7 Marks of True Repentance

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Prov 30:18-20

Prov 30:18-20

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I invite you to take out your Bibles and turn with me to 2 Corinthians chapter 7 and find your place at verse 10.
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The title of today's message is Seven Marks of True Repentance.
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When it comes to grieving over sin, the
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Bible describes two different kinds of grief.
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The Bible describes godly grief and worldly grief.
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Paul tells us that godly grief produces repentance unto salvation and worldly grief produces death.
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But is there a way to know the difference? How can we know the difference?
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In fact, I would argue that such a question is vital when we consider the fact that we are called not only to repent of sin, but we're called to examine ourselves.
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And also, there are times wherein we must, at least in one way or another, examine others.
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Consider the subject of church discipline. When someone has been excommunicated from the church and wants to be restored, what should we look for in the repentant person?
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These are all things that we have to consider when we ask the question, what does godly grief leading to repentance unto salvation look like?
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And what does worldly grief leading to death look like?
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And as I said, I believe the scripture gives us seven marks of genuine repentance.
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I am already going to tell you that this is going to be two parts because I am going to look at not only the seven marks of repentance, but I'm also going to look at six case studies.
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Three case studies in scripture of genuine repentance and three case studies of remorse that did not lead to repentance, but rather into either rebellion or death.
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So that is our plan. Today we will be looking at the positive aspect, what does genuine repentance look like?
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And then next week, what does false repentance leading to death look like? So let's stand together and read.
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We're going to read beginning at verse 10, which is where Paul outlines for us this important truth.
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So he says, for godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death.
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For see what earnestness this godly grief has produced in you, but also what eagerness to clear yourselves, what indignation, what fear, what longing, what zeal, what punishment.
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At every point you have proved yourselves innocent in the matter. So although I wrote to you, it was not for the sake of the one who did the wrong, nor for the sake of the one who suffered the wrong, but in order that your earnestness for us might be revealed to you in the sight of God.
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Therefore, we are comforted. And besides our own comfort, we rejoice still more at the joy of Titus, because his spirit has been refreshed by you all.
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For whatever boasts I made to him about you, I was not put to shame, but just as everything we said to you was true, so also our boasting before Titus has been proven true.
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And his affection for you is even greater as he remembers the obedience of you all, how you received him with fear and trembling.
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I rejoice because I have complete confidence in you.
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Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. And Lord, as we come into your presence, let us not as Nadab and Abihu, who flippantly came before you and were willing to offer up an unauthorized fire before you, a strange fire before you,
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Lord, let us be genuine in our offering of praise to you today,
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Father. Forgive us of sin, forgive us of pretense, keep us from hypocrisy.
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And Lord, I pray that as I preach your word, that you would forgive my sin, that you would fill me with your spirit.
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That you would yet again prove yourself true to the preaching of your word.
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And remind us that we should let God be true and every man a liar.
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And Lord, I pray that you keep me from error, especially on a subject like this, where it would be easy to fall into the ditches of legalism or licentiousness.
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Lord, I pray that we would stay on the narrow path of the truth. That you would tie me to the post of your word.
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Not let me stray. And I pray, oh, God, for those who are here.
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For the believers whose repentance is genuine, I pray that today would be a reminder of the heart and soul of repentance and what it means.
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And for, Lord, those who are not yet believers, Lord, that they would see the beauty.
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Of repentance. And that it does lead. To life and Lord, for those who maybe.
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Have staked their hope in a false repentance. That they would be reminded today.
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What true repentance looks like. And contrast. Their condition.
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Lord, for all these things and of all these things and. Lord, we pray. And I ask you to be merciful to us in Jesus name.
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Amen. Now, I know that we have visitors always, and I like to be reminded of that to welcome you all and say, we're glad that you're here.
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We preach verse by verse through books of the Bible. And so if you have not been here with us up until now or maybe you've missed a few weeks and you're you're coming back with us, we are continuing in our study of 2nd
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Corinthians. And as we've just read chapter seven, verses 10 to 16, it's important to understand the context which we are in.
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Paul is writing this letter from Macedonia where he had been waiting for the return of his his associate, his friend, his ministry partner,
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Titus. Titus had gone to the Corinthians and he was bringing a report back to Paul, particularly of how the church had received
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Paul's rebuke because the church had begun to rebel against Paul's teachings and reject his ministry.
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And Paul had sent them a letter, which he defines in this book. He defines it as the severe letter.
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And this severe letter had been received by the Corinthians. And as we talked about last week, it could have gone one of three ways.
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It could have either been that they received it in anger because anytime someone receives a rebuke, sometimes there's always the opportunity that they could just get mad and not want to hear it.
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They could have received it in ambivalence, which means I don't care. Right.
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They hear it, but they don't care what it says. Or they can receive it in repentance. And glory to God, they received it in repentance.
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And so Paul is overjoyed. And we just read part of that in this section that we just read.
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We read about the fact that he was comforted by the return of Titus because Titus brought him a good message.
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And chapter seven is all about the reunion between Paul and Titus.
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He's happy that Titus is back in his company. And he's happy that Titus has brought a positive report.
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It would have been easy for Titus to have come with a bad report.
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It would have been easy for the people of Corinth to simply reject or simply ignore the rebuke of the apostle
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Paul. But that hasn't happened. So the majority of this chapter, chapter seven, is
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Paul expressing his joy and comfort over this situation.
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He's overjoyed that the Corinthians have received his rebuke. He's encouraged that they've shown love for Titus.
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He's encouraged that Titus has shown love for them. There's been reciprocal love there. And he even says in verse 14 that he has, in fact, boasted of them and his boasting has proven true because Titus went and they got a good report.
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Therefore, everything he's basically saying, everything I said about you was right and you proved that it was right by how you received the rebuke.
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So in the midst of this joyous reunion, where at times
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Paul writes, and if you read it in the original language, he writes these really long, emotional sentences.
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In the midst of this reunion with Titus, he addresses the fact that his letter has caused the people of Corinth grief.
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And he says, and we talked about this last week, he says, I initially regretted sending it, but now
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I don't regret sending it because it did what it was intended to do.
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The rebuke produced repentance. So in the midst of this section, he says something interesting.
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He tells them how he knows their repentance is genuine.
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Remember, he told us in verse 10, we just read it, that there are two types of grief, worldly grief and godly grief.
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Some of your Bibles say worldly sorrow and godly sorrow. It's essentially the same thing.
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And that's verse 10. Godly grief produces repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death.
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Then in verse 11, and this will be where our focus is for this week and next week, because in the heart of this reunion with Titus is this very important verse, verse 11, where in this verse he gives us seven characteristics or fruits of godly grief.
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So you want to measure what grief leads to repentance. You want to see what type of grief is genuine.
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According to Paul, we find it here in verse 11. And so for the next few minutes, we're going to look at these seven things, the seven things described to us, the seven marks of true repentance.
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And I want to say a couple of things about the list. You can see the list on the board if you haven't seen it yet.
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It's right there. Seven marks of genuine repentance. But I want to simply say this list one is overlapping.
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So when I begin to explain these seven things, there'll be some things that I say and I talk about the next word and you'll say, well, wait a minute, that was part of the previous word.
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Paul does this a lot. When he gives us lists of things, oftentimes there's overlap in the list because he's what's outflowing from him are our words that all have meanings and each meaning is very specific.
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But sometimes the words have are synonymous with words that he's already used. And so he's he's just intensifying that idea.
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And so when we see some of the overlap, I don't want you to be confused. The other thing I do want to mention, and this is important.
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Is that when we look at these seven things, I am not saying. That every time we repent that all seven of these will always be present in the maximum capacity that they could be, because depending on the situation, some of these may be more important than others, particularly in the area of clearing one's name and things like that,
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I'm going to talk about what that means. But the point is, is when a person repents, there will be signs.
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And if there are not any signs present of genuine repentance, and I would say these are among those signs,
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I would say these seven should be among those signs. If they're not at all present in the life of a person, then there would be great question as to whether or not their repentance was legitimate.
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And again, I hope you don't think I'm giving you today a reason to go around and check everyone else's list.
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I talked about this last week, you know, about how oftentimes we become very concerned about checking on other people without checking on ourselves.
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This list is for you first. Now, as I said earlier, when it comes to church discipline, there are times where we may have to examine someone's repentance based on these things.
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And I do think it can have application in that respect. But in general, this is this list is for me.
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This list is for you and for you to look at yourself, not to be again going around and as Mike likes to say, become the president of the
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Sin Sniffers Association. That's not your responsibility or your prerogative to become everyone else's
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Holy Spirit. All right. That doesn't mean we can't call each other to repentance and we should, but we need to be careful that we not become pickers of knits, as the
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Bible says. Knit pickers, if you never heard it said that way, but that's the Bible says that we should not be those who major in the minors in the lives of others.
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So let us be careful as we're considering these things. All right. So seven marks of true repentance, beginning with the first one.
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Again, reading verse 11, it says, foresee what earnestness this godly grief has produced in you.
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So number one is earnestness. Studane in or studane in the
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Greek. This is a this is a diligence, a seriousness in regard to the subject of repentance.
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And it is an eagerness to repent. The word is used in other places.
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It is translated as determination in certain places in the Bible. It's translated in haste.
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Now, haste sometimes is a bad thing when you say you do it quickly in haste and that can be bad. Don't be hasty.
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But the word haste can also mean to do something because it's important or urgent. And that's the idea.
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The idea of earnestness here is that real repentance will be an urgent thing in the heart.
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It will be a thing that we're concerned about taking care of. We're not putting it off. We're not kicking the can down the road.
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We're not waiting to repent. But the the earnestness of it is that the haste or the desire or the care or the determination that arises out of us.
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We want to see this righted. We want to see this sin dealt with.
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It is serious business. It will not be entered into flippantly.
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It will be done with a sober mind. Now, I want to tell a story. And I, I have vacillated about telling this story because I felt like it was possible that you may misunderstand what
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I'm saying. So I want to be very careful and say, as I tell this story, I want you to know that I understand it's it's apt for misinterpretation.
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So I will try to be as clear as I can. Many, many years ago, my wife and I were going to a car dealership to look for a new vehicle and was my practice at the time to carry gospel tracts in my pocket.
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And I still try to carry them. I'm not as diligent and disciplined as I used to be. I used to carry like a like a fanny pack with gospel tracts.
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And this this fanny packs are not attractive. But but that was but I would have a, you know, a pack with gospel tracts.
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And I just handed them to everybody I saw. I'm a big, strong believer in gospel tracts.
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And so I would just hand them to people. And so as I was walking into the dealership, I I just started walking up to salespeople handing them.
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They hand me cards. I hand them cards. Right. I'm a hand them their card. Well, as the purchasing of the vehicle began to be more serious and a man found us and we began to look at a truck and we were looking at it and going through all the process.
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One of the guys walked up to me. He goes, hey, man, I read your car and I read your card and I repented and I stopped and I and I and I had to consider for a moment the attitude with which he was saying what he said.
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And I want you to know this is the part that you misinterpret. I want you know, I was not trying to judge his soul and there was a part of me that was very happy that he read it and that was very happy that he was that he was coming to talk to me.
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But the part that I was concerned about was he wasn't taking it very seriously. At least on the outside,
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I repented. Did you really do you understand what that means, that you have recognized your sin before a holy
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God and that your sin deserves God's punishment and that Christ died on the cross to receive the punishment you deserved and gave to you his righteousness?
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Now, I know you probably didn't get all that off of a little card, but are you ready to have that conversation or are you just hoping that and somehow
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I'll be happy enough to buy a car? Now, again, I'm not trying to judge his heart, but salespeople sometimes and I know we have salespeople here.
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Don't be mad. Salespeople can sometimes do things to try to win you over. And I was less inclined to be excited about his repentance because it didn't seem to have any weight behind it.
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And again, please don't leave this place thinking I just go around and judge everybody's repentance. I'm not trying to be that guy. But the reality is genuine repentance is weighty.
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Genuine repentance is broken. Genuine repentance recognizes the need for a change.
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Are you getting what I'm saying? And again, if you if you feel like I'm being overly hard on the man, I did have a conversation with him later.
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We did talk more about it. I didn't just leave him there. But the initial response, hey, man,
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I repented. OK, what does that mean? And I want you to think about this because I'm going to apply this now to our children.
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All of us have not all of us, but many of us have children in this room who are still young. If you don't have children who are still young, you have grandchildren.
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And oftentimes our children will come to us, Daddy, Mommy, I repented or I believed in Jesus.
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That's great. And you should definitely encourage that. And if they do bring them to me,
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I want to talk to them, too. I want to hear about that. And I'm excited to hear about that.
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But we should impress upon them the weightiness of it. Amen. It's a weighty thing.
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And when my son comes to me, he's eight years old and he has. He said, Daddy, I want to believe in Jesus.
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I want you to believe in Jesus. And I want to pray with you that you believe in Jesus and I want to encourage you to believe in Jesus, I want to raise you to believe in Jesus.
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But I want you to understand the earnestness of repentance, the weightiness of repentance, the heaviness of this reality.
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This is not simply choosing chocolate over vanilla. And it's more than just choosing heaven over hell.
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But this is saying that Christ is going to become the most important person in your life.
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And your life's changed. It's weighty, it's heavy, there's earnestness in it.
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And if there is not earnestness in our repentance, we have a reason to ask, is it genuine repentance?
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That's that's the point I'm making is the first mark of true repentance will be a weightiness and earnestness, a heaviness.
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An urgency. Just makes sense so far. OK, and again, that happens with anybody, doesn't have to be just young people, it can be any of you.
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That's the first mark of genuine repentance. Now, the second mark, as we see going on, it says, see what earnestness this godly grief has produced in you, but also what eagerness to clear yourselves.
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That one is strange. I've titled it defense, and the reason why
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I've titled it defense is because in the original language, it is literally the word apologia, which many of you probably know is where we get the word apologetics or apology.
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It means to make a defense for something. But I want you to understand what Paul is saying here.
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He is not saying that you're defending your sin, but rather that whatever the sin has brought about in your life, your desire is to come and make that sin right.
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You say, how do you understand it that way? When Paul uses the word apologia, he's not saying defend your sin or even being unwilling to be responsible for your sin, because both of those would be wrong.
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If sin is brought out in your life and you come and defend it, well, I was right in doing that thing.
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That's wrong. That would be the wrong use of defense. Or if you said, I'm not willing to take responsibility, that would be wrong and not certainly in keeping with what
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Paul would teach. But rather, you want to clear the blame by making it right, taking initiative.
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To show that the repentance is true, you want to defend not the sin, but the repentance.
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You want to defend not what you did wrong, but that what you're doing right is true. You're not only earnest about your repentance, but you're defending the fact that your repentance is genuine.
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Here's how that works out in real life, and this one's hard.
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But let us say, let us make an example of someone who has not an individual specifically, but in your mind,
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I want you to create a caricature, an avatar or whatever, a person who has sinned against a group of people.
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We've had people who've sinned against this church. Through the years, we've we've had a few folks, one specifically who, as I said,
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I don't mention anybody particularly, but we those who are members here know that the one there is a person who's under discipline for the mishandling of money and has yet to repent.
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If that person repented, and I pray that that person does every day. They would need to come and express that repentance to the body.
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That would be making a defense for their repentance if they said, well,
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I'll come and tell you, Pastor, but I'm not going to stand in front of the church and repent. Then you're not ready to repent. You understand the point, you're you're willing to stand in front of all the people you hurt and say,
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I did it and I was wrong. You're not defending the sin, you're defending the repentance as being genuine by being willing to stand up and say it.
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Beloved, that's where it ends for a lot of people. It ends at the moment of responsibility, taking responsibility.
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So the first thing is earnest, by the way, I'm not getting a lot of amen today, so I just want you to know I'm I'm noticing the lack of in.
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Yeah. It's either you don't agree or you just want to say out to either one.
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I'll get the emails later, but. But think about what you would want to see in a repented person, you would want to see them be serious about their repentance and you would want them to see them defending the fact that they have repented by being willing to address it with anybody.
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I like what R .C. Sproul said. R .C. Sproul said if a man steals your watch and he comes to you, he says he repents and he's still wearing the watch, he's not ready to repent.
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You know, that makes that simpler. Right. The repentance would be here you go. And if that hasn't happened, repentance hasn't happened, right, that's defending the repentance.
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I'm giving you this back. Third thing, indignation.
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Indignation is. Anger, the underlying
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Greek word here. Literally just it does it means what it says, it means anger.
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You say, well, how can anger be part of repentance? It's indignation.
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Over the sin. And I don't know if you understand what I'm saying, but let me try to make this simple.
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When we sin, there should be a hatred of that sin. There should be indignation toward that sin, not just the consequences and the effects, and you can be angry at that.
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And I do believe you can be angry at the consequences of your sin and how it has affected others.
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And you should be. But it should also be at the sin itself. Because that sin is an affront to a holy
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God. And so being angry over the sin doesn't mean you're outbursting with uncontrollable rage, but here's how it shows itself.
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You're not excusing it. You're not shifting blame.
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You're not using the word, but. The word but can be good. We're dead in trespasses and sins, but God and his mercy saved us, right?
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So there's great times where the word but can be used, but there's other times where you say, I know I did that thing, but.
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No, when you repent, the buts are gone, the buts are over. There's no more trying to defend what you did.
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Now you're defending the repentance, but you're not defending the sin. You hate the sin. You're showing hatred for the sin.
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Let me give you an example of this from Scripture. Adam, not our
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Adam, Adam from Scripture, the original Adam, when he sinned against God, he experienced shame.
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And when he experienced shame. He hid himself. He clothed himself and his wife sewed fig leaves together.
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And they hid. In the wilderness. When God came and walked in the garden,
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God called to them. Adam came out.
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We hid from you because we were naked. Who told you you were naked?
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By the way, God knew, just so you understand, God condescends to us for those types of conversations because we cannot elevate ourselves to him.
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So God condescended to Adam. Who told you you were naked? Did you eat from the fruit of the tree, which
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I commanded you not to eat? And Adam and all his nobility, as our first father and preeminent progenitor, stood and said, the woman whom thou has given me.
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Sorry, baby, made the baby cry. But in that way, he did.
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Adam immediately, the woman whom thou has given me, she gave me of the fruit and I ate. So God turns his attention to the woman, the serpent.
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The serpent is the one who caused me to do this, and so God, beginning with the servant, lays out his punishments.
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He lays out the punishment to the servant. He lays out the punishment to the woman, lays out the punishment to Adam. And in those demonstrates that even though you might have the ability to shift blame, it's never going to alleviate you of the consequences of your sin.
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You might can say, oh, yeah, I had a person who encouraged me to do this. Well, they're guilty, too. But it doesn't alleviate us from the responsibility of our own sin.
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And so we have to be angry, not at the people who did it, but at the sin itself and at the reality of the fact that this was our participation.
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We have done this. I really think this is one of the hardest things people people do not want to accept responsibility.
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In our modern culture, we have absolutely abandoned the idea of personal responsibility.
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In the state of Illinois. They have changed the written code to no longer use the word criminal or offender, but now they are used and this is no this is
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I'm not joking and I did not make this up. You can go look it up for yourselves. They're using the term justice impacted individual.
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For criminal or offender, they're taking out the words and they want to use their justice impacted like they were just standing there and justice came along and hit him like a car accident.
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No, that's not how it works. You did it. Justice isn't in the wrong.
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You are in the wrong. An indignation over sin is recognizing the wrong, recognizing that it is.
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Deserving. Of your hatred because God hates it. You ever think about the fact that when you defend your sin, you're defending what
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Christ died for. When you make excuses for your sin, you're excusing what Christ died for.
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What held him to the cross? It was our sin, it was my sin that held him there until it was accomplished.
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Right. Don't we sing that? So the third thing is indignation.
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Number four. Fear. Phobos, that's that's an easy one as far as translating it, we use the word
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Phobos, we use phobia in our modern language. But why would fear be listed again, going back to the list, see what earnestness this godly grief is producing you, what eagerness to clear yourself, what indignation, what fear?
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Why is fear listed among these? Well, I believe that this is.
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The fear of God. Which accompanies repentance. And I've talked about this quite a bit, if I want to,
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I want to somewhat retract something I said maybe last week or the week before, I can't remember.
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I said, if you can tell the difference between fear and reverence, write me a five page essay.
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Well, as I thought about that and I was watching the video of it, I said, you know what, that that was that was unkind of me.
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Because I certainly am not trying to downplay, if you are having a difficulty understanding the difference between fear and reverence,
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I'm not trying to insult or be in any way ungodly in my speech. But what I was saying is, is
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I have a hard time distinguishing when someone says, I don't fear God, I reverence God. Well, what does that mean?
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And that's what I was saying. How do you make the distinction? How do we make the distinction? I grew up with a healthy fear of my father and I never was afraid because my dad loved me.
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He told me every day that he loved me. And at 70 something years old, 77, 78, 79, somewhere.
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And every day of my life for 44 years, he's told me he sometimes calls me just to tell me he loves me.
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So I've never been afraid, but I've always had a healthy fear of my dad because I knew growing up he was in charge and I knew that he could level me for most of my life, maybe even still could.
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But he had a certain power and strength in my life that made me fear who he was. And the greatest thing
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I feared was offending my father. I did not want to offend my father and I did not want to offend his name.
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I carry my father's name, Medford Foskey is my father's name. That's my name. I did not want to offend him.
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I don't want to offend his name. And I did not want to offend our family. Because I loved my father and I feared my father.
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So when this text says that repentance will be accompanied by fear, it's that fear of God that drives us to our knees.
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A person who repents without the fear of God has a reason to question their repentance. Do you get what
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I'm saying? Because it should be accompanied by a reverential fear of Almighty God.
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That God that we serve.
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Is no weakling. The God that we serve is the
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God in whom we live and move and have our being. And as I've said many times from this pulpit, in an instant, if God so chose,
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I could cease to exist like that because God is the one who's holding me together. And I trust that he won't.
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But I know that he can. And in that, I say this is the God Almighty who deserves not only my love, but also my awe.
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I remember the first time. I realized that I'm somewhat claustrophobic.
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I'm not somewhat claustrophobic, I'm way claustrophobic, just so you know, MRIs are like the devil, but. But you know what caused me to be claustrophobic was not being inside of something.
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But it was being at the base of a mountain. I was driving into the Tennessee mountains,
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I was driving at night. And the top of the mountain was lined with lights.
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And it began to come over the horizon as I was driving, it began to rise. It looked like a monster rising up out of the sea because it was pitch black at night.
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But these lights are just rising up. And as closer I got to the mountain, the higher the light seemed to be and the smaller
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I seemed to be. And I began to feel overwhelmed by the size of this giant thing coming out of the earth and how small and and and how powerful it is and how little and weak
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I am. And I began to compare myself to the mountain. And I felt in that moment claustrophobic, even though I wasn't inside anything.
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I just felt like I was overwhelmed by this giant thing. Imagine the presence of Almighty God.
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If a mountain, you ever stood on a bow of a ship and looked out at the ocean and felt overwhelmed by the mass of the ocean,
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Mike and Andy are both on ships right now. And I imagine at some point on their trip, they're going to walk out on the bow of that ship and they're going to look out at the sea and feel very small.
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Because that's what the ocean has the power to do. It has the power to make us feel small. Mountains have the power to make us feel small.
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Valleys have the power to make us feel small. How much more does God and his immensity who created all the universes?
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My son has been studying this. JJ has been telling me all about space recently. He's been studying all the stars and how this star is bigger than this one.
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And this is like 50 ,000 earths will fit into this and 30 this and whatever. And he's showing me how massive. And I say, but son, how much bigger is
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God? When you can look at Alpha Centauri and all these different things, you say they're huge, but God is so much bigger and how small
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I am and how much he deserves my awe. I can talk about this all day.
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I know I got to move on. But you understand if repentance is not accompanied by the reverential awe of God.
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Then we have a reason to wonder if it's genuine. Number six and seven will go together.
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Because as I was studying these words, I find that they're not exactly synonyms, but they're very similar in meaning.
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He says, what longing, what zeal, what longing, what zeal. And essentially, longing is recognizing of lack and zeal is a vehement desire.
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And if you put those together, you're asking, what is it they're lacking? What is it they're desiring? What is it they're longing for?
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What is it they're zealous for? And I believe in this case, it's restoration. One thing that a repentant person wants is to be restored to God and restored to the people they've offended.
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And Paul's talking about the Corinthians with himself. And he said, I see your longing and I see your zeal.
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I see your earnestness and your eagerness to to not to defend your repentance.
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But I also see your longing and your zeal for me because you want our relationship to be restored. And you more than that, you want your relationship with God to be restored.
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Yes. OK, we'll talk about that later, buddy.
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I love you so much. But I thought you're going to ask the question about the Bible and I would have been happy to answer. And we'll talk about that later.
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Understand, though, if there's no longing, if there's no zeal, we have a reason to ask if our repentance is genuine.
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Finally, number seven. Is vindication. The root word of this this word in the
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Greek, ekdikason, is the is is the word the root is dike, which is the is the word where we get the word just or righteous.
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Dikaio means to be righteous or just. And ultimately, I believe this is why
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I call it vindication. That's why I've listed it as vindication. The person who is genuinely repented wants to see justice done, not in a carnal or sinful way.
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But they have a readiness to right wrongs. If there is a punishment that goes along with the sin, they're ready to receive that punishment.
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They're not running from their consequences, but they are facing their consequences. The Corinthians, the
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ESV translates it as punishment. And I think what Paul is saying is they essentially have punished themselves.
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They've recognized their sin. The King James says revenge, the
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New American Standard Bible says avenge. It's kind of hard to understand exactly what he's saying, but I do think it has to deal with the issue of consequences because it has the idea of righteousness in it.
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I don't know what happened to the lights. It's OK. So what does this look like?
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I've kind of as I said, there's there's there's carry over, there's overlap in some of these. And I go back to the idea of defense.
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The person who continually runs from the consequences of their sin and doesn't face the consequences of their sin is not ready to repent.
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That's the point. And so with that,
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I want to give our first case study. I think it goes right along with number seven, but it might be the easiest way.
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This might be the only one we get to today. I wanted to do three positive case studies today, but I don't think I'll get to all three.
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So we can we can carry this in the next week. If you guys promise to come back, well, we'll we'll do it again next week.
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But let's look at our first case study of what real repentance looks like. Turn in your Bibles to Luke chapter 19 and verse one.
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It's a story of a man named Zacchaeus. Now. If you grew up in church, you know at least one thing about Zacchaeus and what's that?
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He's a wee little man and a wee little man was he. That's right.
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So here's what it says, beginning in Luke 19, verse one. Speaking of Jesus, it says he entered
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Jericho and was passing through and behold, there was a man named Zacchaeus. He was a chief tax collector and he was rich and he was seeking to see who
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Jesus was. But on account of the crowd, he could not because he was small in stature. So he ran on ahead and climbed up in a sycamore tree to see him, for he was about to pass that way.
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And when Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said, Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today.
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So he hurried and came down and received him joyfully. And when they saw it, they all grumbled.
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He has gone in to be the guest of a man who is a sinner. Just stop right there.
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Everybody in town knew Zacchaeus was a sinner because he was what?
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A tax collector, does it say publican? Is that what it is to say tax collector?
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He is one. You understand who the tax collectors were. They were the Jewish people who had gone in league with the
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Romans to extort money from their own people and were considered by the Jewish people to be the worst of the worst because they had turned against their own people and essentially had become traitors.
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So Zacchaeus was a man who had sinned against the
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Jewish people. He had sinned against his family name. He had brought shame upon himself and upon his house.
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Jesus comes into town. Jesus sees this little man up in a tree. Why did he want to see
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Jesus? We're not told, but I imagine because God was already working on his heart. He was looking for some way to find his repentance, some way to find his salvation.
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And he hears about this man, this Messiah, who's coming to town.
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And he runs out and he finds himself in a tree and he looks down and Jesus looks up. And I can't imagine the joy, but also the fear in Zacchaeus when
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Jesus' eyes met his. And he said, I'm going to stay at your house.
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Y 'all ready to have Jesus come stay at your house? I'd say I need 10 minutes to clean up.
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Zacchaeus received him with joy, but the people did not because they knew who
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Zacchaeus was. Now, here's what's interesting about verse 8.
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Verse 8 jumps ahead in the story, and we don't know how long. We don't know how long it took to get to Zacchaeus' house.
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We don't know how long Jesus was there with him, sharing with him the truth of the gospel. We don't know how long
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Jesus spent explaining to him his sins. We don't even know if Jesus had to. He probably recognized his sin.
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Everybody in town told him he was a sinner. He knew he was a sinner. But being in the presence of Christ for however long it was produced in Zacchaeus a genuine repentance.
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And how do we know? Because it says,
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And Zacchaeus stood and said to the Lord, Behold, Lord, the half of my goods
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I give to the poor. And if I have defrauded anyone of anything,
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I restore it four times as much.
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You understand? That was what the law required.
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Fourfold solution to theft. So he takes and he understands his theft.
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He understands it as fraud. He calls it fraud. If I have defrauded anyone, I will restore it fourfold.
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And Jesus said to him, Today, salvation has come to this house since he is also a son of Abraham.
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For the son of man came to seek and to save the lost.
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Zacchaeus started that day as a lost man. He had an encounter with the
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Lord Jesus Christ and it changed his life. And that life change was accompanied by genuine repentance.
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And Jesus said, salvation has come to this house. Beloved, this is genuine repentance.
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In Matthew, chapter three, verse eight, John the Baptist told the Pharisees and the Sadducees bear fruit in keeping with repentance.
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What are the fruits of repentance? What have we learned today? The fruits of repentance are a serious desire to accept responsibility, to hate sin, to fear
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God and to yearn for restoration. And a sad reality in the modern church is that rather than repent of sin, many people rather choose to run from responsibility, run from confrontation, run from restoration.
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And that's the very thing repentance should bring about in our heart, a desire for those things.
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If we are not serious about our sin, serious about having offended God and serious about being restored, then it's likely that we're not serious about repentance.
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So now, as I close, I want you to understand my goal today is not to place upon you a weight too burdensome for you to carry.
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But to remind you that genuine repentance bears fruit. And to ask ourselves the question.
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Have we, when confronted with our sin, had a desire to repent?
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Or rather, a desire to run away. To ignore, to blame, beloved.
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There is a godly grief that leads to repentance. But there's a worldly grief that leads to death.
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Next week we're going to look at some of those people. You can probably already think about who they are in your mind. People in scripture who had a worldly grief but not a godly repentance and it led to death.
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May that not be us. May we have a genuine repentance which leads to life.