Nekoda's Blogs

The Importance of Repentance

May 25, 2010 at 5:10 AM (Uncategorized)

Genesis 42:28 He said to his brothers, “My money has been put back; here it is in the mouth of my sack!” At this their hearts failed them, and they turned trembling to one another, saying, “What is this that God has done to us?” Genesis 43:7 They replied, “The man questioned us carefully about ourselves and our kindred, saying, ‘Is your father still alive? Do you have another brother?’ What we told him was in answer to these questions. Could we in any way know that he would say, ‘Bring your brother down’?”

Almost everyone who attended Sunday School as kids knows the story of Joseph and his brothers. His brothers were jealous of the love their father showed Joseph as “favorite”, and they threw him in a pit, took, and tore his coat of many colors and dipped it in blood, then gave it to their father and said a wild beast ate him. Joseph then was sold, by his brothers, to Egyptians to be a slave, and so on and so forth.

Later, it is apparent that the brothers had confessed their sin to their father Jacob (or Israel). But was there TRUE repentance?

The first verse above shows a guilty conscience in the brothers. This shows us that their sin still had a hold on them. There was no TRUE repentance. The next verse above shows us the 2nd time recorded of them lying to their father. They told him about how the ruler (which was Joseph) questioned them hard about their family. This is NOT TRUE. Genesis 42:12 He said to them, “No, it is the nakedness of the land that you have come to see.” 13 And they said, “We, your servants, are twelve brothers, the sons of one man in the land of Canaan, and behold, the youngest is this day with our father, and one is no more.” 14 But Joseph said to them, “It is as I said to you. You are spies.

Joseph didn’t ask them anything about who their family was, or who they had in their family, but accused them of being spies. The brothers were the ones who just came out and said who they had in their family. So… they lied to their father again. This again shows the hold that sin still had in them.

This is why repentance is so important! We can “confess and confess and confess” all we want, but until we absolutely turn from our sin, there will be no freedom from it.

I dealt with a pornography addiction for far to long before I truly repented from it. I “confessed” day and night that I had an addiction, but I always went right back to it.

First, it took a BEAUTIFUL SALVATION FROM JESUS CHRIST to show me my faults, then a true confession and turning away from that sin and giving my all to God.

By the way, I’m not saying you need to get saved every time you need to repent. That was just my testimony. But, I am saying that true repentance is important to have an everlasting freedom from sin.