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Repentance, part 5

Every law in Scripture, when violated, demands repentance. The law lacks the power to make men righteous. Its purpose is to teach us the righteous standard and thereby also teach us what sin is so that we can truly repent. How can anyone repent without knowing which laws we have broken?

Likewise, when we have false or distorted views about God or His plans for the earth, we must study Scripture by the Holy Spirit to learn how to change our thinking. We repent every time we alter our views, and this might occur daily as we align with His word. If we are taught the word from childhood, it is an advantage, because it gives us a head start, but it is also unlikely that everything we were taught is actually true. Unfortunately, those things are ingrained into our thinking and become preconceived notions that are difficult to change.

I was “saved” when I was 7 years old, being led in a prayer of repentance. But at the time my only concept of sin was disobeying my parents. I knew nothing of God’s law as such. This was my Passover experience, though I knew nothing of the feasts of the Lord. Neither did I know that there was such a thing as Pentecost, and it would be many years before I learned that the first Pentecost (i.e., the feast of Weeks) was when God gave the Ten Commandments to Israel, speaking to the people from the fire in the Mount.

I was not raised in a Pentecostal or Charismatic environment and had to alter my thinking when I was 21. Even then, it was another 10 years before I began to study the feast days and realized that Pentecost celebrated the giving of the law and was merely the second of three main feasts to experience. In other words, the main purpose of Pentecost is to write God’s law upon our hearts by the revelation of the Holy Spirit.

Our justification at Passover requires a measure of repentance, but it is not until we come into genuine Pentecost that the Holy Spirit teaches us the law so that we may alter our thinking and conform to the nature of God and His ways.

After experiencing the baptism of the Spirit, it took me another 12 years to learn that King Saul was crowned on Pentecost and that he was one of the main Pentecostal types of the Old Testament. By his example of a rebellious Pentecostal, I then learned the limitations and deficiencies of Pentecost and the need for the third feast, Sukkoth, or Tabernacles.

The point is that it can take many years of incremental repentance in order to align with mind and nature of God. Repentance is the path to spiritual growth. Those who think they know all truth that needs to be known are those who have stopped growing and have built a house along the path to the Promised Land. Unless God destroys their house and forces them to move on, it is unlikely that they will ever cross the Jordan and enter the Kingdom.

Changing Direction

I have found also that often we do not really know what direction we are going. There are times when we are directed toward one place but find ourselves in another place that God intended without telling us ahead of time. For example, in the story where Jesus walked on the water on the Sea of Galilee, Mark 6:45 says,

⁴⁵ Immediately Jesus made His disciples get into the boat and go ahead of Him to the other side to Bethsaida, while He Himself was sending the crowd away.

Bethsaida was on the northeast end of the sea. But after Jesus walked on the water and got into the boat, it was transported to Gennesaret, not to Bethsaida. Matthew 14:34 says,

³⁴ When they had crossed over, they came to land at Gennesaret.

This is repeated in Mark 6:53,

⁵³ When they had crossed over, they came to land at Gennesaret, and moored to the shore.

Gennesaret is quite far from Bethsaida. John’s gospel tells us that the boat landed immediately after Jesus got into the boat and calmed the storm. In other words, God transported them to Gennesaret in a supernatural manner.

Bethsaida means “house of fish.” The early church used the symbol of the fish in speaking of the church. Gennesaret means “harps,” which represents the overcomers (Revelation 14:2; 15:2). The storm that Jesus calmed represents the tribulation, whose underlying purpose was to change the orientation of the disciples from church to Kingdom-minded overcomers.

The church has its purpose, but it is not an end in itself. David himself was part of Saul’s court until he was driven away. God uses the church to train the overcomers in both a positive and a negative way. As children we learn the Bible stories, which are foundational to our early growth. But when God calls one of these to be an overcomer, the time comes when he/she must leave or be driven into the wilderness where God takes over and trains prophets and overcomers.

My People

God brought Israel into the wilderness under Moses to train them in His ways. Unfortunately, only a few actually learned the required lessons. Most of the people grumbled and complained because they did not agree with the manner in which God was leading them. Whenever God tested their faith, they failed. From the time they left Egypt to the time they were commanded to enter the Promised Land at Kadesh-barnea, God tested them ten times (Numbers 14:22). This covered a period of only a year and a half.

At Mount Sinai, God promised to make them His peculiar treasure (i.e., “My people”) if they would obey His commands. Yet after 40 years they still had not become His people, for He found it necessary to make a second covenant with them in the plains of Moab (Deuteronomy 29:1). This was a covenant where God Himself took an oath to make them His people (Deuteronomy 29:12, 13).

This, of course, was the promise of the New Covenant, which was to be fulfilled over a long period of time. In the interim, only the remnant of grace would carry this promise, while the vast majority was blinded. In Elijah’s day there were just 7,000 men in this remnant. In our day the ratio probably remains the same. Many are called as believers, but few are chosen overcomers.

In Solomon’s prayer to dedicate the temple, we read in 2 Chronicles 7:13, 14,

¹³ If I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or if I command the locust to devour the land, or if I send pestilence among My people, ¹⁴ and My people who are called by My name humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.

Solomon was not appealing to the wicked to repent but to “My people who are called by My name.” This is an appeal to the remnant of grace. When the heavens were shut up in the days of Elijah, it was the remnant of grace that was called to repent and to change the situation. It would seem that they did not think to do so until the drought had ravaged the land for three years. But when they sought the face of God, Elijah was sent back to confront King Ahab.

We today have a different kind of drought and famine. Amos 8:11, 12 prophesies,

¹¹ “Behold, days are coming,” declares the Lord God, “when I will send a famine on the land, not a famine for bread or a thirst for water, but rather for hearing the words of the Lord. ¹² People will stagger from sea to sea and from the north even to the east; they will go to and fro to seek the word of the Lord, but they will not find it.”

This is a different sort of famine, where the Bible is the best-selling book in America, yet the church is blind to many of its revelations. The church as a whole has cast aside the law of God, not realizing that they are rejecting the word of God and disagreeing with His nature. Their ignorance of the law blinds them to the nature of sin and prevents them from repentance. Such people lack the authority and standing in the divine court to fulfill Solomon’s prayer. The solution is for “My people” to repent on behalf of the nation and the church itself.

This is about to change. I believe that repentance by God’s people will soon reach a crescendo in the divine court that will cause God to end the famine of the word. This will break the power of Mystery Babylon, and God will send forth His Holy Spirit in a fresh outpouring of the Spirit. The Spirit will be comparable to the original Pentecost at Mount Sinai, which was a revelation of the word of God—the law, the prophets, and the New Testament writings.

We see, then, the importance of repentance and also the role that the overcoming remnant of grace must play in the solution to the famine of the word.