Change or Die 1
The Heart of Repentance
Dennis Mullen – 9.23.7

Luke 3:1-9

LK 3:1 In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar--when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, Herod tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip tetrarch of Iturea and Traconitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene-- 2 during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the desert. 3 He went into all the country around the Jordan, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. 4 As is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet:

  "A voice of one calling in the desert,
  `Prepare the way for the Lord,
    make straight paths for him.

  LK 3:5 Every valley shall be filled in,
    every mountain and hill made low.
  The crooked roads shall become straight,
    the rough ways smooth.

  LK 3:6 And all mankind will see God's salvation.' "

    LK 3:7 John said to the crowds coming out to be baptized by him, "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? 8 Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not begin to say to yourselves, `We have Abraham as our father.' For I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. 9 The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire."

            Change.  Or die.

            Change...yours...could be the only hope you have for saving your marriage (and I say this to people who still can't admit they're in trouble).  Personal change could be the only way you are going to keep yourself from increasing the already-huge gap between you and your sons and daughters (and I say this not just to people who are already estranged from your kids, but also to you who don't yet realize how late it is).  Change might be the only hope this church has against the possibility of becoming completely irrelevant in the next five years to the spiritual needs of real people.  Change might be the only hope you have of keeping your job for more than a month, or your health for more than a year.  Change is the only way for a person to come to Christ and be saved – a complete change in the leadership of your life is exactly what he demands.

            It is this last meaning that John has in mind as paces next to the Jordan and preaches the word he received from the Lord.  His word is REPENT.  Its essence is change...or die.

            Today I begin a new series called Change or Die in which I plan to talk about change, why it is so essential to the Christian faith, and why we resist it so much.  As the series moves along, I want to get into that idea I just mentioned about how the church, this church, needs to embrace certain kinds of change or else find itself irrelevant and unfaithful.  Change or die?  Yet church people are notorious for saying “we've never done it that way before”, and we too easily assume that the church is just as it should be as long as it makes us comfortable.  But maybe it's time for us to face the choice of Change or Die.

            I have to credit Chip Eichelberger for inspiring this series as he pointed out to some of us an article from Fast Company, May 2005, by Alan Deutschman called “Change or Die”.  Deutschman's article is about business, but he begins with a medical study.  If your doctor told you to change your diet or face probable death in 2-5 years, would you change your diet?  Deutschman says that most people do NOT though many try.  The biggest problems in health care are the same today as they were 50 years ago – too much smoking, drinking, eating, stress, and not enough exercise.  Everyone knows it, but few are willing to change the things they can, and that is true even when your doctor sits you down and says:  “Look, you've got six to eighteen months to change something or you are going to die”.  We're resistant to change – physical AND spiritual. 

            Maybe that's why Luke lists the names of Caesar and Pilate and Annas and Caiaphas and others who occupied the government palaces and the temple before saying that, ironically, the word of the Lord came not to them but to John, an offbeat sort of character, out in the wilderness, away from the city and its power-centers, out under the stars and among the tall grasses where he could HEAR and ACCEPT God's message – REPENT - change or die.

            Actually, repent doesn't DIRECTLY mean “change or die”; it means “Turn around!  You're going the wrong way!” 

            It's an old joke but an effective one to say that men don't like to stop and ask directions.  (Men don't stop and ask directions, women don't stop to change flat tires.  We all have our gender-based problems!)  But it really is a deeply human problem that we don't like to be told that we're heading the wrong way, that we have gotten ourselves lost, that we had better turn around for our own good and that of everyone around us.  That makes us mad.  We don't like the word REPENT.

            I have a picture of that crowd standing around listening to John, and I classify them by their responses to his message.  First there are those who are cut to the heart by their sinfulness, and they repent and receive baptism.  Anytime anyone preaches the Gospel, even if it isn’t done very well, there is usually someone who hears it and applies it down deep and in a personal way.  With John, this was a large number, and it included people from all walks, because the Holy Spirit was moving powerfully through his preaching.

            Then there’s a group of people whose hearts are so hard that nothing John says will sway them (nor anything the Spirit says).  Most of the priests and Pharisees fall into this category, and they probably deserve to be called a brood of vipers.  I suppose that in every crowd where the Gospel is preached, there are those who won’t respond no matter how much the Spirit moves, and no matter how skillful and passionate the Gospel presentation.

            Between these extremes, between the people with soft hearts and the ones with hard hearts, lies the vast middle which in most crowds is the largest segment (John’s being the exception).  These people are in some ways the hardest to come to terms with, as a preacher.  They’re the ones who say things like:  “Wow, the preacher really stepped on my toes today.  He really hit it out of the park.  I felt like he was talking right to me.  There are some things I really need to change…but not today.  I’m going to repent, but I need to make a little more money first; I need to get my head together; I need to finish school and find a girlfriend and get married, and THEN I will make that turn-around that I desperately need.  For now I’m going to bookmark it and forget it.”

            Change or die.

            Sometimes the decisions we make, the sins we commit, put us on a course where it isn't easy to turn around.  This past spring and summer I have been trying to run on a regular basis.  Yesterday I decided to try running on a trail through the words.  I've heard some of you talk about it.  It sounded like fun.  I decided to run a loop trail even though the loop was longer than I had ever run before.  You know, when you get halfway around a loop, it really doesn't make any sense to turn around.  Not even when your legs start to cramp.  Not even when you lose your breakfast.  And you can't quit, nor can you leave the trail and try to find a shortcut back through the woods.  You have to make it back!  And occasionally the things we get ourselves into are like that.  You are on the trail and you have to finish it.  Some examples (and I know these are sensitive issues):  A marriage, unwisely entered into.  A child, brought into the world under circumstances you're not proud of; poor stewardship of the body that has now brought on disease.  These are situations that call us NOT to turn around and find our way back to the beginning (which is impossible) but rather to turn our hearts around and turn them over to God and find out what it means to walk with him starting with this very next step.

            But for the most part, our life decisions are not like that.  When we make a bad one – that is, when we head off in some direction other than the one in which God is leading us – our desperate need is to repent, to turn around and begin following him again.

            Gordon MacDonald is a fairly famous preacher and writer, but even though he had several best-selling books in the 80s, I never heard of him until he became infamous for a time for committing adultery.  He lost his job and his reputation.  But he repented – which means a lot more than “he apologized”.  MacDonald turned around and headed back to God.  He submitted himself to discipleship.  He sought forgiveness from his wife, and in time their relationship was healed.  He began writing again.  He was even hired again as the preaching minister of a church he had once served (of course with their full knowledge of his very public sin). 

            The reason I tell you about his life is because Gordon MacDonald has an interesting thought about repentance.  Namely:  Repentance isn’t just about what I’ve done but rather about what I am.  Even with something as visible and serious as adultery, it's fairly straightforward to own up to it and apologize.  It's much harder to deal with WHY I became the kind of guy who would do something like that, and what needs to change inside – even more so when we haven't DONE anything that our friends call terrible.   That's why I said that the largest part of any crowd is the middle group who says:  “Boy, I really ought to repent.  But not today.”   We think of repentance as being mostly about what we have done, and we say:  “What I have done isn’t that serious.  Sure, I’ve got things inside that are rotten, but no one has seen them; hence, whatever repentance I need to do is minor.”  That’s the Pharisee way.  That's cleaning the outside of the cup and leaving the inside filthy. 

            Repentance that pleases the Lord goes deep.  It deals with action, but it also deals with character.

Donald Miller:  I lived for a time with my friend and mentor John MacMurray, where the first rule is to always tell the truth. John and I were sitting in the family room one night when he asked about my new cell phone.

"I got it free," I told him.

            "How did you get it for free?" he asked.

            "Well, my other one broke, so I took it in to see if they could replace it. They had this new computer system at the store and they didn't have their records. They didn't know whether mine was still under warranty. It wasn't, I knew, because it was more than a year old. The guy asked me about it, and I told him I didn't know, but it was right around a year. Just a white lie, you know. Anyway, the phone was so messed up they replaced it with a newer model. So, I got a free phone."

            "Did you ever see that movie The Family Man with Nicolas Cage?" John asked. "There's this scene where Nicolas Cage walks into a store to get a cup of coffee.  And Don Cheadle plays the guy working at the counter. There's a girl in line before Nicolas Cage, and she's buying something for ninety-nine cents, and she hands Cheadle a dollar. Cheadle takes nine dollars out of the till and counts it out, giving her way too much change. She sees that he is handing her way too much money, yet she picks it up and puts it in her pocket without saying a word. As she is walking out the door, Cheadle stops her to give her another chance. He asks her if there is anything else she needs. She shakes her head no and walks out."

            "I see what you're getting at, John," I say.

            "Let me finish," he says. "So Cheadle looks over at Nicolas Cage, and he says, 'Did you see that? She was willing to sell her character for nine dollars. Nine dollars!'"

After a little while, I spoke up. "Do you think that is what I am doing with the phone? Do you think I am selling my character?" And to be honest, I said this with a smirk.

            "I do," John said. "The Bible talks about having a calloused heart. That's when sin, after a period of time, has so deceived us we no longer care whether our thoughts and actions are right or wrong. Our hearts will go there easily, and often over what looks like little things—little white lies. All I am saying to you, as your friend, is, watch for this kind of thing."

            I went back to the store the next day. It cost me more than nine dollars, but I got my character back.  Reprinted from the Catalyst GroupZine Volume 2: The Culture Issue. Copyright © 2006. Used by permission of INJOY & Thomas Nelson Publishers. This article is originally adapted fromTo Own a Dragon© 2006 by Donald Miller and John MacMurray. Used by permission of NavPress—www.navpress.com. All rights reserved.

            Now if I stopped here, I would not have preached a Christian sermon.  After all, repentance may not be a popular word, but lots of people talk about it.  Dr. Phil when he tells people to quit being stupid.  Your high school football coach when he tells you to start putting in some effort on the field or run the stairs.  Even an abusive father who yells at you for not putting gas in the car and beats you up so you'll remember next time.

            God's call for you to repent stands on a different foundation.

            Just a bit later in Luke 3:  21 When all the people were being baptized, Jesus was baptized too. And as he was praying, heaven was opened 22 and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven: "You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased."

            Now it said clearly in v. 3 that John's baptism was all about repentance for the forgiveness of sins.  So what is Jesus doing here?

            Again it is Gordon MacDonald who explains it so well.  He paints a picture where someone sets up a registration table beside the Jordan and everyone coming to be baptized by John has to sign in.  “Name?”  “Jacob.”  “Your sin?”  “Murder.”  So Jacob gets a name tag that says:  “Jacob:  Murderer.”  “Name?”  “Anna.”  “Sin?”  “I stole from my boss.”  Her name tag says “Anna:  Embezzler.”  “Name?”  “George.”  “Sin?”  “Adultery.”  Name tag:  “George:  Adulterer.” 

            Then along comes Jesus.  “Name?”  “Jesus.”  “Sin?”  There aren't any sins.  What a difficult situation.  But then Jesus makes it make sense when he walks along the shore among the people and says:  “Let me have YOUR name tag.  And yours.  And yours.  And he who knows no sin becomes sin for us.  HE wears the tags that say ADULTERER and EMBEZZELER and MURDERER – so that in him, we might become the righteousness of God.

            God doesn't simply say REPENT.  Change or Die!  He takes upon Himself in Christ sin's penalty and power so that we can actually do it.

            I went to a chiropractor this week and heard him talk about health and the body and having your spine in proper alignment and he made an interesting statement that has all kind of application to physical and spiritual health, but especially to repentance.  He said:  “If pain has led you to seek treatment, you are fortunate.  Many unhealthy people do NOT have pain and therefore they don’t realize how messed up they are.”  He went on to explain that a relatively small percentage of back problems cause pain, and that there are serious issues that don’t cause pain until WAY late in the game.  This year I found out that the normal path of esophageal cancer is that there are no symptoms until it is too late.

            I wonder how many of us who are feeling pretty good today are in desperate need of repentance?  On the other hand, if you are in pain in your spirit, and you know that it is your own sin that is causing it, you are blessed. 

            We need his Holy Spirit to show us the truth.  And we need to repent.

            Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts:  And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.  Psalm 139:3-4.

 Morrison Hill Christian Church
P.O. Box 59 - 1008 E. Race St.
Kingston, TN  37763   (865) 376-5205