Tag Archives: repentance

Our Prayer for Mercy

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It doesn’t matter how messed up you are. That’s what makes grace a controversy. The cry for mercy like David’s in Psalm 51 will not go unheard. This is a holy cry.

We can identify with David because his prayer here must incessantly be our own. The cry for mercy is not only an action of forsaking all other options. The cry for mercy must also be an embrace, a continual embrace. The cry for mercy is confident and focused. It is according to something, that is, according to the LORD’s steadfast love.

What necessitates the life of praying for mercy is not the accumulation of guilt but the absolute extinguishment of it by Another. The cry for mercy is not a license to live in darkness, but a testimony that we have been transferred into the kingdom of light. We don’t ask for mercy because we are enslaved to a life of sin. “Create in me a clean heart! (v. 10).”

The prayer for mercy encompasses our sorrow for sin and our hope in the work of Christ. We ask for mercy in reference to Jesus Christ who bore the wrath we deserved, removed our sins, and freed us from bondage.

“Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love;”

Amen.

Damn the Moab and Babylon in Us: A Plea to Worship Jesus Christ

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Jeremiah is speaking judgment against the enemies of Israel in 46-51. Mingled in this word of God’s wrath against the nations is the hope of salvation for Judah and Israel, and a future restoration of the nations themselves (48:47; 49:6, 39).

We should take note of the LORD’s indictment of these nations. The theme of His charge against them has implications and we can’t be unreceptive here. The heart of Moab’s sin was that “he magnified himself against the LORD” (48:26, 42). To Babylon, God says:

Behold, I am against you, O proud one, declares the Lord GOD of hosts, for your day has come, the time when I will punish you. The proud one shall stumble and fall, with none to raise him up… (50:31f)

This stretches beyond the Book of Jeremiah and the transgressions of Moab and Babylon. This is a theme in the Bible. The pride of man is stupid and it will get you damned forever if you do not repent. Pride is our rebellion. It is our refusal to worship the one true God in order to worship ourselves. Or it is the refusal to truly worship the one true God because we want to worship ourselves too!

This is an epidemic not just for those apart from Christ, but for all humans, for me and you. We are fallen creatures. Only those who are part of the New Covenant have been given the eyes to see and a heart to repent. And repent is what we must do, everyday. We are not wired to wake up every morning and worship the Jesus Christ who died for us. It is much easier for us to move like Moab, to spend our days like Babylon, no matter how much ‘Christian stuff’ we throw into the mix. 

My plea for us is that we awake and see that the Moab and Babylon in us was damned at the cross of Jesus. We repent of our ‘old man propensity’ in that way. That in Jesus we are free to not worship ourselves anymore, but instead to truly worship the one true God, forever. That we see Jesus and marvel at His supremacy and grace to make prideful rebels His own. He died for us to make us stop worshiping our-crappy-selves, so that we could worship Him who is infinitely better! Jesus Christ is better! Worship Him!  O the glories of God and surpassing joy found in Him!

“Oh come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the LORD, our Maker!” (Psalms 95:6)

This is the Epiphany That I Pray You Have…

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Jeremiah describes the kind of repentance that we all must go through. We have to see the futility of all the stuff that we worship instead of the true God. Verse 20 is the exclamation of leaving one kind of life in order to have the best…

“O LORD, my strength and my stronghold, my refuge in the day of trouble, to you shall the nations come from the ends of the earth and say: “Our fathers have inherited nothing but lies, worthless things in which there is no profit. Can man make for himself gods? Such are not gods!” 

“Therefore, behold, I will make them know, this once I will make them know my power and my might, and they shall know that my name is the LORD.””

(Jeremiah 16:19-21 ESV, italics mine)

God’s Delight in Repenting Sinners

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 Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance (Luke 15:7)

 

The same idea is repeated two more times (15:10, 32). God rejoices over sinners who repent. I think often these parables are read to juxtapose the two categories of saved and unsaved. The repentance part is taken to mean conversion and we are told to celebrate with God because the guy up front just prayed to receive Christ. Or at least this is where I’ve been. 

 But notice the categories that Luke spells out. Jesus is talking to an audience of two types: 1) sinners in v. 1, and 2) Pharisees in v. 2. The two categories are simply that: sinners and Pharisees.

The question is which one of these do we identify ourselves with. Luke wants to be obvious. He tells us which one delights the Father. And we should find ourselves there. This is not merely about sinners being converted, it is about sinners repenting. And sinners repenting is who we should be, everyday.

So when you pray, does God rejoice?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Word on the Miracle of Repentance

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Now what was the sort of ‘hole’ man had got himself into? He had tried to set up on his own, to behave as if he belonged to himself. In other words, fallen man is not simply an imperfect creature who needs improvement: he is a rebel who must lay down his arms. Laying down your arms, surrendering, saying you are sorry, realising that you have been on the wrong track and getting ready to start life over again from the ground floor–this movement full speed astern–is what Christians call repentance. Now repentance is no fun at all. It is something much harder than merely eating humble pie. It means unlearning all the self-conceit and self-will that we have been training ourselves into for thousands of years. It means killing part of yourself, undergoing a kind of death. … The worse you are the more you need it and the less you can do it.

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 57

This is to say, repentance is a miracle.