Sunday Sermon: A Godly Grief that Leads to Repentance (2 Corinthians 7:2-16)

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September 2, 2018

Pastor Gabriel Hughes preaches on 2 Corinthians 7:2-16 and how we must mourn over our sin, but if it is a godly grief, we will rejoice to know the forgiveness we receive through the gospel of Christ. Visit fsbcjc.org for more info about our church.

00:15: You are listening to the teaching ministry of Gabrielle Hughes, pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Junction City, Kansas.
00:22: Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday on this podcast, we feature 20 minutes of Bible study through a
00:27: New Testament book. On Thursday is our Old Testament study, and then we answer questions from listeners on Friday.
00:33: Each Sunday we are pleased to share our sermon series, presently going through the letters to the
00:39: Corinthians. This is the sermon that was preached last week from our pulpit. Here's Pastor Gabe.
00:45: Second Corinthians chapter 7, starting in verse 2. The Apostle Paul wrote to the church in Corinth, make room in your hearts for us.
00:57: We have wronged no one. We have corrupted no one. We've taken advantage of no one.
01:03: I do not say this to condemn you, for I said before that you are in our hearts to die together and to live together.
01:13: I am acting with great boldness towards you. I have great pride in you.
01:20: I am filled with all comfort. In all our affliction, I am overflowing with joy.
01:27: For even when we came into Macedonia, our bodies had no rest, but we were afflicted at every turn, fighting without and fear within.
01:39: But God, who comforts the downcast, comforted us by the coming of Titus, and not only by his coming, but also by the comfort with which he was comforted by you.
01:53: As he told us of your longing, your mourning, your zeal for me, so that I rejoiced still more.
02:05: For even if I made you grieve with my letter, I do not regret it.
02:11: Though I did regret it, for I see that the letter grieved you, though only for a while.
02:19: As it is, I rejoice. Not because you were grieved, but because you were grieved into repenting.
02:29: For you felt a godly grief, so that you suffered no loss through us.
02:36: For godly grief produces repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death.
02:48: 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.
03:03: 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.
03:21: Therefore, we are comforted. And besides our own comfort, we rejoiced still more at the joy of Titus, because his spirit has been refreshed by you all.
03:36: 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.
03:48: And his affection for you is even greater, as he remembers the obedience of you all, how you received him with fear and trembling.
03:58: I rejoice, because I have complete confidence in you. Let's come together once again in prayer.
04:08: Our great God and Savior, we thank you for your word. We thank you for the hope that it gives.
04:18: For we would otherwise be lost in this world and hopeless as we clamor for the things that are wasting away around us.
04:29: This world that has been subjected to futility, this world that is full of evil, this world that will eventually be judged with fire.
04:37: None of these things could possibly satisfy us, because none of these things will last.
04:43: But we have an eternal hope that is given to us through Jesus Christ, our Savior.
04:50: So that by faith in him, we would be delivered from this mortal coil and delivered into immortality with God.
05:02: Let that be our hope and peace that sustains us in this life, that no matter our struggle that we go through on any given day or week or year, we know, as the
05:20: Apostle wrote, that it cannot compare to the surpassing greatness of God and the promise of eternal life that is given to us in Jesus Christ.
05:36: This is what we cling to. This is what sustains us.
05:41: This is our focus and our goal and our aim as we labor in this life, doing all things to the glory of God.
05:53: For it will be that very glory of God that will be revealed to us on the day of Christ.
06:01: As we are comforted by your word, teach us how we may also comfort others by this word.
06:09: Those who have become weary and heavy laden, trying to attain righteousness either by their own works, or they've just become exhausted trying to find some meaning and purpose in a world that is falling apart.
06:26: May we be able to share with them the hope of the gospel of Jesus Christ, who forgives sins and gives eternal life, our resurrection from the grave, our hope, and our peace.
06:41: In Jesus' name we pray and all God's people said, amen. Thank you. You may be seated.
06:50: So I want to ask you a question this morning and I want you to be honest with me.
06:55: I know this is going to be difficult for you, but I want you to dig way down deep and I want you to find the courage to answer this question and to do so honestly and even to show your answer to the people around you.
07:10: I'm going to ask you to raise your hands and I don't want you to be embarrassed. I think it would be a good exercise for all of us because you will be able to see that you are not alone and there are other people who have gone through this very thing with you.
07:26: So here is the question and I want you to answer honestly. How many of you have ever seen the check engine light and ignored it?
07:37: Raise your hands. All right. So I think that that's basically everybody who has ever owned a car.
07:44: So you know you are not the only one in here who has ever seen and ignored the check engine light.
07:51: That light on your dashboard is a general fault warning that is alerting you to the fact that something is wrong in your car.
07:59: And we think that if we just ignore it, the problem will go away.
08:05: Amen? Right? Okay. Or we ignore it long enough, the car actually starts making some funny noises.
08:14: How do you take care of that problem? You turn the radio up, right? And then you can't hear the noises anymore and boom, the problem is gone.
08:23: Well, God has equipped every single human being, believer or unbeliever, with a check engine light and it's called a conscience.
08:37: Whenever we're about to do something sinful or we have done something sinful, contrary to the divine nature of God.
08:49: For Romans 1 20 tells us that God's eternal power and divine nature are clearly seen by all.
09:01: And so when a person has sinned, contrary to that eternal nature or divine power of God, our consciences tell us that something is not right.
09:13: That feeling is called grief. It is described here, at least in this passage that we're looking at in 2
09:20: Corinthians 7, as grief. And so from that point, when we experience that grief or that regret, we have two decisions to make.
09:30: We can try to figure out the cause of the grief and we can get it fixed. Just as a little light comes on in your car and you know there's a problem, you got to figure out what the problem is and you got to get it fixed.
09:42: You go to somebody who is an expert in your vehicle who will tell you what the problem is with your vehicle so that you can get it fixed.
09:49: And whenever we feel that problem, we might go to someone who might tell us, what is this feeling that I have and what do
09:56: I do about it? The only thing that will fix the grief that we experience because of our sin, the only thing that will fix it is the gospel of Jesus Christ.
10:13: The good news that Jesus has died for sins and all who believe in him will be forgiven and will be reconciled to God.
10:22: Our sin has separated us from God. Jesus Christ died for our sins so that by faith in Christ, that relationship is restored.
10:31: And we're no longer under the judgment of God, but rather we are received by him in his love.
10:39: So we can either get our grief fixed or we can ignore it until the problem gets progressively worse and will eventually even lead to our own destruction.
10:52: There is a grief that all of us must experience over our sin.
10:59: And again, as I mentioned, there are other words that you might substitute in for grief here.
11:05: Brokenness, conviction, guilt, lament, or mourning.
11:18: And even the Bible uses all of these words to describe the feeling that we should experience when we realize that we have sinned against God.
11:30: Whatever form that grief takes for you, whatever word you might most associate with,
11:36: I pray that for all of us, what we are experiencing when we experience that grief is a godly grief.
11:44: And as Paul describes it here in 2 Corinthians 6, it is a godly grief that leads to our repentance.
11:51: It leads us to find comfort in the only place that true comfort is found, and that is in the loving, forgiving arms of Jesus Christ.
12:03: And that's what we're going to explore today as we look further at this section in 2 Corinthians. I've expressed to you before that one of the beautiful things that I love and I appreciate about 1 and 2
12:14: Corinthians, both of these letters together, is that we get to see a church that is steeped in all kinds of sin, and we see the love of Christ for that church expressed through one of his apostles.
12:28: That church is called to repentance in one letter, 1 Corinthians, and then in the next letter we're privileged to see the fruit of that repentance.
12:38: Some of the sins of the Corinthians were so embarrassing that we might even blush to repeat them.
12:46: According to 1 Corinthians 5 .1, there was a man in that church who had slept with his stepmother. We get the sense that the other members of the
12:54: Corinthian church didn't care that that had happened, and some of them were probably even joking about it and congratulating him for it.
13:02: And Paul said, look guys, this is a kind of sexual immorality that isn't even tolerated among pagans.
13:11: How much more should we as a church despise sins such as this, and not desire that such sins would be practiced in our midst?
13:24: Among the other sins that the church in Corinth was guilty of, they were segregated, they were prejudiced over a multitude of different things.
13:31: They were boastful and inconsiderate of one another. They were blaspheming the Lord through the misuse of his table.
13:38: Some of them were even getting sick and dying because they were misusing the Lord's table. Some of them doubted
13:45: Paul's apostleship. He appeals to his authenticity as an apostle in both letters, 1 and 2
13:51: Corinthians. They were still eating in pagan temples. They were abusing the spiritual gifts.
13:57: Their services probably look like the most wackadoo Pentecostal services you've ever seen. The men weren't stepping up and leading.
14:04: Women were serving as elders. Wives were shaming their husbands. Divorce and sexual immorality were common.
14:11: They were even wrong on essential doctrinal issues like denying the bodily resurrection of Christ.
14:20: If such a church stood in our community today that looked anything like the church in Corinth we read about in 1
14:27: Corinthians, they would be the shake in our heads. They would be the wag in our fingers.
14:34: They would be the roll in our eyes. And whenever we referred to that church, we'd put church in air quotes.
14:40: Oh, that church down the road. Why would God tolerate such a place to stand with his name on their sign?
14:51: Surely this place is the synagogue of Satan rather than the bride of Christ.
14:57: Why on earth did this church in Corinth still qualify as a church when they were doing such things?
15:07: And the answer is this, beloved, because when they were told to repent, they did.
15:17: If the spirit of God was not with that church, then when they were told to repent, they wouldn't have.
15:25: They would have continued looking like the rest of Corinth. They would not have been grieved over their sin, a grief that leads to repentance.
15:35: They would have just continued on in their way to their own destruction. And as we're seeing happen, even in America today, when the church doesn't look any different than the rest of the world, eventually that church closes its doors.
15:51: It will just become irrelevant and useless to the culture and nobody will attend it anymore.
15:58: I hear stories from pastors all the time who go over to Europe and will tour London and they will visit huge cathedrals, historic church sites, and when they go to attend a church service on Sunday morning, you're talking a building with a seating capacity of 500 to 1 ,000 people and there's maybe a few dozen.
16:19: And it's because that church has become so irrelevant on sound doctrine and right theology that what's the point?
16:28: What's the point in going to church? When I can stay home and get just as much as if I didn't go to church at all.
16:39: But Paul rebuked this church of the sins that they were committing, Corinth, which looked like the rest of Corinth, and they repented.
16:48: In the second letter we see, in this letter we see that they did repent. We've seen some of that already.
16:54: And this was not a repentance that turned into faultlessness, okay, because there were still some problems.
17:00: We've addressed some of them in this letter. We still have half the letter to go. We'll see some more problems come up.
17:06: But this was a repentance, not unto faultlessness, but unto godliness.
17:13: When Paul confronted their sins, they were grieved and it was a godly grief, a good kind of brokenness, the kind of brokenness that leads one to repentance.
17:24: Therefore, Paul knows not to write them off, but instead to write to them again and continue to appeal for their sanctification, because the
17:36: Spirit of Christ is indeed in this church. If a church will no longer repent of their sins, then that is a church where the
17:47: Spirit of Christ is not. When you read Christ's addresses to the churches in Revelation chapters 2 and 3, when he calls a church to repentance, what you'll often see him say there in those two chapters is, repent and return to me, or I will remove your lampstand from you.
18:09: The light of the gospel that's been given to you, so you might become a light unto the world, and if the gospel is no longer relevant and the obedience to the gospel is no longer being lived out in that church, the
18:23: Spirit of Christ is no longer there and their lampstand is removed. But if a church is indeed in Christ Jesus, then by the
18:36: Spirit of God they will be grieved over their sin and they will repent and return to the
18:41: Lord. In Revelation 3 .19, Jesus says, those whom I love,
18:47: I reprove and discipline, so be zealous and repent.
18:58: We see repentance happen here, in fact we've even looked at some of it already regarding this man who had slept with his stepmother,
19:05: Paul said in 1 Corinthians 5 .13, purge the evil person from among you, and I believe we've already seen that happen to this man when we were in 2
19:12: Corinthians chapter 2. If you flip over to chapter 2, let's look at verses 5 and 11, because this goes well with what we're looking at here in even chapter 7.
19:21: 2 Corinthians 2 verses 5 -11, the apostle
19:29: Paul said, now if anyone has caused pain, he has caused it not to me, but in some measure not to put it too severely to all of you.
19:40: For such a one, this punishment by the majority is enough, so you should rather turn to forgive and comfort him, or he may be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow.
19:51: So I beg you to reaffirm your love for him, for this is why I wrote, that I might test you and know whether you are obedient in everything.
20:02: Anyone whom you forgive, I also forgive. Indeed, what I have forgiven, if I have forgiven anything, has been for your sake in the presence of Christ, so that we would not be outwitted by Satan, for we are not ignorant of his designs.
20:19: So here, according to the instruction that Paul had given in 1 Corinthians 5, the church followed it.
20:26: They disciplined this man, he was removed from their midst, and now in this next letter Paul says, don't let him grieve too long or he will fall into despair, rather welcome him back, forgive him for his sin.
20:38: That the grace of God may be demonstrated among you. The grace of our
20:44: God who forgives sins and gives eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
20:50: What a beautiful exercise of grace that we see here.
20:56: And in both 2 Corinthians 2 and in chapter 7, Paul says that these things have been done to test you, to know whether you are obedient in everything, and the
21:08: Corinthian church is showing themselves to be obedient to the commands of Christ. In verses 2 through 4, let's come back again to 2
21:20: Corinthians chapter 7, 2 Corinthians 7, in verses 2 through 4 we read the following, make room in your hearts for us.
21:33: We have wronged no one. We have corrupted no one. We have taken advantage of no one.
21:40: I do not say this to condemn you, for I said before that you are in our hearts to die together and to live together.
21:47: I am acting with great boldness toward you. I have great pride in you. I am filled with comfort.
21:54: In all our affliction I am overflowing with joy. This is beautiful and this is affectionate.
22:01: This is Paul being a pastor. He is caring for the flock of God.
22:09: He has disciplined them. But even though he had to rebuke them, he is encouraging and he asks that they would love him as he has loved them.
22:22: Make room in your hearts for us. In other words, don't despise us because we have corrected you.
22:30: This is for your good. It is for your benefit. It is because we love you that this was done.
22:38: Paul says we have wronged no one. We have corrupted no one. We have taken advantage of no one. This is Paul saying,
22:44: I rebuked you for your benefit, not mine. This was not to take advantage of a situation.
22:53: This was to encourage you in the Lord Christ. In my eight years here at First Southern Baptist Church, there have been occasions where over the course of my time as pastor,
23:06: I've had to confront somebody in their sin. This was a responsibility that began even when
23:13: I was an associate pastor. So it wasn't just something that I came into when I became the senior pastor. For those of you who know or have been here long enough, when
23:21: I first was hired on here, I was the associate pastor with an emphasis in music. So I led the worship for two years before Nate Butler was called on by the
23:30: Lord to go plan a church in another place. And then the church voted for me to become the senior pastor at that point.
23:37: But when I was hired on as the associate pastor, it was less than two months into my time here,
23:42: I was informed of an affair that was going on in the praise band here in this church.
23:50: A man who was married with a woman who was divorced. And I had to confront that situation, and I did.
23:59: And rather than be grieved over their sin, and they knew what they had done, they didn't even deny it, but rather than be grieved over it and realized that they needed to repent, they left.
24:09: And I never spoke with them again. Now, before I go on with the sermon,
24:15: I want to clarify that this isn't going to be laying out example after example of times when I've confronted sin or things like that.
24:22: I simply draw from that very first time that I had to confront a sin in this church to say to you that you would know,
24:30: I've been through this, and I've done this before, and I relate with the Apostle Paul, having to confront somebody in their sin, and then he himself being grieved over it because he wonders, how would they respond to this?
24:44: Are they going to repent, or are they just going to continue in their sin to their own destruction?
24:53: I've had this experience early, and it doesn't get any easier, and I will not say that I'm an expert at it.
25:00: I don't always come up with the best things to say. Oftentimes, it's, you know, the next day when
25:05: I think of, oh, yeah, I could have said that. Maybe that would have come across better, and surely you've probably been in those situations as well.
25:13: But I bring this up because when it comes to correction or when it comes to discipline within the church, this is not just my responsibility.
25:19: It's actually the responsibility of the whole church. Spiritual discipline is the responsibility of every
25:27: Christian. Colossians 3 .16 says, to the whole church, teach and admonish one another with all wisdom.
25:35: To admonish means to correct with goodwill. In Matthew 18 .15 -20, when
25:41: Jesus laid out instructions regarding church discipline, he said, if your brother sins against you, go and tell your pastor.
25:50: Is that what it says there? It says, if your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault just between the two of you.
26:01: And if your brother repents, praise the Lord, you've won your brother.
26:07: I don't ever even have to hear about it. You know the age -old theological question?
26:14: It was first asked by Cain in the book of Genesis, am I my brother's keeper?
26:21: And my brothers and sisters in the Lord, the answer to that question is this, yes you are.
26:28: Yes you are your brother's keeper. We must offer correction, and we must also receive correction when offered.
26:39: Proverbs 12 .1 says, whoever loves discipline loves knowledge, but he who hates reproof is stupid.
26:48: And that's the one time where using the word stupid is appropriate in this particular sense. Furthermore, Proverbs 27 .6
26:56: says, faithful are the wounds of a friend, but profuse are the kisses of an enemy.
27:06: The Apostle Paul is expressing to the Corinthians that he corrected them with goodwill and for their benefit.
27:13: And so likewise, if we ever have to correct anyone, may it be for their benefit.
27:18: And if somebody ever corrects you, receive it as though they have your best interest at heart.
27:28: And how the two of you can come to an understanding that you might repent of your sin and walk in the righteousness of Christ.
27:37: Church discipline is something that is very rarely practiced in the church today.
27:43: There's a statistic whenever we talk about this subject that I bring up every once in a while. It was actually printed in the
27:48: Washington Post, a secular newspaper, that less than 8 % of churches in America practice church discipline.
27:57: This is a statistic that Albert Moeller, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, will cite every once in a while as well to show how rare it is that we follow this command that has been given to us in Scripture, that we would correct and receive correction.
28:13: Whenever I do interviews with somebody who is interested in our church and they want to know more about our church,
28:19: I answer all of the usual questions. What sort of programs do you have? What do you have for men? What do you have for women?
28:25: What do you have for my kids? Not one time in eight years. And this isn't an indictment against anybody, but it's just to say, not one time in eight years have
28:35: I ever been asked, does your church practice discipline?
28:44: Do you discipline each other that you might walk in righteousness and turn from sin and be holy as our
28:55: Heavenly Father is holy? And now that I've said that, if you're a visitor today, you're welcome to ask me that question later.
29:03: The answer is yes, we do. In fact, those qualifications or those guidelines for church discipline that are given in Matthew 18, 15 through 20 by our
29:14: Lord Christ, we have that written in our own constitution as this is the process by which we would confront somebody who is in their sin, the very words of Christ that have been given to us.
29:26: So Paul followed a proper procedure as an apostle in confronting the sins that he had heard about going on in the church in Corinth.
29:35: And when he confronted these sins, we even have it mentioned in 1 Corinthians 1, exactly where this report came to him from.
29:42: He even cites his source. It has been said to me by Chloe's people. The Corinthians had also written a letter to Paul asking him certain questions, so he even knew by their letter some of the things that were going on in the church in Corinth.
29:57: So he confronted things according to the facts and not according to speculation or bias, so that he might restore this church to walking in the truth.
30:10: He says, we have wronged no one, we have corrupted no one, we have taken advantage of no one. This is Paul saying, my motives were pure and my conscience is clear.
30:19: More than that, he's saying, I'm proud of you. I am filled with comfort. I am overflowing with joy.
30:26: You have repented. They did not turn their backs on Paul's instruction. They listened to it and they responded to it.
30:34: And so Paul is filled with joy. Look at verses 5 through 11, the next section here in verses 5 through 11.
30:42: Paul says, for even when we came into Macedonia, our bodies had no rest, but we were afflicted at every turn, fighting without and fear within.
30:51: This is Paul saying that they were being persecuted for the gospel, while at the same time, they were troubled in their own hearts over those
30:59: Christians who were walking in sin and needing to repent. So they're receiving affliction from the outside, but they're tormented on the inside, hoping that those
31:08: Christians would repent. Verse 6, but God who comforts the downcast comforted us by the coming of Titus.
31:15: And not only by his coming, but also by the comfort with which he was comforted by you.
31:22: As he told us of your longing, your mourning, your zeal for me, so that I rejoiced even more.
31:31: They didn't turn their backs on Paul. They wanted to see him again. And so Paul rejoiced. So after Paul sent his previous letter to the
31:38: Corinthians, which we have as 1 Corinthians, he was troubled in his heart, and hoping and praying that they would listen to his words, and they would turn from their sins, showing the genuineness of their confession of faith.
31:52: Remember again from chapter 2, Paul said, this is why I wrote, that I might test you and know whether you are obedient in everything.
31:59: So Paul wrote his letter, and between his first and second letter, he sent Titus to them to check up on them.
32:06: And Titus returned to them with this positive report that the church had indeed followed Paul's instructions.
32:12: And even though Paul and his brethren were being persecuted for the gospel, God has comforted their spirits with this news that the church in Corinth, whom they have labored for, is repenting and is walking in the truth.
32:28: So surely Paul related with the words of John who said, this is 3
32:35: John verse 4, I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth.
32:45: And so having received this news that the church in Corinth has repented, Paul is filled with joy.
32:52: Going on here to verse 8, For even if I made you grieve with my letter,
32:58: I do not regret it, though I did regret it, for I see that my letter grieved you, although only for a while.
33:08: As it is, I rejoice not because you were grieved, but because you were grieved into repenting.
33:14: My friends, it is necessary for you to mourn over your sin.
33:20: And if true, genuine repentance must happen, then you must grieve.
33:26: You must realize that you have sinned, and sin is very, very serious.
33:35: Matt Chandler, in talking about sin, if you've ever listened to Chandler, boy, his cadence will go up and he will even start shouting.
33:43: And in talking about sin with his congregation, he got to this point in which he said, listen to me, look at me,
33:50: God hates sin. And I think that is an emphasis that we often forget.
34:03: And we will use the grace of God to excuse sin as not being that big a deal.
34:10: Oh, God's just going to love me anyway. My friends, he hates sin so much that the only way it could be covered for you was to give his own holy son to die in your place.
34:33: The wrath of God poured out on Christ on the cross for you.
34:43: Sin is so serious that one man and woman's sin sent a perfect paradise, a universe in perfect order into disorder because of their sin.
35:04: God cursed all of creation. And we live in this feudal world that we live in now because of the sinfulness of man.
35:13: I passed by a church recently. It wasn't a church here in town, but outside on their sign, it said, this
35:20: Sunday, answering this question, why do bad things happen to good people?
35:27: And I don't know where the pastor was going to go with that. But my first answer to that question would have been, there are no good people.
35:39: Bad things happen because we're bad people. And we deserve much worse than what we're getting now.
35:51: And Julie talked with the kids this morning about grace, grace being unmerited favor, grace being something that we do not deserve.
36:00: And God has shown a love for us that we don't deserve. What we deserve is death and destruction.
36:06: But God has shown his love for us through his son, Jesus Christ. Romans 6 .23
36:13: says, for the wages of sin is death. There's the serious of sin right there, the seriousness of sin.
36:20: We deserve death for our sin and our rebellion against God. But that verse goes on to say, but the free gift of God, grace, is eternal life through Jesus Christ, our
36:33: Lord. You only know the mercy of God when you recognize your own depravity.
36:50: The sickness of your own heart must grieve you.
36:58: And if it is a godly grief, it is a grief that will not lead you into despair, but rather it is a grief that leads you to repentance.
37:08: And I mean, look at what Paul says here. Again, in verses 8 and 9, he says, even if I made you grieve with my letter,
37:15: I don't regret it, though I did regret it, for I see that my letter grieved you, in these five words, though only for a while.
37:27: See, if it's a godly grief, it's temporary. It won't even last. You'll grieve for a moment, but then rejoice in the mercy of God.
37:36: You know Lamentations 3, right, where it says, weeping may endure for the night, but joy comes with the morning.
37:46: His mercies are new every morning. And even if you go your entire life with a grief in your bones that you just cannot seem to shake, it seems like every single day you wake up, it's a struggle, and you wonder, when will
38:06: I be relieved of this that I experience and that I feel? Take heart,
38:13: Christian, for a day is coming, and we are promised in Revelation chapter 21, where there will be no more crying, there will be no more pain, there will be no more tears.
38:30: Even the most deep depression that we can experience in this life is temporary. And there is a resolution that is coming on the day of the
38:40: Lord. When it comes to grieving over our sin, it is a grief that leads to our restoration, that leads to, as we had talked about in 2
38:53: Corinthians chapter 5, it leads to reconciliation, a right relationship with God again through our
38:59: Lord Jesus Christ. Probably the most popular contrast between a grief that leads to destruction and a grief that leads to repentance, the most popular contrast that we have in the
39:12: Bible of this is Judas and Peter. For Judas sinned against the
39:20: Lord Christ by betraying him and turning him over to be arrested by the Pharisees, and he did this for 30 pieces of silver.
39:29: And Judas, when he realized, had turned over an innocent man, was filled with grief.
39:39: He realized that what he had done was wrong, and that he had sinned against the very
39:46: Creator God. That awareness had been awakened in Judas' heart, so much so that he tried to give the silver back.
39:57: And the Pharisees wouldn't take it. They said, it's blood money now. We're not going to take it back. And he threw the silver, and it clattered on the floor of the temple, as it was prophesied in Zechariah that the betrayer of Christ would do that exact thing.
40:15: And he was so filled with grief, but rather than repenting, he went out to a place where he found a tree and he hung himself.
40:28: It was a grief that was a worldly grief that led to his own destruction.
40:34: Peter, on the other hand, now Peter betrayed the
40:40: Lord Christ as well. Lest anyone think that Peter's sin was not all that bad, Matthew 10, 33 says, whoever denies me before men,
40:49: I will also deny before my Father in heaven. And Peter heard Jesus say that.
40:54: And yet Peter said to Jesus, I will never deny you.
41:00: Even if all of these others, referring to the other disciples, even if they all run away,
41:05: I'm not going to. I'm sticking with you. And Jesus confronting this man's pride said,
41:13: Peter, before the rooster crows, you'll deny me three times.
41:22: And Peter remained insistent. No, I won't ever do that to you.
41:28: And Jesus said, Satan wants to sift you like wheat, but I am going to pray for you.
41:37: And so sure enough, it happened that after Jesus was arrested, Peter followed close by. And when he started to get recognized, he started to deny.
41:46: Aren't you one of his disciples? Weren't you with him? No, I tell you, I don't even know the man.
41:54: And then it was when the rooster crowed. It says in Matthew 26, 75,
42:01: Peter remembered the saying of Jesus, before the rooster crows, you will deny me three times.
42:11: And then seven of the most heart -wrenching verses in scripture.
42:18: And he went out and wept bitterly. The grief of Peter, though, was not like the grief of Judas, for Peter's grief was a grief that led to repentance.
42:41: In John 21, Jesus reinstated Peter by asking him three times, just as Peter denied him three times.
42:49: Jesus asked him three times, Simon, son of John, do you love me?
42:56: And each time Peter replied, Lord, you know that I love you.
43:03: And I hear in Peter's answer, an asking of Jesus, search my heart, know that I love you.
43:13: And Jesus told him, feed my sheep. And Peter did so. And he did to his own persecution, but his reward was heavenly.
43:29: There is a necessity of brokenness and contrition over our sin, much like what
43:37: Peter modeled when he realized that he had betrayed his Savior. Dr. Vodie Bauckham has said, if true repentance is going down a highway, and then by God's grace, experiencing that change in attitude that leads to a change in behavior that leads to going the other way down the highway, if that's what repentance is, and I believe that it is, then brokenness, grief, mourning over our sin, that's the off -ramp.
44:11: Brokenness is the place where we get off. Brokenness is the place where God stops us, where he halts our progress, where we would otherwise go to our own destruction, and he causes us to see the end to which that we will come if we continue to go down that road on the trajectory that we are on.
44:29: Brokenness is the place to which we come when we recognize that all that we are, all that we have, and all that we do in and of ourselves is sorely and miserably insufficient.
44:47: God crushes us under the weight of our own sin. And before we wrap up here, if I might take a moment to be a little apologetic with you in this.
45:02: Unfortunately, in our culture, we've come to a place where we believe that no one should ever experience any discomfort, right?
45:16: No one should ever grieve over anything. No one should ever be uncomfortable with something that they have done wrong.
45:25: And so if you feel miserable, if you feel broken, if you feel insufficient, if you feel like this life does not have enough for you, there's a pill for that.
45:37: Now, let me preface this by saying that there are some very real struggles that people face physiologically that they can't help.
45:45: And praise God through the advancements in medicine, there are medications that can help a person cope with physical and emotional hurts.
45:52: But specifically, what I'm talking about is a man who is shirked on his responsibilities as a husband.
45:59: His children are rebellious because he doesn't love them enough to discipline them. He can't keep a job because he's not disciplined himself.
46:06: His debts are piling up because he's irresponsible. And he goes to the doctor and he says, I'm depressed.
46:14: Where has his depression come from? It's come from his conscience.
46:22: His conscience is screaming at him. The guilt of his sin is so weighed upon him that it's causing him physical anguish.
46:30: His check engine light is flashing and blaring like the lights on the top of an ambulance.
46:36: But instead of doing something about the noises his car is making, he just turns the radio up.
46:42: He goes to the doctor to take a pill because no one should feel bad.
46:50: To understand how futile this effort is and how it doesn't solve anything, but only masks the problem, all you need to do is go look at the side effects of these antidepressant drugs.
47:04: Have you ever done this before? The most popular antidepressant that is out on the market today,
47:12: I went to their website and I clicked on side effects. And the very first side effect listed is this, may cause thoughts of suicide.
47:26: Wait a minute. Isn't that the reason I'm taking this drug? So that I can survive my depression?
47:37: And yet the drug may be the very thing that kills me. I've served as a chaplain with the
47:45: Geary County Police Department. And every time that I've worked a suicide case, we open a cabinet to find bottles upon bottles of empty prescription canisters.
48:08: Our culture's solution to our depression doesn't work. In fact, it makes the problem worse.
48:18: God gave us pain receptors so we would know when we're too close to danger.
48:24: If you get too close to a fire, your body tells you, hey, it's hot, get away.
48:31: If you try to stare at the sun, you've got receptors in your eyes saying, hey, this hurts, close your eyes.
48:40: If you listen to music too loud, you might start to get headaches. Your body telling you this isn't good for your ears and you will lose your hearing if you continue this.
48:50: And so we have in our bodies a spiritual warning gauge as well.
48:57: When we're too close to sin, our conscience warns us of the danger.
49:03: And this is a godly thing that happens. So that we would repent of the dangerous thing that we are doing and we would turn to Jesus and be saved.
49:16: Again, the only solution to this is the gospel of Jesus Christ.
49:27: Remember what we read this morning in Psalm 51. David prayed, let the bones that you have broken rejoice.
49:35: God brings us to a place of brokenness that we might realize we need
49:40: Jesus and that he would repair us and restore us. C .S.
49:46: Lewis has said the following, we can ignore even pleasure, but pain insists upon being attended to.
49:54: God whispers to us in our pleasures. He speaks to us in our conscience, but he shouts to us in our pains.
50:03: It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world. God uses the pain that we experience so we would recognize our sin and our need for his righteousness.
50:21: In this final section of 2 Corinthians 6, verses 10 through 13, Paul says, for godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret.
50:32: Whereas worldly grief produces death. 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, that a person would even celebrate punishment because they know that the punishment is making them more like Jesus.
50:57: 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, therefore we are comforted.
51:17: There's an assurance of salvation that comes with this. When you can look back and see the grief that you experienced over your sin that brought you to repentance, and the forgiveness that you have been given in Jesus Christ, and you realize by the spirit of God that is living within you, that you are his and you are his child.
51:44: And he disciplines you because, my brothers and sisters in the Lord, he disciplines you because he loves you.
51:58: In Psalm 103, beginning in verse 8, and here's how I'll close. We read the following.
52:04: The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
52:13: He will not always chide, nor will he keep his anger forever.
52:21: He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities, though that would be what we deserve.
52:32: Verse 12, for as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him.
52:39: As far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.
52:47: As a father shows compassion to his children, so the
52:53: Lord shows compassion to those who fear him, for he knows our frame.
52:59: He remembers that we are dust. As for man, his days are like grass.
53:07: He flourishes like a flower of the field, for the wind passes over it and it is gone, and its place knows it no more.
53:18: But the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him and his righteousness to children's children, to those who keep his covenant and remember to do his commandments.
57:20: Thank you for listening to our weekly sermon presented by First Southern Baptist Church of Junction City, Kansas.
57:27: For more information about our church, visit fsbcjc .org
57:33: On behalf of our church family, my name is Becky, inviting you to join us again this week, Growing Together in Christ, when we understand the text.