Repentance

​Midweek 4 – 2025                                                                                         LSB #’s 839, 419, 615
Text – Jonah 3:8
 
…let man & beast be covered with sackcloth, & let them call out mightily to God.  Let everyone turn from his evil way & from the violence that is in his hands.
 
REPENTANCE
 
 
The people of Nineveh were vicious & violent, not the sort of people you’d think would be receptive to repentance.  But Jonah delivered the Lord’s message to them: “Yet forty days, & Nineveh shall be overthrown!”  (3:4 ESV)   It worked brilliantly.  You could not ask for a more thorough-going repentance than that of Nineveh.  
The people repented even before the king decreed it, & by the end, everyone in the city, from the king all the way down to the animals, was wearing sackcloth & sitting in ashes.  It is a model of repentance in Holy Scripture.  Tonight, we consider it as a model for our repentance. 
They did much better than Adam.  After the 1st two human beings ate of the forbidden fruit, God called to Adam, “Where are you?”   He replied, “…I was afraid, because I was naked, & I hid myself.”  (Genesis 3:9–10 ESV)  
When confronted by God’s call to repentance in this season of Lent, will we find the courage to be honest about who we are & sit in ashes like Nineveh, or will we be afraid & hide like Adam? 
HOW DO WE HIDE   
St. John wrote, “Everyone who does wicked things hates the light & does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed.”  (3:20)   It’s our natural tendency as well.  Who wants to have their sins made public?  Repentance means exposing your deeds to your own conscience & to God; perhaps to a pastor or fellow Christian – if it’s a sin that particularly bothers you.  
That is intimidating, even though we know Jesus forgives our sin.  We naturally react like
Adam: I was afraid, so I hid.  One way of hiding is to confess our socially acceptable sins.  Yes, I get angry with family members, or sometimes I’m lazy, or sometimes I don’t obey my parents.   By confessing those sins, we figure we’ve done our duty.  We’ve met the requirement, so to speak, & come up with something to confess.  
It can be a smoke screen so we don’t have to confess the deeper rage or lust or unbelief we’d be ashamed of, if others found out?   The sins doing the greatest damage to our relationships with God & our neighbors are the ones we most try to hide. 
Not that superficial repentance is false.  It’s probably true that Adam was afraid because he was naked.  But by confessing that, he was hoping he would not have to confess the real issue: he ate the fruit in direct disobedience of God’s command.   “I was afraid, so I hid.”  
Another way to hide is by moving our thoughts along quickly to keep our attention off of ourselves: “Yes, I’m a sinner, but aren’t we all?  Besides, I’ll try really hard next time.”  My track record may show I’m not good at amending my sinful ways, but if I promise to do better, I can get past this uncomfortable part of the service & move on to something less threatening. 
HOW WE CAN STOP HIDING
Hiding was not what the Ninevites did.  They sat in ashes & spent time contemplating their sin – another way of saying that they spent time being honest about who they were.  What does it mean to sit in ashes?  
Ashes remind us of the curse that God pronounced on Adam & Eve after the fall: “Dust you are & to dust you shall return.” (Genesis 3:19)  Ashes remind us that our sins have catastrophic consequences.  This is not just a matter of violating arbitrary rules.  God’s law determines the structure of the universe.  To sin against God’s law is to sin against the way we are designed.  
To sin is not only rebellion against God.  It is to fall short of what we could be.  It is
destructive, like knocking out the walls of your house until you’re sitting in a pile of rubble.  To sin is to settle for living in a hell of our own making rather than in the boundaries that God established where life can flourish.
You may think we need to get rid of those parts of us that are sinful so we can fit into the demands of God’s law.  With that thinking, God’s law is like Cinderella’s slipper.  You can only be the princess if you can fit into the shoe.  In the Grimm’s Fairy Tale version, Cinderella’s wicked stepsisters wanted to be the princess, so they cut off their toes trying to fit into the shoe.  
Because of our sinful nature, we are the wicked stepsisters of Cinderella.  How are we ever going to fit into the shoe?  Our Creator knows that is impossible.  Honest repentance confesses that we can never fit ourselves into God’s Law.  Honest repentance recognizes our sin, mourns over it, & sits with it a while.  Honest repentance stops hiding from Yahweh. 
In fact, this evening I ask you not to promise to do better.  It doesn’t even matter whether you think you can.  We’ll take that question up next week.  For tonight, just focus on being who you actually are before God.  He wants to rescue you.   Recognize too that when we repent, we are not thinking only about the things we feel ashamed of.  
Isaiah says, “All our righteous deeds are like filthy rags.”  (64:6)  This is reflected in Jonah by the fact that the entire city repented from the king down to the animals, from the highest to the lowest.  Not just the corrupt parts of us need repentance, but our highest faculties: our reason & intelligence, our love, our self-sacrifice – none of it is pure.   It is all shot through with sin. 
HOW DOES GOD SEE US
Repentance is not only feeling sorry for sin.    It is also faith in God’s promise of forgiveness.  Yet even there, we feel the instinct to hide.  We’ve been told that when God looks at us, He sees only Christ.  There is certainly truth in that, but it doesn’t go far enough.   After all, what is our ultimate hope?  On the Last Day, we want to hear the words, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.”  (Matthew 25:34 ESV)  So, Christ ushers us into the kingdom, & then what?  We hide behind Him forever?  That sounds more like Adam.  “I was afraid, because I was naked, so I hid.”  
What if, at some point in eternity, God were to peek around Jesus & figure out who we really are?  Would He say, “How’d you get in here?”  No!  Our faith is in the promise that Christ has reconciled us with God.  That means God says:
“I know exactly who you are, & with full knowledge of that, I welcome you into my kingdom.  I know your shame, & with full knowledge of that, I seat you in a place of honor.”  Your honored welcome into God’s kingdom has nothing to do with how well you fit into God’s law, nor a sincere promise to be better, nor your ability to do better.  
Your welcome into heaven is determined only by the work of Christ, whose death has redeemed you from every aspect of yourself that would destroy you.  The issue of turning from sin & doing better is important.  We’ll take up that question next week.  But your success or failure at that can never add to, or subtract from, what Christ has done. 
Only Satan’s corruption of our heart, mind & soul causes us to hide from our Lord instead of run to Him.  The next time you’re tempted to hide, think of Nineveh & trust in the almighty God’s love for you.  He will restore your heart, mind & soul.  Amen. 
 
 
Savior, when in dust to Thee  low we bow the adoring knee;  when, repentant, to the skies  scarce we lift our weeping eyes;  O, by all Thy pains & woe  suffered once for us below,  bending from Thy throne on high,  hear our penitential cry!    By Thy deep expiring groan,  by the sad sepulchral stone,   by the vault whose dark abode  held in vain the rising God,   O,  from earth to heaven restored,  mighty,  reascended Lord,   bending from Thy throne on high,  hear our penitential cry!  Amen.  LSB 419:1, 4.