1/1 For Youth Only

Part 1 of 3

We Need to be Ashamed
by: Frank Burton

We read in Jeremiah 31:18, “I have surely heard Ephraim bemoaning himself thus; Thou hast chastised me, and I was chastised as a bullock unaccustomed to the yoke: turn thou me and I shall be turned; for thou are the Lord my God.”

Here, Ephraim was not lost, but in a backslidden state. This is evident by Jeremiah 31:17 when it says, “And there is hope in thine end, saith the Lord, that thy children shall come again to their own border.” In order for Ephraim to return, he had to be right with God at one time.

Christians today have become calloused to their sin. I remember a time when you would see Christians at the altar weeping because of the sin in their lives. Just think about it for a second. When was the last time you shed a tear because of the sin you have committed? Our heart does not burn inside of us anymore. We just live our life day in, and day out, never thinking about our sin.

True repentance of sin can have an affect on us. Remember verse eighteen, Ephraim said that he was chastised as a young bullock unaccustomed to the yoke. That means when God was working in his life, he fought it. The fight was between God and the sin that he enjoyed. Too many Christians today fight the Holy Spirit when He brings conviction in their lives. I hear many Christians make the statement when it comes to some sin in their life, “It's not that bad.” Did you just hear what you said? You just said, “It's not that bad.” Somehow we feel that some sin is not as bad as other sin. I wish somebody would show me a verse in the Bible that states that. Ephraim did say one thing in verse eighteen that I find very interesting. He said, “…turn thou me and I shall be turned.” Ephraim made a good statement when it came to God working in his life. He said he would be turned. When it comes to sin in our life, we must turn from it. We must go another direction, away from the path that we once trod. In order for us to make any headway in our life, we must turn from our sin.

Now this brings me to the point of this article. Let's look at what Ephraim said in verse nineteen, “Surely after that I was turned, I repented; and after that I was instructed, I smote upon my thigh; I was ashamed, yea even confounded, because I did bear the reproach of my youth.”

The first thing he did after he turned; he repented. Christians today seem to think that once they accept Christ, they don't have to repent of their sin. You will see that his repentance wasn't simply words, but something that had smote his heart. When was the last time you truly repented of your sin? That means that you turned from your sin and worked hard never to return to that particular sin in your life. I'm afraid that most Christians today don't think their sin is that big of a deal. Of course, everyone else's sins are a big deal. If we are going to grow in our Christian life then we must repent of our sins with our whole hearts.