Faith and Repentance

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Faith and Repentance

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Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.
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No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the
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Apostle Paul said, �But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour ,� so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.
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In short, if you like smooth, watered -down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn�t for you.
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By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we�re called by the
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Divine Trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King. Here�s our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth.
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Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth. And this show, by the way,
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Fred, is being recorded only a couple days before it airs. Just a couple, three or four.
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Just a few couple. How do you say that in Arkansasian, Fred? Fred, are you using the preaching
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Bible when you preach? Do you do that? Why did we not go to Cassell�s this year? Maybe they already had some good food at the
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Shepherd�s Conference. If you want to write me, it is Mike at NoCompromiseRadio .com. If you want to talk to Spencer, if you�ve got some no -co kind of question, info at NoCompromiseRadio .com.
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What�s new around here? A couple writing projects, but I�m just so tired.
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I can�t really get those done. Working on messages in Hebrews and my
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PSA numbers went down some, so that was good. Every three months I get tested, so mine last week, they�ve gone down.
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I�d just like to see them down a little lower, but the doctor said this is normal. Anyway, three more months, we�ll have some more, then an
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MRI, then some biopsies, and hopefully this will be behind me. Prostate cancer will be gone.
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It�s not that kind of cancer that if they kill it all that you�re probably going to relapse kind of thing, because if it�s killed, it�s killed.
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Maybe you get another kind of cancer that�s not related, but hopefully this will be done and over.
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What a wild, wild 16 months. I couldn�t think of a wilder 16 months.
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Anyway, at least it wasn�t my wife or kids. It was me.
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What are we going to talk about today on No Compromise Radio? Well, just a few things. Number one,
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I listened to N .T. Wright on Whitehorse Inn. I like Michael Horton.
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I like his books a lot and very influential. I like Mike and Rod and Kim all talking on Whitehorse Inn back in the old days, and sometimes they would bring in Ken the
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Baptist. I think that was when Ken was�I don�t know. Whatever happened to Ken? I don�t even know his last name anymore.
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I think he moved to Florida. He used to be in Compton or Watts or South Central someplace.
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Kim is a man, Kim Riddlebarger. He has written some good books, and then they�ve got the
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Lutheran. I�m like, okay, Rod�s, you know, dad Rod and stuff, the Lutheran, okay, fine. And then some ladies started coming on the show, and I have nothing against ladies.
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I�m married to one and have three daughters. I like ladies. I just am a pastor, and I like to listen to shows about ministry, and therefore
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I want to listen to men talk about ministry. I regularly talk to my wife about ministry, and she�s my close confidant, and she�s very insightful, so it�s not like I couldn�t listen to my wife, because I do, and I count it a privilege to have her counsel.
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But I�d rather sit around and listen to Sinclair Ferguson and John MacArthur and S. Lewis Johnson talk about ministry than I would
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Nancy DeMoss or something like that. So I stopped listening to the
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White Horse Inn when they started having the ladies, and I don�t know if that�s just what you do now when you have
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Reformed shows, but I just don�t prefer that.
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So I started listening again, because I like Michael Horton a lot.
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Then he interviews N .T. Wright. Now the way it�s set up is, I think next week they�re going to have
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Simon on, Gather Cole I think is his name, and they�re going to talk about substitutionary atonement the right way.
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But N .T. Wright, in my opinion, is dangerous. N .T. Wright is, I guess if you want to, at seminary, have your students read the books, some of his books, and then talk about why they are in fact dangerous and pastorally, it would be pastoral negligence from me to recommend
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N .T. Wright. And you can pull up on the website on No Compromise Radio, just type in N .T.
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Wright, and you�ll find all kinds of shows and stuff like that, I�m sure, about N .T. Wright. And, I mean,
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I have a long way to go in my sanctification, that�s for sure. When I listen to N .T.
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Wright, I can hear, here�s what I hear, I hear condescension,
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I hear highbrow, maybe that�s just this English, Anglican, you know,
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Oxford, Cambridge kind of thing. But, his view of justification by faith, his view of Galatians and other things, and even on the white earth sin, well, no,
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I really believe in penalty substitution, but just the way he says it, you know where he�s coming from.
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And I just didn�t like it at all. I would have preferred no platform, no entree, and if I go to a church and I talk to the pastors and they�re wearing, you know, hipster beards and rolled up jeans and, you know, special blunt stone boots,
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I like blunt stones, by the way, but just not on Sundays, and they�ve got all their N .T. Wright stuff, it is hashtag henno, it is hashtag forget you, it is hashtag avoid, and maybe next week white horse sin will have, you know, put
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N .T. Wright in his place, but that�s that, all right. What else is here on my desk?
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Faith and repentance, faith and repentance, Sinclair Ferguson, Ligonier has a great, oh, this is a side note when
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I�m thinking about Ligonier, I�m going to officiate a wedding there, St. Andrew�s Church, down in Sanford, Sanford, Sanford, Stanford, Stanford and Son, Stanford and Son, Stamford, Stanford, Chamsford, and I�m going to officiate a wedding and I�ll stand up in R .C.
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Sproul�s pulpit to give the congregational address. That�s going to be fun, that�s going to be a lot of fun, that�s going to be this kind of fun.
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All right, let me tell you some more kind of fun that I have, this is my life, my life is just full of fun. My wife volunteers at the local ski mountain,
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Wachusett is what it�s called, Mount Wachusett, and they ask her if she would lead, they know she�s a pastor�s wife, if she would lead the, my dog is wandering around and she�s just going to stay, she�s bugging me, to lead the
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Easter sunrise service at the top of the mountain. So you get your skis on, you go up the lift, you have a little service at the top and then ski down and you have breakfast.
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Well, my wife said she doesn�t preach, and they said, �Why not ?� She said, �Well, I�m old school, I�m a lady, ladies don�t preach, it�s what the
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Bible says.� �Really ?� �Yeah.� And they said, well, and my wife said, �Well, my husband would do it.�
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And they said, �Oh, really, he would ?� �Oh, yeah, he would, but it�s going to be from the Bible.� �Oh, that�s okay, as long as it�s short.�
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So this Sunday, at 645, up to the top of Wachusett, and preach the gospel, talk about the resurrection.
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You ask me how I know he lives? He lives within my heart. No, no, no, no.
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You ask me how I know he lives, here�s what the text says right here, Mark 16,
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Matthew 28. What does Matthew 16 say? I�m quite sure it doesn�t talk about the resurrection.
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All right, Faith and Repentance, Sinclair Ferguson. As you know, I think one of the best books in the last few years is
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The Whole Christ, W -H -O -L -E, by Sinclair Ferguson. I�ve talked to my son about this on No Compromise Radio.
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I try to get people to read the book. It�s got some challenging things, but it has some wonderful things as well.
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Maybe my favorite all -time MacArthur book is Ashamed of the Gospel. What I really liked about that book was it dealt with an issue, and that issue was having a backdrop of something that happened in the past that was very similar.
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I learned about Spurgeon and the downgrade controversy while MacArthur was talking about modern evangelicalism.
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So too with The Whole Christ, Sinclair Ferguson, he takes you through the Merrill Controversy in the 1750s,
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I think that�s about when it was, 1757, does that sound right, and then into the late 1700s with antinomianism, neonomianism, the
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Merrill Controversy, the Merrill Men, Thomas Boston, Fourfold State, Edward Fisher, and the actor
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Arthur Creed. You learn all that, and he has a great section in his book about faith and repentance, and I think this is from, this
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Ligonier article comes from that. I printed the reader view, so I�m not really sure, that�s bobbing, that�s something else.
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And I�m not going to read the whole article, but I want to talk a little bit about faith and repentance, because which one comes first?
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Can you tell people to repent and believe? Are they able to repent and believe? Is faith a command?
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Is it a gift? Yes. Is repentance a command? Yes. Is it a gift? Yes. When the gospel is proclaimed, it seems at first sight that two different, even alternative responses are called for.
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Sometimes the summons is repent. Thus John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea, repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand,
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Matthew 3. Again Peter urged the hearers, whose consciences had been ripped open on the day of Pentecost, repent and be baptized, each one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, Acts 2.
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Later Paul urged the Athenians to repent in response to the message of the risen Christ, Acts 17.
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Yet on other occasions, the appropriate response to the gospel is believe. When the
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Philippian jailer asked Paul what he must do to be saved, the apostle told him, believe in the
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Lord Jesus and you will be saved. There's no mystery, Ferguson writes, or contradiction here.
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Further on in Acts 17, we discover that precisely where the response of repentance was required, those who were converted are described as believing.
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Now did you get that? You call people to repentance, or actually Paul called those people to repentance, and what was their response?
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Acts 17 verse 30, the times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.
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What's it say in verse 34? But some men joined him and believed, among whom were also
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Dionysius, the Areopagite, and a woman named Damaris, and others with them.
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That's pretty amazing. I just was talking to someone on the phone about this. Can we just tell people to believe?
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Can we tell them just to repent? Can you say repent and believe? Can you just preach the gospel and like with Acts 2, have people respond?
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That was weird. I got a phone call from my daughter. She was at the airport. So if there's like a little jag there,
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I had to push stop, and I can't remember when I pushed stop or what I pushed stop for. Faith and repentance.
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The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the gospel,
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Mark chapter 1. So there Jesus says both. I think the only thing that we're going to have to really watch out for, and not whether you say repent and believe, but if you mean repent like you've got to stop sinning in order to be saved, then that's the language you're going to have to avoid.
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Any preconditions, any antecedents to faith. If repentance is a change of your mind, which of course
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I think will lead to a change of life, a change of behavior, a change of conduct, a change of conversation, to use
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King James English, bearing fruits, you know, with fruits of repentance, that's fine if it's fruits of.
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If it's do I have to stop sinning before God saves me, then we're in a completely different realm.
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Sinclair Ferguson asks the question, which comes first logically? Is there a priority?
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And then he gives three answers to that question. Which one's first? How can there be three if there's only faith and repentance?
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Well, you might guess. First, faith precedes repentance. That's option one, and he quotes
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Shedd, the theologian. Though faith and repentance are inseparable and simultaneous, yet in the order of nature, faith precedes repentance.
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Berkhoff has option two. There's no doubt that logically repentance and the knowledge of sin precede the faith that yields to Christ entrusting love.
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Does it really say entrusting love? I know. Third, John Murray, an unnecessary question and the insistence that one is prior to the other is futile.
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There is no priority. The faith that is unto salvation is a penitent faith or a penitent faith, and the repentance that is unto life is a believing repentance.
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Saving faith is permeated with repentance and repentance is permeated with saving faith. That is from Redemption Accomplished and Applied, page 113.
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That's excellent. I go for option three. Now maybe there's some implications that I don't know about, and that's one of the things that I'm sometimes not smart enough to figure out.
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Well, if I do choose this particular view, then the shoe's going to drop elsewhere and affect other things.
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Faith precedes repentance, repentance precedes faith, or you need to have a repentant faith and a believing repentance.
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Ferguson said, we cannot separate turning from sin and repentance and coming to faith in Christ. They describe the same person and the same action but from different perspectives.
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In one instance, repentance, the person is viewed in relation to sin. Okay, did you get that?
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It's the relation to sin, and the other, faith, the person is viewed in relation to the
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Lord Jesus. So you turn from sin and turn unto the Lord Jesus Christ.
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Now St. Clair doesn't have this verse, but one just popped into my mind, and here is the verse that just popped into my mind as I turned there.
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1 Thessalonians, and it says,
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For they themselves report concerning us the kind of reception we had among you, and how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true
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God, and to wait for His Son from heaven, whom He raised from the dead, Jesus, who delivers us from the wrath to come.
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When it comes to sin, there's repentance. When it comes to Jesus, there's faith. The individual,
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Ferguson said, who trusts in Christ simultaneously turns away from sin. That's why some people call these twin graces, twin graces.
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Now how does it come about in a person? Does everybody go through the exact same thing?
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Well, I guess everyone repents and believes they're all trusting in Christ Jesus. But what about the psychology of conversion?
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And Ferguson goes on to talk about that, and this is why it's important. Not every person experiences this the same way.
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Now I did not say they would not experience it, but they don't experience it the same way. What is unified,
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Ferguson said, theologically may be diverse psychologically. Thus an individual deeply convicted of the guilt and bondage of sin may experience turning from it, repentance, as the dominant note in his or her conversion.
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Others, whose experience of conviction deepens after their conversion, may have a dominant sense of the wonder of Christ's love with less agony of soul at the psychological level.
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Here the individual is more conscious of trusting in Christ than of repentance from sin.
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But in true conversion, neither can exist without the other. Now that's important, especially when what happened to you when
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God saved you. When you were converted, what if you were experiencing one side, and then now you're ministering to people and you're expecting every person to think and feel and experience conversion the same psychologically?
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I'm not trying to say psychologically like Freud's psychology, but just experientially.
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How do you experience this theological truth? And you will experience it differently.
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If someone is, like Ferguson said, in bondage to sin, then they're going to have this conviction and this repentance.
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This is going to be more dominant. I mean, what do we do? Is it 50 -50? And so if somebody's 45 -55 or 35, what's the other number, 65?
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The psychological accompaniments of conversion thus vary, sometimes depending on the dominant gospel emphasis that is set before the sinner, the sinfulness of sin or the greatness of grace.
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Do you hear what he's saying there? It depends on how it's preached as well. If the preacher is preaching a lot about the sinfulness of sin or the greatness of grace, that's going to play into it.
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This is quite consistent with the shrewd comment of the Westminster Divines to the effect that faith acteth differently upon that which each particular passage thereof, regarding Scripture, containeth.
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It depends what you're preaching from, what particular passage you're preaching from. Repent and turn and flee or trust and believe.
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There needs to be repentance and faith, of course. No person is going to become a
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Christian if the issue of sin and the Savior is not dealt with. Sorrow for sin, right, trust in Christ.
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Here's Ferguson, does the necessity of repentance in conversion constitute a kind of work that detracts from the empty -handedness of faith?
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Does it compromise grace? In a word, no. Sinners must always come empty -handed, but this is precisely the point.
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By nature, my hands are full of sin, self, and my own good deeds. However, hands that are not full, hands that are full cannot hold on to Christ in faith.
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Instead, they take hold of Him, they are emptied, or as they take hold of Him, they are emptied.
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That which has prevented us from trusting Him falls inevitably to the ground. The old way of life cannot be retained in hands that are taking hold of the
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Savior. Yes, repentance and faith are two essential elements in conversion. They constitute twin graces that can never be separated.
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As John Calvin well reminds us, this is true not only of the beginning, but of the whole of our
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Christian lives. We are believing penitents and penitent believers all the way to glory.
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Now that is an excellent article, and you ought to get that article. Go to ligonier .org,
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L -I -G -O -N -I -E -R, and if you just type in Sinclair Ferguson, that would be good, or this is forward slash articles forward slash faith dash and dash repentance forward slash.
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That is an excellent, an excellent article by Sinclair Ferguson.
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I just released a new video, I think it's episode 139. If you don't know, there is a
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YouTube channel called No Compromise Radio. There are 139 videos, some more probably recorded this week, and what you do is you play them on YouTube, and you can send them off to your friends.
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This week's, well, actually, I think it dropped last week, is
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What Is God Doing Right Now?, stemming from a conversation I had with Sinclair Ferguson about God simultaneously exercising all of his attributes.
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God simultaneously exercising all of his attributes, all the time, including at Calvary, and you might want to send those off to your friends.
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If you have enemies, you can send them Where's Beth Moore's Husband?, or Quit Quoting C .S. Lewis, or something
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N .T. Wright thinks that the atonement's for five -year -olds, something like that. Something that, you know, would endear them to me in the ministry here of Caleb kind of radio.
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Okay, what else? I think I've talked to you a little bit about the ministry we're going to have to help pastors, and I don't know how we go about doing this in a wise way, but pastors for a fee that's a lot less than $20 ,000 for seminary can send me their videos, and I will try to help them become better preachers.
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If hermeneutics is the science and art of biblical interpretation, then homiletics is the science and art of biblical proclamation.
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I'm sticking to that. That's my little slogan. I've said it I don't know how many times, a hundred times maybe, a hundred, a hundred times.
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My daughter Grace was just out visiting the Master's University, and the way we roll here in our house is
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I say to my kids, you will love the Master's University. As a matter of fact, they end up loving it. My son's there, my daughter's there.
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She just got baptized recently, Maddie did, and then became a member at Grace Community Church, and I saw a picture of her and MacArthur and some other people and some, one of you all posted on social media.
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Is that Mike's daughter, or is that Pat's daughter? That's Pat's niece, but my daughter.
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Anyway, it's No Compromise Radio. Or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.