The following sermon was presented by the Reverend John W. Howe, Rector of Truro Episcopal Church in Fairfax, Virginia, on October 30, 1983. The title is, A Call to Repentance, and the scripture reference is Isaiah chapter 1, verses 10 through 20. 

A reading from the book of Isaiah, the first chapter beginning at the 10th verse. Hear the word of the Lord, you rulers of Sodom. Give ear to the teaching of our God, you people of Gomorrah.

What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices, says the Lord? I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of dead beasts. I do not delight in the blood of bulls or of lambs or of he goats.

When you come to appear before me, who requires of you this trampling of my courts? Bring no more vain offerings. Incense is an abomination to me.

New moon and Sabbath and the calling of assemblies, I cannot endure in equity and solemn assembly. Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hates. They have become a burden to me.

I am weary of bearing them When you spread forth your hands I will hide my eyes from you Even though you make many prayers I will not listen Your hands are full of blood Wash yourselves Make yourselves clean Remove the evil of your doings From before my eyes Cease to do evil Learn to do good Seek justice Correct oppression. Defend the fatherless. Plead for the widow.

Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord. Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. Though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.

If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land. But if you refuse and rebel, you shall be devoured by the sword, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken. The word of the Lord. The subject this morning is repentance. A lady came up to me after the last service and she said, I loved your sermon, and I said then it was a total failure. not a pleasant subject it's not easy to hear and it's not easy to speak about but it's what God brings to us this morning and I want to look again at the first chapter of Isaiah I'd ask you to turn with me I think you'll find it on page 586 of the Bibles there in your pews The book of Isaiah begins with a devastating pronouncement which appears to be directed against the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah.

That's what we heard read just a moment ago. Verse 10, Hear the word of the Lord, you rulers of Sodom. Give ear to the teaching of our God, you people of Gomorrah.

But if you remember anything about your Bible history, you're aware that Isaiah spoke and prophesied and wrote somewhere around 740 BC. The cities of Sodom and Gomorrah had been destroyed over five and a half centuries before that. So what is going on here?

Well, the immediately preceding verse tells you that he's using that language figuratively. Verse 9, if the Lord of hosts had not left us a few survivors, we should have been like Sodom and become like Gomorrah. In other words, it's not literally directed to Sodom and Gomorrah.

It's directed to the people of Isaiah's own generation, to the Israel of the 8th century B.C., to the city of Jerusalem. But it's as if Isaiah looks out across his nation. He looks at his own capital city and he sees within it a compromise, a lifestyle, a corruption, a perversion that is exactly the same as led to the destruction of those ancient wicked cities.

Of course, what everybody remembers about them is the extent of their sexual sin. You remember in the book of Genesis, one of the most unpleasant stories in all the Bible, God sends angelic messengers to the home of Lot. And when they arrive, all the men of the city gather around and pound on the door and demand that these angels come out to participate in a homosexual orgy.

Boggles the mind even to think of what's going on. Of course, they don't come out. and the next morning God destroys utterly destroys the city never to be built again archaeologists speculate that it is probably somewhere on the bottom of the Dead Sea just prior to that you remember a famous argument between Abraham and God over that destruction which God says must come and Abraham pleads with him he says shall not the The Lord and Judge of all the earth do right.

God, how can You destroy, utterly destroy, a city like Sodom? Suppose, Lord, that there are 50 righteous people in that city. Are You going to allow them to be consumed along with the wicked?

And God says, no, Abraham. No, if there are as many as 50, I'll spare the city. Abraham says, well, Lord, Suppose I can't come up with that many.

How about 45? No, for the sake of 45, I'll spare the city. How about 40?

How about 30? How about 20? And finally, Abraham figures he's pushed it about as far as he can.

Lord, I'll speak only one more time. If there are 10 righteous people in the city of Sodom, are you going to allow them to be swept away? And God says no. no if there are as many as ten people in that whole city I will spare it but of course there aren't and you see God knew that all along people have sometimes said that Abraham was arguing God into some position that God didn't want to be in God knew what the city of Sodom was all about you may fool some of the people some of the time you may fool all of the people all of the time you don't fool God for a second He knew what the city was all about.

Lot and his wife and their two daughters escape. Lot's wife looks back longingly at this city of sin, and she's changed into a pillar of salt. You look at the subsequent history of Lot and his daughters, and you really wonder how high the standard of righteousness was.

They were not all that pure. They did trust God. And that was enough to get them out.

Nobody else in the whole city. And so it was destroyed, along with its twin city, Gomorrah. That's what we remember about those cities, but I hasten to point out that that is far from a complete description of what the problem was.

Ezekiel says this, Behold, this was the sin, the guilt of your sister Sodom. She and her daughters had pride, surfeit of food, and prosperous ease, but they did not aid the poor and needy. They were haughty, and they did abominable things before me.

Therefore, I removed them. Pride, arrogance, materialism, selfishness, hoarding of worldly goods, self-indulgence, lack of charity, lack of compassion, lack of concern for anybody else. Those were the sins, and the sexual immorality was simply a symptom of a whole syndrome of self.

And so, these cities became a byword, and whenever another city or another generation was majoring in corruption, God would send a prophet and He would compare them to Sodom and Gomorrah. And in essence, he'd say if you don't repent, you may suffer the same fate. I want you to see that Isaiah goes much farther than that.

Isaiah says, you are Sodom and Gomorrah. It's as if he looks at God's own people and sees Sodom reincarnated in them. and what makes it infinitely worse is that the Israel of Isaiah's day the holy city of Jerusalem of Isaiah's day was completely involved in religious practice there were multitudes of sacrifices burnt offerings, sin offerings, guilt offerings, thank offerings.

They had fasts and they had feasts. They had solemn assemblies. They had all the external show of religious devotion.

And God says, that's a stench in my nostrils. Just beneath it. Just beneath it.

Haughtiness, selfishness, materialism. blasphemy, idolatry, sexual immorality running rampant. God says, I cannot stand iniquity and solemn assembly.

I cannot stand sin and the show of righteousness. It is far worse to wrap sin in the cloak of respectability. you might ask yourself why do we read such a passage today a lady came up to me last week and she had just discovered that the same scriptures that are read in her Episcopal church each morning are also read by the Roman Catholics by the Presbyterians by the Lutherans by various others Do you know that all over America this morning this passage is being read?

Why do we read it? To whom does it apply two days before All Saints Day? Well, I have no doubt it applies to our nation as a whole.

And that really sobers me. Thomas Jefferson says, I shudder for my nation when I recall that God is just. I have no doubt it applies to America, to a nation that is conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that each and every one of us has an inalienable right to life.

And we're slaughtering a million and a half babies a year. to a nation called to be the breadbasket of the world and we pay our farmers to let their lands lie fallow while two-thirds of the world is starving? I have no doubt it applies to America.

But I don't think that's why we're reading it today. I think it applies to me. and I think it applies to you.

Peter said the time has come for judgment to begin with the household of God. Before I throw any stones at America, I want to make sure the church has its act cleaned up. And before I throw any stones at the church, I want to make sure that I've got my act cleaned up.

And I think God's Word to us is examine yourselves and see whether just beneath the show of religious devotion there's something of the spirit of Sodom. There's enough of that problem in me to keep me busy for a while, friends. A friend of mine did a retreat for an Episcopal vestry in another state.

He got on to the subject of adultery, and he had some very devastating things to say. And the rector took him aside after the session was over, and he said, absolutely everything you said is biblical. I don't question anything that you said, but I just wonder why you chose to speak to our vestry.

I mean, these are men absolutely committed to Jesus. These are the finest men in our parish. Why would you speak on this subject to them?

Do you know that in the course of that weekend, every single one of those vestry members sought a private conference with the retreat leader? Because every single one of them were involved in that particular problem. Do you understand what I'm talking about?

we're not talking about whether or not you love Jesus I've no doubt that you love Jesus you wouldn't be here if you didn't love Jesus I'm questioning whether or not you hate sin that's what repentance means I hate what God hates and somehow we've got an attitude in the church today that you can have it both ways. You can love Jesus and go on with life, business, sin as usual. God says, I cannot stand iniquity and solemn assembly.

I cannot stand iniquity. Sin wrapped in the cloak of religion is doubly abominable. The time has come for judgment to begin with the house of God.

Praise God the passage doesn't end there. Praise God. There's Gospel here.

Isaiah says, verse 18, Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord, though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. Though they're as red as crimson, they'll become like wool, if you're willing and obedient. Jeremiah lambasted the priests of his generation because he said, they have healed my people's sin lightly.

Or slightly. They have healed my people's sin slightly. And I've used the example over and again that you get a wound in your flesh and there's dirt down there and you don't bother to clean it up.

It'll scab over. New skin will grow. But a terrible thing will begin happening down deep inside the wound as it becomes infected and turns to gangrene and eventually costs you your arm or your life.

They've healed my people's sin slightly. We've come to Jesus. We're touched by His love, by His loveliness.

But do we hate sin? Do we hate sin? Zacchaeus.

Utterly compromised. Sold out his own people. Jesus comes to his home Zacchaeus welcomes him into his home and this is his immediate response he says I'm going to give away half of everything I have to the poor and if I've defrauded anybody I'm going to restore it fourfold because he didn't just love Jesus he hated sin And Jesus said, this day salvation has come to the house of Zacchaeus.

2 Corinthians 7 verse 10 says, Godly sorrow produces a repentance that leads to salvation and brings no regret. Godly sorrow. what is repentance it's hating what God hates it's grieving over what grieves God it's allowing our hearts to break with what breaks His heart have you ever asked God what David asked Him it's an incredible prayer it's the sort of prayer Gert Mahana used to say you pray that kind of prayer you better duck God search me and see if there be any wicked way within me.

You pray that prayer, you better duck. Search me and see if there be anything inside me that is an abomination to you because I want it to be an abomination to me and I want to have done with it. This evening is the fifth night of Life in the Spirit seminar.

we'll be praying for folks that they enter into a new experience of the empowerment of God God cannot empower that which offends him sin killed Jesus on a cross and it will kill him in your life sin wrapped in respect In respectability is an abomination to God. But sin covered by repentance is utterly washed away. Who are the saints?

They're sinners. Who have repented? I sing a song of the saints of God.

and I mean to be one too I'm going to ask you to kneel maybe you've done this maybe you never have done this maybe you need to do it again no man can produce this result but we ask the Holy Spirit to work godly sorrow in us Lord Jesus Christ forgive me my sin search me by your Holy Spirit and whatever displeases You. Lord, I dare to ask You to show that to me. Show me, Lord, as much as I can bear to see.

not to make me feel guilty but that I might be cleansed of it. Lord, break my heart with what breaks Your heart. for taking holiness so casually.

Cleanse me of iniquity. And fill me afresh with your life. that I might live for You.

And Lord, if there are folks with whom I need to make amends, show me how to do that and give me grace to do it for Your name's sake. Amen. Amen.

Kyrie eleison. Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy.

Lord, have mercy. Amen.