6-29-2025

Good Morning All,

    Matthew 4:17;” From that time Jesus began to preach, saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

   This is one of those verses that causes people to really kind of wrinkle their nose at.  “Repent;” it makes it sound like I am some sort of bad guy; well, you are.  Yet there is more to this verse than most of us read.  Most of us see this as Jesus “the kill joy God” coming into our lives and screwing up the good times we are having.  This is what the devil and our sinful nature wants us to believe.

    Of course, the devil and our sinful nature lie to us every single time.  The truth is, God is trying to get us to see that we are on the wrong path and we need to fix it.  When God created the world, it was perfect.  Man was perfect and all of creation worked in harmony with each other.  Then sin entered the world and brought disharmony and caused man to turn away from God.  So that is where we sit, with our backs turned toward God looking and going away from God and his grace.

    To this life Jesus says repent.  In other words, turn around, come back, don’t go that way, it will only harm you.  Repent, turn from the sin that harms you and come back to my grace; repent.

    We need to understand that the 10 Commandments are a reflection of God’s Will.  This is God telling us how we can live the life that we were designed for before man sinned.  This is how the relationship between you and God along with you and your fellow man are designed to be.  We see that if we believe that God is our God and not some other false god pretending to be that our relationship with our creator is better.  If we see that our dealings with other people should be based on respect, love, and honor, we see that we have a better existence.  God’s law serves to bring us back to this proper existence.  When we sin, we turn from God’s perfect design to the broken sinful one.  When this happens, we need to repent; we need to turn away from our sin and back to God’s grace.

   This is what repentance is really all about.  It is not about God taking away our fun but about returning to the proper, healthy life that we were created for.  To keep returning to sin is to keep returning to the very thing that causes us pain.  God calls us to repent; to turn away from this self-destructive behavior and return to God’s grace and favor.  We can continue to beat our self over the head and claim we like it or we can repent and turn back to God and his path for our life.

Dearest Father, too often we go our own way which causes us pain and suffering.  Too often we miss your call to repentance and only suffer more.  We give you thanks for the mercy to call us and we ask that you strengthen us to hear your call and heed it.  We ask that you be with those who are in the most pain and suffering.  Lead them to hear your call to repentance and to come home.  In Jesus’ precious name we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret