Sermon Tone Analysis

The season of Advent is a season of preparation and of waiting.

And we all know waiting can be the worst.

But our smart phones have made waiting differently now, haven’t they?

It used to be you stood in line and awkwardly looked around you, noticing people, reading signs, shifting your weight on your feet and your entertainment was whatever weird things were going on in your mind.

Nowadays, we grab our phones in line and we scroll social media, have conversations with friends over text, DM’s or snapchat, or we crush candy or whatever other game we are into.

Back in the 80’s, when I was a kid, the most fun you would experience waiting around was if your mom got into a fight with a grocery store clerk because the price of cheez whiz rose to $1.99 and who could afford those ridiculous prices.

Today, smartphones have eliminated boredom and have changed how we wait.

Last week, we looked at the idea of waiting and anticipating.

We identify with the people of Israel who were waiting for a Messiah to come and save them and as we wait to celebrate the birth of Jesus, we should remember that Jesus is the center of History and should be center of our lives and that Jesus came for all kinds of people.

We were reminded by the genealogy in Matthew’s gospel that there is no one so good they don’t need Jesus and no one so bad they can’t be redeemed.

Today, I want to continue that theme of waiting.

But good spiritual waiting is neither idleness nor distraction.

It’s engagement with Holy Spirit.

It’s looking at ourselves and asking God what changes do I need to make in order to be ready to receive my king, Jesus the Christ.

I believe that God gives us seasons of waiting so that we can prepare our hearts through repentance.

What is repentance?

Repentance in the Greek is the word metanoia.

On the surface, it means to change your mind.

But it isn’t like changing your mind about what you’re going to watch on Netflix, or what you want to eat for supper.

It is a changing of the mind that takes place after the fact, after you’ve done something.

And the desire to make the change comes from a conviction on a mental and even emotional level that what you have done was wrong.

Like eating at Taco Bell.

It’s great while you are there, but soon after, you understand that you made a colossal mistake.

Repentance is experiencing that, and then not going back to Taco Bell.

The idea here is that you are walking on a path and you soon realize that you are going the wrong way.

So you “repent” - you change direction because you know that you are wrong and you re-align yourself in the direction you want to go.

What does this have to do with Christmas and Advent?

A key figure in the Christmas narrative is John the Baptist and his ministry, was about preparing Israel for the Messiah and that preparation focussed on repentance.

Let’s read Mark 1:1-8.

Pray.

Mark is an action-oriented book.

Mark spends very little time with Jesus’ teachings, preferring to focus on what Jesus did, as opposed to what Jesus said.

It’s why his letter is so much shorter than the other gospels.

Here, Mark gives a quick reference OT reference in order to situate us just before Jesus’ appearance.

Mark connects the ministry of John the Baptist with the prophecy by Isaiah, written about 700 years earlier.

It describes the type of ministry that John will have: one where he prepares people for Jesus by calling them to repentance.

And for them, the sign of their repentance was baptism.

Repentance prepared people to receive Jesus because repentance helps us emotionally and spiritually deal with our sin.

For those of you who are new to the faith or are just exploring Christianity, let’s define sin.

The Greek word for sin, “hamartia”, means to miss the mark or the standard by which God has set.

But what is the standard?

Well, because God is our creator and we are made in God’s image, to sin is to fail to love God and to love others by not treating them with the honour they deserve.

In fact, if you were to look at the 10 commandments found in Exodus 20, you would see that the first half of the commandments identify ways to you can fail God and the second half are ways that you can fail others.

Maybe that is why Jesus, when he summarized the entire OT law with its 613 commandments, said in Matthew 22:37-39 “...‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’

This is the first and greatest commandment.

A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’”

Repentance helps us to take our sin and give it to Jesus to deal with it.

Isaiah 55:6-7 says, “Seek the Lord while you can find him.

Call on him now while he is near.

Let the wicked change their ways and banish the very thought of doing wrong.

Let them turn to the Lord that he may have mercy on them.

Yes, turn to our God, for he will forgive generously.”

When we repent, we experience God’s forgiveness and God loves to forgive people.

Luke 15:3-7 says,

How do we actually practice the spiritual discipline of repentance?

Repentance can be broken down into three steps:

Step 1: Recognition

To change your mind, you need to practice self-examination.

Self Examination is simply paying attention to the way in which you are living your life.

It is easy to go through life without giving any thought to why you do things and what your motivation is.

And in today’s world, more and more people are not doing this reflection and assuming that everything is good.

1 John 1:8 says, “If we claim we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves and not living in the truth.”

So, if you value authentic faith, then you need to engage in the process of recognizing your sin.

Ask yourself why more often: Why am I working so much?

Why can’t I find a job?

Why am I angry?

Why do I want this or why do I want to do that?

Why is my marriage not thriving right now?

Why won’t my kids talk with me more?

The key word in self reflection is self.

You are not trying to figure out everyone else’s problems.

You are examining yourself.

Better yet, you are inviting God to examine you.

Self reflection is a prayer exercise.

Psalm 139:23-24 “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts.

Point out anything in me that offends you, and lead me along the path of everlasting life.”

What you are looking for are the ways that you aren’t loving God and the ways you aren’t loving others in your life.

If you are snapping at your spouse or kids, you aren’t loving them and you need to examine that.

If you are working 80 hours a week and have no time for the things of God: prayer, scripture reading, church, anything - then you aren’t loving God.

If you are caught in an addiction to pornography, drugs, or alcohol, then you aren’t biblically loving anyone, not even yourself, for if you loved yourself, you would do what is good for you, not what feels good.

The key to good spiritual growth is to take time to reflect on your life, on your day and invite God to examine your heart for all the ways that you succeeded and you failed to love God and love others.

The first step in repentance is recognizing your sin.

Step 2: Confession

I read a story about four pastors who met for a coffee and prayer time.

During the conversation one pastor said, "Our people come to us and pour out their hears, confess certain sins and needs to us, because we are safe and they know it won’t get passed around.

But what about us?

Who do we confess to?

Why don’t we confess our sins to each other because, as we know, “confession is good for the soul."

Everyone agreed.

One confessed he often downloaded his sermon from the internet.

The second confessed that his coffee on Sunday morning usually contained some Kahlua.

The third said that he was so upset with his youth pastor over breaking the piano by standing on it while singing “I want to know what love is” by foreigner at the youth group karaoke night, that that he snuck into the youth pastor’s office on Sunday morning and put some Ex-lax in the open can of Red Bull on the desk.

He said the noise that followed echoed throughout the whole church.

When it came to the fourth pastor, he wouldn't confess.

The others pressed him saying, "Come now, we confessed ours.

It’s okay, we won’t judge you.

What is your secret or vice?"

Finally, he got up, grabbed his coat and as he backed out the door, he answered, "I’m sorry.

I have to go, I have an elder’s meeting tonight.

But pray for me, because my sin is that I really struggle with gossip.”