Word of Salvation – February 2025

 

The Restoration Of Repentance

 

Sermon by Rev. John Westendorp on W.C.F. ch.15 & Isaiah 59:1,2,20

Reading: Isaiah 59; Westminster Confession – ch.15

 

Singing:        BoW.118       Give thanks to God for all His goodness         [1,4] –                      BoW.119c     I have followed truth and justice
–                      BoW.023a     The Lord my shepherd rules my life
–                      BoW.116       What shall I render to the Lord?             [1,5]

 

Theme: The spiritual barrenness from unconfessed sin isn’t God’s fault but must be dealt with by repentance.

 

Introd:  Why must Christians repent and confess their sins?

Some people say that once we are Christians we don’t need to do that anymore.
We believe that when Jesus died on the cross He carried all our sins.
Past, present and even future sins were all dealt with at Calvary.
So why is confession and repentance such a big deal in our life?

 

The reason is that unconfessed sin impacts our lives negatively.
The kind of impact that Psalm 32 talks about… the impact of spiritual depression.
David says there that when he did not confess his sins his bones wasted away.
There was groaning all day long.
God’s hand was heavy upon him and his strength was sapped as in the heat of summer.

 

It’s a very vivid picture of spiritual depression and spiritual alienation.
And remember: this isn’t an unbeliever speaking, this is David the man after God’s own heart.

 

We have a similar situation in Isaiah 59.
There are some things in that chapter that we can all relate to.
We’ve all experienced times when God seemed to be a million miles away.
‘Times when our prayers seemed to go no higher that the ceiling.
All the joy and all the zest… gone out of our spiritual life.
And our Bible reading… well, we still go through the motions but that’s all.

 

Look at the way Isaiah pictures it in verse 9 to 11:
We look for light but all is darkness, for brightness but we walk in deep shadows.
We growl like bears and moan mournfully as doves…!
That kind of a spiritual downer is not a happy picture, is it?
And the worst of it is that in those situations we feel so powerless to solve the problem.

 

A]        THE PROBLEM DOES NOT LIE WITH GOD.

 

1. In times of spiritual depression like that we often try to shift the blame.

And we do that in a variety of ways.

Spiritually depressed Christians often blame their church.
Their fellowship within the Christian community grows cold.
But of course that’s because people aren’t friendly and don’t respond to my needs.
Or the worship services have become dull and routine.
But that’s because Session should change things or the pastor put more fire into his sermons.

 

When we have problems in our spiritual life we love to have a scapegoat.
It’s because of the spiritually deadening environment I work in.
Or it’s because the elders of the church never visit me.
And the rest of the church never really supports me.

 

And the worst of it is that in our blame shifting we come to the same point Israel was at.
That in our darkest moments we even blame God.
God doesn’t care about me anymore…!
Where is He when I so desperately need Him…?

Here Israel was complaining that God’s arm was too short to save.
And that his ear was too dull to hear their prayers.
That’s why their prayers never seemed to go any higher than the ceiling.

2. That’s why Isaiah comes to them with a message from God.

It’s a message to tell them that they’ve got it all wrong.
’A reminder that in these situations the problem does not lie with God.
When we get ourselves in the spiritual doldrums that is not the Lord’s doing.
Israel’s spiritual barrenness and dryness is not God’s fault.

Ifs a little bit like a child that has wandered a very long way away from its mother.
But then blames the mother for not listening and for not taking any notice.

 

In that context it’s lovely the way the Bible portrays the Living God.
Isaiah pictures Him in very human terms.
Our God is presented to us as a God with hands… and a God with ears.

Of course God is a Spirit and He doesn’t have bodily parts.
But Isaiah uses that language to show that this God of ours is a God of action.
This God is always powerful enough to help… His arms can reach us anywhere.
This God is always attentive enough to hear… He can hear the weakest cry for help.
So we have a God who works with His hands and who listens with His ears.

 

The point Isaiah is making is that God may seem far away… the heavens may seem silent.
But that is not due to God.
It is not that God is unable to assist… or unable to hear.
It is not that He can’t solve Israel’s problem… or your problem… or mine.
God is not a million miles away… and our prayers do go through the ceiling.

 

3. At the heart of this issue is the need for us to understand who God is.

The context in Isaiah is God’s judgment on His people who have drifted away from Him.

Things have come to the point where He is about to banish them to Babylon for 70 years.

 

But Isaiah wants them and us to know who our God is.
God is a God who never stops caring about us.
God is a God who always reaches out to us.
And that’s why a lack of confession and repentance leads to spiritual depression.
It’s so that we might wake up to ourselves and repent and return to our God.

 

I guess it’s a little like the way parents deal with their children.
I recall an instance from my childhood when I had done the wrong thing by my Mum.
And I still recall vividly that my mother gave me the silent treatment.
Mum refused to talk to me.
I spoke to her… but she wouldn’t answer… she would deliberately turn away.
It was a terrible feeling… it led to me having a most miserable day.
But she was teaching me a lesson… to make me wake up to myself.

The problem was not that my mother could not hear me… or that she could not help me.
The problem did not lie with her… the problem lay with me.
Even right through that painful experience she never stopped being my mother.
And I, never… not at any point, stopped being her son.
The problem was simply that there was a barrier there that needed to be removed.

 

Today we understand so much more clearly that our problems are not God’s fault.
We know Jesus and we know the gospel.
So we see in Jesus very vividly that God’s arm is not too short to save.
And in Jesus we see clearly that His ear is not too dull to hear.
Christians still go through times of spiritual darkness and depression.
But because of Jesus we know it is not God’s fault.

 

B]        THE PROBLEM LIES WITH SINFUL MAN.

 

1. Years ago there was a very popular bumper sticker that I often saw.

It read: If God seems far away guess who moved?
That’s the heart of the problem: If God seems far away, guess who moved?
And that’s the message Isaiah is trying to get across in our text too.
Only he didn’t do it with a bumper sticker on his chariot…
He spoke it as a message inspired by the living God Himself.

 

Notice how carefully Isaiah puts it.
Vs.2 – Your iniquities have separated you from your God.
Isaiah makes quite clear who made the first move.
It’s not that our iniquities have separated our God from us… but us from our God.
If God seems far away it’s not God who has moved… we moved.

 

And just to make sure we get the point he adds:
Your sins have hidden his face from you so that he will not hear.
Again notice carefully… it is not God who hides His face from us.
Our sins are the barrier, Your sins have hidden his face…!
So Isaiah consistently places the blame where it belongs… with us.

 

That is the consistent teaching of the Bible.
There is only one barrier between God and man… and that’ the barrier of sin.
That’s why blaming God when we’re in the spiritual doldrums is a serious business.

The problem is this separating barrier of sin.
And that never, ever originates with God… it always originates with us.
And when we, in any way, blame God
then it’s like the little boy who blames Dad for the communication breakdown,
when it was the lad’s bad behaviour that created the problem.

 

2. But I began by asking why Christians need to repent and confess.

And what about this truth that Jesus died for all our sins, past present and future?

 

When the W. Confession speaks about repentance it refers to it as a blessed product of the gospel.
It then ties this in with the life of the believer.
It is not talking about godless people who don’t care about the Lord.
Repentance is something that Christians do.
The W. Confession even lays it on preachers not to neglect teaching repentance:
Along with the doctrine of faith in Christ it is a doctrine to be preached by every minister of the gospel.

 

When we think of Isaiah 59 we find the same thing.
What Isaiah is saying is not being spoken to people outside the church of that day.
No… these things are being said to the people of God.
We would have found this teaching far easier to accept if it was addressed to unbelievers.

The Israelites would have agreed that the pagan nations around them needed to repent.
Those pagans who followed other gods needed to confess and repent of their sins.
But Israel…?  They were already in relationship with God.
They were His saved people belonging to Him… His sons and daughters.

Ifs easy for us to apply repentance to our godless neighbour who curses God’s name.
It makes sense to us to call a Hindu or a Muslim to confess and repent.
But we Christians…?  We already have a relationship with Jesus.
We are His saved people… His precious children…!

 

3. So how are we to understand this?

OTOH it’s absolutely true that Jesus has died for every sin we have ever committed or will ever commit.
The barrier of sin was removed through the shed blood of Jesus on Calvary.
But when we now do what displeases God, the Lord doesn’t just close His eyes to it.
And God doesn’t want us to close eyes to it either… as if it doesn’t matter.

 

I like the way the West. Confession describes repentance.
In repentance the sinner is able to see his sins as God sees them.
The issue is not whether or not we are forgiven.  Every believer is!
The issue is not whether we have stopped being God’s children.  We haven’t!
Our problem is that in those moments when we sin we do not see sin the way God sees it.
But in our repentance we see our sins again as God sees them.

 

Here again Isaiah is really instructive for us.
Read this chapter and we’re inclined to think that these people must have been major criminals.
They must have done some shocking things for them to lose the sense of God’s presence.
Well, okay… some terrible sins are listed in vss.3 to 8.
But in the previous chapter there is another list of sins: These people told lies…!
They didn’t live in harmony with their brothers and sisters.
They ignored the poor and didn’t feed the hungry.
That’s hardly material for newspaper headlines; and we’re often guilty of these same things.

 

It makes us aware that the sins that separated Israel from God were not only headline crimes.
Sure there are some gross sins in these verses too: there was the shedding of innocent blood.
But by and large they were also ordinary every day, garden-variety sins.

 

But the problem was that Israel was so comfortable with it that they no longer saw the seriousness of it.
In repentance we see sin again as God sees it:
As filthy and hateful before God.
Totally contrary to the holy nature and the righteous law of God.
And so we begin to grieve over those things that offend God.
We turn away from them… we change direction and walk with God again.

 

C]        THE GOSPEL PROMISE FOR THE REPENTANT.

 

1. I find it a little sad that talk about repentance today is not well received.

Repentance is something we only want to talk about when it comes to very serious sins.

And we don’t apply this teaching to the seemingly small and petty things in our relationship with God.

 

That’s sad because it leads us to deal with our problems the wrong way.
As a pastor I have so often counselled Christians who were depressed.
People who did feel that God was a long way away.
But they hadn’t yet come to understand the need for repentance.

And so their solutions were homemade solutions:
Pray a little more often… and a little more intensely.
Read the Bible more conscientiously.
You can do all of those thing: worship more often… give more money away.
Do all of that and it still won’t lift you out of the doldrums.

 

The answer is first of all to confess those sins of ours – even the seeming petty ones.
And then not just in a vague and general way either.
Para.5 of the W.C. reminds us that believers should not be satisfied with general repentance.
Rather it is our duty to try to repent of every Individual sin individually.
That’s why Isaiah spells out in detail the problems that he has seen in the nation.

 

2. That then leads then to a most beautiful promise in vss.20 to those who repent.

The redeemer will come to Zion; to those in Jacob who repent of their sins.

IOW: God is close to those who keep short accounts with Him.

 

In a way we could look at Isaiah 59 this way.
It begins in the opening verses with a dark and gloomy situation.
There’s no joy evident there… darkness and grief are the keynotes well into this chapter.

 

And that reminds us of David in Psalm 32, before he owned up to his wrongdoing.
There’s a depression that feels like his bones wasting away.
Groaning all day long and God’s hand heavy upon him.

 

But what Isaiah then does is confess the sins of his people.
It’s as if he’s repenting on their behalf.
Or at least… he’s showing them what repentance ought to look like.

And towards the end of the chapter God Himself comes to deal with the situation.
God is pictured as putting on armour.
And the Lord Himself brings about salvation.
And only then do we get those reassuring words:
   The Redeemer will come… to those in Jacob who repent of their sins.

So there are three stages in this chapter.
The first stage shows how sin alienates us from our God and depresses us.
The bulk of the chapter is a litany of confession and repentance.
The heart of it is verse 12: We acknowledge our iniquities.
And then finally, because of repentance, there is a promise of restored fellowship with God.

 

3. I like to compare repentance to that situation that I remember from my childhood.

That time when I didn’t own up was a terrible time.
I was miserable because Mum refused to communicate with me in any way.
At the time I probably felt that my mother didn’t love me but had rejected me.

But the reality was that Mum was simply waiting for me to say, “Sorry!”
She wanted me to see the seriousness of my wrongdoing.
To understand that the problem was not with her but with me.

 

But that also made the eventual repentance so wonderful.
Okay… it can be very difficult to admit we’re wrong… I don’t find that easy!
Our pride makes us insist that what we did was okay… or, at least, not that bad.
But when we finally own up then we again have a song in our heart.
The relationship is again restored.

 

So what follows after verse 20 is extremely positive and encouraging.
Isaiah 60 is as joy-filled as Isaiah 59 is gloomy.

 

That’s even more so for us.  We know that this Redeemer in vs.20 who comes to Zion is Jesus.
And it’s precisely because he has paid for all our sins on the cross
that we may know that repentance and confession do bring blessing.

We don’t have to doubt for a moment whether or not God will accept our confession.
We don’t have to be uncertain about whether He will acknowledge our repentance.
God, in Christ, is always… always merciful to those who repent.
Let’s then not make life difficult for ourselves.
Let’s learn always to keep short accounts with God for His glory and our delight.

Amen