Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript: Isaiah 19:22

Sermon text today is found in Isaiah 19 verse 22. Please stand for the reading of God’s word. We have sung some wonderfully optimistic psalms and hymns already this morning and a portion from Isaiah itself. And the text before us today while calling us to repentance has these great promises attached to it as well. So this is Isaiah 19 verse 22 is the sermon text. Open your ears to hear the word of the Lord.

And the Lord will strike Egypt. He will strike and heal it. They will return to the Lord and he will be entreated by them and heal them.

Let’s pray. Lord God, we thank you for such great promises given to us here of the great nation of Egypt. We thank you, Lord God, for your promises given to us in Psalm 22 that the death for sinners of our Lord Jesus Christ on the cross 2,000 years ago is efficacious for bringing all the nations of the world pictured for us in today’s text by the great and powerful nation of Egypt to worship you.

We have come forward, Lord God, to be healed. May your word be a sharp two-edged sword to us today. May it both strike and heal that we may pray to you. In Jesus name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated. I tend to rush seasons and Lent actually begins this Wednesday with Ash Wednesday. We will have a service here at Reformation Covenant Church, but most of you won’t be there. That’s okay. We are church year light here.

We acknowledge the church year as we go through it, but it isn’t a major emphasis, nor do we think we’re at all required to. God’s calendar began at creation with a 7-day pattern. And the Sabbath, the Christian Sabbath, is now the Lord’s day. That is our calendar in the new creation. In the middle of that came a period of time when the Lord God saw fit to give his people a calendar season of observance over the course of a year.

And that was to show to us what the Lord’s day is all about. All the different aspects of the Lord’s day are shown in the various feasts of the Old Testament. They’re all fulfilled in the work of Jesus Christ. So we have no need to keep an annual calendar. On the other hand, the historic church has found it good and profitable at times to focus on particular seasons and we do that. The season of Lent is in the middle of the first half of what liturgical years celebrate as the church year.

The church year is divided into two portions. The first is the life of Christ and then after that season comes the life of the church. So it’s really pretty easy to remember. There’s two halves of it. One focusing on the historical ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ, his advent, preparation for his advent, his coming, his ministry, his suffering on the cross for us, his resurrection and ascension to the right hand of the father.

And so the ministry, the life of Jesus Christ is kind of pictured in the various events of the first half of the church year beginning in early December, continuing through until late spring. The word Lent just means lengthening. It means the days are getting longer. Did you notice last night it was still light here in Oregon at whatever it was, 6:00, I think 5:30 or 6. I was so pleased to see that the days are getting longer.

And during this time the church has decided to focus upon this season of meditation on the work of Jesus Christ. When our savior is first baptized and begins his formal ministry in the gospel accounts, he goes to the wilderness for a period of 40 days. And the sequence of 40 days, 40 years is a common one throughout the Bible of suffering and affliction and preparation for tremendous victory. And so the 40 days of our savior in the wilderness is one of those periods of time.

Lent is a 40-day period. It actually lasts longer than that because the church has always known that the Lord’s day is not a day of primarily focus on fasting or affliction or whatever it is. The Lord’s day is resurrection. The Lord’s day is a feast day for the church. And so the 40 days are actually non-Lord’s day time in between Ash Wednesday and then resurrection Sunday. So that’s why it’s longer than 40 days.

And the church has always wanted an emphasis in the context of affliction and repentance. They’ve always wanted the context for that to be the weekly observance of the feast of the resurrection of Jesus Christ in the victory that we just sang of. Today’s text is a call to repentance and it is the theme for this particular season of Lent here at Reformation Covenant Church. You’ll see some adornments of the sanctuary beginning on Ash Wednesday that will in some ways reflect this theme.

And so I wanted to begin this season, even though it isn’t Lent yet—Lent begins with Ash Wednesday—I wanted to begin this season by talking about this particular verse and praying that the Lord would use it over the next six or seven weeks to really help us to focus on the need for personal repentance.

You know, it’s interesting that Martin Luther, of course, the Protestant Reformation is sort of symbolically launched by the posting of the 95 Theses. So we can say that the great transformation of the world that came through the Protestant Reformation began with the posting of the 95 Theses, at least in some very significant ways. The first of those 95 theses was Luther’s statement that all of the Christian life is a life of repentance. So the Protestant Reformation that transformed the world, that brought about a degree of acknowledgment of the kingdom of Jesus Christ over all nations and began a significant change in governance that continues to work itself out to this day.

The basis for liberty and freedom and national liberty and freedom is found in the Protestant Reformation. And that reformation really begins symbolically for us, at least, with the call to repentance. Our verse today says the same thing. The Lord strikes. We turn. Repentance just means a change of mind, a change of heart, a change of direction. You turn from here to go here. It’s as simple as that. That’s what the word means.

And that repentance is the basis then for the great blessings of God that at the end of that process he heals us. We want health, right? We want blessings. We want to be healed individually in our families, in our communities, in our nation, in our world. And the Bible tells us that healing comes as a result of God bringing us back to him in repentance. So the verse itself promises us that.

But here at the beginning, we’re going to go through chapter 19 of Isaiah, which is on your handouts today. But look, if you will, at verse 24 and 25, we have a rather astonishing verse that maybe when you read Isaiah, you just sort of gloss over, but it’s really a rather astonishing statement. Isaiah, of course, is about judgment and there are in this section here in Isaiah various burdens against different nations and God saying how he’s going to judge them.

But in the midst of this statement of God’s judgment on Egypt, at the end of it rather the culmination is found in verses 24 and 25: “In that day Israel be one of three with Egypt and Assyria a blessing in the midst of the land whom the Lord of hosts shall bless saying now listen blessed is Egypt my people and Assyria the work of my hands and Israel my inheritance.”

Now if you don’t read much of the Old Testament the impact of that may not come through to you. But to the best of my knowledge, this is the only place in the Old Testament where these terms of “my people” and “the work of my hands” are applied not to Israel, but to the historical enemies of Israel to the north and to the south, those two nations. This is a tremendous statement in the Old Testament of God’s intended purposes for the world. When the Lord Jesus ultimately comes and makes atonement for sin, all the nations will be discipled as we just sang of Psalm 22 and that is pictured for us here by God’s promise and his declaration that—you know, let’s not get it wrong here—that the Israelites who thought we’re the work of his hands, we’re his people, especially nobody else. God says that in that day Assyria will be described as the work of my hands, Egypt will be described as my people.

Now they had seen this already actually and if we know our Bibles we know that Egypt had indeed become the people of God under the ministry of Joseph. Pharaoh had turned to the God of Jacob and had faith in him. The end of Genesis is not failure or something bad going on. The end of Genesis is the conversion of the world by the conversion of Egypt. They’d seen Egypt become my people. And they’d even seen Assyria become the work of my hands under the ministry of Jonah.

Jonah goes to Assyria. God blesses Assyria with repentance. Right? “Forty days Nineveh will be destroyed.” And God uses that to then convert all of Assyria so that Assyria is indeed the work of his hands. They’d seen this already. And then they saw Assyria go south and be God’s vehicle for judgment against Israel. But they were wicked and turned away from God. And God destroyed the Assyrians and raised up another empire, the Babylonians. But they’d seen it. They knew their history. They knew that Jonah had come to bring Assyria to repentance.

And friends, listen. It’s talking nationally here, right, in these verses. But don’t forget about Joseph and Jonah. Don’t forget that individual people and their service of God was the vehicle by which God brought Egypt and Assyria to become my people in the work of my hands. And God was promising them that would happen in the future as well.

And we read about the Assyrians in the book of Acts expressing faith in God. And we read specifically about Egypt, right? Egypt is represented at the day of Pentecost. Egypt was—so they say and there seems to be good evidence of this—converted by Mark, writer of the gospel. Egypt was long a Christian nation before the Islamic influence began to take place in it. It was completely Christian, and we still have 7 million Coptic Christians in Egypt representing maybe 12 or 13% of that country who are still the remnants of a church that go all the way back to the early days when the gospel of Jesus Christ went out over the whole world.

There was a split. The Coptic church is different than the Orthodox church and then the Protestant church. There was some—at the council of Chalcedon there were differences of opinion. They are not unorthodox necessarily. It seems like there was confusion of what was being said. It seems like there might have been some political things involved. So the Coptic Church was being diminished, the Pope of Alexandria, etc. But suffice it to say that we still have a large Christian presence through the Coptic Church in Egypt. And they were part of the transformation of Egypt. Over the last month or two, Christians were in good numbers in the square there looking for their salvation, the removal of a tyrant who tortured and killed people.

So pray for the Coptic Church in Egypt and recognize the tremendous picture they are of the fulfillment of these verses here before us.

Kids, your coloring page today is Nineveh repenting. And it’s a reminder of what—my point is a reminder of that—repentance produces a great blessing and Assyria comes to conversion under the ministry of Jonah. So we have a tremendous blessing for us in today’s text in Isaiah 19.

A call to repentance is a call to victory. Fasting in the book of Joel is preparation for victory. Okay? And so today I want to urge you to make Lent 2011 a significant event in your life through repentance and recognize that if what we want for America is healing, this is the only road to it, the only road to this is repentance. That’s where God comes with healing after he brings people sovereignly to repentance.

Now, of course, repentance means following the Lord in all these activities—political action, economics, as we’ll see—but understand it all begins with turning away from sin and turning to God. And very significantly with Egypt and Assyria, a focus is upon individual people. Their work, Jonah’s repentance precedes Assyria’s repentance. May the Lord God use our season of Lent in this key verse to have us each focus on repentance for particular sins in the context of our lives.

So, let’s look at the context for our key verse today. And on your handouts, I hope you have them. You know, on your handouts, what I give there in a couple of pages is the entire text of Isaiah 19. And I’ve got blanks there that you’re supposed to fill in. The outline isn’t filled in. It is on my copy and it was before I deleted it on your copy. But I want us to sort of see the flow of the text to see the context for what has been determined as the key verse for us and theme for the season of Lent at Reformation Covenant Church.

This is one of the tables out front. This is a devotional booklet that you can use in your families or for yourself personally beginning with Ash Wednesday. It’s really very simple—short paragraph excerpts from writings of C.S. Lewis and his major works and some from his books and things and relationship to Lent. And so, well, not he didn’t describe them in terms of Lent, but that’s what they do with this booklet.

And I’ll be actually quoting from this today. And may the Lord God help me to talk about the little red buttons or the little red stones as we move to the end of our service today, our sermon.

All right, let’s look then at the context for our key verse. And in verse one, we have kind of a heading, right? “The burden against Egypt.” So this entire section is called the burden against Egypt. And chapter 20 begins with a different thing, an activity going on with Isaiah in reference to Egypt. But the burden against Egypt is found in Isaiah 19:1 through the end.

And there’s this kind of preliminary statement then that God is coming. “Behold, the Lord rides on a swift cloud.” So Roman numeral one is the striking. And what’s going to happen is God’s going to strike them. And the letter A under one is the reason for the striking, which is idolatry. “Behold, the Lord rides on a swift cloud and will come to Egypt. The idols of Egypt will totter at his presence.” Now, we’re going to come back to this later before describing what these idols are because what God does now in this chapter is he goes on to talk about the specific details of the striking that he does to Egypt. And these details are significant. I think that they’re fairly universal. I think that if we look at America’s difficulties today, we’ll see connections between the striking that God seems to be doing to us and that God brought upon Egypt so that she might return and repent and turn back to the Lord and be healed.

So, we’ll come back to this idolatry after we look at the details of the striking. So letter B is the details of the striking. The text will now move on to articulate specific things that are going to happen to Egypt as God strikes her for her idolatry. And the very first thing is fear. Let number one there is fear. “The heart of Egypt will melt in its midst.” So the beginning of this striking and we’ll see in a little bit that the end of it is fear.

Fear is the surrounding of it and Americans, you know, are becoming increasingly fearful. In the last few years when we have sin that we don’t deal with in our lives, one of the ways that God ministers grace to us really is by coming and making us fearful of our situation. Maybe we don’t connect it originally to our idolatry, but fear is a manifestation of the striking of God that’s intended to bring us to repentance.

Secondly, and associated with this fear is disunity. “I’ll set Egyptians against Egyptians. Everyone will fight against his brother and everyone against his neighbor. City against city, kingdom against kingdom.” And I could add party versus party, union versus management, people versus people, states versus states, you know, different kinds of Christians versus Muslims, whatever it is. We have seen this in our country, haven’t we?

Disunity is what it’s all about now. We’ve got a president who claimed to want to unify things. Maybe that was his intent. I don’t know. But the end result after a very difficult time under President Bush and the disunity here is even increased disunity, increased warfare amongst the citizens of America. Now I think that’s rather evident and it’s evident that we want to be reconcilers. We want to try to not get into sinful divisions.

But the point here is this: this is the work of God bringing the idolatry of the Egyptians to their forefront. Not allowing them to have peace in their country when there’s no peace with God. No Jesus, no peace, right? And so he brings disunity.

He brings failed counsel. So number three is failed counsel. “The spirit of Egypt will fail in its midst.” So what’s the problem with Egypt? Why do we have disunity and fear? Because their spirit is not right with God. It’s not the Holy Spirit inhabiting the nation of Egypt. Her spirit is not the right spirit. And so God brings judgment against the spirit of Egypt, which will fail in its midst. “I will destroy their counsel. They will consult the idols and their charmers, the mediums and the sorcerers.” He brings judgment against their wisdom, against their counsel.

Now, Egypt was known as the great wise nation in similar ways where the wisdom of America has been known to the world. And God will bring their wisdom to foolishness. This is what Paul says in Corinthians, right? “Where is the wisdom of this world?” “I’ll bring it to foolishness,” God says the preaching of the cross. God hates a lifted up, prideful set of understandings of how we look at the world. The problem with Egypt is pretty simple at its core. They look at the world according to their wisdom and their counsel, their spirit, and not the Holy Spirit of God.

Now, brothers and sisters, isn’t that us at times when we sin? That’s what we’re doing. We’re looking at things from our wisdom, from our counsel. We’re not being—you know, working in the context of the spirit of God—that the spirit of our own old man is coming into our lives. Counsel is one of the core things that God attacks here and strikes. Their counsel is shown to be foolishness.

And America again with its division and its obvious loss of wisdom in terms of knowing what to do about military events, what to do about the economy, what to do to bring unity—the counsel of America, I believe, is being judged by God because it strays from the Lord Jesus Christ. And this has to remain personal with us to the extent that we sin. It’s reflecting a counsel that is prideful in our own state of mind and lifted up against God.

You know, Egypt was the epitome of counsel of wisdom, right, compared to the wisdom of Solomon in the scriptures and yet God brings it to nothing. So judgment is against counsel.

And then look at number four. Verse four is number four. “The Egyptians I will give into the hand of a cruel master and a fierce king will rule over them, says the Lord, the Lord of hosts.” Political enslavement is part of the judgment of God. Let me say that again. Political enslavement, while it—we’re to resist tyrants, we want to be active in the political process—but understand that political enslavement, at least in the text before us, at certain times in history, political enslavement is the striking of God against a people and nation that will not acknowledge King Jesus. And God will raise up cruel task masters.

I’m astonished at what’s happened in this country in the last two years. The administrative branch of government is exerting its supremacy now over the judicial branch, declaring flatly what laws are constitutional and unconstitutional and which laws they’ll defend in court. That is a usurpation of power that should shake every one of us down to our core. If we understand this nation, if we understand the separation of powers, the checks and balances that our forefathers described and as we watch the administrative branch essentially rolling over the legislative branch and doing administratively through the EPA what the Congress will not legislate and then as we watch them rolling over the judicial branch and saying we’re not going to defend this law, the Defense of Marriage Act, because it’s unconstitutional.

It should shake us to our core. Do you see what’s happening here? Do you see what’s happening? What’s happening is God is raising up a cruel master to us. We have an administrative branch that is becoming dictatorial in its influence. And what’s happening behind that? You know, don’t rail against the severe master. He’s the messenger. God’s message is turn back to me. I’m the source of freedom. No Jesus, no peace. No Jesus, no justice. No Jesus, no political freedom. That’s reality. It’s a good reality, by the way. Last thing we want is for a country to be successful long term without reference to Jesus. Wouldn’t we hate that? That’d be really bad. It’s not reality.

So, political enslavement. And look at the next one. And it’s kind of long. I won’t read the whole thing, but in verses five and following, you know, he begins to talk about the river. He talks about things sown by the river withering. I’ve got these bolded on your outline. “The fishermen have problems. They’ll languish who spread nets on the waters. Moreover, those who work in fine flax, those weave the fabric will be ashamed and the fountains will be broken. All who make wages shall be troubled in soul.”

Economic judgment is what happens in Egypt. They’re prideful about their wisdom. They’re prideful about their political situation. They’re prideful about their blessed economy that at some portions in history have ruled the world. Sort of sounds like us. And what is God doing? He’s judging us economically. “All who make wages,” even the unions, now the public employee unions—all who make wages are being troubled.

God is visiting and striking Egypt in our text. And one of the typical ways that he brings judgment against the people and striking is through economic difficulty. Okay? And it’s to bring us to repentance.

Next we go back to counsel in verse 11. So number six in the details of this striking is again failed counsel. “Surely the princes of Zoan are fools. Pharaoh’s wise counselors give foolish counsel. Where are they? Where are your wise men?” It almost sounds like a quotation from 1 Corinthians. “Where’s the wisdom of this world? God has put it to not.” So, as we begin to back out now, we have the same message about counsel that we had earlier.

And then in verse 14, “The Lord has mingled a perverse spirit in her midst.” Spirit of Egypt referenced earlier. Counsel being judged. Counsel being judged. The spirit of Egypt is perverse in their midst. It’s the judgment of God for their failure to acknowledge him. So counsel again.

But you know when we talk about counsel, what do we have in this country? We have education, investment required. We need bigger and better public schools. We need to train our kids in counsel and wisdom. And 90% of it is happening apart from any kind of acknowledgement. In fact, it’s illegal to make acknowledgement in those public school classrooms that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of sound counsel. Counsel has been driven away from us. And of course, things get worse. No Jesus, no counsel. No Jesus, no knowledge. And we see it and our response is not to return to Jesus as a nation. It’s to try harder. It’s to reform the public schools. It’s to bounce the rubble somehow and think it’s going to get better.

So counsel again. And then seven, fear. We’re back to fear. “In that day, Egypt will be like women and will be afraid and fearful because of the waving of the hand of the Lord.” Now, that’s the kind of judgment that comes to a people.

I’ve got another handout that I provided for you, a single page. I don’t know if many of you got it or not, and it’s not real important that you did, but looking at and meditating upon this more yesterday after I already done my outline, it does seem like there’s a structure to the details of this striking. Fear is at both ends. And then as we come into the interior, it’s the spirit that is the wrong spirit at work in Egypt. And then as we come into the middle, it’s counsel, source of knowledge. And then as we come into the very middle, it’s politics and business. It’s government and business. That’s the center, I think, of the details of the striking.

So the structure kind of draws our attention to the most immediate manifestations of the problems when God judges a people. And those problems are economic and they’re governmental. And of course, we have them in quite pronounced ways in our country today.

Let me read my first quote from C.S. Lewis in his devotional book for Lent. Lewis said this:

“When Satan put into the heads of our remote ancestors the idea that they could be like God—they could set up on their own as if they had created themselves, be their own masters, invent some sort of happiness for themselves outside of God, apart from God. And out of that hopeless attempt has come nearly all or much of what we call human history. Lewis says the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy. The reason why it can never succeed is this: God made us, invented us as a man invents an engine. A car is made to run on gasoline and it will not run on anything else. Now God designed the human machine to run on himself, his spirit indwelling us. He himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn or the food our spirits were designed to feed on. There is no other. That is why it is just no good asking God to make us happy in our own way without bothering about religion. God cannot give us happiness and peace apart from himself because it is not there. There is no such thing.”

Now that’s a message that America needs to hear: that there’s no such thing as happiness apart from God because he is the spirit, he’s the engine, or he’s the fuel rather that’s to drive our engines. But don’t you know just think about the nation. Think about yourself. How often do we have you in the recent future wanted to work by your own counsel, your own independence from God, not wanted the spirit of God to direct your path in all that you say and do?

The text shows us the striking of God to bring us to repentance of our sins. And that’s the next part of the outline, the turning. The turning. So we have the striking. We’ve got the details of the striking. The striking is announced. The details are given to us. And then we have the turning.

Verse 18 is so Roman numeral 2 is the turning, if you’re writing down these headings, and verse 18 is the beginning of the turning. “In that day five cities in the land of Egypt will speak the language of Canaan and swear by the Lord of hosts. One will be called the city of destruction.” Translation difficulty—city of destruction may be some manuscripts say city of Horus, Heliopolis, great capital city of Egypt. And so what he’s saying is really five strong major cities of Egypt will learn the language of Canaan. They’ll speak the language of Canaan. And what I think the implication is here is that the turning begins with a study of God’s words and ways.

They’ll learn the land of Canaan, be. They’ll learn the scriptures which is the basis for the language of the Hebrew people that inhabited Canaan at this time. They’ll learn Hebrew. In other words, they’ll learn what the scriptures say. They study God’s word and they’ll walk in his ways. The turning begins with the turning back to the word of God and a commitment to walk in the ways of the Lord.

Verse 19 continues the turning. “In that day there’ll be an altar to the Lord. They’ll cry unto the Lord because of the oppressors.” What do we have here? We have worship and prayer. A study of God’s word and ways leads them to build an altar to God to worship him. And in the context of that worship, they cry out for relief from the striking. They cry out because of the oppressors that the Lord has brought upon them. They turn to the Lord for their deliverance. So, the turning begins with a knowledge of God’s word and ways and it continues with worship and prayer.

And this leads to Roman numeral 3 on the text, which is the healing. The healing: “He will send them a savior and a mighty one, and he will deliver them.” Their prayers are heard and God grants them salvation from their enemies. So the actual healing now happens with deliverance from enemies. He’s stricken them. They’ve turned to him in several ways through knowing his ways in word by worshiping him and praying to him. And then the healing comes and the healing is identified with what we sang about earlier: relief from the enemies that God has raised up sovereignly against us.

B. Verse 21. “Then the Lord will be known to Egypt and the Egyptians will know the Lord in that day will make sacrifice and offering. They’ll make a vow to the Lord and perform it.” Knowing and trusting the Lord is the essence of the healing. He’s going to deliver them from enemies so that they might know him and trust in him and make vows to him.

And then we have our theme verse. “The Lord will strike Egypt. He’ll strike and heal. This is a summary verse at the end. They’ll return to the Lord, and he will be entreated by them and heal them.”

Another quote from C.S. Lewis:

“We all want progress, but progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you’ve taken a wrong turning then to go forward does not get you any nearer to the mark. If you’re on the wrong road, progress means doing an about turn and walking back to the right road. And in that case, The man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man. We have all seen this when doing arithmetic. He says, when I have started a sum in the wrong way, the sooner I admit that I’m going in the wrong way and go back and start the problem over again, the faster I’ll get on. There is nothing progressive about being pigheaded and refusing to admit a mistake. And I think if you look at the present state of the world, it is pretty that humanity has been making some big mistakes. We are on the wrong road and if that is so, we must go back. Going back is the quickest way to moving on. Going back is the quickest way to moving on.”

And Lewis was right then and it’s even more true today, is it not, my friends? The whole world—what do we see? Warfare erupting across the Middle East. Economic—you know, nearly a worldwide depression that we just barely escaped a few years ago. And who knows what is going to happen in the next couple of years? A loss of political freedom, a destruction of economic values, worldwide strife, the loss of Christian leadership in the world that America used to exert in other countries as well.

The world is headed wrong and the quickest way to move on is to go back. And the quickest way in our life to health—we want blessing, but if we’re on the wrong road to attain that blessing, you know, you don’t just keep desperately moving ahead. You admit your sins, you repent, you turn back. And turning back is the quickest way to moving on. That’s what God told Egypt. He struck them. Their need was to turn to him. And the result of that turning is the healing by God.

And then, as I said, Roman numeral 4 is international blessing. The end result of Egypt doing this is international blessing.

Verse 23: “In that day, there’ll be a highway from Egypt to Assyria. The Assyrians will come to Egypt. The Egyptians into Assyria. The Egyptians will serve with the Assyrians.” There’s international blessing of commerce that results of this. Highways are mechanisms of commerce. And one of the results of healing is international economic blessing.

And then in verse 24, “Israel will be one of three with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the land. The postmillennial vision that we began with today at the beginning of this text, the conclusion of it is unity and diversity. You still got Egypt, Assyria, and Israel, but they’re all serving the Lord now. They’re all, you know, the work of God’s hands. They’re all his people. They’re all his inheritance, right? And so, postmillennial blessing comes as a result of responding to the striking of God with repentance and turning to him and receiving healing from God. And that healing then moves out into all the world.

And as I said, remember Joseph and Jonah. Jonah—remember Jonah. He repents. And the end result is the salvation of a nation and their work that God has established for them in the context of the world.

Another quote from C.S. Lewis:

“Repentance is no fun at all. He said, ‘It’s something much harder than merely eating humble pie. It means unlearning all the self-conceit and self-will.’ The Egytian counsel that we have been training ourselves into for thousands of years. It means killing part of yourself, undergoing a kind of death. In fact, it needs a good man to repent. And there comes the catch. Only a bad person needs to repent. Only a good person can repent perfectly. That’s a difficulty. If there is not God’s mercy and grace, and that’s what he’s described in the verse for us, he’ll have mercy upon us, repentance would be impossible. The worse you are, the more you need it and the less you can do it. The only person who could do it perfectly would be a perfect person and he wouldn’t need it.

“Remember this: repentance, this willing submission to humiliation and a kind of death, is not something God demands of you before he will take you back and which he could let you off if he chose. It is simply a description of what going back to him is like. If you ask God to take you back without it, you are really asking him to let you go back without going back. It cannot happen.”

God called the Egyptians to repent. He calls Christians to repent. Jesus’s message was repent. John the Baptist’s message was repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. The message of the epistles is repent. Jesus’s message to the seven churches in the book of Revelation is repent. Remember what you did before.

Martin Luther is right. While there’s more to the Christian life than repentance, there’s certainly nothing less than repentance going on. You can’t have the Christian life without repentance. You can’t become a Christian unless you do repent of your former ways and accept life in the Lord Jesus Christ and acknowledge that you’ve ruled your life your way and your way is always the wrong way because it’s your way and not God’s way. If you don’t do that, then there’s no life. And if you think you have life and continue to sin and won’t repent of your sins as a Christian, there’s no sanctification. There’s no growth.

And the text of scripture—I mean, I’m not trying to blame you for the ills of the world. But everything’s connected. Our sins are connected to our nation. Our nation is connected to the world. Our response to what’s going on in our Egypt of today, right, should be to repent, to acknowledge the striking of God, not to redouble our efforts politically, not to try to work harder at getting businesses going. Those things are important. They’re good to do. But that’s not step one. Step one is repenting, turning away from our personal sins that we’ve engaged in, and returning to God.

Make this Lenten season of 2011 significant. Make it one you’ll remember in the future. Make it one that the end result—at the end of when this is over, and as you move forward into the rest of your lives from this Lenten season—may it be a time when you acknowledge the blessings of God through his grace and mercy and healing in response to your particular repentance.

Well, you say, “Pastor Tuuri, what don’t we repent every Sunday? That’s what we do at the beginning of the service, right? We confess our sins.” Yeah, we do. And I don’t normally—you know, I haven’t normally or always used Lenten season to talk about to really focus on repentance. I have this year because I think it’s pretty easy for us to just kind of get into a rote deal. We’re confessing generally our sins and at the beginning of our covenant renewal worship, and letting kind of accretions of self-will, moral disabilities start to build up in our lives. And I want us to clear them out.

You know, that’s what this little red thing, these red stones are. And if you took one, you’ve already committed to something. Sorry. Well, you really haven’t. But the purpose of the red stone—years ago, one of my kids made a little heart on a jigsaw out of wood, and it was kind of, you know, wasn’t it—wasn’t perfectly symmetrical and it was kind of rough. And I carried that heart in my pocket for several years till it got nice and smooth on the edges, this little piece of wood. And I did it because I knew that I was sinning against this child by not giving them glory when their imperfect efforts were, you know, were criticized. But not intentionally criticized, but when I looked for better things.

I need to forget all that, but I needed to give this child more glory, more weight. And I carried around this little wooden heart in my pocket for several, I don’t remember how long, but years, trying to remind myself when I put my hand in my pocket: What’s this? Yeah, bless that child, Lord God. May I honor that child.

Well, that’s what the little red thing is meant to do to you. It’s something to carry in your pocket during this season leading up to Easter, maybe, you know, longer than that. And I want you to attach to it—if the Lord God lays it on your heart today—I want you to attach some sin, some place that you’ve turned away from Jesus, and you’re going to commit to turning back to him today. And that particular specific thing.

One of your handouts, there’s the seven A’s of forgiveness. I’ve given it to this congregation before. It’s from the Peacemakers. And to begin to repent means to admit specifically what you’re doing wrong. That’s the very first step on those seven things.

And so repentance today—what I’m asking you to do is to think of some particular. Now, we’ve been going through the law of God, right? We’re going through the Ten Commandments. And the Ten Commandments are a good device to remind ourselves of the kind of sins that are going on in our lives.

And I want you to think about that now. We’ve looked at the last three. Honor your parents—your mother and your father—and the implication of that for parents properly preparing their children and loving them. Right? It’s a two-way street. That’s the fifth commandment. The sixth commandment is about, you know, don’t murder, be careful about life. And the seventh commandment, which we spent five or six weeks on, is don’t commit adultery and all the various forms of that.

Now, I don’t know about you, and I don’t know what the spirit of God is going to lay on your heart here today or if he’ll lay a particular sin at all. I’m not saying he has to. I’m not saying you got to take a little red rock, you know, but if God lays a sin on your heart during this worship service that you need to turn from—and maybe it’s dishonoring your parents, maybe it’s your speech toward your parents. Maybe it’s hateful attitudes or thoughts toward your brother or sister. Maybe it’s you know that you haven’t done a good job of helping your children mature in the Lord Jesus Christ. Maybe whether you’re a young person or an old person, it’s sexual impurity of some sort. Maybe it’s the things you’re looking at. Maybe it’s the thoughts that you’re having, right? Maybe it’s some of those things.

Whatever it is, I want you to attach it to that little red stone and say, “Lord God, you know, I know I feel the conviction of your Holy Spirit striking me, and I want to return to you. I want to turn back in this particular area. I want to forsake that sin, whatever it is.” And Lord God, help me this day to commit to that and to believe that you’re going to heal me and have healed me, right? That God will forgive you. He has mercy for you. You don’t got to earn your way to forgiveness with Jesus by carrying that red rock around. You commit to it today. The Lord God has forgiven you of that sin as you bring it to him in prayer.

But the commitment of the red stone is to commit to trying real hard, having put off the sin, to put on righteousness in that same area.

Couple more C.S. Lewis quotes:

“Christianity tells people to repent and promises them forgiveness. It therefore has nothing, as far as I know, to say to people who do not know they have done anything to repent of, who do not feel that they need any forgiveness. It’s after you have realized that there is a real moral law and a power behind the law and that you have broken that law and put yourself wrong with that power—it is after all of this and not a moment sooner that Christianity begins to talk. Christianity has nothing to do with people who think they have no need of forgiveness, who are in that kind of blindness. But for those who do, the Lord God promises grace and healing.”

Another quote:

“Some modern theologians have quite rightly protested against an excessively moralistic interpretation of Christianity. The holiness of God is something more and other than moral perfection. His claim upon us is something more and other than the claim of moral duty. I do not deny it. But this conception, like that of corporate guilt, is very easily used as an evasion of the real issue. God may be more than moral goodness. He is not less. God may be more than moral goodness, but he is not less. The road to the promised land runs past Sinai,” which he’s referring to the Ten Commandments. “The moral law may exist to be transcended, but there is no transcending it for those who have not first admitted its claims upon them and then tried with all their heart to meet those claims and recognize that the only way to meet it is through the merits and grace of the Lord Jesus Christ.”

So, as we look at these Ten Commandments, here’s an example of the sort of thing that you might want to repent of. Here’s a quote first of all by Mark Driscoll talking. He’s actually Mark Driscoll quoted Doug Wilson on his Facebook page this last week. One of my kids pointed it out. Great quote. Our culture is doing to sex what people who chew with their mouths open do to food. Typical Doug Wilson, you know, he’s so G.K. Chesterton-like and Driscoll picks it up and reports.

And here’s something from Driscoll. This is a little longer. But I think this is quite important. It came up on the BHT list this week. And he talks about how what beauty is and can you—can you look at other women and say, “Boy, she’s really sexually attractive or she’s beautiful” as a man, a married man. Is that sin? Driscoll says in a pamphlet that he wrote some years back, he says:

“Until that point when Adam got Eve, Adam had never seen a woman because one had not yet been formed by God’s hands. All he had seen were aardvarks, sea bass, and other animals that would not look good in a wedding dress. Eve may or may not have been beautiful, but to Adam, she was glorious because she was all he had ever known. Practically, he had no standard of beauty to compare his bride to. She was his only standard of beauty. In creation, we see the wise pattern that every man’s standard of beauty is not to be objectified. It should simply be his wife. That means that if a man has a tall, gangly, red-headed wife, then that is sexy for him. And if his neighbor has a short, pudgy brunette wife, then that is sexy for his neighbor.

“Pornographic lust exists to elicit coveting and dissatisfaction that no woman can satisfy because she cannot be tall and short, endowed and waiflike, black and white, or young and old, like the harem laid out in pornography.”

Excellent comment. Excellent. And hopefully it moves some of you to repent for violations of the seventh word. Maybe it’s the fifth word. Maybe it’s your parents. Whatever it is, may the Lord God grant you a Lenten season of repentance with the great promise that he is merciful and compassionate. He will forgive you because of the merits of the Lord Jesus Christ. And not only that, he will bring you healing and health that’ll be good for the world itself.

One final quote from C.S. Lewis:

“The principle runs through all of life from top to bottom. Give up yourself and you’ll find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death—death of your ambitions, your favorites, your wishes, your favorite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end. Submit with every fiber of your being and you will find eternal life. Keep at nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will ever really be yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ. Look for Christ and you will find him and with him everything else thrown in.”

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you that you tell us to seek first the kingdom of God. And that kingdom has a king, the Lord Jesus Christ. And then as we seek that kingdom, all other things will be—see, as Lewis said—thrown in. Bless us, Lord God. Bless the congregants here. May each and every one of us commit to removing some aspect of sin in our lives during this Lenten season. Bless us, Father, and our families and our personal devotions. May we turn from our sins, put off the old man, put on the new man, and be healed by you and be a blessing to this culture and to this world.

In Jesus name we ask it. Amen.