Repentance: To Turn, Look and Live

Good Morning! “REPENTANCE: TO TURN, LOOK AND LIVE” The enemy has worked overtime to to convince the lost man and even the church to ignore sin, to tolerate sin, or simply be offended by the idea of repentance. Satan never wants you looking at sin because if you face it, then you understand you must turn from it!!!! I’m amazed at how the word repentance in America seems to ring as a negative, unloving, judgmental concept and has borderline become a spiritual cuss word!!! If hell had a playbook and that playbook was designed to keep people out of heaven the most valuable play would be to “convince mankind there is no need to face their sin and repent. The second part of the play would be then change the culture from repentance to acceptance of sin!” I don’t know about you, but I rather be bound by God’s play book “THE BIBLE” that says in Romans 6:23 that the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus!! The time has come to face your sin with the power of repentance! We all know that repentance means to turn from sin and turn towards God! To change from a pattern of destruction to a pattern of righteousness. The only way to receive Gods gift is to turn from sin that keeps you from that gift! Consider Numbers 21:8-9 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Make a fiery serpent, and set it on a pole; and it shall be that everyone who is bitten, when he looks at it, shall live.” 9 So Moses made a bronze serpent, and put it on a pole; and so it was, if a serpent had bitten anyone, when he looked at the bronze serpent, he lived. The reality of this text is if the people wanted to be made whole they had to “Turn, Look and Live!” Can you imagine they were all bit by a serpent instead of looking around trying to figure how to keep from dying in their own strength, they had a command from God to Turn, Look and Live! They had to face what they had been bitten by!!! They were not called to a self help, motivational or natural way of medicating something that would kill them! We have all been bitten by a serpent called SIN!! SIN WILL KILL YOU! God is not asking you to look for ways to fix your spiritual emergency all by yourself! GOD IS CALLING YOU TO FACE YOUR SIN THROUGH HIM! God did not tell Moses to just put up a pole and have them look at it and live! That would be like trusting a cross instead of what was done on the cross!!!!! You don’t get to just look at the glorious works of Jesus and ignore the fact that his death on the cross defeated the powers of sin! He carried the sins of the World!! The people had to face the pole that had a bronze serpent on it!!! And when it was lifted up if they turned and looked they lived! It is a picture of them having to face their sin!! If our Jesus be lifted up and we look at him and we face our sin through him and his shed blood we shall live!! Genesis 3 says the Seed of the woman would crush the head of the serpent!!! John 3:14 Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up.” Jesus was lifted up on Calvary’s cross and carried the sins of this world that has bitten every one of us with its venomous poison! We must look at Jesus through the eyes of carrying our SIN on the cross!! There is never a place in scripture where we allowed to receive Jesus and ignore sin!!!!! As you turn and look at Jesus you see your sin washed in his precious blood! Only the precious blood can reverse the poisonous venom of sin!!!!! When you turn make no mistake about it you will see that which you are turning from! John 6:40 says “For my father’s will is that everyone who LOOKS to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life.”The power of repentance is ls facing your sin through Jesus Christ and His death burial and resurrection!! I challenge you to turn from your sin by facing it through Christ!! YOU MUST TURN, LOOK AND LIVE!!!!:)