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Today is Shabbat T’shuva. It’s the Sabbath of Repentance. It’s the Sabbath between Rosh HaShana/Yom Truah, the first day of the seventh month, the day we blow the shofar, and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. It’s the Sabbath of Repentance because these ten days are a special time to repent.

T’shuva means repentance. Repentance means turning – turning away from something and turning to something. It involves turning away from bad attitudes and behaviors, and turning to God and to good attitudes and behaviors.

Repentance involves turning to God Himself, which means coming to God on His terms, not our terms, and His terms require us to come to Him through Yeshua. Since God the Father sent Messiah into the world, to be the Savior of the world, and since God commands us to believe in Messiah and honor Messiah, and since Yeshua is the only one who can reconcile human beings to God – loyalty to Messiah is not optional.

Repentance involves turning to God, and God is a Person. He has a mind. He thinks and reasons. He has emotion. He loves, He hates, He can be pleased or grieved. He has a will. He wants certain things and does not want other things. Just as, if we have offended another human being, we go to him and talk to him and apologize for the way we have offended him and try to make things right between us, so we turn to God based on a personal relationship with Him.

Therefore ceremonies and rituals, even God-ordained ones, apart from a personal relationship to God, are not a substitute for repentance that flows from a relationship with the Supreme Person.

Repentance involves a change in our thinking, so that our thinking, which was wrong, lines up with God’s thinking, which is always right. For example, if God says that all sex outside of marriage is wrong, and He does, we adjust our thinking to His thinking. If God says that a baby in its mother’s womb is a human being, and He does, we must line up our thinking with His thinking. Then, after changing our thinking, we must change our behavior, so that our behavior lines up with what God has said is right.

Repentance involves confession – agreeing with God that what He considers wrong, really is wrong, and that we are guilty of doing wrong, thinking wrong, speaking wrong. We are guilty of not only doing something we should not have done, but we may be guilty of not having done the things we should have done: sins of omission and sins of commission. For example, the Lord has made it clear that He wants each one of His sons and daughters to boldly and unashamedly proclaim the Good News to those around us. To not do so is a sin of omission.

The opposite of confessing our sins is ignoring our sins or justifying our sins. If our conscience is bothering us; if there is a nagging awareness that we are doing something wrong and something needs to change; and if we ignore our conscience, we can’t be repentant. If we ignore our conscience so that we become comfortable with our sin, so that we don’t even think about it as sin anymore; or if we are justifying our sin by denying it is sin; or if we try to convince ourselves that since lot’s of other people are doing it, it’s OK; if we try to convince ourselves that the sin we are involved in is a smallish sin – it’s not something big like murder, so God will forgive that small sin – we are not repentant.

From repentance comes a clean conscience. It’s wonderful having a clean conscience, knowing that nothing is interfering with our relationship to God; that we aren’t doing anything to cause us to feel shame, guilt or embarrassment; to feel like a hypocrite.

Repentance involves restitution. If we have hurt or damaged someone, if at all possible, we go to him and make things right. It’s not always possible to make things right so that the other person is made completely whole, but the attempt should be made.

Here are some of the main sin areas that most people need to repent from:

Losing our first love for God. Lack of zeal for God. Being lukewarm in our relationship with God. Our relationship to God should be warm, passionate, personal, intimate. We are to love Him with all our heart, soul, strength, might. We are to be committed to Him, devoted to Him.

Not believing the Word of God is the Word of God; that it is divinely inspired, accurate, reliable, true.

Not sufficiently practicing the spiritual disciplines like reading the Bible on our own, praying so that we are talking to God throughout the day, having a running conversation with Him. Not only attending our faith community regularly, but doing something to build it up from within.

An unbalanced life, so that the pursuit of pleasure and money crowds out serving God.

Sexual immorality in all its many perverse forms.

Losing self-control, so that we lose our temper, eat too much, drink too much, abuse drugs: We must learn how to get close to God and stay close to God so that we are full of the Holy Spirit, who produces in us the fruit of self-control. If we walk in the Spirit, we will not lose self-control and we will not carry out the lusts of the flesh.

Not getting along with people – especially those closest to us – our husbands and wives, parents and children – and especially the rabbis.

Substituting the fear of man for the fear of God, so that we go along with the godless majority, and are fearful of telling others the Good News and standing for the truth.

Repentance is the way we begin our relationship with God, and it is the way we maintain our relationship with God. T’shuva is not a one-time event. It’s an on-going process, even a daily process, or more than a once-a-day process.

The truth is that we sin a lot. We sin each day. We sin in thought, word and deed. Often we don’t do what we should do. And frequently we do do what we shouldn’t do. And so we should repent – not just at the beginning of our walk with God, or yearly during the time between Rosh HaShana and Yom Kippur, but whenever we realize we have sinned.

As soon as we become aware of a failure or rebellious act, we turn to God and confess and ask Him for forgiveness, and thank Him that forgiveness is available because of what Yeshua did for us. We ask Him to restore us and renew us and strengthen us with His grace so that we don’t make the same mistake again. And we have His amazing promise: If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will cleanse us from everything we have done wrong.

With these thoughts about repentance in mind, let’s consider one of the greatest prayers of repentance, written by one of the greatest men who ever lived – king David. Psalm 51.

We start with the introduction to the psalm: For the director of music. A psalm of David. When the prophet Nathan came to him after David had committed adultery with Bathsheba. David, who was one of the greatest men of God who ever lived, sinned very badly. He was guilty of a very serious sin, a sexual sin – adultery. Under the Sinai Covenant, death was the penalty for adultery.

It’s not easy to confront a king, but the prophet Nathan confronted David with his sin of adultery and murder, which led to David’s repentance. Thank God for friends who are willing to confront us when we sin. Those are our true friends.

After the introduction comes David’s prayer: Have mercy on me, O God, according to Your unfailing love; according to Your great compassion blot out my transgressions. Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me. That’s acknowledgment of sin. That’s agreeing with God that our sin is sin. That’s confession, which is an essential part of repentance.

Against You, You only, have I sinned and done what is evil in Your sight. That’s understanding that ultimately all sin is a sin against God, a violation of His nature, His character, out of which flows His standards and laws. So, if we sin against a human being, we should ask for his forgiveness and try to make things right, but we also need to ask God for His forgiveness, because we have also sinned against Him.

So You are right in Your verdict and justified when You judge. That’s acknowledging that God has the right to make the rules and judge anyone who break His rules – and all of us have broken His rules.

Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me. Yet You desired faithfulness even in the womb; You taught me wisdom in that secret place. That’s an acknowledgment of the tremendous impact the fall of man has made on all of humanity. From the moment of conception, we have a fallen nature. We are born with a sin nature. We come into this world with a sin nature – ignorant, far from God, far from the truth, selfish and prone to sin. We don’t’ have to teach our children how to break God’s commandments. We sin because we have a sin nature. Sinning comes “naturally” to us.

Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones You have crushed rejoice. Hide Your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquity. That’s an acknowledgment that God is able to completely forgive all of our sins, provide atonement for all wrong-doing, cleanse us from all our moral filth, even things as wicked and as serious as adultery and murder.

And not only forgive, the Lord is able to replace the unhappiness caused by sin and being unrepentant and backslidden, into the joy that comes from repentance. Often we sin because we think the temptation we are yielding to will be fun, give us pleasure, make us happy. The truth is, it might – for a time. Sin can give the sinner short-term pleasure. But since it is wrong and harms us and others, eventually the pleasure is replaced with increasing levels of misery. Knowing this, why wouldn’t we want to stop living for wrong, short-terms pleasures, and instead experience the lasting joy that comes from getting right with God and living the right way?

Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. That’s an acknowledgment that repentance, if it is genuine, will reach our hearts and spirits. God is able to purify and renew those who repent, not in a shallow way, but in our deepest places, in our hearts, in our spirits. And it’s even better under the New Covenant. Because of Messiah’s life and death and resurrection, we are able to receive a whole new nature, a new godly nature.

And a pure heart and a steadfast spirit will result in a change of behavior. A pure heart and a steadfast spirit results in purity of living, and a steady, right kind of living.

Do not cast me from Your presence or take Your Holy Spirit from me. Before Messiah’s New Covenant was made, the Spirit of God could come on a person for a special task, and He could leave that person, like He left David’s predecessor, Saul. Under Messiah’s New Covenant, while we can sin and grieve the Holy Spirit, we are promised He will never leave us or forsake us.

Restore to me the joy of Your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me. Saints can sin. Believers can fall short, miss the mark, and fail. For the true believer, sin will cause him unhappiness. It will interfere with his desire to be close to God and serve God. The good news is that God is able to restore joy to the repentant and restore his willingness to live for God.

Not only are there wonderful inward changes that take place in those who repent, repentance results in important attitudinal changes toward those around us. There is a new desire to reach out to those around us. Then I will teach transgressors Your ways, so that sinners will turn back to You. The truly repentant have a new desire to teach the truth to those who are far from God, those who are far from the truth, those who need the Good News about the Messiah. You have little or no desire to do that? Should make you wonder …

God is mighty to save. He is a great savior. He is an All-Powerful Person who is aware of everything, and willing and able to help us, save us, deliver us, rescue us from all kinds of circumstances.

He is even able to help us with our great need for atonement, help us by forgiving sins as heinous as adultery and murder – which David knew he was guilty of. Deliver me from the guilt of bloodshed, O God, You who are God my Savior, and my tongue will sing of Your righteousness. Open my lips, Lord, and my mouth will declare Your praise. What a great God, who can save us from the worst kinds of sins!

How can the repentant and forgiven adulterer, the repentant and forgiven murderer, not sing about how great and righteous is the God who can save the adulterer and murderer? How can those who are forgiven, not open their mouths and praise the God who has saved them from their sins?

David gives us one of the most important principles in the Word of God. It’s only after our relationship with God has been restored through a broken spirit and a contrite heart, which is another way of saying repentance, that the Lord is interested in our religious activities, ceremonies and rituals. You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it; You do not take pleasure in burnt offerings. My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart You, God, will not despise. Works, good deeds, sacrifices, even God-ordained ones, apart from genuine repentance, do not please God.

Those who repent become concerned about what concerns God. Their hearts start beating in sync with the heart of God. May it please You to prosper Zion, to build up the walls of Jerusalem. The well-being of Jerusalem is very important to God. It was 3,000 years ago, and it still is today.

And, what is true for an individual is true for a city or nation. Zion can only be successful when the population of the capital city of Israel is repentant; and since the Son of God has come, Israel’s repentance necessitates recognition that Yeshua is the Messiah.

Again, it is only the religious activities of a repentant people, that please God. Then You will delight in the sacrifices of the righteous, in burnt offerings offered whole; then bulls will be offered on Your altar.

Repentance is so important, so essential, so vital, so beneficial. We should be the most repentant people on Earth!

How do we know we have truly repented? We examine our lives with a very critical eye. We ask ourselves: Have I really turned to God and turned away from my sins? Is my heart cleaner? Do I have a steadfast spirit? Do I have a willing spirit, willing to serve God? Do I have a desire to reach out to those around me, and teach them about God and salvation and the truth? We answer our questions honestly. Our conscience will let us know.

We ask tough questions of ourselves, and we ask God if things are right between us. And His still small voice, and His Spirit living in us, will let us know if we have made the necessary changes and if things are right between us, or if they aren’t and we need to make additional changes.