Trumpet Judgments graciously declare - REPENT!

Hello Church Family:  Regret is easy and comes at us pretty fast.  Shame will jump on us in a flash.  We will carry remorse around for days, weeks, moths and even years.  But, repentance is rare and difficult.

Repentance tends to be a fleeting thought that we can reason away into a forgotten fog of justification.  And yet, our Holy God requires repentance for our entrance into His heavenly Kingdom.  Repentance and faith are two sides of the same coin and God calls us to both.  Simply stated, no repentance means no admittance into God’s heavenly kingdom.  And that is the reason for the continued partial judgments in Revelation.  The partial judgments of the Seal Judgments and now the Trumpet Judgments are God’s way of saying, REPENT, for the Kingdom of God is at hand!

What is repentance?  Repentance is a change of mind.  The Greek word for “repentance” is metanoia.  The prefix, meta, means “to change” and then noia means “mind.”  Repentance involves changing ones mind about sin.  It is to admit that, we are sinners who love sin.  It is to admit that certain things that we do, think or say are sin.  And once we change our mind that this or that is sin, then we turn from those sins, we leave those sins and then in faith we turn to Christ, relying on Christ, desiring to please Christ.  Jesus says, "I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance (Luke 5:32).”  And “none is righteous, no not one” (Romans 3:10).

Revelation 9, continues with amazing judgments.  Every tragedy, catastrophe and natural disaster from the judgments in Revelation is a call to repentance today.  They are God’s divine reminder for all of us to repent before His final and complete judgment arrives.   God will bring an end to this world as we know it and then He will usher in the new heaven and new earth where we will have no need of repentance because there will be no more sin, sadness or death.  
God speaks to our world daily, “repent now, before my final, complete judgment comes.”  And yet what does our world say?  “There is no need for repentance.  Repentance from what?”  The world says, “there is no need to die to self, in fact live for self.”  The world says, “there is no need to kill sin, in fact that is not a sin, enjoy it.”  The world says, “do not admit that you are wrong, that is just a weakness.”  The world is being hardened by its own sinfulness, just like Pharaoh hardened himself (Exodus 8:15, 32).

Jesus shows John in Revelation 9:20-21, that the longer people refuse to repent as His judgments continue on this earth, a time will come when the world is so hardened that they will not repent of anything.  If you are reading this and have not repented of your sins, stop and repent.  Call sin, sin.  God is merciful and gracious, He is slow to anger and He is abounding is steadfast love and faithfulness.  And so, He calls all to repentance.  But that window of time is shutting as each minute passes.  When that window closes and Jesus returns for His church, the Church who have repented, then there will no longer be an opportunity for repentance.  Don’t wait, repent of your sins once and for all.  Change your mind about sin.  Hate it.  And then in faith cling to Christ for His perfect and complete forgiveness from all of your sin.  For our sake, God the Father made perfect, holy Jesus to be our sin so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21).  When we repent of our sin in Christ, we get His perfect righteousness and He gets our horrible sinfulness.  And we get to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.  Thank you Jesus.

This Sunday we will be meeting in person at the church building if you would like to join us in person at 10am.  And for those who will be staying at home, we will  be live-streaming on our Grace Community Church Topsail YouTube Channel. Push the blue link.  We can also be found at https://www.gracetopsail.com/

I look forward to worshipping the Lion and the Lamb, Jesus Christ, with you Sunday. - Steve