. So I found the aisle with the bicycle parts and there was an employee at Wal-Mart. He had his vest on and his name tag and it said Bob. So I got to talk to Wal-Mart Bob and he was very helpful. He pointed me to the right parts I needed and how to install them on the bike. And then we talked. I asked Wal-Mart Bob how I could pray for him. And he told me a little bit about his story. He said he was retired from the Air Force after 24 years and thinking about Independence Day that we had just celebrated, he was grateful to God for the blessings bestowed on our nation. But Bob was also concerned about the way our nation has turned its back on God. And I remembered at that moment, I had put my Malawi t-shirt on that day just for something to wear and it was a perfect teaching tool. So I told Bob my story that I just had about Malawi and how here there were people who had so little in the way of material things and yet so readily received that message from the Lord and turned back to him. And we saw that happen sometimes in the hundreds or the thousands. And so I prayed for Bob and I prayed for our nation and especially that we here in the United States where there is so much division right now that we would humble ourselves and repent and turn back to God. So I was thinking about this scripture passage Acts chapter 26 verses 19 through 20. It's been on my mind this year because of the crusade and mission work in Malawi and then also the way I've been able to share that with other people since I got back. And I think there are some important lessons that we can learn from this call to repentance and from this scripture passage and I've summarized it in a few words. The first one is the word obedience and that simply means to hear God's voice and to obey, to walk out what God says for us to do even if we can't see the full picture or how it's going to work out. That's what the Apostle Paul did. In our scripture lesson it says So then King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the vision from heaven. Paul who was zealous in persecuting Christians had that vision and experience with the risen Lord Jesus Christ and he was obedient to the Lord's call to turn around and to go where the Lord sent him on missionary work. I saw an example of this kind of obedience when or I heard about it when we were in Malawi. We had a big team and we were going in all different directions. There was one team that went out to visit people on farms out in the countryside and a friend of ours, Bridget Stump, who also goes to the Brethren Church here in Napani was also on the team and she was in the group that went out to the farms. One day they were way out in the wilds. There were about a hundred women present that they were able to preach to and as Bridget was looking at this crowd, she felt the Lord say to her clearly, call out this particular woman in the crowd to come forward for prayer. Bridget was a little hesitant. It just seemed a little awkward to do and yet she was obedient to the Lord's voice and invited this woman to come forward and the woman herself was obedient in being willing to stand up and come forward for prayer. As this woman stood up and came forward, Bridget noticed that she was missing part of her left arm and Bridget knew immediately why she was called to pray for this woman because Bridget's own daughter was born missing part of her arm and had to learn how to live life and make an adaption to that situation. So Bridget spoke to the woman and prayed for her and Bridget said in her post online, Bridget's the one on the right with that blue Revive Schools shirt. The woman on the left is from Minnesota I believe and part of our team. Bridget said, the Lord wanted to edify this woman with his loving heart and his words and I, Bridget, was just the vessel that he used. This woman, this farmer had tears running down her cheeks as the Lord encouraged her. So it was a picture of obedience for both of them, for Bridget to have the courage to invite the woman forward for prayer and for this woman to come forward and to receive that prayer. The second word that I think that I summarized from this scripture passage is simply that word go. So we have obedience to hear God's voice and to obey and then God will call us to go and we're called to go wherever he leads including to the nations. Paul said in our scripture lesson for today, first to those in Damascus, then to those in Jerusalem and in all Judea and then to the Gentiles I preached. Part of this whole crusade that we were involved with in Malawi also included a three-day conference for African leaders. There had been other pastors around Africa who had been leading Bible studies called Revive School Bible Studies that were organized by this Time to Revive ministry and so our team, the United States team, invited some of those pastors to come to Malawi while the crusade was going on. There were about 120 African pastors from about 40 different African nations that arrived in Malawi in the capital city. We had a three-day conference and these pastors also took part in some of the crusades. So the hope was that they would see this and take that idea and that calling for the message of repentance home to their own nation. And we're praying that they will embrace that vision for repentance in their own country. So when you think about the idea of going, it was a challenge even for these pastors to make that trip, but they did it and they've carried that message back home. I think another word that summarizes what we can learn from this scripture passage is that word repent, which we've already talked about means turning away, turning away from sin. Paul said in our scripture passage, I preached that they should repent. And again, that was the theme of the message in all of the crusades we were part of, the conference for the African pastors, also for the smaller teams that visited in farms and schools and I was on a team that went to some of the prisons in Malawi, turn away from sin, turn back to God. The team that I was on and there were about eight of us, it varied from day to day, but we visited about nine different prisons in four different cities in Malawi. And this is a picture of one of them and it's a pretty good representation of what we saw each time. The prisons had low brick walls. They often had a central dirt courtyard like this and they would assemble the prisoners, hundreds of them packed in their shoulder to shoulder and allow us to preach. There were people that would sing. There were some of the prisoners who were already Christians, people of faith. They had prison choirs that would stand up and sing for us, which were just amazing. One young man who stood up and recited from memory, I think it was all of Luke 15, and he did it with emotion and understanding of what he was saying. But we preached that message of repentance and at the end invite people if they wanted to give their life to Christ to do so and it was usual that hundreds of people would put their hand up. I honestly have never experienced anything like that, but it was a blessing to be able to go and talk with them and to share the gospel with them and to see that response. So another phrase that we can learn from this scripture passage is to turn to God. And we can go back to our list in the next slide and add that phrase on. Paul said in our scripture passage, I preach that they should repent and turn to God. So the idea is that it's not enough just to feel bad about sin and to turn away from it. We also need to turn towards something and what we are called to turn to is to turn to God. In that way we are forgiven, we are strengthened to resist that sin in the future. We are called to live for Christ. The other thing that we can learn from this scripture passage, it's a phrase, demonstrate repentance. Demonstrate repentance by deeds worthy of repentance. Paul said in our scripture passage, for today I preach that they should repent and turn to God and demonstrate their repentance by their deeds. It's not enough to turn away from our sin and turn back to the Lord, but we also need to live it out in our lives to show that that repentance, that turning away from sin, that receiving that free gift of forgiveness from the Lord has made a difference in our lives. We are free from that sin that once bound us that we are trying to live for the Lord. It is important to get this in the right order. We don't do good things in order to earn God's favor. While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. But then in response to that love, we lay down our lives for him in our obedience and go where he leads and do as he calls us to do. As I mentioned, as we visited in prisons and we saw hundreds of people giving their life to Christ, we didn't just say to them, well, bye and good luck. There was a plan from the beginning for all of the people at the crusades, prisons, farms, schools, to follow up by connecting them with local churches to connect them with Bible studies. So the idea was to start some of these revived school Bible studies that go for two years so that people would have a chance to be discipled and encouraged in the faith. In fact, over the summertime after we left, the pastors in Malawi were busy organizing these studies. They took the names of all the people who turned to Christ and contacted them and set up the studies. So they had, as of September 1st, which was the start date for the studies, they had 400 Bible studies ready to go, leader, at least 10, sometimes 40 students in them, and the materials that they needed to do it. And they are underway now. They're a month into it already. So we pray that they will demonstrate acts of repentance that change in their life. There's one story, one anecdotal story that I heard that I really appreciate. In one of the prisons in a central city called Balaka, there was a man who had raised his hand and accepted Christ. And apparently he was released from prison as he was scheduled to do shortly after we left. And immediately one of the local pastors took this former prisoner under his wing, got him involved in the church, got him involved in one of these Bible studies, and we saw a picture of him standing there free, a Bible in his hand, and ready to go as a new believer in Christ. What this comes down to in closing is a call for us to think about what the Lord is saying to us. If there are those here or those in your life who have not taken that step yet in turning their life over to Christ, now is the day. And maybe that's you to take that step, or maybe it's you to share that news with them, but that news of repentance, of turning away from sin, turning back to the Lord, walking it out in our life. Even for those of us who have lived for Christ, maybe we know in our heart that we've grown cold, and it's time to turn back to the Lord. I would say today is the day to turn back to the Lord, to come back to Him and receive His love and His grace. So there's a message of repentance which I was privileged to see preached and worked out in amazing ways far away in Malawi, but I know that it's one that is for us right here at home as well. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Spirit, amen.