Come Here

Welcome back you brave souls. As you may be aware we have been talking about repentance for the past few weeks.

In fact we have been looking at Where God is responding to the Dedication of the new temple and the prayers of King Solomon.

In His response God gave a pretty clear picture of what true repentance looks like, and in these couple of verses God laid out some steps of repentance that still hold up today even though we do not need to go to the temple in Jerusalem to do it, the reality is there are time in our lives when we need to repent.

Now since God the Holy Spirit dwells in us and we have been given a direct line to The Father through Jesus the Son, who serves as our sacrifice so no animal sacrifice is needed; we do not need to travel to any special location, we can repent just about anywhere.

Yet the four steps shown in verse 14 still play a big role.

So far we have traversed steps 1 and 2.

Step 1 was a step of humbling ourselves. Not to berate ourselves but to humble ourselves by surrendering control and authority to God. To stop caring what we look like to others or even to ourselves, and relinquish all pride.

By getting down of the throne of our lives and allowing God to Reign.

To stop caring what we look like to others or even to ourselves, and relinquish all pride.

Step 2 was about praying, but these prayers were to be prayers of acknowledgement. An acknowledgement that we sinned, and Acknowledgement of what we deserve and an acknowledgement that Jesus already took the punishment for our sin.

This evening we will move on to step 3., because if you try and skip step three you will stumble on step 4.

Has anyone here ever fallen up the stairs? No just me, usually it is because of step skipping, at least for me.

So to introduce step three I want to watch a short 30 second video.

Unfortunately I could not find a high quality video of the clip I wanted so this very low quality video will have to suffice.

Insert video

What is the 3rd step anyway...

Well let’s read verse 14 again.

2 Chronicles 7:14 NLT

Then if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sins and restore their land.

So step 1 is...

Step 2 is ...

So what is step three?

Seek God’s face

Me: When I was a child and I would mess up and break the rules, or something in the house and was caught I would go through a series of steps before entering the repentance steps.

You all know them because I bet you did them to, if not you may have had someone, perhaps a child try them on you.

So I broke the rules and have been caught.

Step 1 Deny it

This step usually doesn’t work well because when you are busted, usually mom or dad have you nailed dead to rights. But we all tried it.

Of course this meant breaking another house rule which is don’t lie, so now I am in twice the trouble, so we move on to step 2

Step 2 Justify it

This is tricky because you usually have to do some pretty creative talking in order to justify breaking the rules.Let me give you an example.

“I had to play ball inside, because it was raining outside and you said I couldn’t watch anymore TV.

I’m just a young boy and need my exercise, so you can see I really had no choice I had to play ball in the house.”

Just so you know my parents were sharp so step 2 never worked, but it didn’t stop me from trying.

So on to step 3

Step 3 Play the blame game

This one is usually a collective favourite, in fact it started all the way back in the garden of Eden.

It wasn’t my fault it was the women’s fault, and your fault, you gave her to me.

Then she says not even it was the snakes fault he lied to me.

You know we’ve all done it. In really desperate measures like Adam we will go for broke and blame the judge.

You know I never asked to be born so if you think about it this is all your fault.

Just to be clear these are not the steps of repentance, these are the steps of an unrepentant person still trying to get away with something.

Inevitably though once I realized none of my tactics would work my heart would get soft real fast I actually would enter into repentance.

humility was easy, realizing my parents were the ones in control and not me was usually pretty humbling.

The acknowledging stage was rough but inevitable. Yup I broke the rules and yup I deserve whatever punishment you come up with, yes I will take my punishment.

Unfortunately I never had an older sibling who would step in and take my punishment for me. WWJD that’s all I’m saying.

So before I could fulfill my punishment I first had to face sentencing.

Just so you know being a parent is a lot like running a court house. First you hear pleads, then cases, then you determine guilt or not, if found guilty then you hand out sentencing.

I hated sentencing, because up to this point you get to do most of the talking, because most children are too poor or too naive to hire a lawyer. But it now it was mom and dad’s turn to speak.

They say that what hurts the most during punishment is knowing you disappointed your parents.

I don’t know about that but I do know that when it comes down to true repentance of sin, I have no problem humbling myself. He is God and I am not.

And acknowledging my guilt and what I deserve is actually freeing, as confession is good for the soul.

But step three seek His face this is where it starts to get hard.

We: This is where we stop talking and look to Him. The reason this is so hard for many is because to this point we are downcast focused usually on our own guilt, but now we get to look to God and most of us don’t expect to see Him smiling.

Some expect to see an angry God, maybe that is because that is what they were used to seeing when they looked to their earthly father after they did wrong.

For a lot of people this is their view of God. I screwed up now God is going to smite me.

For others they don’t expect to see an angry God, they are afraid to see a disappointed God. No one wants God to be disappointed in them.

So when people screw up these are often what they expect to see when they seek His face.

God: Ok so we should clarify what it means to seek God’s face. Remember that video that seems so irrelevant now. Cliff kept saying come here come heerree.

When we sin this is the call of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Come to me.

The Hebrew word panim occurs over 2100 times in the OT in various forms. This passage uses the form פָּנֶה

Now according to The Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary

The Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary Face

Pānı̂m is the most common word in the OT for “presence” in a broader sense than just “face.” Thus pānı̂m was used in reference to entering or leaving the presence of a king or a superior, or of being in Yahweh’s presence.

Pānı̂m

Drinkard, J. F., Jr. (1992). Face. In D. N. Freedman (Ed.), The Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary (Vol. 2, p. 743). New York: Doubleday.

The Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary Face

As indicated above, the face expressed a full range of emotions to the Hebrews. Thus anger, especially from a feeling of being rejected, was indicated by a fallen face or countenance.

What I am trying to show you is that in this time and even today No one could see God’s actual face without dying. This was why Moses could only see His back, and why the smoke and cloude in hid God.

So this call to seek His face was really a call to enter into His presence to seek Him and His emotions.

This could be equally scary if you think that God is angry with you, or that God is disappointed in you.

You: But do you want to know what you actually see when you seek His face, even in your brokenness, God loves you.

His desire is to forgive you. When Jesus died on the cross the Father turned His face away. That is where He expressed His disappointment for your sin not while it was on you but while it was on Jesus.

We: We are so blessed to be invited into God’s presence not to be judged in anger but to be forgiven in love.

The reason this is such an important step in repentance is because it keeps us from living a defeted life thinking God is mad or upset with us. When we truly seek His face what we see is love and forgivness, which makes the next step so much easier.

Next step: come back next week.