Repentance

The Lord said to Abraham, Go from your country, your people, and your father's household, to the land I will show you.

In other words, leave the rich, fertile lands of Mesopotamia, and head west to a land you know little about.

Abraham obeyed, became an immigrant, and ended up the father of many nations as a result.

Today, we begin a new series in the Book of Psalms entitled The Discipleship Journey.

I was born in Brisbane.

At a few months of age, I was brought to Sydney with my mum and dad and my older brother Murray, where I've lived the rest of my life.

I grew up in the French's forest, not far from here, got married and migrated south over the border to the Sutherland Shire.

Well, it felt like a big move to us anyway as a newly married couple.

We didn't know anyone.

And in the south, we, I guess, built a life for the next 20 years before moving north again here to Hornsby, actually Mount Coler.

Big whoop, I hear you say.

You call that immigrating?

What are we fair?

I didn't exactly call it immigrating, but point taken.

Compared to many in our church family, I don't really know much at all about genuine immigration.

We have people in our church who left Africa, who left Canada, China, Malaysia, Indonesia, South Africa, New Zealand, Singapore, to name just a few, to make a new life as immigrants here in Australia.

And if you're one of those people, you know far better than I what it takes to make it as a pilgrim, setting out on a journey to a far off land.

What I do know a little about is a pilgrimage called discipleship.

Every follower of Jesus is a pilgrim on the path of the way, the way of the Master.

Discipleship is a journey.

It is a pilgrimage towards the prize for which Christ has called us heavenward.

It's a journey towards new creation, complete heaven, the Father's house, which has many rooms.

It's the sort of journey that someone along the way, normally a kid says, are we there yet?

And everyone laughs because they know, no, we're not there yet.

And there is a long, long way to go.

This path towards knowing God more deeply is not a pathway towards being saved or forgiven.

It's a pathway for the saved and the forgiven.

It's the pilgrimage we find ourselves on once we have received the Good News and the new life Jesus offers.

It's the journey towards becoming all that has been made available for us to become.

We're not the first people to walk this path through life towards knowing God more deeply.

The Israelites didn't have what we have, the Holy Spirit, in them through the power of the death and resurrection of Jesus, but they did have God's presence and his commands.

They were his people.

And there is much for us to learn about journeys from the songs and prayers of this Pilgrim people of the Old Testament.

Today we're in Psalm 120.

It's the first Psalm of 15 known as the Songs of Ascent from Psalm 120 through to Psalm 134.

These are songs the people of Israel would sing as they traveled to Jerusalem three times per year for their big annual feasts.

How about you?

Has discipleship been a journey for you?

Hebrews calls the discipleship journey a race.

Hebrews 12 verse 1 says, Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith.

To run this race, to travel the discipleship journey, there are sins that need to be jettisoned, and throw off everything that hinders, the scripture says.

The Apostle Paul calls this journey a race in Philippians 3, 14.

But one thing I do, forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me Heavenwood in Christ Jesus.

It's the language of a race.

A long race.

The Discipleship Journey.

We live in the age of the instant, don't we?

It's a comment most of us have heard, certainly in at least a few sermons over the years, but it's true.

Some of us might have collected the eggs this morning, but I doubt many milked the cows.

Some of us cut wood for a fire, but not many chopped the tree down to get it.

We eat fast food and send video pictures of ourselves to people on the other side of the world in seconds.

We used to send telegrams, now we use Instagram.

This series is about relearning the holy rhythms of discipleship for the long journey that is the Christian life.

This series is about learning what it is to be a maithetes or disciple and a parapedemos, a pilgrim.

A maithetes is a learner, a follower of the master, learning the art of life and a parapedemos is a person who spends their life going somewhere, a pilgrim.

In John 14, Thomas says to Jesus, Lord, we don't know where you are going, so how can we know the way?

Jesus answered, I am the road and the truth and the life.

Jesus is the road to God that is true, a true road which provides life along the way.

As much as Christianity provides powerful encounters with the Lord, or times where we stand amazed at His healing hand, His forgiveness, His power to break chains, once we are set free, we resume the pilgrim's journey of faith, the discipleship journey.

Psalm 120 is one of 15 songs sung by Israel as they travelled uphill to Jerusalem together.

The Israelites were a people whose salvation had been accomplished in the Exodus, whose identity had been defined at Sinai and whose preservation had been assured in the 40 years of wilderness wandering.

As such a people, they regularly climbed the road to Jerusalem to worship.

They refreshed their memories of God's saving ways at the Feast of Passover in the spring.

It was all about the Exodus rescue.

They renewed their commitments as God's covenanted people at the Feast of Pentecost in early summer.

That was about when the law was given at Mount Sinai 50 days after their liberation from Egypt.

They responded as a blessed community to the best that God had for them at the Feast of Tabernacles in the autumn, remembering when he provided shelter for them throughout the wilderness wanderings.

They were a redeemed people, a commanded people and a blessed people.

These foundational realities were preached and taught as they praised God at the annual Feasts.

Between Feasts the people lived these realities in daily discipleship until the time came to go up to the mountain city again as pilgrims to renew the Covenant.

A pretty cool picture, don't you think, of life following God?

Three rhythms each year to take you on a discipleship journey of realignment to the truth about life and faith.

Anyone have a favourite Bible?

I'm a professional Bible reader, so as you expect, my Bibles get pretty scruffed up.

But you can imagine Psalm 120 to 134 was an old dog-eared song book for this pilgrim people.

Eugene Peterson translates it like this from The Message Bible.

I'm in trouble.

I cry to God, desperate for an answer.

Deliver me from the liars, God.

They smile so sweetly, but lie through their teeth.

Do you know what's next?

Can you see what's coming, all you bare-faced liars?

Pointed arrows and burning coals will be your reward.

I'm doomed to live in Meshech, cursed with a home in Kedar.

My whole life lived camping among quarreling neighbours.

I'm all for peace, but the minute I tell them so, they go to war.

It's not a pretty psalm.

It's not a joyful psalm.

It's not even a hauntingly melancholic psalm.

It's dissonant.

It's jarring.

It's a sharp prod that says the discipleship journey only begins when you realise things aren't right.

The psalm begins with I'm in trouble and ends with the word war.

The psalm provides the backdrop for the beginning of the journey towards God.

And that is repentance.

Repentance starts the journey.

Repentance often realigns the journey along the way.

Repentance is changing direction, changing allegiance from the way things have been to a new way.

COVID quarantining has given us a unique opportunity for repentance.

To repent, to turn around, to change one's mind, to realign our allegiance.

COVID quarantining has caused many of us to stop.

To stop the busyness and the hurry sickness of our 21st century, unreflective lives.

It's caused parents to get to know their kids a little better, to understand a little more about their education.

Employees have learned a little more about work-life balance.

Even church machinations have been given a jolt.

We've reassessed what relationships mean to us.

We've rediscovered what solitude can do to renew and replenish, as well as to isolate.

There have been aspects of this season wherein, that have not been much fun, but most of us would agree, it's not been without the opportunity for fresh insight and revelation about our lives as individuals and in community.

Psalm 120 is not on anyone's memory verse list of favourite Psalms.

The Psalmist on this journey to Jerusalem has written a song for the people that reminds them that they are surrounded by liars.

I'm in trouble.

I cry to God, desperate for an answer.

Deliver me from the liars, the Psalmist says.

They smile so sweetly, but lie through their teeth.

Do you know what's coming next?

Can you see what's coming, all you bare-faced liars?

The Journey of Discipleship more often than not begins in the same way that the Psalmist has described it.

We realise we've been living a lie.

We realise the map of life didn't take us to where it promised.

We realise we've been duped by the world, duped by the man or woman in the mirror, bare-faced liars.

We can all quickly bring to mind the look of a person we believe to be a liar doing it bare-faced, unashamedly, looking you in the eye.

Let's face it, they're typically politicians.

Well, and a few famous preachers also.

The Discipleship Journey begins when, by the prodding of the grace of God, and often the fear of God, we realise, I need a truthful road that leads to life.

Does anyone know a road that is true and life-giving?

One of our church community found this road.

This is Daniel.

Please listen to his story.

Hello NorthernLife.

For those that don't know me, my name is Daniel.

I've always known as Trotty.

And I've been a part of the NorthernLife community for the past year or so.

I guess my journey with faith started in my early childhood.

I was brought up in a Catholic community with a Catholic education.

And while I kind of learned kind of the idea of who God was and who Jesus was and his journey and all the knowledge behind that, I never developed the personal connection.

And that's really where that journey ended for me.

It was just the knowledge without that, you know, that real intimate connection with God.

Then many years went by and I was about my third year into uni.

And I don't know what happened, but I kind of came to this realisation that I was just lost and I had no idea what was going on in my life, really.

I was my third year into my music degree.

And I just realised that I wasn't really going anywhere.

I kind of, I was kind of known as the life of the party with my friends, but that doesn't mean anything.

I was basically a social alcoholic, as you would define it, where kind of I was only kind of friends with a lot of people was because I was fun at parties and I didn't have any strong connections with many people.

And I was kind of lost on my own journey and actually had to seek out counselling for that.

And through that I started going to a couple of personal development conferences and at one of them, they actually had a service on a Sunday morning where a couple of people got up and shared their testimonies as Christians.

And I was just struck by the values that I lived by and how committed they were to their calling by God and how much of a purpose they had in their lives.

And a bit of a emotional reveal to me, I realized that that was what I wanted.

And it was just such a surreal experience for me.

A couple of weeks later, I was talking to a friend of mine, Tim Palmer, about this.

And he ended up inviting me along to NorthernLife.

And I guess from the moment that I walked in to NorthernLife, the first thing that struck me was the tightness and the togetherness of the community.

And while everyone was on separate journeys in their life, they all had a calling from God, which brought them together.

And they all had such a strong sense of purpose and the values that drove their life.

And, yeah, it was just such a tight-knit community.

And I knew from the start that I wanted to be a part of this community.

I guess from my own journey as a Christian over the past year, what I've kind of noticed is that the values and beliefs that I live by have been amplified so much.

And that's shown through everyday conversations that I have with people and kind of the purpose that I have for my life has just been amplified so much by understanding kind of my calling from God and just developing that relationship with Him.

And I guess every day, I now kind of see life through a new set of lenses.

It's not that life's so different for me now.

It's just that all the little things that I do every day has so much more significance when I see them through the eyes as a Christian with a calling from God.

And it's just made such a wonderful impact on my life.

Thanks, Daniel.

Praise God for what He is doing in your life, mate.

We get life wrong, don't we?

And sometimes God needs to send pointed arrows as the Psalm says, to get us to turn around.

Ever tried to loosen a nut in an unusual situation like some lawnmower blades and tried your hardest to know a veil only to discover that this thread goes the other way?

Not lefty loosey, righty tighty.

It's righty loosey, lefty tighty.

Sometimes until you feel enough pain to realise you're wrong, you will never turn around and find the road to life.

The Psalm continues, I'm doomed to live in Meshech, cursed with a home in Kedar.

My whole life lived camping among quarrelling neighbours.

I'm all for peace, but the minute I tell them so, they go to war.

Now I did say this is not on anyone's favourite Psalm list, but it's an honest cry from the heart.

The psalmist is basically saying, if things don't change, I'm going to be stuck in this life, surrounded by liars, feeling the judgement of God, and living in fear all my life.

Meshech and Kedar are place names.

Meshech is a far-off tribe, thousands of kilometres from Palestine in Southern Russia.

Kedar, where a wandering Bedouin tribe with a barbaric reputation along Israel's borders, Meshech and Kedar represent the strange and the hostile.

Paraphrased, the cry is, I live in the midst of thugs and wild savages.

This world is not my home and I don't belong.

No matter when you lived in history, honestly, humanity has not changed much at all.

The discipleship journey begins when you come to the end of yourself.

And you look up.

You climb to the top of the corporate ladder and realize the ladder is on the wrong building.

I've believed a lie.

You get to the end of parenting your young children and you realize that outsourcing their parenting to others wasn't the best idea.

You believed a lie the world told you you needed to do.

You get to the end of your marriage, the end of the alcohol, the gambling, the self-righteousness, the workaholism, the laziness, the entitlement, the rage, the self-obsession.

And you see, it was a lie.

It hasn't given life.

And you see a different way, a fork in the road.

And it starts with repentance.

The song of the Parapiedemos, the song of the Pilgrim, travelling towards knowing God through Christ, remembers repentance.

Turn around, change direction.

So what is repentance?

Repentance starts with recognizing the presence of God.

This Psalm only mentions the name of God twice.

But it's when we look up and see God and His truth in Jesus by His Spirit, that everything changes.

Amen.

Repentance starts with a renewing of the mind.

What does God say about my situation?

I need to renew my mind to find out what is the truth.

We find the truth in God's Word.

Repentance involves remorse for sin.

We express our remorse to God for breaking His holy rules for living, for believing the lie of the world, the flesh and the devil.

We renounce the sin.

We speak it out.

I do not believe the lie I have been sold about how to find the good life.

I am turning away from this way of life by the grace of God.

We receive the power of the shed blood and empty tomb.

Jesus has made a way to pay for our sin.

He offers us a divine exchange.

We get what He deserved and He gets what we deserve.

He pays for our sin and we get relationship with God.

We receive the power of the gospel and we remove access to sin.

If we are truly going to live a different life, then we can't put ourselves in the way of the same temptations anymore.

We need to remove access to the lie that has caused us to sin.

So, what do you need to throw off to run the race marked out for you?

We reassign the cue.

Sin works on habits, like most things in life.

Habits have a cue, which activates a craving, which activates a habit, which delivers a reward.

Cue, craving, habit, reward is how the body works.

After reassigning the cue, we replace the habit and enjoy a different reward.

So when the cue turns up, which would normally lead you to sin, by God's grace and with a renewed mind, you insert a new craving and a new habit and new reward.

The more that your body gets used to what the cue begins, the more you reinforce a new way of living.

Let's think about an example.

Say you're suffering with unforgiveness.

The cue for your sin of bitterness might be, every time you do something in the garden, you think of that person who hurts you, and it takes you into a spiral of condemning thoughts towards them.

By God's grace and with a renewed mind, every time you walk into the garden, let that become a cue to speak out a truth about your own life from God's Word.

Let that be a cue maybe to sing a chorus or a hymn about God's faithfulness to you and how much He has loved you and forgiven you.

Over time, there will be a reward of peace, godliness and holiness that you actually feel, that transcends all understanding that you really look forward to.

What is it for you?

What is the lie that you have been believing?

What is the lie you are surrounded by?

What is the Spirit of God saying to you about the road ahead?

Discipleship is a journey.

And much of the journey is spent in between points along the road.

Repentance is a turning point.

Then you spend a lot of time in between.

We all know what it's like to feel like saying, are we there yet?

Christian maturity is all about finding the rhythm of the journey and letting God do His work in our lives as He shapes us into the likeness of Christ.

There is a long period in between the time we leave home and arrive at our destination, between the time we leave adolescence and arrive at adulthood.

There is an in-between between the time we leave doubt and arrive at faith, between hearing from God and receiving His deliverance, between the time when the trapeze artist lets go of the bar and hangs in midair, ready to be caught by the other person.

The in-between time is a time of danger, of expectation, of uncertainty.

It's a time of faith.

We sing the songs of ascent in between.

We pull out the old dog-eared songbook and we sing the pilgrim's songs.

In John 9, Jesus comes across a blind man at the pool of Siloam.

Jesus spits on the ground and rubs mud in his eyes and then says, go and wash in the pool.

It's a weird story, but one I'd like to leave with you today, because it speaks to the discipleship journey.

The blind man didn't know what was happening.

Mud on his eyes.

Suddenly he's on a pathway to the pool.

There's uncertainty in between.

There's fear.

There's excitement.

There's faith.

Of course, the pool of Siloam is significant because Siloam means sent.

We are a redeemed people, a commanded people, a blessed people.

The discipleship journey often feels like we're walking blind in the in-between.

But remember who sent you, who is your travelling companion, and who is your destination.

Remember, the blind man got to see.

We're ascent people.

We are on a long discipleship journey.

We're not doing it alone.

We're doing it together.

Jesus is the road, the truth and the life.

May we continue to walk in Him.

Let's pray.

Thank you, Lord God, for this incredible privilege we have to be pilgrims on the journey of life with other pilgrims.

Thank you, Jesus, that you are the road and you are with us and you give us truth that guides us and you are the life.

And you've given us your spirit and your word, everything we need for a life of godliness, everything we need to make it through the journey.

Lord God, we want to commit ourselves, Lord willing, to the next couple of months ahead that we might invest ourselves in the songs of ascent, these Psalms that you use to remind your people of what matters in life.

Lord, for those of us who need to turn, change direction, shift allegiance, who really need to repent, thank you, Holy Spirit, you're the only one who can guide us to that place, who could show us where the lies are and where the truth is, where the darkness is and where the light is.

Would you come and move in your church and help us on this journey of the Pilgrim Path to the destination of new creation and that we might be servants found to be faithful.

All to the glory of Jesus, we pray.

Amen.

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