Revelation 3:19 (NKJV) As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten.
Therefore be zealous and repent.
Introduction:
Yesterday our church participated by live stream simulcast in an all-day meeting in Washington DC calling our nation to repentance and prayer. It was a global call to “return to God” so that God will return to us (i.e. the U.S.). The event took place on the National Mall in front of the Washington Monument. At the same time and partially in the same place, Franklin Graham had a prayer march in which people walked from the Lincoln Memorial all the way down past the National Mall to the U.S. Capital building, praying as they walked.
As I began preparing this message, the prayer meeting in Washington hadn’t occurred yet, so I began planning without knowing what the speakers were going to be saying, except in a general sense to call us to repentance and prayer. But as I thought about the prayer events in DC, I felt that God was leading me to preach on a similar topic in order to lead our church into a spirit of repentance and prayer that will help put us in harmony with the call that national leaders have expressed.
We often quote 2 Chron. 7:14, and I just preached on that passage a few weeks ago. It is a passage that reveals a promise from God for His people if they will meet certain conditions. Those conditions are: humility, repentance and prayer. However, it occurred to me that God’s people, the church, may not know what to repent from. Therefore, I felt God leading me to preach on the subject: When Does the Church Need to Repent? Or What does the church need to repent from?
We who are believers and are part of the Church of Jesus, we might be tempted to think and even say, “We’re the ones who are right. It is all those dirty, rotten, sinners out there in our world that need to repent.” Yes, the dirty, rotten, sinners need to repent. So do all of the clean, respectable, sinners! However, I'm confident that there are scores of people sitting in church pews today (or watching a church service online or on TV) who truly think that all the repentance and returning to God has to be done by the wicked people of the world. But even more than all those sinners, the church needs to repent too. It was the people of God, that the Lord was talking to in 2 Chron. 7:14. It is the people of God or the churches of God that were commanded to repent in the book of Revelation.
Today I am going to raise the question, “When does the church need to
repent?” I am going to look at Scripture to answer that question in hopes that
God will show us if there are any areas our church needs to repent, either
corporately or individually.
Before we do that, I want to review the meaning of the term repent or
repentance.
Repentance – a change of mind leading to a change of action. (Logos
Bible Software); a change of mind: as it appears in one who repents of a
purpose he has formed or of something he has done…that change of mind by which
we turn from, desist from, etc. (Thayer, Greek Lexicon)
Repentance does not merely mean to be sorry about something. It does include sorrow, but it goes farther than simply being sorry and leads to a change of action, leads to a turning from or desisting from something in order to start a new course of behavior, attitude, etc. The Apostle Paul stated that “godly sorrow leads to repentance.” (2 Cor. 7:10) Practically speaking, repentance means that you do not and cannot go on in the same direction and the same manner you’ve been going.
About 7 years ago, I preached a series of messages from the first three chapters of Revelation, which contain God’s message through the Apostle John to seven churches of Asia. Today, I would like to briefly revisit that passage in our discussion of repentance.
I raised a question in my sermon title, “When does the church need to repent?” I believe that God’s message to these churches gives us some insight into the answer to that question. Out of the 7 churches mentioned, 5 of them were commanded to repent. So, I want to use those examples in Revelation 2-3 in order to help us understand when or why churches need to repent.
1. The church needs to repent when love is abandoned.
Rev. 2:5 Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do
the first works; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy
candlestick out of his place, except thou repent.
Ephesus was a very prominent city. It had experienced great teaching
and preaching. This church has received one of the richest letters from the
Apostle Paul.
(Leon Morris, Tyndale NT Commentary) The condemnation of this church is
expressed in one memorable phrase, You have forsaken your first love. It
is not clear whether this is love for Christ (‘you do not love me now as you
did at first’, GNB), or for one another (‘you have given up loving one
another’, Moffatt), or for mankind at large. It may be that a general attitude
is meant which included all three (‘you do not love as you did at first’,
Phillips). Forsaken (aphēkes) is a strong term; they had
completely abandoned their first fine flush of enthusiastic love. They had
yielded to the temptation, ever present to Christians, to put all their
emphasis on sound teaching. In the process they lost love, without which all
else is nothing.
When the church becomes satisfied and even self-congratulatory with just being orthodox in our beliefs and our normal formalities and routines, but the passion to love God and others along with the action that proves it has long been abandoned. This passage reminds us that mere faithfulness is not enough unless that faithfulness includes the faithful fanning of the flame of love for God. I’m not simply talking about emotional, warm and cozy feelings about Christ, but an ardent, vibrant love for Him that craves His Holy presence, His smile of approval, and His tender voice of guidance.
2. The church needs to repent when truth is compromised to accommodate
public standards.
Rev. 2:16 Repent; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will fight
against them with the sword of my mouth.
While these people were maintaining the right “theology” or the right
terminology and were apparently willing to “die” for their faith, yet they were
apparently not willing to stand against those in their “congregation” who had
adulterated the practice of their faith to include various practices of
sensuality and immorality.
(Barclay) [These wayward members] sought to persuade Christians that there
was nothing wrong with a prudent conformity with the world’s standards.
Denomination after denomination, church after church and Christian after Christian all across our nation have bought into modernistic philosophy and rejected God’s Word in favor of the approval of the world. For example, the legal definition of obscenity is decided by community standards. God’s truth isn’t judged by community standards. God is the judge. His law is the standard. It really doesn’t matter what the world / community says about it.
3. The church needs to repent when its conduct is as immoral as the
world’s.
Rev. 2:21 And I gave her space to repent of her fornication; and she
repented not.
Rev. 2:22 Behold, I will cast her into a bed, and them that commit
adultery with her into great tribulation, except they repent of their deeds.
Writers describe one of the potential problems in this city was the fact
that large numbers of people would feel it necessary to join the trade guilds
in order to “avoid commercial suicide.” These guilds no doubt offered common
meals that would include meat that had been consecrated to an idol, and they
would engage in all kinds of drunken revelry and immorality. (Barclay, ZPBD, et. al)
It is not clear whether the reference to “fornication” should be
understood literally as sexual immorality or as spiritual infidelity.
(Barclay) Some believe that the phrase “the depths of
Satan” (v.24), could very well be a reference to a common heresy during that
era which claimed that Christians should experience every kind of sin… and
accommodate themselves to the world.
This week Kris and I attended a two-day conference in Kentucky. In one of the sessions, the presenter mentioned a large mega-church that hired a Christian survey firm to conduct an assessment of its congregation. The conclusion of the survey was that the beliefs and conduct in the church nearly mirrored the beliefs and conduct of the non-churched.
There's little difference in ethical behavior between the churched and the unchurched. There's as much pilferage and dishonesty among the churched as the unchurched. And I'm afraid that applies pretty much across the board: religion, per se, is not really life changing. People cite it as important, for instance, in overcoming depression--but it doesn't have primacy in determining behavior. (George H. Gallup, "Vital Signs," Leadership, Fall 1987, p. 17.)
4. The church needs to repent when it has spiritually died.
Rev. 3:3 Remember therefore how thou hast received and heard, and hold
fast, and repent. If therefore thou shalt not watch, I will come on thee as a
thief, and thou shalt not know what hour I will come upon thee.
(Barclay) This church was not practicing any heresy, and it was not
under attack (persecution) from the outside. It had simply died spiritually.
One dies by simply not doing the things that sustain life. Nourishment;
Exercise; Purpose; etc. – these are the things that promote life. Without
these, life will ebb away, and death will certainly come.
Signs of death: legalism; formalism; ritualism… Paul said, “The letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life.”
A change of mind leading to a change of action is necessary in order to
revive the dead.
5. The church needs to repent when its passion and mission have cooled.
Rev. 3:19 As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous
therefore, and repent.
They were not cold or hot.
This likely is a deliberate reference to the condition of the water supply in
that city and the surrounding area.
(Reformation Study Bible)
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The point seems to be that these people, just like lukewarm water, did not exhibit any passionate qualities that would have a positive effect on their culture or their world. In a literal sense, lukewarm condition can be attained by cooling of something that was hot, or the warming of something that was cold. The same is true spiritually.
How can people get in this condition of blindness? I believe it is through the common habit of comparing ourselves with ourselves. We Christians look at the attitudes and behaviors of the unsaved and unconverted “pagans” around us and, as long as we’re “not as bad as they are,” we are content.
Conclusion:
Look at vv. 19-20. God is passionate about saving them from their certain destruction. God is passionate about giving them whatever they need to break out of the lukewarm, half-hearted, self-righteous status quo into which they have settled. The Lord isn’t content to just let them drift along and lose their souls. He is rebuking and chastening and pleading and calling to them. He is urging them to do something about their sad condition.
Again, I remind each of us that the horrible conditions of our society right now are not solely because of the wicked people flaunting their wickedness. If the church had stayed hot instead of lukewarm; if the church had not compromised its standards of truth and conduct instead of following the standards of Hollywood and Washington; if the church had nurtured its love for God and its spiritual life; rather than gradually dying out; then I have no doubt our society and our world would be totally different than it is today.
I want to caution us to point the finger at all of the other
denominations and Christians as if they are the problem. We need to ask God to
search our own hearts and show us where we need to personally repent and change
our thoughts and our conduct to line up with God’s Word.
But… remember that we can’t do any of that without a deeply personal
and committed relationship with Jesus.
Closing Song: Give Me Jesus
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