David Platt – Repenting of sin and returning to God

Pastor David Platt of Brook Hills Church preaches from Joel:

Throughout history there have been times among God’s people when there has been an acute, keen, humble, even an emotional sensitivity to sin. You look at Ezra. At one point he is so overwhelmed by his sin and the sin of God’s people that he falls on his face and he’s weeping. He’s unable to even lift his head before God. You look in the book of Nehemiah and you see a time when God’s people were simply listening to the word being read and that’s all it took; they heard His word, they were convicted of sin and all of the people fell down on their faces, weeping over their sin.

Then you look in church history. I’ve read about times when in the context of a worship gathering, conviction of sin would just simultaneously sweep across an entire congregation. People would fall on their faces and knees, weeping, grieving over sin. Times where God would revive His people in a fresh way. It was a clear demonstration of the power of His Spirit.

So we see those times and then we see times in history where God’s people have been desensitized. Tp sin, in some senses, dulled to sin.; participating in religious activity but never stopping, pausing to grasp the depth of sin and to mourn over it; where sin is treated casually and worship is treated routinely.

And, as I look at the state of the contemporary church, and I don’t want to keep it that general, As pastor I want to say, as I look at the state of Brook Hills, I see us much closer to the latter than the former. A dangerous, religious dullness to sin. Desensitivity. Even we, we can sit for hours in ront of the TV or movie listening to God’s name in vain and it doesn’t even register with us. We can gossip and call it ‘ just normal’. In church, we can let our minds wander on the internet and in our imagination, in lust and impurity and think, ‘Well, that’s just the way men are in our day. Our marriage and our divorce rate matches that of our culture. And we run after greed and status and success. and money just like everyone else around us and we NEED TO WAKE UP and pray that God will wake us up to weep over sin.To grieve over offense against God.To HATE sin. To RUN FROM IT. I want to be a part of a people, in my own life, in our lives, in the days ahead where sin is not treated casually. Cornelius wrote a classic book on sin in which he said: ‘The awareness of sin; a deep awareness of disobedience and painful confession of sin used to be our shadow. Christians hated sin. They feared it, fled from it, they grieved over it. God’s people agonized over their sins

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