Sermon 02.17.13 :: Turn

Turning requires a physical reorientation.  You move your body from one direction to another.  Simply put, this is the nature of what it means to repent.  God’s Word calls us to turn from one direction to another, from sin to righteousness.  This Lent, we consider what it means to turn.  What do we need to turn from?  How do we turn from deeply engrained sins?  Underlying all of this turning is the graciousness of God in Christ.  His “turn” to Jerusalem and to Golgotha reoriented our destiny for eternity.  Based on member feedback, each week we will consider a different sin that we’re called to turn from. 

“Repent, therefore, and turn again, that your sins may be blotted out, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus.”      Acts 3:19-20

“To probe and ponder how bad you have been is not enough if you do not ponder and probe much more how good you desire to become.”

- Martin Luther

“Repentance is begun when we acknowledge our sins and are sincerely sorry for them; it is completed when trust in the mercy of God comes to this sorrow and hearts are converted to God and long for the forgiveness of sins.”                                                      - Martin Luther

“The work of God can be built only upon the ruins of our self.” - Fenelon

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Thus Solomon finished the house of the LORD and the king's house. All that Solomon had planned to do in the house of the LORD and in his own house he successfully accomplished. Then the LORD appeared to Solomon in the night and said to him: “I have heard your prayer and have chosen this place for myself as a house of sacrifice. When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command the locust to devour the land, or send pestilence among my people, if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land. Now my eyes will be open and my ears attentive to the prayer that is made in this place. For now I have chosen and consecrated this house that my name may be there forever. My eyes and my heart will be there for all time. And as for you, if you will walk before me as David your father walked, doing according to all that I have commanded you and keeping my statutes and my rules, then I will establish your royal throne, as I covenanted with David your father, saying, ‘You shall not lack a man to rule Israel.’
   
 “But if you turn aside and forsake my statutes and my commandments that I have set before you, and go and serve other gods and worship them, then I will pluck you up from my land that I have given you, and this house that I have consecrated for my name, I will cast out of my sight, and I will make it a proverb and a byword among all peoples. And at this house, which was exalted, everyone passing by will be astonished and say, ‘Why has the LORD done thus to this land and to this house?’ Then they will say, ‘Because they abandoned the LORD, the God of their fathers who brought them out of the land of Egypt, and laid hold on other gods and worshiped them and served them. Therefore he has brought all this disaster on them.’”

2 Chronicles 7:11-22 ESV 

Sermon posted at reliantchurch.org