Episode 29: True and False Repentance and the Joy of Yom Kippur

True and False Repentance and the Joy of Yom Kippur—Character in Context Transcript—October 2019

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As I went through last week, it is a commandment to afflict ourselves through fasting and a denial of comforts on Yom Kippur—but that affliction is really only half the story because Yom Kippur is also a day of trust and hope and great anticipation because we know that God keeps His promises and we know, Scripturally, how faithful He is when we do earnestly repent and humble ourselves before Him.

So, this week we are going to go through the incidents in Scripture, from front to back, where people repented—even horribly wicked people—and God famously relented in His judgement. We are also going to look and see what happened when people were confronted and unwilling to repent.

Since this is airing on Yom Kippur I am going to forgo my usual lengthy introduction and just suffice it to say that my name is Tyler Dawn Rosenquist and that this is Character in Context, and that past broadcasts—including last week’s teaching on Yom Kippur—are available at characterincontext.podbean.com.

So, last week I read most of the the Torah verses about Yom Kippur, leaving out the parts about the sacrifices, and this week I am going to just read Isaiah 58 and then jump right into the material about repentance and non-repentance in Scripture. This week’s readings will all be from the Tree of Life version, my current favorite for reading. It is really the only Messianic Bible whose translation I am really impressed with, going so far as to even be more accurate with the Greek verb tenses, which sound very odd to our modern ears. Some serious scholars put this one together, which can’t be said about most of the Bibles that label themselves as Messianic.

“Cry aloud, do not hold back!
Raise your voice like a shofar.
Tell My people their transgression,
and the house of Jacob their sins.
² Yet they seek Me day to day
and delight to know My ways,
as if they were a nation that did right,
and had not forsaken their God’s decree.
They ask Me for righteous judgments;
they delight in the nearness of God.”

³ “Why have we fasted.
yet You do not see?
Why have we afflicted our souls,
yet You take no notice?”

“Behold, in the day of your fast you seek your own pleasure,
and exploit all your laborers.
⁴ Behold, you fast for strife and contention
and to strike with a wicked fist.
You should not fast as you do today
to make your voice heard on high.
⁵ Is this the fast I have chosen?
A day for one to afflict his soul?
Is it to bow down his head like a reed,
and spreading out sackcloth and ashes?
Will you call this a fast
and a day acceptable to Adonai?

⁶ “Is not this the fast I choose:
to release the bonds of wickedness,
to untie the cords of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to tear off every yoke?
⁷ Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
to bring the homeless poor into your house?
When you see the naked, to cover him,
and not hide yourself from your own flesh and blood?
⁸ Then your light will break forth like the dawn,
and your healing will spring up speedily.
Your righteousness will go before you,
the glory of Adonai as your rear guard.”
⁹ Then you will call, and Adonai will answer.
You will cry and He will say, “Here I am.”
If you get rid of the yoke among you—
finger-pointing and badmouthing—
¹⁰ If you give yourself to the hungry,
and satisfy the desire of the afflicted,
then your light will rise in darkness,
and your gloom will be like midday.
¹¹ Then Adonai will guide you continually,
satisfy your soul in drought
and strengthen your bones.
You will be like a watered garden,
like a spring of water whose waters never fail.
¹² Some of you will rebuild the ancient ruins,
will raise up the age-old foundations,
will be called Repairer of the Breach,
Restorer of Streets for Dwelling.
¹³ If you turn back your foot from Shabbat,
from doing your pleasure on My holy day,
and call Shabbat a delight,
the holy day of Adonai honorable,
If you honor it, not going your own ways,
not seeking your own pleasure,
nor speaking your usual speech,
¹⁴ then You will delight yourself in Adonai,
and I will let you ride over the heights of the earth,
I will feed you with the heritage of your father Jacob.”
For the mouth of Adonai has spoken.

Yom Kippur is a day that is welcomed and rejoiced in by God when there is genuine repentance and sorrow over our actions—because in that repentance is a trust, a true seeking after God. When we repent, we do so because we recognize that He is indeed merciful, that we can hope in His forgiveness and His inherent generosity toward us. But, as we see in Isaiah 58 here, He is not fooled by insincere hearts and motives. God is not someone to be lied to and mollified by fake repentance. He knows our every though and so it is ridiculous to feign repentance when we aren’t the least bit sorry for our actions. I remember before I became a believer at the age of 29. I was miserable with my life—I would beg God to save me—but I begged Him because I was miserable, not because I saw anything wrong with how I was living. I honestly believe that is why so much of what passes for the preaching of the Gospel falls flat—because we are trying to pull people in who are miserable—without showing them why they are or should be miserable. I loved the things I was doing—I honestly did not see them as sin and therefore was in no position to repent. I remember the day in 1998 when God made me aware of my sin for the first time. You would think, with the stuff I was doing, that I would have been aware that I was in the wrong, but that isn’t how sin works. We are often aware that something isn’t socially acceptable—but that is different from knowing that it is sin and transgression. Knowledge of that is part of the drawing of God to Himself those whom He is calling. When we look at people deep in sin, we must weep and not mock, because many are genuinely clueless as to their transgression. We might think them ridiculous, but they undoubtedly see us and the restrictions we live with in the same light—and how can they see they are wrong unless we are loving and unless God lifts their blindness? We ought not be prideful as we have not lifted even one ounce of our own blindness and we are all still very much blind as long as we think it is okay to mock people who are blind. There is a commandment not to place a stumbling block before a blind person or to curse the deaf—and yet I see posts from those who claim to see and hear which do just that on a daily basis. How tragic that we are so cruel, eh? It is things like this that make Yom Kippur still necessary for Christians because we have tragically and desperately failed to represent the love of God accurately.

I guess the place to start is in the beginning for this broadcast today.  In the garden, of course, Adam and Eve allied themselves with the serpent, with the beast—trusted him instead of God and went after the Knowledge of Good and Evil. When God confronted them, make no mistake, He was giving them a chance to come clean, take responsibility and repent. They flat out refused to do any of these things. They instead played the blame game—shifting responsibility and never once apologizing or showing even a shred of remorse. I believe with my whole heart that if they had repented, the situation would have turned out entirely differently. I mean, there are always consequences, but there is also forgiveness when our repentance is genuine and honest.

Pharaoh in Exodus is another great example of false repentance. He would make a big show of saying how wrong he was, but he had an agenda of getting what he wanted—in more ways than one. He wanted the plague to stop, but he still wanted to keep the Hebrew slaves. For him, admission of wrongdoing was merely a means to an end. No one was fooled, certainly not God, and in the end it spelled the doom of Pharaoh, his armies, his people, and Egypt for a long time.

King Saul is the poster boy for false repentance. Over and over again he would do something just awful—perform sacrifices himself, try to get David killed in pursuit of an excessively dangerous bride-price (100 Philistine foreskins, I mean, dang), and then trying to personally kill David. He would wail and lament to Samuel or David or whoever, and go right back to what he was doing before in rather short order.

The Pharisee in the Parable of the Tax Collector and the Pharisee is an example of someone who doesn’t even think he needs to repent, but I see something similar among believers in that there are people who loudly and proudly admit that they used to be sinners but then get angry if anyone actually suggests that they used to sin. I was once talking to someone about the subject and he said, “Yes, I was a terrible sinner,” but then when I was talking matter of factly about a certain sin that we all committed as children, he got very angry at me and said, “I don’t like where this conversation is going!” I call people like this “former sinners in theory” as they will vaguely admit that they were, at one point, sinners but cannot bear to admit even a single sin.

Pornography addiction, that’s probably the example that a lot of modern people can relate to. As a former addict myself, I get a lot of mail about this—mostly from people who are not truly repentant. They don’t stop. They want that feeling of deliverance and freedom from the porn, they don’t want the shame anymore, but when things get stressful they also want those feelings that porn delivers in abundance. So, they aren’t really repentant—they just want to feel better. Sometimes they want to feel less guilty, and sometimes they want to feel that illicit thrill. But in the end, it is about their feelings and not about acknowledging the depth and depravity of this sin. And I can say that because I have personally been there. Feeling badly about ourselves and wanting to feel good about ourselves instead is not the same thing as repentance—it’s just egotistical.

But what about true repentance in the Bible? There are lots of examples and many of them shocking. But we can’t talk about the Joy of Yom Kippur without first talking about true repentance.

One constant and enduring theme within Scripture is God’s love of repentance—it is stunning how forgiving He is when people humble themselves and truly repent before Him. I mean, some of the wickedest men in the Bible showed true repentance and were forgiven.

King Mannasseh in II Chron 33

Manasseh was 12 years old when he became king, and he reigned 55 years in Jerusalem. ² He did evil in the sight of Adonai, just like the abominations of the nations that Adonai had driven out before Bnei-Yisrael. ³ For he rebuilt the high places that his father Hezekiah had demolished, he reerected altars for the Baalim, made Asherah poles, and bowed down to all the host of heaven and worshipped them. ⁴ He built altars in the House of Adonai—of which Adonai had said, “My Name will be in Jerusalem forever.” ⁵ He also built altars for all the host of heaven in the two courtyards of the House of Adonai. ⁶ Furthermore, he made his children pass through the fire in the valley of Ben-hinnom and practiced witchcraft, divination and sorcery, and consulted ghosts and spiritists. He did much evil in the sight of Adonai, provoking Him to anger.

⁷ Then he placed the carved image of the idol that he had made in the House of God—of which God had said to David and to his son Solomon, “In this House and in Jerusalem that I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, I will put My Name forever. ⁸ I will never again remove the foot of Israel from the land which I have appointed for their fathers, if only they will observe to do all that I have commanded them—all the Torah, the statutes, and the ordinances delivered by the hand of Moses.”

⁹ But Manasseh led Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem astray, so that they did more evil than the nations whom Adonai destroyed before Bnei-Yisrael. ¹⁰ Adonai spoke to Manasseh and his people, but they paid no attention.

¹¹ Therefore, Adonai brought against them the commanders of the army of the king of Assyria, who captured Manasseh with hooks, bound him with bronze shackles, and led him to Babylon.

¹² In his distress, he entreated Adonai his God and greatly humbled himself before the God of his fathers. ¹³ When he prayed to Him, He was moved by his entreaty, heard his plea and brought him back to Jerusalem into his kingdom. Then Manasseh knew that Adonai, He is God…

¹⁵ He also removed the foreign gods and idols from the House of Adonai, as well as all the altars that he had built on the mount of the House of Adonai and in Jerusalem and threw them outside the city. ¹⁶ He rebuilt the altar of Adonai and sacrificed on it sacrifices of fellowship and thanksgiving, and commanded Judah to serve Adonai the God of Israel. ¹⁷ Nevertheless, the people still sacrificed in the high places, but only to Adonai their God.

Mannasseh—more wicked than all the kings of the Canaanites, the Amorites, the Hittites, etc. He led the entire nation astray and when he sinned, he sinned big. Yet, in captivity he did not curse God but truly owned his evil actions and repented. His actions after his return from captivity proved his true repentance—sadly there are always consequences for our sins and his son Amon was so wicked, even more wicked than his father, that he was assassinated. The bad example we set, even though we repent, cannot be undone. There is no sin without consequence to ourselves and/or others and so we must not sin planning to repent later, knowing God’s generous reputation for being merciful. The people we harm cannot be unharmed instantly, and there is no guarantee that they will be healed of what we have done at all.

The Ninevites in Jonah 3:

Now the word of Adonai came to Jonah a second time, saying, ² “Rise and go to Nineveh, the great city, and cry out to it the proclamation that I am telling you.”

³ So Jonah rose and went to Nineveh according to the word of Adonai. Now Nineveh was a great city to God—the length of a three-day journey. ⁴ So Jonah began to come into the city for one day’s journey, and he cried out saying: “Another forty days and Nineveh will be overthrown!”

⁵ Then the people of Nineveh believed God and called for a fast and wore sackcloth—from the greatest of them to the least of them. ⁶ When the word reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, took off his robe, covered himself in sackcloth, and sat in the ashes. ⁷ He made a proclamation saying:

“In Nineveh, by the decree of the king and his nobles, no man or beast, herd or flock, may taste anything. They must not graze nor drink water. ⁸ But cover man and beast with sackcloth. Let them cry out to God with urgency. Let each one turn from his evil way and from the violence in his hands. ⁹ Who knows? God may turn and relent, and turn back from his burning anger, so that we may not perish.”

¹⁰ When God saw their deeds—that they turned from their wicked ways—God relented from the calamity that He said He would do to them and did not do it.

And what was Jonah’s reaction? Sadly, the same as ours all too often. We want the worst of sinners to suffer and burn in hell, but God wants everyone to repent. A couple pf years ago, God ordered me to start praying for the repentance and salvation of child molesters and to say that I was howling as I did so day by day is an understatement. I was in agony. I wanted them to suffer forever—but God taught me something important about sin—that He is the only solution and we have two choices in this life. We can either want people to be eternally punished or forgiven. The price tag of child molesters being eternally punished, the consequence of that is that they never stop molesting children in this life. I had to face the cost of my own hatred—how many children was I willing to sacrifice on the altar of my vengeance? Would I rather they be saved if it meant no more future victims? The truth was, that if I was willing to have them be molested just so that I would get my vengeance, that I would be culpable in any crimes committed against them—so I pray. It is the only solution to so great an evil.

David is, of course, the most famous example and we find this story in 2 Sam 12:

12 Then Adonai sent Nathan to David. When he came to him, he said to him, “There were two men in the same city—one was rich and the other poor. ² The rich man had an exceedingly huge flock and herd, ³ but the poor man had nothing at all, except one little ewe lamb, which he had bought and nourished, and it grew up together with him and his children. It ate from his own morsel and drank from his own cup, and nestled in his bosom, and it was to him like a daughter. ⁴ Now a traveler came to the rich man, but he was unwilling to take one from his own flock or herd to prepare a meal for the wayfarer who had come to him. Rather, he took the poor man’s lamb and prepared it for the man that had come to him.”

⁵ Then David’s anger blazed hot against the man and he said to Nathan, “As Adonai lives, the man that did this deserves to die! ⁶ So he must make restitution for the lamb fourfold, because he did such a thing and showed no pity.”

⁷ Then Nathan said to David, “You are the man! Thus says Adonai, God of Israel: It is I who anointed you king over Israel, and it is I who delivered you from the hand of Saul. ⁸ I also gave you your master’s house and your master’s wives into your bosom, and I gave you the house of Israel and of Judah. Now if that were too little, then I would have added to you so much more. ⁹ Why then have you despised the word of Adonai by doing such evil in My eyes? Uriah the Hittite you have struck down with the sword, and his wife you have taken to be your wife, and him you have slain with the sword of the children of Ammon ¹⁰ So now the sword will never depart from your house—because you have despised Me and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife.

¹¹ “Thus says Adonai: Behold, I am going to raise up evil against you from your own household, and I will take your wives before your eyes and give them to your neighbor, and he will lie with your wives in the sight of this sun. ¹² Indeed you have done it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel and under the sun.”

¹³ Then David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against Adonai.”

Nathan replied to David, “Adonai also has made your sin pass away—you will not die. ¹⁴ However, because by this deed you have made the enemies of Adonai greatly blaspheme, so even the child born to you will surely die.” ¹⁵ Then Nathan went to his house.

Then Adonai struck the child that Uriah’s wife bore to David and he became very sick. ¹⁶ David therefore sought God for the child; and David fasted, and went in and lay all night on the floor. ¹⁷ The elders of his household stood beside him in order to get him up from the floor but he was unwilling and would not eat food with them. ¹⁸ Then it came to pass on the seventh day that the child died. But David’s servants were afraid to tell him that the child was dead, for they thought, “Behold, while the child was still alive, we spoke to him and he didn’t listen to our voice. So how can we tell him that the child is dead? He might do something terrible!”

¹⁹ But when David saw that his servants were whispering together, David perceived that the child was dead. So David asked his servants, “Is the child dead?”

“He is dead,” they said.

²⁰ Then David got up from the floor, washed and anointed himself, and changed his clothes. Then he went to the House of Adonai and worshipped. When he came back to his own palace, he asked for food, so they set food before him and he ate.

²¹ His servants asked him, “What is this thing you have done? You fasted and wept while the child was still alive, but as soon as the child died, you got up and ate food.”

²² He replied, “While the child was yet alive, I fasted and wept, for I thought, ‘Who knows? Adonai might be gracious to me and let the child live.’ ²³ But now that he has died, why should I fast? Can I bring him back again? It is I who will be going to him, but he will never return to me.”

Like Manasseh, David does not curse God over the consequences of his actions. It’s a long story, but God honors Bathsheba, who is compared here to an innocent and helpless ewe-lamb (kivsah) in Nathan’s parable, by giving her a son who will later be Israel’s most glorious king—but God can’t have this son that came from David’s rape of Bathsheba be king over Israel (and yes, it was rape, as I explain in my book Context for Adults: Sexuality, Social Identity and Kinship Relations in the Bible). And I know this story bothers a lot of people, it bothers me too—but this has to be seen within the ancient context of honor and shame. This wasn’t an abortion, not even close. David’s sins brought horrifying consequences on his family, and this was just the first consequence. David took a son from Uriah’s mother and brought that same curse onto his own family as he later lost three sons during his lifetime. God had to set an example to future kings that they could not act with impunity and get away with it, even after true repentance had taken place—repentance doesn’t erase consequences and David understood this—which is why He didn’t curse God in the aftermath of the consequences of His sin. Leaders are always held to higher standards. In some ways they receive more blessings, but the consequences for what they so are also worse than for non-leaders.

Of course, the tax collector in the Parable of the Tax Collector and the Pharisee is another example of true repentance, and we could also look to Zaccheus and Levi. But I want to get to the joy part of Yom Kippur because it is all related.

Yom Kippur was the beginning of the year for tithe years, for the shemittah cycle, and for the Yovel cycle, and for debt-slaves.

Although ancient Israel never observed the seventh year rest for the Land as they were commanded and kept on farming it despite the 6^th year bumper crops, they did observe the return of sold inheritance lands during the Yovel—the year of Jubilee and return. Imagine having sold your inheritance Land away and you and your children farming it as tenants and giving the lion’s share produce to the buyers. That’s a lot of work with only survival to show for your efforts. Imagine getting the Land back in the Yovel, the fiftieth year. I daresay we can’t imagine that kind of joy and celebration! To work one’s own land and live by agriculture was really the only honorable way to get wealth in the ancient world—everything else was “less than” honorable because you were either taking wages from others or you were a merchant, and they were considered to be crooks to a greater or lesser degree, or you were a beggar and totally no honor there! To have Land and work it was honor, and so the Yovel was not only a restoration of Land but also a restoration of a family’s honor—which meant more to them than their very lives.

But, I was up last night—I am an insomniac so I literally spend hours every night talking to God. It was a horrible thing when I was unsaved, but wonderful now. And Yom Kippur is this week—I am recording this a few days before, in 2019 just in case I decide to rebroadcast this later—and I was just filled with hope and joy because Yom Kippur is a season of hope and joy. It is the season of release from debt slavery—when Israelites who could not pay their debts were forced to sell themselves into slavery for six years to pay off their debts, but after six years they went free. Again, a release from shame into honor—another honor reversal—and they were sent out with gifts from their former master. BUT, something else truly amazing could also happen at Yom Kippur—the debt slave could turn to his master and beg not to be released.

Exodus 21 ² “If you buy a Hebrew servant, he is to serve for six years, and in the seventh he is to go free, without payment. ³ If he comes in by himself, he is to go out by himself. If he was married, then his wife will go out with him. ⁴ If his master gave him a wife, and she bears him sons or daughters, the wife and her children will be her master’s, and he will go free by himself.

⁵ “But if the servant plainly states, ‘I love my master, my wife and my children, and I will not go out free,’ ⁶ then his master is to bring him to God, then take him to a door or to a doorpost. His master is to pierce his ear through with an awl, and he will serve him forever.

Yom Kippur is a picture of that for all of us—we are free and yet we choose to remain slaves to God and to righteousness—which is why so many of the Epistles begin with the words, “Paul/James/Peter/Jude, a slave or bondslave of the Messiah.”

Many people ask, “Why do Christians need to celebrate Yom Kippur when Yeshua is our atonement,” and I will tell you that there is a huge difference between personal salvation and the need for national repentance.

Yeshua/Jesus bought our salvation and atonement as individuals on the Passover when He was crucified. That part is done. Now, we are obligated to live with Him as our Master, obeying Him and walking as He walked–which, of course, is obeying the Torah at such a deep, self-sacrificing and honest level that it makes the written commandments of Exodus through Deuteronomy look like child’s play. Yom Kippur, which is short for Yom HaKippurim (Day of the Atonements), is a day for National, not individual, atonements. We, as the Body of Messiah, have not lived up to our calling to walk as our Savior walked. We have shamed God, we have fallen short, we have not done all that we could do either for Him or others. We stand as shameless accusers of the brethren and gossips in our online witness and terrible critics. Frankly, we owe Him a corporate apology and need to ask His forgiveness for how we have represented Him, for our corporate sins and for our corporate ommissions, for failing to complete the Great Commission, for falling away from keeping His commandments, for cooperating with or ignoring or even supporting abortion instead of working to eradicate it, for serving money instead of Him, etc. We got some splainin’ to do.  Yom Kippur isn’t about salvation, it is about owning our failings as a worldwide Body and asking to have our collective slate wiped clean. This day isn’t about “his” failings or “her” failings or “their” failings, but ours. We are all in this together and that is one of the most important lessons of Yom Kippur.