“The following day Moses said to the people, ‘You have committed a grave sin. Now I will go up to the Lord; perhaps I will be able to atone for your sin.’ So Moses returned to the Lord and said, ‘Oh, these people have committed a grave sin; they have made a god of gold for themselves. Now if you would only forgive their sin. But if not, please erase me from the book you have written.'” (CSB – Read the chapter)

When I was growing up, one of my sister’s friends lived in the single most confusing neighborhood in the world. Once you drove in, if you didn’t know where you were going, the odds were high that you were going to wind up lost. There was basically one way in without going to the opposite side of town, but once you got in there were about a thousand turns available to you. If you took a wrong turn along the way, it felt like the only way to get out was to retrace your steps turn-by-turn, going the exact opposite direction as you were going before. This idea of going back the way you came in life has a name. It’s called repentance, and that’s what we see happening here as we near the end of this tragically hilarious chapter.

One of the most incredible things about God’s character that we see on display again and again in the Scriptures is that He responds to repentance. It really doesn’t matter how heinous a thing someone has done. When they finally reach a place where they are ready to acknowledge reality once again, when they return to God, own up to their sin, and commit to going in His direction instead of theirs again, He’s ready to go with them. He does that with incredible consistency. For at least one prophet, Jonah, He did that with a disturbing and infuriating consistency. Responding to genuine repentance with graciousness and forgiveness is simply part of who God is.

Because Moses understood this to be the case, when the people had awakened once again to the reality and grievous nature of their sin, He sought to repent on their behalf. Repentance is something anyone can do. As I just hinted at, it involves only a handful of simple steps. They aren’t always very easy because of their broader implications, but they are really simple.

Repentance begins with an acknowledgment of sin. This is called confession. Unless and until you are willing to own up to the fact that you did something wrong, repentance isn’t something you’re going to actually be doing. This confession can’t be merely verbal, although saying it out loud can be an important part of the process. You’ve got to actually agree with the idea. Again: you have to own it. I did this thing, and it was wrong of me to do that. I sinned. We see Moses doing that here when he confesses, “Oh, these people have committed a grave sin.”

It’s not enough to merely mean it when you confess, though. Confession like this, if it is going to lead to genuine repentance, has to be specific. You didn’t commit a general sin. Therefore, general confession isn’t going to accomplish anything. Genuine repentance is never a general thing. When you repent, you need to be very specific about what it was that you did. Moses did that here too. “They have made a god of gold for themselves.” What exactly was it that you did that was wrong? Say it. Form the idea very specifically in your mind, and then say it out loud. I ___________. Until you are willing to do this, you are far less likely to really walk away from whatever it was. You’ll walk away from merely the idea that you did something wrong rather than the something wrong you actually did.

The third part of confession that is so important is to express remorse for what you did. Merely acknowledging that it was wrong isn’t enough. You need not merely to agree that it was wrong, but to agree to the point that you genuinely wish you hadn’t done it. If you only agree that it was wrong but don’t feel badly for having done it, you’re pretty likely to do it again. And, if you’re likely to do it again, you aren’t really repenting. You’re just confessing. Confession is a good thing, but confession without remorse isn’t repentance, and it doesn’t lead to reconciliation with the injured parties which is the ultimate goal of repentance.

This remorse, then, is best expressed in an apology. Apologize for having done what you did. You can start with God since He is the ultimately injured party, but it may be that you need to apologize to a person as well. This can be a scary thing to do, but it is always the right thing to do when your sin has impacted them in some way. An apology like this paves the way for restoration of the relationship.

Finally, repentance involves making an intentional turn away from the thing you did along with taking active steps in the other direction. These active steps may include installing some guardrails to help catch you if you start to drift back in that direction again in the future. This is the real heart of repentance. The word itself means to turn and go in the opposite direction. You go in the opposite direction because the direction you were going in before was the wrong direction. It wasn’t just a little bit wrong either. You were driving the wrong way down a one way street. The only way to go back and get that right is to drive the opposite way.

Moses did all of this here on behalf of the people. Vicarious, corporate repentance like this is okay to do. We see it happen several times across the Old Testament narrative. But unless it is accompanied by concrete action steps on behalf of the rest of the people, it’s probably not going to accomplish very much. Moses also intercedes for the people once again. He puts himself in the gap between them and God and offers to take their punishment on himself, or to at least share in it. This is a prefiguring of what Jesus would eventually do for us on the cross. Now, the only question that remains is how God is going to respond to it. That is what we’ll see tomorrow.

Between now and then, what is it that you have to repent of in your own life? What sins do you have lingering on your ledger that need to be addressed? Even if you don’t believe any of this is any more than a bunch of nonsense, you’ve still got relationships that are not as strong as they could be because of something you’ve done in the past. You don’t live perfectly consistently with whatever moral standard you have adopted for yourself. People do the wrong thing all the time no matter how they happen to define “wrong.” If you want that situation to be fixed, you’ve got to address it. And the way to address it is with repentance. Start there and see what kind of good will come from it.