Repentance  By David Cox

If you could open your Bibles to Isaiah chapter 1, the book of Isaiah chapter 1.
If you have a church Bible, if you've got one of our few Bibles from the church, it will be page 604.
I just want to read chapter 1 verse 4 to 6 here.
Isaiah is bringing a charge against the nation of Israel.
Isaiah being a true prophet, he did what Jeremiah said that if they had stood in my counsel they would have turned my people from their sin.
Isaiah seeks to do that and what he does first is paint a picture of a diseased person and he said that's you, that's even your sin, this terrible diseased person.
And he goes on in verses that we won't read to talk about the solution is not religion, as a matter of fact that adds to the woes.
But the solution comes in verse 16 to 20 and closes with a warning.
But let me read chapter 1 verse 4 to 6 where he gives a picture of the sinner in his sight.
There's alas sinful nation of people laden with iniquity, a brood of evildoers, children who are corruptors.
They have forsaken the Lord, if turned away from him.
They have provoked to anger the Holy One of Israel, they have turned away backward.
Why should you be stricken again? You will revolt more and more.
The whole head is sick and the whole heart faints from the sole of the foot even to the head.
There is no soundness in it but wounds and bruises and putrefying sores or runny sores.
They have not been closed or bound up or soothed with ointment.
Then chapter 1 verse 16, wash yourselves, make yourselves clean, put away the evil of your doings from before my eyes,
cease to do evil, learn to do good, seek justice, rebuke the oppressor, defend the fatherless, plead for the widow.
Let us be specific with these issues and problems.
Come now and let us reason together, says the Lord, then comes the Gospel invitation.
Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be white as snow.
Though they are red like crimson, they shall be as wool.
If you are willing and obedient, now the Gospel warning, 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.
Let us pray.
Now Father we do thank you for this morning.
We thank you for being able to ponder and meditate upon the greatness
and the vastness of your goodness towards us and the greatness of your love.
And Father if you come to this final topic of repentance, we pray that that might be yet reinforced
and we may learn too, you are not a god to be trifled with.
And Father we just pray that through this you might speak to us, those who are your children,
may we learn much and be comforted and built up in our faith for those who are not yet unsaved.
Father we pray that you might even grant to them this morning repentance as you have done to so many others,
that through your Son you might be glorified in all things.
And we just ask this in Jesus' name.
Well repentance is, if you like, the hard bit of the good news
and not surprisingly it gets left out a little bit today, which is a tragedy.
Because faith and repentance, as I said there in the notes, they are really quite similar.
I don't know if you have considered the relationship between faith and repentance,
but they are quite similar things, they share some similar characteristics.
As I mentioned earlier, both are a response to the Gospel.
God has redeemed, God has reconciled, the call goes out, the Gospel goes out,
you are to believe in the Lord Jesus, exercise faith in him.
And the other part is that you are to repent.
In the book of Acts it puts it together that you must show repentance towards God
and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
And so there are some similarities there.
Another thing is that both are necessary if you would be saved.
We know that Hebrews says that without faith it is impossible to please God.
An unbelieving person cannot possibly believe God, not in a fit.
It is impossible to believe God.
But without repentance also it is impossible.
According to Jesus, and you notice he said this twice in a rather brief space of time,
Luke 13 verse 3 and then again in verse 5,
unless you repent you shall all likewise perish.
And he says again, unless you repent you shall all likewise perish.
So you get the idea, this is important isn't it?
There must be repentance and it must be part of the Gospel,
otherwise you have no Gospel actually, people aren't going to be saved.
Unless you repent you shall all likewise perish.
He is saying in effect that if you have not repented you are not saved.
I don't need me to tell you that that's important is it?
And I must be sure that I have actually repented that I understand what repentance is.
Because so much hinges on it.
We read that John the Baptist began to preach the Gospel,
we read that Jesus began to preach the Gospel and we find they said identical things.
Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.
If you read through the early chapters of Matthew you will find that that's the record of what John is saying,
the record of what Jesus said, the same thing, repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.
The Gospel call went out to the people to repent.
Well what does it mean to repent?
Well we use the same approach, look at what it is not first,
what people might be trusting in that they have repented when they in fact have not,
and then look at what it is.
And so given the necessity of repentance we can't afford to be confused or misguided or deceived.
Unless you repent you shall perish, so we must be clear, we must understand what it is.
And firstly we must understand that repentance is not something you are rewarded for.
A lot of people think that it is, they think if they repent enough God will receive them.
If they turn away enough from bad works and start doing good works, God will receive them.
But the problem with that sort of thinking is that if you are turning away from wicked works to good works,
well that is well and good, and good luck if you want to try that.
You will find it doesn't work for one thing.
But the other thing is you have got all this sin that is trailing along behind you, haven't you?
And so you can't be rewarded for your repentance in the parable of that servant.
Jesus said, you know, does he get thanks for what he has done?
He worked so hard, no, he said what he should have.
And if you are able to turn over a new leaf, if you are able to suddenly start living a perfect life,
now you are doing what you should have done.
But you have still got the past, what is behind.
Repentance does not atone for that.
No matter how sorry you are, no matter how many tears you weep,
no matter how many good works you do, it will not atone for the bad works that have gone before.
Not only that, you will find that with these so-called good works that you will imagine
you are now producing a mingled all sorts of selfish reasons, all sorts of sinfulness itself.
So you can't say to God, I have repented, now where is my salvation?
It doesn't work like that. Repentance is not something you are rewarded for.
Scripture is quite clear that it is by grace you have been saved, not of, works.
Lest any man should boast.
The Gospel gives you no grounds for boasting except that that is in you know the Lord Jesus Christ.
That is the only thing you can boast about if you are saved.
So repentance is not there to atone for sins, blood is.
You are not redeemed with gold or silver or with your repentance.
You are redeemed with the precious blood of Christ.
His work for you.
So we need to clear that up.
Salvation, sorry, repentance is not a good work.
It is not something that you will be rewarded for.
Neither is it simply being sorry.
Some people imagine that they are sorry for their sin, therefore that is repentance.
In a nutshell they are sorry, perhaps they have wept some tears, I feel bad about what they have done.
There is certainly some remorse and they think that is repentance, no it is not.
The Scriptures tell us some people who were sorry, they even wept.
And yet it doesn't imply that they were truly repentant in the Gospel sense.
King Saul was one, remember?
He said to Samuel, yes I have sinned and I turn and worship God with me.
God didn't relent, did he? He still brought judgment upon him.
There was no true repentance there.
Esau wept because he lost his birthright, sought it with tears, didn't get it.
Judas Iscariot was another interesting case.
He realised, he said I have sinned, I have betrayed innocent blood.
Gave back the money that he took, felt really bad, didn't he?
But there wasn't Gospel repentance.
He went out and hanged himself.
That was the solution to his guilty conscience, was to hang himself, to do himself in.
Not saved.
So these people were very sorry.
You know Paul distinguishes between a mere sorrow,
what he calls the sorrow of the world, and a godly sorrow.
In 2 Corinthians 7 verse 10 he said,
Godly sorrow works repentance to salvation, not to be repented of,
not to be sorry for, not to turn away from, but the sorrow of the world works death.
So there is a sorrow that is a sort of a worldly, selfish sort of a sorrow.
Where you might indeed be sorry for sin, but it is not really repentance.
There is a very big difference.
There is a godly sorrow that does lead to repentance.
So Paul actually makes a distinction between sorrow and repentance.
But they are not the same.
There is a godly sorrow, there is a worldly sorrow, one leads to death,
like the two ways, isn't it?
There is also a godly sorrow that is not repentance, but it does lead to it.
And so it is not just sorrow.
Now sorrow, don't get me wrong, is an important part of repentance.
And such an important part that we couldn't mistake it for it.
Just assume that where there is sorrow there is repentance.
And you might make that mistake personally, but you also might make that mistake
if you are either a preacher or you are teaching children or you have your own children
or you have friends who are unsaved and you want to explain to them the gospel
and you see them weeping tears and you think it is wonderful.
There is a repentance. No, there is sorrow.
If it is a godly sorrow it would lead to repentance, but it is not repentance.
Sorrow is only a part of it.
Unless there is a whole hearted turning to Christ by faith,
repentance doesn't exist, the sorrow is incomplete.
And that is the essence of repentance, to turn back.
You may remember the story when God brought Israel out of Egypt
and he said I won't take them this way or take them another way.
He said unless when they get there they see war and they turn back.
That is the Old Testament word for repent.
Unless they see war and they repent.
They turn around and go back.
They were coming this way, they see war, they get frightened, they get nervous,
they are going to die so they repent and go back that way.
And that is the essence of repenting.
Now repentance is much more than just a bare emotion.
As a matter of fact there may be true repentance with very little emotion shown.
That is what seems to me to be happening when we see Stephen,
I think it was Stephen, talking to the Ethiopian eunuch.
There is no mention of tears or great grief or sorrow or anything like that.
He just says he is water, can I be baptised?
If you believe the Lord Jesus, something so on.
He said yes I do, I believe Jesus.
It almost seems sort of cool and rational, not a great display of emotion
and yet obviously there was true repentance there.
The man was saved.
And so it is not something you are rewarded for, it is not simply being sorry.
And it is not simply trying to do better.
You know, kicking bad habits and often you will hear people
and you invite them along the church and they are sincere,
they are genuine, they say I would like to first but I really should give up smoking first.
Or give up drinking and maybe then I should come along the church.
You see they are trying to kick bad habits but they are not repentant.
We might think learning good manners is a good thing.
Getting a little discipline and that solves a problem but it doesn't.
None of these things are repentance.
It still falls short of what it is to turn to Christ.
Simply trying to do better is turning inwards to myself, not turning to Christ.
And so there is something more to it, there is something bigger.
Repentance is also not simply fear.
Whether it is a fear of hell or some other loss.
Sometimes you fear a loss of reputation, you have committed some sin
and you really hope no one finds out because wouldn't that make you look stupid
or unspiritual or ungodly.
And you might think that that is repentance but it is not.
There might be a threat of losing a job, losing people's esteem, losing finances.
But as one preacher, I think it was Charles Spurgeon, said a scare is not salvation.
A scare is not salvation.
And he used a picture of a dog returning to his vomit.
You see a dog eating his vomit and you go, yuck, silly mutt get away.
And you scare him, you are frightened and away he goes.
But what happens when you go away?
He comes back, doesn't he? The dog returns to his vomit.
Some people are like that, they get an awful fright.
And it seems that there is some new life there for a minute but it soon dissipates
because a scare is not salvation, a scare is not repentance.
And so repentance is not these things.
So what is it?
Well, in some way it is those things but it is much more than that.
As I mentioned earlier, repentance is basically a turning around
but the really root meaning, the basic meaning in Greek is that it is a change of mind.
It is a turning, first of all, in the mind where you change your mind.
You get a new understanding, you get a new outlook on things.
You form new opinions about you.
We looked at this with faith.
In the case of repentance you get a new picture of you, that yes I am sinful.
It becomes not just a new opinion but a conviction that I am sinful.
And you know the word, where we are told to confess our sin,
the word simply means using the same words.
You admit to God that what your word says about me is true.
Every bit of it is true.
And so that is the start of it.
You get a new opinion about God.
For one thing, that he will punish sinners.
That he is a holy God, heaven and hell are real.
God will send people to heaven, he will send people to hell.
But you also know that if I return to God, he will accept me.
And so maybe that is a new part of God you have got to learn.
That God is willing to receive you should you be repentant.
And you get a new understanding about sin.
There is firstly an awareness of the evil and the danger of sin.
Not just the danger only, a lot of people have that.
Have you ever thought of the evil of sin?
Have you ever thought of the evil of sin?
What sin is, what it does to God?
What a transgression against his law is actually.
Sin we know is a transgression of God's law, the apostle John tells us that.
And so sin is breaking God's law.
It is taking God's law, trampling it underfoot saying that it doesn't matter, it is not important.
So it is open rebellion against God.
It is an attack on his honour.
To sin against God is to dishonour God.
It is to blaspheme his name if you like, to count it as worthy, to take his name in vain.
Peter Jeffries put it this way, he said,
It is possible to be sorry for the trouble and distress sin has caused,
without giving the slightest thought to what your sin has done to God.
All sin is against God.
It robs him of honour and glory.
Truly repentant sin aggrieves more over this aspect of sin than anything else.
As Steve said in his last talk, sin is a hostile position against God.
And a person who has repented has come to realise that and done something to change that.
He is also an awareness of personal guilt and ruin.
Not him, not her.
You know some people come along and they hear a message and say,
I am glad Martha was here today to hear that.
That is something she needs to really hear.
Repentance is actually an awareness of my guilt,
that I am guilty, that I have sinned against God,
that I am ruined because I have sinned against God.
When the day of judgment comes, I will come to stand before God.
We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ.
And I come to realise that that is me that is talking about.
And repentance will include that.
There is a danger of sin, the threat of recompense.
There is also an awareness of the absolute necessity to be rid of sin.
Sin has caused this terrible, terrible situation.
Sin has brought me undone.
And not just for that sake even, but for the honour of God.
Something must be done about my sin.
Again I was reading Charles Spurgeon's testimony and he said,
he remembers thinking that even if God could just forgive him like that,
he said he shouldn't, he mustn't because his honour is at stake.
He can't just say Charles Spurgeon, you're a fragile sinner,
but bear this, just turn a blind eye to that.
He said God couldn't do that, he can't do that, he's too noble.
There had to be a price paid and Christ paid it.
And so repentance will be those things that change your mind,
which brings about those things an awareness about the truth about sin,
about me, about God, my own guilt, my own ruin,
that the honour of God is all caught up in it.
And then it's not just a change of mind, it's a change of direction.
Ezekiel said, repent and turn yourselves from all your transgressions
so iniquity will not be your ruin.
Repent and turn yourselves.
And there he shows that it really is a change in direction for a person.
Now that change in direction is in a couple of areas.
Repentance you could say is an about face in two ways.
The first one is in beliefs.
Our false views about God must go.
Things that you've learnt perhaps from a little child
and you've been told and you've been taught, that must go.
Worship of false gods must stop.
Maybe you're actually into a genuine worship of false gods, that must stop.
False religion, or perhaps you're worshipping a god
that is a figment of your imagination and not one scripture presents.
Either way, that must stop.
Self dependency must stop.
Self salvation, trying to save yourself, must stop.
All these efforts of self righteousness must stop
because God says that they're hopeless, they can't save you.
And so if these are things that you have believed in and trusted in,
it must change, it must be repentance.
It gets to where Christ is no longer an interest but a necessity.
I must have Christ.
He's no longer just someone I'm interested in
or something I like to learn about, but someone that I must know.
Remember Jesus spoke to the Jews and he said, challenging,
he said in search of scriptures, in them you think you have life.
He said, but they testify of me.
He said, and you won't come to me.
And so you've got to get to that point where you say,
I must come to Christ, I must have Christ.
It's not enough to read the scriptures and be like king and gripper
and believe the prophets, but I must have Christ.
I must turn back to him.
And so Christ becomes a necessity.
And it's here where repentance and faith are seen to work together.
As I said in Acts, repentance towards God and turning back towards God
in conviction of sin, in brokenness, bringing nothing whatsoever,
just turning back towards God and faith in Jesus Christ,
casting yourself upon his mercy that he will save.
And then people are saved.
Paul wrote to the Thessalonians and he recalled, he said,
you turn to God from idols to serve the living and true God.
So there are people who repented.
In their case, it was actually paganism, I'm sure, serving other gods.
But as I said, you might serve a god that goes by the name Christ,
but he's another Christ.
He's a different Christ than the one in the gospel.
Either way, there must be turning to God, to the one true God from idols.
Repentance is an about-facing belief.
And it's sin to believe the wrong things.
It's sin to make up lies and so on.
But there must also be in behaviour.
Now, if there's true repentance, that will be shown by radical change in behaviour.
In fact, if the radical change in behaviour hasn't taken place,
you wonder, has the mind been affected much?
Has that change in beliefs really taken place?
I remember the Pharisees coming to John the Baptist to be baptised
and said, when John saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees
coming to his baptism, which, remember, was a baptism of repentance,
the people would come to sort of seal their intention to repent.
He saw them coming.
They wanted to make this profession that they were going to repent.
And he said to them,
O generation of vipers, who has warned you to flee from the wrath to come?
Bring forth, therefore, fruits meat for repentance,
fruits that are appropriate, show some evidence,
show something that you truly are repentant.
And so repentance is also something that you can see.
It's not just changing in the mind,
it's a changing in the life and the behaviour
where you can see that someone is different.
Something has gripped their mind and gripped their heart
and they really are a new creature in Christ.
That's obvious.
Sin makes me offensive to God.
Like that man in Isaiah saw us from the top of my head
to the bottom of my foot, that's how God views me.
And I must come and understand that sin is offensive
and, like God says, wash yourself.
I must be washed.
And that's part of the repentance.
I turn back to God for that washing.
I don't wash, then turn to him.
I turn to him for washing and to be clean from sin.
And having been cleansed from sin,
having known the torment of sin in my conscience,
I learned to hate what God hates.
I learned to love God with all my heart, mind, soul and strength
and I start to see sin as a wedge that wants to drive between me and God.
And so my mind is changed, my whole attitude is changed.
And so when you talk about repentance,
you're really talking about sin, aren't you?
That's what it's all about, really.
The doctrine of sin.
Do you remember Zacchaeus?
What did he do for a living?
Tax collector.
Tax collector.
What were tax collectors known as?
Thieves.
Thieves.
Greedy men.
They used Roman soldiers to stand over you.
Zacchaeus was a little tiny fellow.
I bet he had three or four soldiers to do his heavy work for him.
A couple of men to lean on people to give a little bit more tax.
And that's the sort of person Zacchaeus was.
Jesus Christ came to his house.
Jesus himself said, salvation has come to this house.
Why do you say that?
He saw fruit, didn't he?
Zacchaeus said, Lord, if I've ripped anybody off,
I'll pay it back so many times.
He said, if I take them from the poor,
I'll give it back half my goods.
Half my goods right now, I won't give to the poor.
You see, he was a man, a money-grubbing man,
covetous, greedy, and now all of a sudden he's generous.
It's like he's polar opposite to the real Zacchaeus
and you think, what has happened?
Repentance.
You see, that's repentance.
Salvation has come to this house, our Lord.
Just have a look at Ephesians chapter 4.
This is one of our few Bibles, our church Bibles.
It's page...
We'll be reading from page 1,040.
Paul uses the language of repentance,
if not the word itself.
And that Ephesians chapter 4,
we'll start with verse 21.
He said, if indeed you have heard him
and have been taught by him as the truth is in Jesus,
see, there's the effecting of the mind,
if indeed your mind has been affected by the Gospel,
the truth of the Gospel,
that you put off concerning your form of conduct
the old man which grows corrupt
according to the deceitful lusts.
That goes off.
And be renewed in the spirit of your mind
and that you put on the new man
which was created according to God
in true righteousness and holiness.
And he gives some examples.
Therefore, putting away lying,
example number one,
if you're a hopeless liar,
deceiving people, tricking people,
Paul says, stop that,
but you don't just stop lying,
now you speak truth with his neighbour
for we are members of one another.
Be angry and do not sin,
do not let the sun go down on your wrath.
So rather than being an angry couple maker,
you become a peacemaker,
nor give place to the devil.
Verse 28, let him who stole steal no longer,
but even that's not enough,
it's not enough to stop stealing,
but rather let him labour,
working with his hands what is good,
that he may have something to give to him
who has need.
So you stop being a thief,
start being a hard worker
and become generous.
Isn't that what happened to Zacchaeus?
He was basically a thief, wasn't he?
Using immoral means to get people's money
and he turned around and he became someone
who was generous.
And so that's the aspect of repentance,
the behaviour changes.
The other thing about repentance
is that it is a gift.
Remember we looked earlier at Romans 3
quoting the Psalms.
How many when God looked down from heaven,
how many people did he find seeking him?
No.
No, one to five?
No, not one.
No, not one.
That's pretty drastic, isn't it?
No, not one.
How are people going to repent
when they don't even care about God?
You see that it's a work that God has to
work within us, it's a gift.
That's why Romans 2, 4 says,
the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance.
God's goodness is what makes you a repentant person.
If you have repented or if you have
in your mind or in your heart to turn back to God,
then know that that is from God himself.
It came from God, it came down to you
in the work of the Holy Spirit,
it's returning back to him in repentance.
That's God giving you repentance.
In Acts chapter 5,
Peter spoke these words, he's talking about Jesus.
He said that God has exalted this Jesus
to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins.
And so it's a gift.
And that raises a question,
why does God grant repentance to people
that they will turn back to him?
Surely it's because he's willing to receive them, isn't it?
He stirs a heart to turn back towards him
because he wants to receive them back again.
Steve put me in mind of the parable
of the prodigal son, wasn't it?
What did he do?
He said, I'll go back to my father.
Why?
He said, my father has many things,
he can take care of me, I'll go back.
And he went back thinking he'd be a servant, didn't he?
What did he find when he got home?
A father more than willing to receive him back again, eh?
And so it is in our hearts, God stirs within us repentance
because he wants us to come back.
He's willing to receive.
You know, the prophet Jeremiah pleaded with God
and said, turn us, O God.
He said, God, you turn us, otherwise we're ruined.
It's a work that God does.
So what could you say repentance is?
I've made an effort of definition.
I don't imagine for a minute that it's complete.
But it is a gift from God.
We need to say that first, by which I learn,
it involves a mind, remember, I learner the horror,
the danger, the evil of sin.
Not just the danger, but the evil of sin.
I have sinned against God.
As David said, against you and you only have I sinned.
That's all he could say, that he had sinned against God.
And that's what repentance will recognise.
It moves me to turn, to turn from error, error in belief
or error in sinfulness, wickedness.
Turn from error and sin to Christ by faith
so that I can be washed like I'm told.
Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean.
It moves me to forsake all sinful words, actions and thoughts
being grieved by it and sorry for it.
And I guess a good picture is a tax collector in the temple, isn't it?
He came to realise his true state before God,
to be told he couldn't even raise his eyes to heaven too ashamed
and beat on his breast, said God have mercy on me a sinner.
Jesus said he went home justified.
He was truly repentant.
And so faith and repentance, they're separate essentially
but really you can't be divided.
It's a bit like in your body you have the circulatory system
and a heart pumping blood.
That's one system.
You have the respiratory system with the lungs and so forth,
the exchange of oxygen, carbon dioxide.
Could you live without your lungs?
No, can you live without your heart?
Is your heart your lungs or your lungs your heart?
No, they're different but you need them both.
And so it is in the gospel.
There must be repentance and there must be faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Both working you together to bring a sinner back to the feet of Christ.
Now the man who has faith, true faith, will hear the gospel call,
will hear God's condemnation on himself, point out to Christ,
is there a saviour, he will hear it and he will repent.
He will turn back to Christ, grieve for his sin.
He'll hear the gospel call saying repent, repent and he will
because he believes it.
And the one who has repented you can be sure is one who has heard
and believed the gospel.
A faith without repentance is no faith at all.
What James would call a dead faith, a faith that produces nothing,
is just a dead faith.
It's a corpse lying on the ground, no use to anybody.
And so there are three musts if you want to be saved.
Jesus said you must be born again in John 3.
You must have faith.
Without faith it's impossible to please God.
Remember John 3, the he who doesn't believe the Son doesn't have life.
The author got a bite on him.
And there must be repentance.
As Jesus said, unless you repent you shall all likewise perish.
And so there must be this turning.
Can there be faith without repentance?
A lot of people seem to think so today.
They say they believe in Jesus but they're not repentant.
They never turn from their sin.
Do you know people like that who say they believe in Jesus,
they're still living with a woman and de facto relationship
or living in sin, the old title we used to give it.
And they think that they're saved because they believe in Jesus.
But there's been no turning, no repentance.
Or there's a man who says, yes, he believes in Jesus.
He still gets drunk and abuses his wife.
Is that the case?
Has he believed in Jesus?
Is he saved?
Or there's a man who is a thief and he says he believes in Jesus.
But guess what?
He still is.
Has he learned the horror of sin?
Has he turned?
And so there must be faith, there must be repentance.
You wonder a person like that is just talking
and you get the impression that he might want you to get off his back.
Now repentance tends to get missed a little bit.
It's fallen out of fashion today.
And I guess one reason is because we're fearful of being labelled as a legalist.
I say, yeah, but you're just a legalist.
You're into salvation by works.
No, we're not into justification by works at all.
But we know that where there's true faith it will lead to works, won't it?
You are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works,
which he is ordained you should walk in them.
We look at the state of the church and we think,
why is it that Christians seem no different to anybody else?
Perhaps because repentance has been missing from the gospel,
so-called gospel that was preached.
And so people don't understand it.
Now what is the cause of the bad state of the church?
Maybe it's because, as I said, this repentance has fallen out of fashion.
We don't call people to leave sins to seek sin.
Someone comes to us and they're living in a relationship,
a de facto relationship, and they say they want to get saved.
What do you say to them?
Repent.
Hey, what would John the Baptist say to them?
What would Jesus say to them?
There must be repentance and sin if you're serious.
I remember hearing a story about this man who called a pastor
and he said, pastor, I want to become a Christian.
And so he went around to his house
and there's a brown bottle in the corner with a bottle of booze
and I saw a brown paper bag with an out-hole in it, you know.
And the pastor saw that and said, oh, well, let me take this first.
You won't be needing that anymore.
No, no, no, no.
He said, just leave it there.
And so he walked out and he said, you tell me when you're serious.
He understood there was talk, but there was no real repentance.
This man was not sorry and repentance wasn't there.
But as Jesus said, and he made it absolutely clear,
as I said, saying it twice in a short space of time,
unless you repent, you shall all likewise perish.
Another must that we could throw into the mix is holiness.
In Hebrews we're told, follow peace with all men and holiness,
without which no man shall see the Lord.
Now, what's the big problem with man, according to the Gospel
that Paul points out in Romans 1?
You are unrighteous, unholy.
And the Gospel is a means that we become holy,
we become convinced of our unholiness, our unrighteousness,
and we turn in heart and mind and the whole,
every bit of us back to Christ so that we might become washed,
that we might receive His righteousness upon ourselves.
And we learn to hate sin.
There's that thing which causes the problem.
And I heard one Puritan pastor put it like this.
He said, what's the difference between an unbeliever and a believer?
The believer sins and there's a sort of a pleasure in it.
He said, the believer sins but there's a burden.
He said, thou wretched man that I am, who's going to deliver me from this?
What I want to do, I can't do.
What I don't want to do, I keep doing.
And it becomes a burden to him.
Just because he can't stop it like that doesn't mean he's not saved.
But it becomes different.
Now it's a burden and a load that he can't stand to bear anymore.
So repentance is that first stirring of the soul
that leads towards holiness or washing or cleansing
and imparting of the righteousness.
So there's a couple of applications for us.
Firstly, you must repent or perish.
You must turn from sin.
Remember, not just sin in actions but sin in belief
and trying to justify yourself and trying to establish your own righteousness.
Turn from all of these things and turn to Christ that you might be saved.
And this is not just something, you don't just repent to get saved
but daily you must, mustn't any Christian here will tell you
that daily we turn from God or we turn back into myself again,
looking for my own righteousness.
I must daily repent and continue to trust Christ.
And secondly, if you're a believer, you must preach and teach repentance.
You must counsel the loss that they need to repent.
If they're going to come to Christ, they must be serious.
Like John the Baptist said, bring forth fruits, meet for repentance,
prove that this repentance is a God, there's a real genuine faith within
and there's going to be a turning.
Otherwise, you risk damning souls in delusion.
If you give them this idea that they can accept Christ and not repent,
what does Jesus say?
Unless you repent, you perish.
And so we can't leave them in that thinking,
thinking that all is well with them and Jesus when in fact
there's no repentance so therefore they must perish.
Now this will mean several things which make us uneasy,
that make us squirm.
We must preach sin.
We must tell our neighbour he is a sinner.
We must make that clear to him.
It may not win us friends but it's something we have to do.
We must preach sin.
That means we must preach the law to show that he has broken God's law.
Sin is a transgression of the law.
We must point out personal guilt and that's where it gets touchy, isn't it?
It's not just that we're sinners.
Yeah, we're sinners.
You know we're a human.
We're a sinner and that's the difficult part, isn't it?
That's the offence of the cross is you're going to come by the cross
and you must preach accountability, the judgment to come, heaven and hell.
I remember one of the things Paul reasoned before Felix was judgment, wasn't he?
And Felix was made to tremble.
So obviously Paul did his work but unfortunately even there,
there was no repentance, no faith, but a trembling.
But we see that Paul still reasoned those things with him
and you must of course preach Christ crucified for sinners.
What's the point of making someone tremble
if they don't know that there's a way to be saved?
If they don't know that there's a fountain open for the cleansing of people,
that there is a saviour, that you can come now as he said there in Isaiah
and reason together, they are sinners like scarlet, they shall be white as snow.
And you must know that this Christ is sufficient to save.
Whatever you need to be saved, he has done.
He invites you to come, he invites you to turn to him by faith
and for those who do, he's made a promise.
He said, I won't ever cast them out.
And there's a story I've told before, again from Charles Spurgeon.
He said, just imagine for a moment, Jesus said,
here comes to me, I'll never, I'll never, no wise cast out.
He said, let's imagine for a minute a sinner comes to Jesus and Jesus does that.
He says, no, no, sorry, you can't come.
He said, could you imagine hell?
Could you imagine the demons in hell and the devil himself gloating?
Look, there's one.
He made that, look, there's one.
One he turned away.
We knew it.
We just knew that, what he's like.
What would that say about Jesus?
What would it say about his character?
But he does receive people.
And so we must preach sin, we must preach the judgment to come,
we must preach Christ crucified for sinners, totally sufficient to save.
And then by God's grace, sinners will leave their way
and lay hold of Christ by faith.
So let's close.
Father, we do thank you for the gospel.
We thank you that we are told that you sent your son into the world
and he might be the saviour of men,
that he has come and offered his life a ransom for all,
that he might buy us back, that he might purchase us,
that we might be his, that he might forgive us and wash us from our sins,
that we, by the work, the mysterious work of the Holy Spirit,
might be made to cling to Christ as our only hope
and learn to hate sin and to seek the forsaken,
to mourn when we can't and we still seem to be in a script.
And Father, we thank you for the hope that's laid up before us
that we will one day, rather than being in a body of weakness,
we'll have a new body of power, rather than incorruption,
sorry, corruption will be incorruption.
And Father, we thank you for these gospel promises.
We do pray that you might stir our hearts and we might believe them
and lay hold of them by faith.
We pray again for those here who are yet unsaved,
we pray that you might stir their hearts,
that they might seek life in Christ and would find it
and that there might be great rejoicing among the angels in heaven
over one sinner who would repent.
And Father, we just thank you again for this day
and we just pray that your word might not be barren
but would be a fruitful word on our hearts
and we ask this in Jesus' name.