​Repent and Believe!
Isaiah 12; Mark 1:12-15
 
A soap manufacturer and a Pastor were walking together down a street in a large city.  The soap manufacturer casually said, “The Gospel you preach hasn’t done much good, has it?  Just look around.  There is still a lot of wickedness in the world, and a lot of wicked people, too!”  The Pastor made no reply until they passed a dirty little child making mud pies in the gutter.  Seizing the opportunity, the Pastor said, “I see that soap hasn’t done much good in the world either; for there is much dirt, and many dirty people around.”  The soap man said, “Oh, well, soap is only useful when it is applied.”  And the Pastor said, “Exactly, so it is with the Gospel.” 
 
This morning we conclude a three-week sermon series based on Jesus’s first sermon in Galilee.  In Mark 1:14-15 we read, “After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God.  “The time has come,” he said.  “The kingdom of God has come near.  Repent and believe the good news!”
 
Life Under New ManagementThe last two Sundays, we covered the first two statements of the “good news of God” Jesus proclaimed in Galilee.  “The time is fulfilled.”  The “kαιρὸς” is here ~ the right time, the perfect time, the time you’ve been waiting for, the time of your life is here.  Let’s make the most of this opportunity.
 
“The time is fulfilled.  The King has come near,” Jesus said.  “The rule of God” Jesus was saying, “has broken into our midst now that I am here.”  So what?  That has huge implications for us.  Jesus spells them out in the last phrase of verse 15: “Repent and believe the good news!”  
 
You notice that there are two things here — repent and believe the good news.  Two things that, when we look at them, are two sides of a coin so to speak.  The two go hand in hand.  Believing and trusting.  Believing and repenting.  It is an invitation to come and live under new management. 
 
Repent: Return Home .. Change Your Mind
Repentance is a word that we do not get to use often in our churches and sermons nowadays.  Yet, repentance is repeated over and over and over again in the Bible.  The words “repent,” “repentance,” and “repented” are mentioned over 100 times in the Bible.  It is almost impossible to find any book in the Bible that doesn’t call to repentance.  
 
When you hear this word you usually immediately picture a preacher pointing a judging finger at a sinner.  The word “Repent” summons up pictures of condemnation and even damnation.  That’s not what the word means.  In order to understand what Jesus meant by “repent and believe the gospel”, we need to shed some light on two important words that are translated “repentance” in the Bible, one of them is Hebrew and the other is Greek.
 
The Hebrew word that is translated “repentance” is “shuv.”  Shuv means “return.”  “Repent” in the days of Jesus and to the Jews was to come back, to come home.  It’s what the prodigal son did.  He went the wrong way, turned around and returned home.  “Return, Israel, to the LORD your God. Your sins have been your downfall!”, says Hosea 14:1.  “Shuvah yisrael ad Yahweh elohey ~ Return, Israel, to the LORD your God.”
 
The Greek word for Repent – metanoia – means “to change your mind.”  It’s similar to the Hebrew word.  Suddenly you wake up, you gain a new perspective, you realize you are going the wrong way and you turn around and go the right way.  My GPS has a lot of different languages on it.  When I get lost, it tells me I am going the wrong way and I need to turn around and go back.  If it had an ancient Hebrew or Greek setting it would said, “Repent, Repent.”
 
Repentance, therefore, is gaining a new perspective.  It is turning around.  Repentance is coming home.  It’s going to take every bit of your being – all your heart, mind, soul and strength – to reorient your life so you can follow Jesus.
 
To repent is to wake up and go the way Jesus is going.  To repent is to value what Jesus values. Jesus spend most of His time in Galilee – where the poor, oppressed, culturally diverse backwater of Palestine lived.  He was one of them.  He lived with them, fed them, healed them, taught them, cared for them, loved them and invited them to follow Him.  He said I have come to preach Good News to the poor, bind up the broken hearted, open the eyes of the blind, set the captives free – physically and spiritually.  That was not a popular message.  The people in His hometown, the ones who knew Him best, tried to kill Him for that.  They weren’t willing to wake up, turn around and follow Him.
 
Repentance is the gate to enter the kingdom of God. “Lord, be merciful to me a sinner.” Repentance will ever be indispensable part of being in the kingdom of God.  True repentance is a radical change, a new mindset, a new attitude towards God.  “A Christian is not sinless”, as Warren Wiersbe says, “but someone who does sin less – and less – and less.”  Sin continues in us even after we come to Christ, but we can never again be complacent about it as we did in the years when we lived in our darkness.
 
Friends, Jesus was absolutely straight and told everyone in Galilee to change, and I am saying to the dear people of this congregation that I deeply care for, we all need to change, because our lives are not being controlled as they should be by the presence of God.  Our discipleship lacks decisiveness, extravagance and wonder.  We have lost the thrill of the merchant looking for fine pearls.  When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it.  There is too much defensiveness, and too many excuses for sub-Christian living, too much averagism, too much looking to people.  The King has come!  Every time we meet here, the King is here!  We have to turn, and change, and move on to new levels of zeal, of dedication, of knowledge, of cross-bearing, of forgiveness, and of hope.
 
And so Jesus says repent and believe the good news.  Believe that the time has come.  Believe that the kingdom of God is at hand.  Believe that God is about to fulfill all His promises. Repent, and believe the gospel because your redemption is drawing near.  Amen!
 
​First Presbyterian Church of Blackwood
21 E. Church Street
Blackwood, NJ 08012                                                                              
Sermon Notes (Sunday March 24th, 2019)
Rev. Dr. Mouris A. Yousef, Pastor 

 
During the press conference to announce NOKIA being acquired by Microsoft back in 2013, Nokia CEO ended his speech saying this “We didn’t do anything wrong, but somehow, we lost.”  Upon saying that, all his management team, himself included, teared sadly.
 
Nokia was a strong corporation.  Incorporated in Finland in 1865, it became one of the biggest corporations in the world.  So, what happened?  I believe the simple answer is that a dynamic, evolving marketplace outpaced company leaders’ strategic thinking.
 
Nokia has been a respectable company.  They didn’t do anything wrong in their business, however, the world changed too fast.  Their opponents were too powerful.  They missed out on learning, they missed out on changing, and thus they lost the opportunity at hand to make it big.  Not only did they miss the opportunity to earn big money, but also, they lost their chance of survival.
 
The message of this story is simple yet challenging, if you don’t change (repent), you shall be removed from the competition.  If your thoughts and mindset cannot catch up with time, you will be eliminated.  The advantage you have yesterday, will be replaced by the trends of tomorrow.  You don’t have to do anything wrong, as long as your competitors catch the wave and do it RIGHT, you can lose out and fail.  Those who refuse to learn and improve, will no longer exist.
 
This Sunday is the Second Sunday in Lent and we continue our journey with Jesus in Galilee.  As we do so, we actually dig deep to the roots, the beginnings of the gospel.  In Mark 1:14-15 we read, “After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God.  “The time has come,” he said.  “The kingdom of God has come near.  Repent and believe the good news!”
 
Jesus’ message to the Galileans was both encouraging and challenging.  In Galilee, Jesus proclaimed the good news of God first.  It was not in Jerusalem where people with power, influence, wealth, and education lived, but in Galilee, where the least of the least.  On one hand, it was encouraging because God’s grace is manifested in the most unlikely of places.  God shows up in the most desperate and hopeless situations and places in our lives.  But on the other hand, it was also challenging because Christ’s message demanded a decision; it demanded a change.  “The time has come,” he said.  “The kingdom of God has come near.  Repent and believe the good news!” 
 
As mentioned last week, Jesus’ first sermon is a three-point sermon, another proof that Jesus was a good Presbyterian.  My goal during the first three Sundays in Lent is to outline the three points of Christ’s first sermon and then we will work through them together.
 
First: The Time Has Come
In Galilee, Jesus preached His first sermon.  “The time has come,” He said.  “The kingdom of God has come near.  Repent and believe the good news!”  The time is fulfilled ~ Greek has two words for time.  The first is chronos, from which we get our English chronological and chronology.  Chronos is the measurement of time.  It’s clock time.  It’s the answer to the question “What time is it?”  The other Greek word is kairos.  It’s not clock time, it’s the critical time, the right time, the time you’ve been waiting for, the time of your life.  It is a moment of truth, a turning point, a decision time.
 
A lot of Christians are chronos challenged.  Yet, Christians should seize those “kairos” moments.  If you put off a kairos time, you will miss a critical moment in your life.  It’s your time to make a decision.  It’s the turning point of history or, at least, your history.  The time has come for you.  Jesus asks, “Are you in?  Will you sign up?  Will you follow?”  When we hear God’s voice, we can either live in the chronos or the kairos. 
 
Second: The Kingdom of God Has Come Near
The second point in Jesus’ sermon had to do with the coming of God’s Kingdom.  Jesus only used the word “church” 2 times in the gospels.  But He talked about the Kingdom of God over 80 times.  His audience knew about kingdoms.  From the time of the prophets until Jesus’ day, the people of Israel lived under the oppression and domination of one kingdom after another.  They lived under the Assyrians, the Babylonians, under the Persians, the Greeks and the Romans. Throughout that time, the prophets promised the Lord is coming to set up His kingdom and set His people free. 
 
So when someone announced this was about to happen, as many people did over the years, there were two reactions: cheers and fears.  Cheers because the people thought, “Now is our time to rule.”  Fears because every one of these revolutions failed and it was always worse afterwards.  I’m sure when Jesus said, “The time has come.  The kingdom of God has come near,” there were cheers and fears and probably even some jeers.  I’m also sure no one understood what Jesus meant. 
 
I believe the same is true today.  What does Jesus mean by the Kingdom of God?  Kingdoms and governments are united by borders and languages, capital cities and currencies, laws and flags, armies and bureaucracies.  The Kingdom of God has none of those.  There are no borders, no currency, no capital city, no single language and no flag.  God’s Kingdom includes people from every nation, tribe and tongue.  So what unites the Kingdom of God?  The King – Jesus Christ.  You belong to the Kingdom of God if Christ is your King.
 
Jesus invites us today to be a part of His Kingdom.  The Kingdom is at hand.  But we have to know that the Kingdom of God is not an institution it is a revolution. The Kingdom of God is not membership in a club it’s a movement.  It’s not an administration it is an adventure.
 
Do you want to join the movement?  Are you ready for the revolution?  Are you willing to sign on for the adventure of your life?  Before you say yes, let me tell you what you are getting yourself into.  Yes, being part of the Kingdom means eternal life.  Yes it means salvation.  But here’s the fine print.  The Kingdom is not just about you being saved.  The Jewish people in Jesus’ days didn’t get it.
 
Friends, the Kingdom of God is not about me and it’s not about you.  It’s not only about salvation.  It’s also about restoration: restoring the people who are lost and broken in this world, restoring the people who are hurting and hungry and homeless and hopeless in this world, restoring the creation and restoring justice.  Why?  Because that is what we see our King doing.  We are saved to be sent.  We are saved to serve.  We are saved to share.  If Jesus is our King, then we need to do what we see Him doing and walk where we hear Him talking.  The time has come.  The kingdom of God has come near.  Repent and believe the good news!  Amen.

First Presbyterian Church of Blackwood
21 E. Church Street
Blackwood, NJ 08012                                                                              
Sermon Notes (Sunday March 17th, 2019)
Rev. Dr. Mouris Yousef, Pastor
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