Case Studies: True Repentance

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I want to invite you to take out your Bibles, turn with me to 2 Corinthians chapter 7.
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And we are again going to be looking at verses 10 through 16. I want to invite you to stand for the reading of God's word.
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Paul writes, beginning at verse 10, For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death.
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For see what earnestness this godly grief has produced in you, but also what eagerness to clear yourselves, what indignation, what fear, what longing, what zeal, what punishment.
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At every point you have proved yourselves innocent in the matter. So although I wrote to you, it was not for the sake of the one who did the wrong, nor for the sake of the one who suffered the wrong, but in order that your earnestness for us might be revealed to you in the sight of God.
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Therefore we are comforted, and beside our own comfort we rejoiced still more at the joy of Titus, because his spirit has been refreshed by you all.
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For whatever boasts I made to him about you I was not put to shame, but just as everything we said to you was true, so also our boasting before Titus has proved true.
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And his affliction for you is even greater as he remembers the obedience of you all, how you received him with fear and trembling.
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I rejoice because I have complete confidence in you.
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Let us pray. Our Father and our God, this morning as we examine the difficult subject of true and false repentance,
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I pray, oh God, that you would keep me from error. As you know that I'm a fallible man and I am capable of preaching error.
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So for the sake of your name, for the sake of my conscience, and for the sake of your people,
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I pray that you would keep me in the very center of your will, keep me tied to the post of your word.
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May I say all that you have me to say and nothing more, nothing less. May I preach with an urgency as a dying man to dying men.
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And may we be confronted this morning with the reality that there is such a thing as worldly remorse that does not cause us to repent.
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But ultimately leads to death. I pray, especially,
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Lord, for those who are here who are continuing in a path of sin and have not desired to repent,
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Lord, that they would be confronted and by your spirit moving.
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That you might draw them to yourself and away from that path which leads to death.
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And Lord, we pray your spirit be the teacher today. That I would decrease and that Christ would increase.
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That the words that go out would be mixed with faith, that the spirit would take them through the ear, beyond the mind and to the heart.
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And that lives would be changed through the preaching of your word. That believers would be sanctified by it and the unbelievers would be brought to saving faith.
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In Jesus' name, amen. You may be seated. We find ourselves this morning in the second half of a message which is part of a longer series through the book of 2
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Corinthians. We have been in 2 Corinthians now for many months going verse by verse through the book.
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And as we came into chapter 7, we noted that chapter 7 makes a specific change in the course of the book where Paul begins to talk about his reunion with Titus.
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Titus was a man who had gone to Corinth and I believe he had carried the severe letter that Paul had written.
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He mentions that severe letter in chapter 2. I believe Titus had delivered this letter to the church and this letter was from the apostle
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Paul, a stern rebuke. And as I mentioned last week, a stern rebuke will receive one of three responses.
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If you rebuke someone over their sin, the first response that could come is the response of anger.
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They don't want to hear it. They don't want to agree. They don't want to admit. They don't want to deal with it. They just want to get angry and spiteful and become vitriolic.
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The second way that a time of rebuke can be received is with ambivalence.
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You tell someone, you call someone to repentance, you tell them that they're sinning, you rebuke them over their sin and they say,
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I don't care. You ever been there? You go to someone, you're scared at first anyway because nobody likes to be the one who's having to go to someone.
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Well, I guess some people do. There are some people who just like to call people out, strange as that may be.
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But most of us don't like to have to go to someone when they're sinning. Most of us don't like to have to do it, but we do it because the
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Bible tells us to. And when we go to them, they just, I don't care. I'm going to keep doing what
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I'm doing. I'm not going to listen. I don't care what the Bible says. I don't care what you say. I don't care what
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Jesus said. It doesn't matter. I'm happy. Oh, how many times? How many times can
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I remember that happening? Well, God would curse my life if they didn't want me to be happy.
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Yeah, but you're committing adultery. Who cares? I've heard that, exactly those words.
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Well, God wouldn't put this person in my life if He didn't want me to be happy. Can I just remind you this morning that God is much more concerned about your holiness than He is your happiness?
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But a lot of people just respond in ambivalence. Don't care. Doesn't matter. But the third way that someone can respond to a rebuke is repentance.
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They receive it with a brokenness, but a joyful response of I want to change.
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I want to repent. I recognize this is wrong and I want to turn from my sin and turn to the direction that Christ would have me go.
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This is a joyous moment. And that's what happened when Titus went to Corinth.
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Titus went and he found a people willing to repent. So when he comes back to Paul and he finds himself back in Macedonia, where Paul was waiting on him, it is a joyous reunion because the people of Corinth have repented.
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And so Paul writes to them in verse 10 of what we just read.
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He writes to them regarding the two ways that a rebuke can be received.
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He says, for godly grief produces repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death.
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Basically, what he is saying is this. He's saying, yes, I brought you a stern rebuke and that stern rebuke brought you grief.
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But grief over sin does not automatically mean repentance.
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You know, you can feel bad about sin and not repent. Did you know that?
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Did you know that just feeling bad about sin is not repentance? I think a lot of people mix that up.
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I think a lot of people really think that what repentance is, is simply feeling bad.
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But as we're going to see today in our study, and what we're going to do today is we're going to look.
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I'm going to remind you what we learned last week, which was the seven marks of true repentance, which comes to us in verse 11.
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We're going to look again very briefly just at those seven things to remind us what those seven things are. And then we're going to look at three case studies.
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We looked at one last week, so really just be two of true repentance. And we're going to look at three case studies of bare remorse.
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And what does Paul say here? Worldly grief, which didn't lead to repentance.
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But what does it lead to? Death. So again, the seven things that we see in verse 11.
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Look with me again at verse 11. These are the seven things that Paul tells us are marks of true repentance.
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He says, for what earnestness this godly grief has produced in you. Also, what eagerness to clear yourselves.
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What indignation, what fear, what longing, what zeal, what punishment. At every point you have proved yourselves innocent.
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Not innocent of having sin, but truly repentant. And we see here are those seven things listed out for us.
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The first one is earnestness. And we talked last week about these, so I'm not going to over define these for you.
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But as a way of reminder, just to remind you what they mean. Earnestness means a seriousness about the subject of repentance.
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Repentance is not a flippant thing. It is not something we enter into lightly. It is recognition of the weight of sin and the need to change.
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And the need to repent. That's what earnestness is. Earnestness is sometimes translated as haste.
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I talked about last week the fact that haste means to do something quickly. In this case it means to do something quickly.
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Not simply inexpedience, but because it's necessary. Because it's urgent. And that's another way to translate this.
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You had an urgency within you to repent. The second thing is defense or an eagerness to clear your name.
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Not to clear your name of having sinned because we should not be adding a type of defense and saying, oh, this is the reason why
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I did it. This is why I did it. This is the but, but, but, but, but, but I blame my wife. I blame my mom.
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I blame my sister. I blame my kids. This is the reason. No. What it means, and when it talks about clearing your name, is actually demonstrating that your repentance is genuine.
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Not defending yourself, but defending the fact that your repentance is true. The third thing is indignation.
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Indignation means to be angry. But it doesn't mean to be angry simply with some type of outburst of anger.
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But rather what it means is to be angry over the sin itself. Angry with the sin itself.
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I think sometimes we forget that we're supposed to hate sin, not love it. I think sometimes that we forget that the
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Bible calls us to hate that which Christ died for. Not to love it. And yet, often that is the very reality.
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We find ourselves in love with the very thing for which Christ died. The next word on here is fear.
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Phobos in the Greek, where we get the word phobia. It means to be in awe of God. In a few weeks,
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I'm going to be preaching at a conference in Winter Haven, Florida. And I have been asked to preach on the subject of the holiness of God.
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But the conference is on the subject of practical application of the attributes of God.
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And so every speaker who's speaking is speaking on a different attribute. And I'm speaking on the holiness of God.
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And I'm going to be preaching from Leviticus chapter 10. Leviticus chapter 10 is when
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Nadab and Abihu, the two sons of Aaron, came before God and they offered up what the King James calls a strange fire, or what our more modern
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Bibles call an unauthorized fire before the Lord. And the Bible says the fire came out from the tabernacle and it consumed them.
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Our God is a consuming fire. And you see, we have today become so comfortable with God that we treat him more like a pleasant grandfather than an almighty king.
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And we don't have the awe of Isaiah, who went in the presence of Almighty God in Isaiah chapter 6, put his hand over his mouth, and he said,
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Woe is me, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live amongst a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the king.
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Woe is me. We don't feel that. But repentance should cause us to feel that, an awe of God, this
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God whom we have offended. When we look at our case studies today, one of the ones we're going to look at is David and the brokenness of David after his sin was exposed.
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Number five, longing. And number six, I put together longing and zeal. We talked about this last week.
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This, again, is a heartfelt desire for what is missing. Longing means there's something missing.
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And what's missing is reconciliation with God and with men. And a desire to do that, zeal, a want to do that.
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The zealots, if you remember, were a party during the time of Christ. Remember, one of Jesus's followers was known as a zealot.
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They were zealous for their country. They were zealous for the Jewish people. They had a zeal which caused them to go and do.
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Well, this same idea Paul is using to say we should have a zeal for our repentance.
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It should be something that drives us. And finally, vindication.
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In my translation, it says punishment. I don't think that's the best way to translate it.
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The word, the root of the word in the Greek is the word dikaio, which means to just, to be just, justify or to be righteous.
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And the idea here, I believe, is that the one who is repenting understands that justice is to be done.
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Therefore, if there is repentance that goes along with some form of punishment, it is to come.
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So just because a person is in jail and they say, oh, I repent, that doesn't mean we lock the door and open it up.
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They still have a justice to undergo. I talked about R .C.
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Sproul's example last week where he says, if I'm wearing your watch that I stole and I said, hey, I repent, but I'm going to keep the watch, then
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I haven't really repented. I haven't been willing to make justice happen. And that is returning the watch, right?
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So there's all of these things go together. And this is what real repentance looks like. And Paul is explaining to us.
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He's saying, I know that your repentance is real because I see these things. This is in the context of him talking to the
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Corinthians. I know your repentance is real because these are the marks of repentance and you are bearing these marks.
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OK, brought you back up to where we ended last week. Now we can start our case studies. We're going to look at three case studies, three in the positive and three in the negative.
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The three positive we're going to look at today is Zacchaeus, which we did last week, so we won't do that much.
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I just want to mention him again. And then we're going to look at David and we're going to look at Peter. Now, Zacchaeus, you remember last week, we read the story and if you don't know the story, maybe you remember the song.
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Zacchaeus was a wee little man, was a wee little man, was he climbed up in a sycamore tree because the
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Lord, he wanted to see. And the Lord came by and said, come down or I'm going to your house today.
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And when Jesus entered the house of Zacchaeus, a man who had been a essentially a robber of the people, he had been one who had extorted the people as a tax collector.
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He had sided with Rome. So not only a robber, but a traitor. He says,
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I'm going to take half of what I have. I'm going to give it to the poor. And if anyone I have defrauded, I'm going to give it back four times as much.
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So going back to our seven things, what one of those seven does? He represents all of them.
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But what one of them does he really represent the best? Is that last one, the desire to see justice done.
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You see, it was the law of God which says if something is stolen, that it's to be repaid four times. Right.
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And so he understood as a Jewish man, he understood the law of God and he understood the need to make it right.
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And so he sought to do that. And what did Jesus say to Zacchaeus or to the people?
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Salvation has come to this house today. Now, understand this, and this has to be said, and I'm going to say it now and I may say it again before we end.
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Salvation is never earned by what we do. So Zacchaeus is not earning his salvation.
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There's a spiderweb. Zacchaeus is not earning his salvation by his giving the money back.
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But just like when we talk about how works do not cause our faith, but works demonstrate our faith, the very action of him desiring to repent is the action of demonstrating his faith is genuine.
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We cannot forget that James and Paul are not in disagreement.
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Paul says we are justified by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. That is true.
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But James says, if a man says he has faith and does not have works, can that faith save him?
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And the question that he asks in the Greek, can that type of faith save him, is answered in the negative.
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It's assumed in the negative by the construction of the sentence. The answer is no. A faith that does not have works is dead.
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That's James's point. So we are saved by grace alone, through faith alone. But faith that is genuine will never be alone.
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The reformers said, they said, if you say you have faith, then faith is not just what you say, but it comes out in what you do.
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Your faith is lived. And therefore, when we see Zacchaeus giving the money back, he's not buying his salvation, but he's demonstrating his repentance and a willingness to see justice done.
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But David's story is quite different.
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And I will ask you to turn here. Turn to Psalm 51 with me.
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Now, I don't want to assume that you all know the story of David and Bathsheba, but I imagine most of you do.
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But just in case there are those who do not, let me just very quickly remind you of what has happened to get us to this point.
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David was on his rooftop and he spied a woman bathing.
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And her figure caused him to lust. And so he had her brought to his room because he was the king and he had the power to do so.
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And when she was brought to his room, he laid with her, knowing that she was a married woman.
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And not only was she a married woman, but she was married to one of his greatest servants, a man by the name of Uriah.
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Well, because of their infidelity, Bathsheba becomes pregnant.
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And so David hatches a scheme. What can I do to hide this?
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He's been to war. Certainly, they're going to know the child is not his. People talk.
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I'm sure people saw her going in and out of the king's home.
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I'm going to get Uriah to come back. And when Uriah comes back, I'll have him lay with his wife. They'll have the baby.
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They'll never know. So Uriah comes back from battle.
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David says, go home and be with your wife. Uriah says, no, king, not while my men, the men
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I serve with, not while they're at battle. I'm not going to go enjoy a time of rest and leisure and being with my wife when my fellow men are on the battlefield.
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I'm not going to do that. So he sleeps on the king's porch. And the king's like, go home.
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But he didn't go home. Uriah was more noble than David in that moment.
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Amen. David says, take this letter to the man in charge.
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And the letter said, go into battle with Uriah. And when all the fighting is happening, pull back and leave
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Uriah by himself to die. David is the greatest king in the history of Israel.
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But in this moment, demonstrated himself to be wickedly sinful.
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So it all happens. And later, a man by the name of Nathan, a prophet, comes to David.
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And he tells David a parable. He says, David, there was a man who had a sheep, one sheep, and another man who had an abundance of sheep, took that man's sheep and stole it away, leaving that man without his sheep, and then killed him.
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What should be done to that man? David said, bring him to me that justice may be done.
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And with that little crooked finger, Nathan pointed at the king of Israel and said, thou art the man.
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All right. So now we know the story. Look at the precursor to Psalm 51.
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Notice what is written. These precursors are often a prelude to the music that is going to be sung.
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And they tell something of the context of the music. Notice what it says. To the choir master, a psalm of David, when
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Nathan, the prophet, went to him after he had gone into Bathsheba.
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So that's the context. And what we are going to read, and we're not going to read the whole psalm, we're only going to read a few verses, but what comes in Psalm 51 is the broken hearted repentance of David.
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Understand this, when we look at the seven things,
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David can't make this right. David can't fix it.
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He can't raise Uriah from the dead. And I know that that's what some of you were thinking last week as I was preaching on these seven things.
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I know that some of you were thinking, pastor, I have sins in my life that will never be made right.
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Maybe I'm the only one. But there's certain things that just there's certain breaks that can't be fixed.
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There's certain things that have been broken that will never mend. You know what
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I'm saying? That's where David finds himself. He finds himself in a place where the what?
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This Humpty Dumpty ain't getting put back together again. So what does he do?
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He throws himself. On the mercy of almighty God. Look what he says.
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He says, have mercy on me, O God. And I can only imagine this is written through tears.
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This is not a man who is flippantly considering his repentance. This is a man who is broken, having been having been exposed before his entire court by the prophet.
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He is here broken before God. He says, have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love, according to your abundant mercy.
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Blood out my transgressions, wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, cleanse me from my sin, for I know my transgression and my sin is ever before me.
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I can't go anywhere where I don't see the result of this sin. I've got a dead child that's part of the result of this sin.
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I've got another child that's growing up who's the son of Bathsheba, who will eventually become king.
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Every time I look at him, I think about what I've done to your eye. I can't go anywhere. But then verse four.
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Against you. And you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgments.
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Now, you might think. Your eye is up in heaven going, what about me? You don't think you sinned against me, but that's just the point.
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Your eyes gone. He's with the Lord, he's fine. In this moment,
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David is teaching us something about repentance that we must never forget that the first person we sin against when we sin.
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Is we sin against God. And when our sin is against another human being, what makes it such a travesty is that we are sinning against an image bearer of God.
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Andy mentioned earlier the death of babies, abortion. What makes abortion the most heinous crime in America today is we are systematically slaughtering image bearers of God to the tune of three thousand a day, even after Roe v.
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Wade. Has been struck down. Three thousand a day.
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Oh, that's an exaggerated number, not in the least. Is that number exaggerated?
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How many cities are there around America? More than three thousand. And almost every major city has an abortion clinic.
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It's fully functional, operational, going, working every day. So when we talk about the subject of sin, we have to first remember that sin is against God.
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David recognizes that and he teaches us that. Now, if there is a person we have sinned against and we can go to them and we can repent to them and we can seek to bring some form of reconciliation in the situation again, the watch analogy, if that can happen, yes, it should.
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Sometimes that can't happen. Sometimes it's between us and God and that's all.
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But that doesn't make it any less important. And any less serious. Because when we consider against who we've sinned.
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Remember when I talked about fear that should be on our mind, we're going before a holy
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God. All right, third one, because I could spend the rest of our time on Psalm 51, but I'm not going to because feel free to read the whole thing.
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He he he calls, you know, calls upon God to cleanse him, calls upon God for his mercy.
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And to restore to him the joy of his salvation. The third one is
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John chapter 21, if you want to turn there.
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And this is Peter. Now, again, every one of these has a story.
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And most of us probably know Peter's story. Peter was the mouthpiece of the apostles, very impetuous, very willing to speak, sometimes out of turn.
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Very willing to stand out in front and be the guy who represented the others. Sometimes even throwing under, sometimes even throwing the others under the bus when he would say things like,
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Lord, even if they will deny you, I never will. And we do have to give
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Peter at least a little bit of credit on the night they came to take Jesus. He did pull forward and attempt to fight back, cutting off the ear of Malchus, the servant of the high priest.
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But when Jesus said, put your sword away, he who lives by the sword will die by the sword, put it away.
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And he put Malchus his ear back on. And, you know, the text just says it like it's nothing like you just put it back on.
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It's just Jesus amazing ability, put his ear back on.
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Everything was fine. And so. Peter runs.
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Strike the shepherd and the sheep shall scatter. Peter was among those who scattered.
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As Jesus was being taken. Before pi or rather, excuse me, before the the
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Jewish leaders, Peter is outside warming himself with other people. Trying to conceal who he was.
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And the Gospels tell us that a woman. Calls him out.
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You were with Jesus. I don't know what you're talking about.
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Another says, you're a Galilean. We can hear it in your accent. Your accent betrays you.
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I have no idea. I've never met the man. And as they pressed again,
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Peter cursed. I don't know him.
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And then the rooster crowed. Fulfilling the prophecy.
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Before the rooster crows twice this day, you will deny me. Three times,
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Peter was broken. In a way that's unique. Because the very thing he said he would never do was the thing that he did.
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Again, you ever been there? You ever said I would never do that.
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And then find yourself knee deep in it. I said last week, the amens have really decreased over the last two weeks.
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I just want you to know. This is serious, right? We think about it where Peter was.
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I said I would never do this. Now I have. I hear the rooster crow. I am absolutely undone.
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Peter's undone. Yeah, I think about what Saturday was like for Peter.
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That was on Friday. Peter's broken on Saturday.
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Sunday comes. Mary Magdalene comes. The tomb's empty. So him and John run to the tomb, see that it's empty.
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He notices the cloth that was on Jesus's head. He recognizes that it was Jesus's cloth. He recognizes
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Jesus is not there. And he goes back amazed. Jesus appears to them.
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The Bible says in successive events, Jesus appears to them, ultimately appearing to over 500 people before his ascension.
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But Jesus appears to the apostles first. Remember, in that first meeting, Thomas wasn't there. Then the second meeting,
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Thomas was there. Thomas said, I'm not going to believe unless I, you know, see the touch, touch the place in his side and touch his hand.
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Jesus appears and he says, here's my side. Here's my hands. It's me. But this story in John's gospel is where I want to go because it demonstrates a repentance for Peter that I think is just so wonderful.
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Look at it. It says when they had finished breakfast. Oh, by the way, we didn't really read the preface to this.
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Peter was fishing. There's a seashore. They've been fishing all night. No fish. Similar to something that happened earlier in the ministry.
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Jesus says, cast it on the other side. They cast it on the other side. They try to pull the nets up. Can't pull it up.
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There's too many fish. John's gospel actually tells us how many fish it is. Interestingly enough, like there's a number there attached to it, like somebody counted and then let us know what that number was.
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But Peter jumps off the boat, swims, he pulls a force, go right off the boat, jump.
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Comes right up to the shore. Jesus is making breakfast. And this is where we begin.
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When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon, Peter. Simon, son of John. Do you love me more than these?
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He said to him, yes, Lord, you know that I love you. He said to him, feed my lambs. He said to him a second time,
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Simon, son of John, do you love me? He said to him, yes, Lord, you know that I love you. He said to him, tend my sheep.
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He said to him a third time, Simon, son of John, do you love me? Peter was grieved.
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Because he said to him a third time, do you love me? And he said to him,
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Lord, you know everything. You know that I love you. Jesus said to him.
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Feed my sheep. Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were young, you used to dress yourself and walk wherever you wanted.
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But when you're old. You'll stretch out your hands and another will dress you.
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And carry you where you do not want to go. This, he said to show what kind of death. He was to glorify
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God. And after saying this to him. He said, follow me. So what is this about?
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How many times did Peter deny Christ? Three times.
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So Jesus has come to Peter. In mercy and love.
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And he has given him the opportunity. For a threefold repentance and reconciliation.
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Notice the first thing Jesus asks. Do you love me more than these?
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Why did he ask him that way? Because he doesn't say it again that way. Because that was the very thing that Peter claimed of himself.
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I love you more than them. If they depart, I never will. So Jesus asked him straight out.
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Do you love me more than these? Lord, you know, I love. Simon, son of John, do you love me?
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You know that I love you. Simon, son of John, do you love me?
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And that the text says is when it grieved his heart.
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Because he said in that moment, Lord, you know, everything.
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You know, everything. Why does he say, you know, everything?
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You know what I did. You know what
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I did. And you still love me.
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And I love you. And you know I love you. And Jesus said, yes, and you're going to die for me one day.
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Where you failed, you won't fail next time. Where you weren't willing to name my name among men, you're going to name my name among men.
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You're going to be you're going to be imprisoned for my name. And you are going to be taken to your death for my name.
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And I'm going to empower you to do it because I know that you love me. Yes, you failed, but I still love you.
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And I know you love me. I love it.
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It's beautiful. It's a beautiful story of genuine repentance. Jesus giving him the opportunity to say.
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I love you. Are you there today? Are you in a place where you feel like.
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There's no way God still loves me. Can I tell you that he does?
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If you are his, he still loves you. He calls you to love him back.
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Receive his forgiveness. And his love. And love him back.
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I find myself at a difficult place. Because for the life of me,
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I didn't want this to go three weeks. But I just can't think of a better place to end than right here.
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Because we are reminded in the story of Peter. How important it is to receive the love of Christ and love him back.
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So what instead of running into false repentance and what that looks like and the ugliness that accompanies false repentance, why don't we end here?
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And if you're a person who finds yourself today in a place. Where you don't know if God loves you.
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Can I remind you that the Bible says. That if you are in Christ, nothing can separate you from the love of God.
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And the Bible says if you come to Christ, he will not reject you. All the father gives me will come to me.
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And the one who comes to me, I will never cast out. Beloved, if you're here today and you are and you are not in Christ.
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The Bible says to turn from your unbelief, trust in the finished work of Christ and find in him a perfect savior.
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He is a perfect savior. Freely, freely, you have received because he gives us his grace freely.
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Let's pray. Father, I thank you for your word. I thank you for your truth.
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I thank you for the opportunity to be reminded today of how much you love us.
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And as we get ready to partake in communion. And as we get ready to be reminded of the goodness of God in the communion table.
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And what Christ did on the cross. I pray that you would in this moment.
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For the believers in the room. Remind us of what your word says when it tells us that nothing can separate us from the love of God.
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And for those who are not believers. That this might be a moment in their life.
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Where they are confronted with the love of God. And with the call to repentance.
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That they would take it seriously, soberly and earnestly seek the savior today.