Repent – Devotions for 1-29-25
Matthew 4:17 “From that time Jesus began to preach, saying, ‘Repent, for the Kingdom of heaven is at hand’”
I have been thinking a lot about what repentance means and looks like lately. I know I have need of repentance, we all do. We hear about repenting a lot in church and read of it in the bible, but what does it look like when a person truly repents?
Is it true repentance when a schoolboy is told by his teacher to say he’s sorry to a classmate who he hurt? Is it repentance when someone is caught by the police for doing something wrong and they say they are sorry for what they did? Does the spouse who tells their loved one they are sorry for having spent family funds selfishly for things they couldn’t afford really mean it? How about the alcoholic who says they are sorry again and again but who returns to drinking again and again? Is any of that true repentance. Probably some of it is and some isn’t.
In this verse Jesus begins His ministry, and He does so by preaching repentance. Specifically, He says to “repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” If we could see behind the curtain of our life and see the spiritual reality at hand all around us, see the kingdom of God and not just the natural world, we would understand this a bit better, and our repentance would look very different.
An example of that is when the prophet Isaiah saw God on His throne in heaven. He saw angels flying and heard them singing, felt the ground shaking beneath his feet, and saw billows of smoke filling the whole area. He was impressed! He was humbled. His response to seeing God, seeing behind the veil of this world, is what is important. He saw God and immediately repented. Seeing God in all His glory and power would humble anyone and everyone!
If we were to suddenly find ourselves in God’s presence, we would respond exactly the same way. We would see how great and pure He is, and we would see ourselves and the sin we live in more clearly. The contrast would be huge and undeniable.
Isaiah saw the sin of his words. Maybe he was a vulgar person, maybe he told bad jokes, but whatever it was, he saw God and immediately became acutely aware of his own sin. What would I suddenly become acutely aware of in my life? What would you suddenly become acutely aware of in your life? What would God call us to repent over?
Maybe it is our words. Maybe it is how we treat others? Maybe it would be our pride that would suddenly be exposed for the sin it is. Who knows, but this I do know, if we were to suddenly find ourselves in God’s presence, we would see how sinful we are and we would come to true repentance.
True repentance, the kind Jesus calls for in all of us, is what Isaiah found when he saw God in all His power and glory. What will it take for us to come to that kind of repentance? What would it take for us to see behind the veil like Isaiah was blessed to be able to do?
Read God’s word. See Him more clearly. Get to know God more intimately. As we do that, He will reveal more and more of Himself to us, and He will lead us in a deeper and truer repentance as He exposes the sin in our life.
That is what Jesus called the people of His time to, and what He is calling us to today. “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”
Pastor Gary.
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