Rev. David Holwick Y
First Baptist Church
Ledgewood, New Jersey
August 4, 2013
Lamentations 3:39-58
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I. So many sordid politicians.
A. Anthony Weiner is only the latest example.
1) Republican Mark Sanford made hiking the Appalachian Trail
a sleazy joke.
2) Democrat Eliot Spitzer, who had been considered a paragon
of moral rectitude, was caught with a prostitute.
B. They follow a familiar pattern.
1) Public stumble, public apology, public rebirth.
a) It is a pattern they have adapted from Evangelicals.
2) All three politicians have re-entered the political arena.
a) Sanford divorced his wife, is engaged to his mistress,
and got elected to Congress.
b) Spitzer will probably become New York's comptroller.
c) Weiner was the frontrunner for New York City's mayor
until his latest fiasco.
1> This week he announced he has no intention of
quitting the race.
2> America has a reputation for being a forgiving
society, and he is investing in this to the hilt.
C. It runs through our culture.
1) How many celebrities have confessed their sins on Oprah's
couch?
2) All their public apologies sound the same, with the final
refrain of "please respect my privacy."
3) Perhaps even you have been caught up in this.
a) The apology ends the matter and cleans the slate.
b) It should never be questioned or challenged.
c) Is this what the gospel is about?
II. You can chalk it up to Cheap Grace.
A. Cheap grace is the grace we bestow upon ourselves.
1) David French makes the connection in a recent article
in National Review. #64178
2) The concept originated with the German anti-Nazi martyr
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who wrote:
"Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring
repentance, baptism without church discipline,
Communion without confession....
Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the
cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate."
#18038
B. Cheap grace is popular in American churches.
1) By sweeping sin and its consequences out of sight, it
relieves us of having to deal with guilt and shame.
a) This is probably why we are so ready to bestow cheap
grace on others.
b) As David French puts it, failure is embarrassing and
shame is unbearable.
1> We want to close the worst chapters of our lives
as quickly as possible.
2> Then we get back to life as it used to be, without
the embarrassment.
2) True grace is something wonderful - God's gift of
forgiveness and acceptance that we don't deserve.
a) But God never intended for his grace to be turned
into license to do whatever we want. Jude 1:4
b) In Titus 2:12, Paul says that real grace ...
"Teaches us to say 'No' to ungodliness and worldly
passions, and to live self-controlled, upright
and godly lives in this present age."
III. God's forgiveness should not be taken for granted.
A. Lamentations is one of the saddest books of the Bible.
1) Its very name means "woeful song."
2) It is about the despair of the Jews as they saw their
nation destroyed and the people driven into exile.
a) The book opens with the phrase, "How deserted lies
the city."
b) The country has been looted, burned and desecrated.
c) Nothing of value is left.
3) Traditionally, Lamentations is attributed to the prophet
Jeremiah, but he is speaking for all the survivors.
B. They recognized why they were suffering like this.
1) It was punishment for their sins - idolatry, injustice,
violence, contempt for God.
2) In 3:42, they recognize they have not been forgiven.
a) It wasn't the Babylonian army that drove them down,
it was God himself.
b) He wasn't listening to their prayers and he made himself
distant from them.
1> We may feel like this at times.
2> But right away we say, "That's just my depression.
God would never ignore me!"
A> Are you sure?
C. They knew what they had to do.
1) They had to acknowledge what they were doing wrong. 3:40
2) They had to return to God.
3) They had to confess their sins to him.
a) This is not a "pity poor little me" confession.
b) It was a true act of contrition.
c) The whole nation of Israel began to get serious about
God.
IV. What real repentance looks like.
A. You are humble and don't claim to be "cured."
1) Sin is very persistent, and the flesh is weak.
2) We can only overcome it with God's help.
3) Like an alcoholic or addiction, there is always the
possibility of future failure.
B. You are emotional and motivated to recommit to God.
1) The emotion should not be limited to the time when you are
"caught."
2) You are upset that you have harmed others, and God.
a) It is not a pity-party for yourself.
C. You don't hang onto the sin.
1) An example from Hamlet.
Dr. George Mason had to read Hamlet in high school, but
later in life he decided to read it again.
He concluded that Shakespeare is wasted on teenagers.
There's a passage where Hamlet's uncle, Claudius, who is
now the king after killing his brother and marrying his
mother, is feeling trapped by his crime.
He tries to repent but he knows that a blessing from God
is hopeless so long as he clings to his sin.
O! what form of prayer
can serve my turn? 'Forgive me my foul murder?'
That cannot be; since I am still possess'd
of those effects for which I did the murder,
my crown, mine own ambition, my queen.
May one be pardon'd and retain the offense?
[Act III, scene 3.]
#26327
2) Repentance shouldn't be half-way.
a) Don’t think you can “manage” your sin by moderating it.
b) Repentance requires you to turn away from the sin.
D. You don't treat it as a get-out-of-jail-free card.
1) In my research this week I came across something I didn't
know before - Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma bomber,
confessed to a priest before he was executed.
2) The previous day he had written a letter to a newspaper
claiming he was agnostic.
3) But on the day of his execution he apparently changed his
mind.
4) I can accept a deathbed conversion.
a) But it has to be sincere.
b) So many modern confessions are motivated by saving your
own skin rather than getting right with God.
c) C.S. Lewis pointed this out many years ago when he said:
"Much of the time when we say, 'Please forgive me,'
what we're really asking is, 'Please excuse me.'
We're not asking for forgiveness, but to be excused.
We don't want to admit that what we did was wrong,
we simply want to be let off the hook."
#24596
V. There is more to salvation than forgiveness.
A. We have made forgiveness the end-all of our faith.
1) Consider the popular slogan, "Christians aren't perfect,
just forgiven."
#30339
a) It is sounds humble.
b) The content is Biblical.
2) The problem is that it is incomplete.
a) We are satisfied to know we are forgiven of our sins.
b) But being forgiven is the beginning of a process.
B. True repentance involves a change of direction.
1) A modern prodigal.
Mark Snowden, a Baptist evangelist, had checked into a hotel
and was walking in the parking lot when a young man
approached him.
The guy had seen Mark carrying his Bible and asked if he was
a preacher, because if he was, the young man needed to
talk to someone before he did something drastic.
Mark prayed for the Lord to work through him.
The young guy started pouring out his story about just
getting out of a mental health facility.
He said he had accepted Christ and was baptized five years
previously.
However, he had gotten into drugs, done time in prison, and
had an unhealthy relationship with a woman.
He said, "I've tried physical solutions and psychological
solutions, but they all failed.
I think I'm at the point that that only a spiritual
solution will help."
Mark thought the way he said he was running from God and
sick to death with his lifestyle sounded so much like
Jesus' parable of the Prodigal Son.
He asked the man if he knew the Bible story.
He did and immediately began to tell it to Mark.
However, Mark noticed he skipped one important part of the
story.
Mark asked him what made the son want to go home.
He couldn't remember.
So, Mark told him just that part of the story -- the famine,
feeding pigs, and the Prodigal's "coming to his senses."
When Mark asked him what that meant, he actually said,
"He was sick of what he had become."
Boom. He got it.
Mark reminded him that the son was still in a far country
and had to walk back to his father.
He also reminded him that not only did the prodigal son sin
against his earthly father, but he had sinned against
his heavenly father as well.
Mark asked if he wanted to say anything to God.
The guy was ready and prayed a heartfelt prayer of
confession and repentance.
When he finished, Mark asked if there was anything he needed
to do to get on the road "home."
The guy pulled out a cellphone and said that he needed to
call his sponsor, who was offering him a job.
And so Mark left him on the phone working out details with
his sponsor to take a bus and start a new life.
#64123
2) God wants more than a clean slate - he wants transformation.
a) He wants to see positive changes in your life.
b) Max Lucado once wrote, "God loves you as you are, but
he loves you too much to leave you as you are."
#19883
c) Perfection may have to wait for heaven, but improvement
can happen now.
d) Ask God to help you achieve it.
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SOURCES FOR ILLUSTRATIONS USED IN THIS SERMON:
#18038 “Cheap Grace,” by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, from his book “The Cost of
Discipleship" (1937); quoted in Rev. Brett Blair's
Illustrations by Email, www.sermonillustrations.com,
September 1, 2002.
#19883 “Grace: Free But Not Cheap,” by Edward Fudge, Heartlight Magazine,
http://www.heartlight.org/. Reprinted from gracEmail,
August 30, 2001.
#24596 “Please Excuse Me,” by Rev. Michael Jackson, Kerux Sermon #17593:
“Coping With Guilt, Part 2,” July 24, 2004.
#26327 “Forgive Me My Foul Murder?” by Dr. George Mason, from his book
“What Should We Do?” Quoted in Rev. Brett Blair's Illustrations
by Email, www.sermonillustrations.com, December 9, 2003.
#30339 “Just Forgiven?” by Dallas Willard, from his book “The Divine
Conspiracy,” pages 35-36. June 19, 2005.
#64123 “A Modern-Day Prodigal and a Gospel Witness,” by Mark Snowden,
Baptist Press, http://www.baptistpress.org, June 12, 2013.
This column first appeared in the Pathway, the newsjournal of
the Missouri Baptist Convention.
#64178 “The High Cost of Cheap Grace,” by David French, July 24, 2013;
<http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/354337/carlos-danger-and~
-high-cost-cheap-grace-david-french>
These and 35,000 others are part of the Kerux database that can be
downloaded, absolutely free, at http://www.holwick.com/database.html
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