The Role Of Repentance

Good morning. My family and I are very happy to be here with you again.

It's been five years since we were here last, and it's a pleasure to be able to visit you again and to renew our fellowship and our friendship.

Before I preach, I want to again just say how thankful we are for your participation in the ministry with us there in Spain.

As I walked in this morning, I saw that you've got our flyer on your bulletin board right there. It's the first thing that you see when you walk in the church.

It's a place of privilege for us, and we're thankful that we're in your thoughts and in your prayers, and we're thankful for your support.

We hope also that you are encouraged by knowing how

God is working in and through us in Spain, and you really are being a blessing, you here in Providence Bible Church, a blessing to our church in Vila Sarra de

Mar and also in the seminary and through the seminary, through the students that God has blessed us to be able to teach as they go out to other parts of Spain.

You here in Providence Bible are blessing other churches all around the country. So we're very thankful to be here with you, and I'm thankful also for the exemption, the tie exemption that I got this morning.

I did bring a tie on this trip this summer, actually, and I wore it the first sermon that I preached in Phoenix, Arizona.

My wife said, you know, that's old and it's out of style, so actually I'm sparing you the old and out of style tie.

That's why I'm not wearing it. But the rest of you who preach here, like Pastor Josh said, you're not off the hook.

Sorry. So I want to talk this morning about repentance, and I thought we would begin with a little church history quiz.

Okay? So I don't know if anybody's been studying or reading in church history recently, but what

I thought we would do is the following. I'm going to read a quote from an important figure, an important Christian figure from the past, and then

I want you to tell me who wrote it. Okay? So here we go.

Here's the quote. So, when our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, repent, he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.

So can anybody tell me who wrote that? Ah, I was going to say, well, you've got four,

I'll give you four guesses. It's not Spurgeon. It's not Calvin. It's not

Augustine. It's Luther. Yeah? So kind of the four biggies that people would typically guess. That was written by Martin Luther.

That was the first of his 95 theses that he pinned on a door in a church in Wittenberg in Germany for scholarly debate.

This was the first of the 95 theses and probably the most well -known. And it's an interesting affirmation that he makes because he says in this thesis that all of the

Christian life should be one of repentance. Now there's a lot that we could discuss in relation to this affirmation, but one thing that comes to my mind, particularly thinking about Luther.

If he says all of the Christian life should be one of repentance, does that mean that justification is by repentance?

Is repentance necessary for justification? And it's an interesting question because Luther is the champion of the doctrine of justification by faith alone.

And yet he says all of the Christian life is to be one of repentance. Is repentance necessary for justification?

This question becomes even more interesting when we open our Bibles and there's a number of texts that we can read that talk about repentance, including 2

Corinthians 7. And we'll get to that text in a few minutes. But in Acts chapter 2, you don't have to go there,

I'm just gonna, you know what happens. In Acts chapter 2 we read Peter's sermon on the day of Pentecost.

He preaches with the power of the Holy Spirit, a number of people are convicted of their sin and they ask

Peter what they should do. And how does Peter respond? He says the following, this is

Acts chapter 2 verse 38, Repent and be baptized, every one of you, for the forgiveness of your sins.

Now if we just read this verse, we would think that the forgiveness of sins and justification depends on repentance.

Is repentance necessary for justification? We're gonna let that question guide us through our message this morning.

We'll come back to the question and we'll answer it a little bit later. But before we do that, I think that in order to answer the question well, we need to first define repentance.

What is Peter asking his hearers to do on the day of Pentecost? When he tells them to repent for the forgiveness of their sins, what specifically is he asking them to do?

So we're gonna define repentance and the way I want to do it is by analyzing it according to three component parts, maybe it's better to say three aspects.

We talk about three different aspects of true biblical saving repentance and there's an intellectual aspect, there's an emotional aspect, and there's a volitional or a decision aspect to true biblical repentance.

We're gonna talk about those three aspects and try to define it. First of all, in order to repent according to what

Peter was saying on the day of Pentecost, the first thing that you have to do is you have to know that you've sinned and that you're guilty.

It's an intellectual component. Now that sounds maybe elemental but it's really important.

There's a historic confession of faith that was a product of the Reformation, the 1689

London Baptist Confession, and this confession is a chapter about repentance, chapter 15.

And in this chapter, it says that for a person to repent, he must be made sensible of the manifold evils of his sin.

Isn't that interesting? In order for a person to repent, he must be made sensible of the manifold evils of his sins.

That does not sound like fun. But, what it means is that in order to be able to repent, you have to first know that you've blown it.

You've sinned against your Creator. That sounds really basic but it's crucial. The reason why

I bring this up is because in our modern day speech, sometimes we use the word repent in non -religious ways, and that's fine as long as we know what we're doing.

I'll give you an example. So, I went out to lunch in Spain a little over a year ago with a friend of mine.

We went to this restaurant. We both ordered our dishes off the menu, and we're talking, we're having a wonderful time together.

And they brought out two plates, one for me and one for him. They set mine down and it was this big plate with about that much food on it, decorated in the back by the chef to make it look like it was more interesting than it really was.

It was gourmet vegetables. And my buddy got the ribs and the fries. And I looked at my plate, and I looked at his, back at mine, and I repented.

I repented. But did I repent in the sense of what Peter was asking his hearers to do in Acts chapter 2?

No. So I made an erroneous decision, or maybe not.

If we're talking about my waistline, maybe I made the right decision. But Peter was not commanding his hearers to repent of wrong decisions.

He was commanding them to repent of sinful decisions, sinful actions, sinful thoughts, sinful behaviors that offended

God and were hurtful to other people. Peter was commanding his hearers to repent of their sins.

So it's important that first, intellectually, in order to be able to repent, we have to understand that we've sinned.

But we can go one step farther. We have to understand also that we're guilty because we've sinned.

We need to understand that we've sinned, and therefore, we're guilty. And this is an important point. We could say it like this.

True repentance comes without excuses. We're really good at making excuses, aren't we?

Yeah, I told that lie, but oh, I had to to get out of the mess that I was in. Or yeah,

I stole that money, but you should have seen how great my need was in the moment. Or yeah,

I spoke harshly to my wife, but you should have heard what she said to me. Right?

We're so good at dodging accusations. We're so good at passing the blame off of ourselves on to other people.

And oftentimes, we're willing to recognize that we behave poorly, but we make excuses. True repentance, however, doesn't try to dodge accusations.

It doesn't blame shift. It doesn't try to pass the responsibility on to other people or to external circumstances.

True repentance says, I blew it. I sinned. It was my fault. I'll own it.

So to really repent, we first have to recognize that we've sinned, and we have to be willing to take the blame.

That's the intellectual aspect of repentance. Now, second, there's an emotional aspect.

The acknowledgement of our sin and our guilt ought to produce in us an emotional change.

Specifically, as we become aware of our sin, we should be sad. True repentance must also include a change of emotions.

There should be a sorrow. If the knowledge of sin and guilt doesn't produce sorrow in me,

I cannot really repent. We have to explain this carefully. The repentance that Peter was commanding his hearers to included a sadness over sin, but not just any kind of sadness.

Because a lot of times we sin, and we're sad all right, but specifically about the consequences of our sin.

So to the high school student who got caught cheating on his chemistry test, he could be really sad about having cheated on the chemistry test, but maybe he's sad because he's going to get an

F on the test, and he's going to get a bad grade in the semester, and it's going to affect his GPA, and he's going to get into the college he wants to,

D .C. Sad about the consequences. Or, I did that shameful thing, and I'm sad because somebody posted it on social media, and my reputation is ruined.

So oftentimes we recognize that we've sinned, but we're sad mostly because of the consequences that result from it.

Now I'm not saying that we should enjoy the consequences of our sin, or rejoice over them, but what I am saying is that the sorrow that needs to accompany a knowledge of sin should be a sorrow for having offended

God, and for having hurt other people. So we should be primarily sad because we've offended our

Creator. Now, do I sound like a party pooper? This kind of talk, maybe it's not so good for church growth, right?

But the Bible talks about a certain kind of sadness and sorrow that's healthy, and that's good.

That's healing, in fact. So, back to that text that we read in 2 Corinthians. Now I know that I asked

Josh to read that text, and we're just jumping right into the middle of the letter, in the middle of the chapter, without the context.

As you know, we have two of Paul's letters to the Corinthians in our Bibles. But we know of at least four, and there was one in between our 1st and our 2nd

Corinthians. There was one in between that scholars call Paul's harsh letter, because apparently he had some harsh words for the

Corinthians. And he was worried that maybe he'd been a little too hard on them. But he comes back in 2

Corinthians and he says, You know, I'm glad because it produced a certain kind of sorrow in you, a godly sorrow.

That's good. That's the context of the passage that we read. So let me read again, 2 Corinthians 7, just verses 9 and 10.

So Paul says, As it is, I rejoice, not because you were grieved, but because you were grieved into repenting.

Do you see this repentance? There's an emotional aspect to repentance, this grieving.

For you felt a godly grief, so that you suffered no loss through us. For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret.

Do you see that? It's a good kind of grief that leads to salvation. Whereas worldly grief produces death.

So there's, according to Paul here, there's such a thing as a godly grief over sin that leads to life and salvation.

But there's also, related to sin, there can be a worldly grief that leads to despair and death.

We can illustrate these two kinds of grief thinking about two biblical characters that appear in the

Gospels. So at the end of Matthew, Matthew 26 and 27, we see juxtaposed two guys, right?

Two guys who both denied their Lord. Two guys who are both very sad about it afterwards, but sad in different ways and with different outcomes.

Who am I thinking of? Judas and Peter, right? So in Matthew 27, verse 3, if you have the

NIV, the NIV translates verse 3 in a helpful way.

Judas, after he betrayed Jesus, he was seized with remorse. So Matthew 27, 3, excuse me, says that Judas, as he's handing back the 30 pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders, he was seized with remorse.

That's how the NIV puts it. So he clearly laments having betrayed

Jesus. He knew that he did something wrong and he's very sad about it. But what does he do after that?

Well, he goes off and he kills himself. So that's Judas. Peter, on the other hand, just a few verses earlier, you wonder if Matthew did this on purpose, just a few verses earlier in Matthew 26,

Matthew 26, verse 75, Peter, after denying Jesus three times,

Matthew tells us that Peter went out and he wept bitterly. So Peter betrays

Jesus. He laments his decision. He's very sad about it. But unlike Judas, later he's forgiven and he's restored.

What's the difference between Judas and Peter? Well, the difference has to do with the kind of grief that they experienced.

I think it's safe to say both Judas and Peter knew that they blew it. They were probably both embarrassed.

I think they both probably felt guilty. But Judas, unlike Peter, see

Peter was concerned because he had damaged his relationship with his Lord. He had hurt his friendship with Jesus.

And so Peter returns to his friend and Judas goes the other way. Peter was sad.

He had a godly sorrow because he had offended Jesus, you see. And that godly sorrow led to life and to salvation, ultimately to restoration.

Judas was sorrowful too, but his sorrow led only to despair and death.

So this takes us to the third aspect of repentance. You have to, in order to repent, know that you've sinned and that you're guilty.

Second, you have to have the right kind of emotional response, a godly sorrow that leads to the third aspect, a decision.

So repentance that leads to life and salvation requires a decision. You have to decide to forsake the sin that damaged your relationship with God and turn to Him seeking renewal and restoration.

So it's a decision. And this is the decision precisely that Peter took.

He desired to be restored in right relationship with his Lord. And so Peter was restored, but following Peter's life we can illustrate one more thing.

That decision to leave behind that sin and the purpose to walk before God in new obedience has to be sincere.

It can't be a farce. So think about Peter. Peter was restored by Jesus beside the

Sea of Tiberias. And what does Jesus say to him? He gives him a command, doesn't He?

He says, feed my lambs. And what does Peter do throughout the rest of his life?

He doesn't do it perfectly, but he serves in the Church of Jesus Christ. So you see that denial,

Peter's being ashamed of his Lord, he wanted to leave that behind, he wanted to walk before God in new obedience.

He made a decision and that decision bore fruit. So true repentance, intellectual aspect, emotional aspect, it's a decision then, but that decision, if it's real, will bear fruit in our lives.

Think of Jesus' words, not Jesus, excuse me, it's John the Baptist, he's baptizing and the

Pharisees come to him and say, what does he say to them? He says, bear fruit in keeping with repentance.

You say you're repentant, but that repentance, if it's real, should demonstrate itself. There should be consequences, there should be fruit, there should be transformation in your life.

So we can illustrate this by comparing two other figures. Now we're going to go to the

Old Testament, we're going to compare two more guys who seemingly repented, one really did and the other didn't, two kings of Israel, two men who both sinned, who both verbally acknowledged their sin, one was repentant and the other one wasn't.

Who am I thinking of? Saul and David. So, think of these two guys.

Saul first, in 1 Samuel 15, I'll tell you the story, you probably remember it. Saul defeats the

Amalekites. And what was he supposed to do? He was supposed to destroy everything that they had.

What did he actually do? You read the text carefully and it tells you that he destroyed the most despicable stuff, the best stuff he saved for his own purposes.

Whoops, Saul blew it. And the prophet Samuel comes to him and confronts him, and this is the interesting part, and Saul recognizes that he sinned, so intellectually he's got it.

He says, I have sinned. In English it's three words, in the original it's one word, I have sinned.

He recognizes it. And you think, oh, maybe Saul's going to repent. But what does

Saul do throughout the rest of his life? He persecutes his successor. He's obsessed with killing

David, which demonstrates that he's not really repentant. He's still concerned about himself and getting his own way.

He's going to follow his own plan, you see. So verbally he recognizes his sin, but he's not really repentant, and you can see that by the consequences, the fruit in his life.

He's going against God's will. Think of David. Now, what David does, I don't know if we could put it in a scale and weigh it, but it might actually be worse.

So he's king, he commits adultery with Bathsheba, and then he conspires to have her husband killed, and then he hides it for a while.

So as they say in Spanish, muy mal, bad. Now again, prophet comes in,

Nathan comes in, confronts him, and what does David say? Does anybody remember? He says,

I have sinned. It's the exact same word in the Hebrew. I think maybe that's not accidental either.

I have sinned. The same word that Saul used. He recognizes his sin.

What's the difference between David and Saul? The rest of his life, David is not perfect, is he?

But he serves the Lord to an extent that the Bible calls him a man after God's own heart.

So he intellectually, verbally, he recognizes that sin, but his repentance is real. He makes a decision to forsake the sin, and he purposes to follow

God in new obedience, walking with him. So true repentance, it's more than just knowing about our sin.

It's more than just regretting what we've done. It includes the desire to be reconciled to the God that we've offended.

And if that desire is real, it bears fruit in our lives. I'm gonna give you another example to help illustrate this.

So we can illustrate, I think, the three aspects of true repentance with this example. Imagine a husband who comes home, he's had a bad day or whatever, and he just snaps at his wife.

Ah! He's just mean to her, and he's such a heel that she says, okay, you sleep on the couch tonight.

It's purely hypothetical. I'm not recommending, wives, that this is a godly way to deal with your grumpy husbands, okay?

Husband's sleeping on the couch by himself. He should repent.

If he's really gonna repent, what's it gonna look like? Well, first of all, he has to recognize that he's blown it.

And he has to be willing to go back to his wife and say specifically, I'm sorry for having done this.

If he goes back to his wife and he says, well, I'm sorry for having done this, but you... Is that gonna be real repentance?

He's still gonna be in the doghouse, and he's gonna stay on the couch. He has to go back, and he has to accept responsibility for the way that he's acted.

So he has to recognize his sin and his guilt, but secondly, he should also be sad for what he's done.

He should feel bad. He should lament his actions. But there's two different ways that he can lament his actions.

He can be sad because of the consequences. Wow, my back really hurts, right?

Gee, I'm so sad that I have to sleep on the couch. I'm not sleeping. I feel crummy. I'm sad. Well, that kind of sadness, the wrong kind of sadness, that's the kind of sadness maybe that would lead him to grab the car keys and go out and spend the rest of the night in some hotel somewhere so that he can sleep better, would actually drive him away from his wife.

Do you see? He should experience the right kind of sadness. He should be sad for having offended this precious lady that the

Lord has given to him as his wife. And so that should lead him, that kind of emotional response, to get up, to go back, apologize to his wife,

Honey, I'm sorry. I'll try not to do it again. You see? So he's forsaking his actions.

He's purposing to walk differently and to care for his wife in a new way. Now, when is his wife going to know if he's really repentant or not?

We'll see the next day when he comes home after a hard day from work and we'll see how he treats her, right? So if his decision is real, then there should be transformation.

There should be fruit. It's never perfect, but there should be a change in his life if his repentance is real.

So we can define repentance in this way. Biblical repentance.

And what Peter is commanding his hearers to do is to first of all recognize that they've sinned and they're guilty.

Secondly, to have a godly sorrow with respect to that sin. And thirdly, decide to leave behind that sin and return to God seeking reconciliation and purposing to walk before him in new obedience.

Definition. Three parts. Hopefully that's clear. Now, back to our question.

Is repentance necessary for justification? What's the answer? Yes, but we're going to have to qualify it, aren't we?

Yes, it is. But repentance is... There's two things that it's not and there's one thing that it is.

First of all, repentance is not the grounds of our justification. In other words, repentance, even the true and authentic and sincere kind, does not make us worthy of being accepted by God.

We are worthy to be in God's presence, to be friends with him, only because Jesus Christ was worthy in our place.

Our acceptance doesn't make us any more deserving of being accepted into God's presence favorably.

Think about this. The Apostle Paul, if anybody was repentant, it was the Apostle Paul. My goodness.

I mean, he'd been persecuting the Church of Christ. Jesus confronts him on the road to Damascus.

Paul is converted and he's repentant. But think about this. Think about what he says in Philippians chapter 3.

Remember when he's talking about all that good stuff that he'd done and all those things that he once thought were going to be like his merit, his grounds of justification, he says all that stuff is worthless.

He says in Philippians 3, 9, I want to be found in Christ, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith.

So he's recognizing I'm righteous before God, not because of anything that I do, not even my repentance.

And by the way, parenthesis here, there's a really good reason why our repentance could never be the grounds on which

God accepts us. Think about this. God's perfect, right? Perfect.

So his justice is perfect. Okay? If he's going to accept this on the basis of our goodness and our deeds, how good do we have to be?

Perfect. Is our repentance ever perfect? No. So you see, just right there, our repentance can never be the grounds of our justification.

Why? Because it's never perfect. Only Jesus Christ was perfect, and he was perfect in our place.

So we repent, not to somehow score points with God or make ourselves more attractive to him.

No. Our repentance has another purpose. It has another function. So first of all, our repentance is not the grounds of our justification.

Now, the second point, this is the hardest part of the sermon, just warning you, okay? So everybody's awake, we're feeling good, right?

Ready for the hard part? Repentance is not the instrument of our justification.

You're like, what in the world? I say this because there's some people that have taught this, some people that think that this is the case.

Repentance is not the instrument of our justification. What I mean by that is that repentance is not the channel through which we receive all the blessings of Christ.

What is the instrument or the channel through which we receive all the blessings of Christ? What is it?

Faith. It's faith, exactly. So when God's giving out the gift of salvation, starting with justification, and then everything else that comes along with that, we can say it this way,

God responds only to faith. Only to faith. And the reason why that is is because faith is the only human attitude, the only attitude that we can have that says to God, I have nothing to give you.

I can't do anything to make myself more worthy before you.

I need you to have mercy on me. I'm depending totally on your provision for me in Christ, and I believe that he did everything necessary to save me.

See, only faith is that, the empty hand of the beggar, that the beggar sticks out to receive the gift that the generous one is giving to him.

Repentance looks back at our sin, it looks at ourselves. Faith looks to and clings to Christ.

That's why faith is the only instrument of our justification. You read the New Testament from beginning to end, and it never says that we're justified by repentance or through repentance.

It's only by or through faith because faith is that only attitude that we can have that clings to Christ for all his blessings.

So, in what way is repentance necessary? Repentance is, I would suggest to you this morning, the necessary consequence of faith.

It's a necessary evidence of the presence of true faith in the life of a believer.

So if you, we'll say it like this, if you really believe in Jesus, you will repent. If you're not repentant, you can say you believe in Jesus, but you haven't really trusted in him just yet.

So, the Reformers, Luther and Calvin and Spurgeon would have said this too. They say it like this, justification is by faith alone, but never a faith that is alone.

True faith always is accompanied by evidences that demonstrate its authenticity.

So, it's not hard to understand this point. Think about it like this. What kind of a faith can a person have who's not willing to recognize that they've sinned and that they're guilty?

That person who doesn't even recognize their sin, can they have faith? No. What kind of a faith can a person have who's not sorry for having offended

God? What kind of a faith can a person have who doesn't really desire to be reconciled to God after having offended him?

You see, we're talking about the elements of repentance. What kind of a faith can a person have who doesn't long to leave behind their sin, who clearly prefers to continue in the very sin that they're asking

God for forgiveness for? That's nothing more than a false profession of faith. That's what some people call fire insurance.

That's like a safety net to avoid, what? The consequences of sin. I don't want to go to hell.

So, yeah, I've got faith in Jesus, but I really prefer to live on the here and now my own way.

That's Saul. That's not true saving faith. A person who has true faith is sorry for having offended

God longs to have fellowship with God, longs to be restored and to be renewed in their relationship with God.

So for that reason, anybody who really believes will also really repent. Is repentance necessary for justification?

Yes, it's a necessary consequence, a necessary evidence of true faith in a person's life.

We'll bring this to a conclusion. I want to say three more things quickly. With that in mind, three things about repentance, just practical applications.

Luther was right. He said all of the Christian life should be characterized by repentance, and he was exactly right.

One reason why he was right that comes to my mind is the following. Do we ever stop sinning?

Even as Christians, the most veteran of saints, the most seasoned of believers, does anybody ever stop sinning before glory?

No. That's why the scriptures say the one who will overcome, the one who is saved in the end, is the one who continues to believe their entire life.

Continue clinging to Jesus. Why? Because we always need a Savior. Why do we always need a Savior?

Because we continue sinning. For that reason, we need to be aware of it, we need to be sorry for it, and we need to continually purpose to leave that sin behind and walk before God in new obedience.

Luther was exactly right. He said all the Christian life is one of repentance. It's not something that you do once and you leave it behind.

We should be repentant people as Christians. So that's the first point.

The second point is that I think that we're not as repentant as we should be. I'll speak for myself and speak broadly for,

I think, evangelical churches both in the United States and in Spain. I think that there's a lot of people who are in churches who just, they're not aware that they're sinful or the gravity of their sin or they haven't accepted their guilt.

They're making excuses all the time for the things that they recognize that they do wrong. They're not particularly sad because they've offended their

Maker. There's a whole bunch of people who aren't really repentant. And I think all of us would probably say that we should be more repentant than we actually are.

Why is it that we're not repentant? Well, probably there's a lot of reasons, but one that comes to my mind is that I think we don't talk about repentance enough.

And I'll give you an example. I heard a message on repentance by R .C. Sproul years ago. I know it was years ago because I remember it was on a cassette tape.

And I was driving my 1986 Ford Ranger and I was listening to that tape over and over and over and I left one series of R .C.

Sproul tapes on the dash of that Ranger and they melted. But now it's all on MP3 and it's podcasts and whatever else.

So this was years ago with a cassette tape. R .C. Sproul was talking about repentance and he said, he was talking specifically about the sad state of evangelical preaching in the

United States. And he said he was tired of hearing sermonettes. What's a sermonette?

According to Sproul, a sermonette is a little short message with lots of stories and jokes and anecdotes and maybe a few helpful tips here and there about how to live the

Christian life, but pretty much devoid of solid biblical content. He said,

I'm tired of hearing sermonettes. And the specific example he gave was this. He said, imagine a married couple in a congregation that's just struggling.

They're about to get divorced. They're in crisis. They need help. And he said, better than 10 sermonettes on how to have a happy marriage for them would be one good sermon on repentance.

Do you get his point? Better than 10 sermonettes on how to have a happy marriage would be one good sermon on repentance.

And his idea, the main point that he was trying to make is this, that, you know, if we really knew how to repent, how much reconciliation would we see in relationships, in marriages, in family, in church?

How much renewal? How much healing if we really knew how to repent? If we really owned our sins instead of constantly pointing out those of our spouses and friends and other members of the church or whatever, if we really felt a godly sorrow over them, if we confessed and sought reconciliation with one another, what a difference that would make.

Sproul was exactly right. So you see, repentance isn't this, like, heavy burden and cross that we bear.

It's a blessing. It's a wonderful thing to be able to repent. It brings health and healing in our relationships.

First, in our relationship with God, and secondly, in our relationships with one another. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we were all more repentant people?

And then think of the testimony, the witness, that that would be because people in the world don't really repent.

People in the world may be really sad about the consequences of what they've done, but they don't really repent. But to see marriages restored through repentance, it's the power of the gospel.

It's the power of the Holy Spirit working. Wouldn't that be attractive to a watching, unbelieving world?

That takes me to our last point. So we're gonna pray that God would give it to us to be more repentant because repentance is a grace.

It's a gift that God gives, and it's by grace. So I'm saying, we need to repent, we need to repent, and you might be thinking, well, that's great.

How do I do that? I don't feel like repenting. And am I saying to you, well, get your repentance face on, you know, bear down, conjure up those feelings of sadness.

Is that what I'm saying? No. It's not. We have to understand that repentance is by grace in two ways.

First of all, when you turn back to God in faith, you're repenting, you're turning back to God in faith, what you see is your

Savior waiting for you with open arms. So it's true that God is a just judge.

He hates sin. But by faith, when we turn to Him in repentance, the God that we see is a

God who extends mercy and forgiveness. If all God showed us were justice, we'd be better off running.

Luther struggled with this, didn't he? You remember the story of Luther's life where for so long he was, the stories about how he spent hours in the confessional, right?

Or there was this famous quote where somebody asked, Brother Martin, do you love God? And he said, love

God? And he said, sometimes I hate Him. Why did he say that? Because all he knew was God's justice and he thought

God was going to crush him. But then eventually Luther understood, and this is something we all need to understand, he understood that Christ was crushed for him.

So if that's the case, if Christ has been crushed for you, when you turn back to God repenting, in faith what you see is a

God who's longing to accept you again and restore you in friendship and peace with Him.

We need to go a little farther with this. Remember we said our repentance isn't perfect, so it's not the perfection of our repentance that saves us or restores us with God.

So you turn to God in faith and you see Jesus, but you don't see Jesus standing there with his arms crossed, scowling.

Well, you're not sad enough for your sin, you know. You need to flounder a little more in your guilt, maybe you need to, you know, be hard on yourself for a while to somehow make up for it.

You see a Jesus who says to you, I paid for all of that sin. It's done.

I've forgiven all of it and that's why, that's why, we read in Romans 2, Paul says that it's

God's kindness and his mercy that lead to repentance. Right?

So Jesus who says to me, I have forgiven all of your sin, that's the kind of Savior that makes me want to repent.

So, my main message to you today is repent. Maybe for the first time.

Maybe for the ten thousandth time. Or maybe you're like David, and this is why

I asked Josh to read Psalm 51. A David who, for a while maybe you've been hiding a particular sin, there's a sin you don't want to deal with, you've just covered it over, you're not repenting of it.

How did David feel when he was hiding his sin? He said that his bones were wasting away within him.

He felt terrible until God gave him that grace and he repented. And then he says, he cries out to God and he says, restore to me the joy of your salvation.

Why do we repent? To have the joy of God's salvation restored to us.

Daily. Constantly. You don't feel like repenting? Think about Jesus. Think about forgiveness.

Think about assurance. Think about renewed peace with God by faith.

That's what motivates repentance. Repentance is by grace. And there's another way that it's by grace, and we'll finish with this.

The ability to repent is not in us. So, left to ourselves, we would never repent.

In this way, repentance is, it comes along with faith and it's like faith. It's a grace. It's something that God grants.

It's something that God has to do in us. God has to change our hearts so that we'll be genuinely sorry for having offended him.

He has to give us a taste for the sweetness of Jesus Christ and fellowship with him. He has to give us eyes to see the reality of who we are, the reality of who

God is. And that's what produces that right kind of emotional response and that right kind of decision.

So, twice in the New Testament we read this language of repentance being granted.

So, Acts chapter 11, for example, to the Gentiles, God has also granted repentance that leads to life.

God has to give it to us to repent. So, we're going to close in prayer and we're going to ask that he would do that, that he would help us to appreciate again his kindness and his mercy.

That he would give us eyes to see who Jesus really is and who we really are before him. That he would give us a godly sorrow so that we would really repent, be restored, and be healed.

Let's pray together. Lord, we thank you for the words of Psalm 51, 2

Corinthians 7, Acts chapter 2, the examples of Judas and Peter, Saul and David, all the different ways that you teach us in the

Bible about repentance. We thank you for the command that Peter issued and others to repent that just grabs our attention.

Lord, we recognize that in and of ourselves does not reside the ability to repent.

We pray that you would give it to us to repent, perhaps for the first time or maybe for the 10 ,000th time,

Lord. We pray that you would soften our hearts, that you'd bring conviction of sin, that you'd bring godly sorrow and put in us an increasing longing and desire to walk before you in new obedience and to just enjoy our relationship and our fellowship with you.

We pray that you would make us a repentant people for our good and for your glory. We ask this in Jesus' name.