Repentance From Root of Sin — Zac Poonen

The Source of Every Good and Perfect Gift

Nothing good and perfect can come from man. Every good and perfect gift comes from above, from the Father of Light, with whom there is no variableness, no shadow of turning. Therefore, we are not deceived this morning.

We do not believe that anything good and perfect can come to us, even from the best of men. We believe it only comes from Thee, and when it comes, we shall give Thee the glory. Be glorified in our midst, Father.

We look into Your Word. Your Spirit has written this Word, and we cannot understand it apart from the enlightenment of Your Spirit. Give us that light this morning. We humble ourselves. We acknowledge our foolishness and stupidity when it comes to spiritual things.

We pray that You will give us light. You give grace to the humble. You give light to those who are in darkness. You open blind eyes, even today. Spirit of God, move in our midst. We pray. We trust You.

Your name be glorified right from the first meeting through to the end. We ask in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. Basically, what I want to speak to you this morning and throughout these days is concerning the New Covenant.

Discovering Life Under the New Covenant

I was born again 41 years ago, and I was baptized about nearly 40 years ago. But for nearly 14 or 15 years after I was born again and baptized, I never understood the New Covenant. I thought I knew it.

I thought everyone who is born again is a New Testament Christian. But my experience was Old Testament. Even though I believed in Jesus, I lived under the law. And everything that was characteristic of people under the Old Covenant was characteristic of me.

And when I compared my life with people in the Old Testament, I think theirs was better. I didn't realize the seriousness of that, because the Bible says that the law came by Moses, grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.

Moses was the mediator of the Old Covenant, we read in Hebrews. Jesus was the mediator of the New Covenant. And if Moses could raise people to such a height in the Old Covenant as attained by people like Elijah, Elisha, John the Baptist, was Jesus supposed to raise me higher or lower?

And yet when I compared my life with the life of Elijah, John the Baptist, Moses, their devotion to God, their sacrificial life, their freedom from the love of material things, I was far, far behind. If I was honest, I had to acknowledge that.

And I realized that a lot of Christians were like that too. I was a young Christian, and I could not go beyond the Old Covenant, because my leaders had not gone beyond the Old Covenant. They had not experienced New Covenant life either.

Water cannot rise higher than its source. If you fill water up in a tank, you can never have a tap or a faucet above the level of that tank. Water will never rise above that, and so with a leader. A leader cannot lead others beyond where he is himself.

And if somebody in a church goes beyond his leader, it's because he has not followed his leader, but he's decided to follow Jesus and the Scriptures. And I realized I had to do that, and I sought the Lord, and I dug into his Word, and God showed me things that my leaders could not, and led me to something that transformed my whole life, led me to true life in the Holy Spirit.

And by that, I do not mean the excesses and extremes that we see in the name of the Holy Spirit today. Today when we hear about the Holy Spirit, or the fullness of the Holy Spirit, people immediately connect that with Pentecostal Christianity or Charismatic Christianity.

I have never been a member of a Pentecostal or Charismatic Church, and I don't consider myself a Pentecostal or Charismatic. And I believe there is a life in the Holy Spirit which has been abused and counterfeited by a lot of Christians today.

But to me, the Spirit-filled life is the life of Jesus Christ. The way he lived is a demonstration to us of what it means to be a Spirit-filled man. And I saw that, and I wanted it. I longed for it.

I knew that God didn't taunt me by presenting Christ as an example. Jesus did not say, follow me, meaninglessly. He meant it. We could follow him, if we were willing to pay the price. There is a price to be paid.

If I only want to go to heaven when I die, well, you don't have to follow Jesus. Just come to the cross, like we sing in that song, nothing in my hands I bring, simply to thy cross I cling. Salvation is not of works, it is by grace, through faith.

Conversion, Discipleship, and the Body of Christ

But even that, I think there is a lot of shallowness in today's conversion. Jesus said, go and make disciples of all nations. And I question a person who says he is converted, but who says he has no desire to follow the Lord, or does not show any indication of wanting to follow Jesus Christ in daily life.

Can a man be a convert, not a disciple? Can a man accept Christ in order to go to heaven, but has no desire to live for God on earth? I question that. And it's when conversion is shallow like that, that we have problems in the church.

We want to build a church as the body of Jesus Christ, but it's got to start with proper converts. I believe a lot of evangelism today are actually not proper births. The converts that are coming out of a lot of evangelism today are not births, but miscarriages.

Evangelists are in a hurry to get converts, and they want to pull babies out of the womb when they've been there only three months. What are you going to get? Not a baby, a miscarriage. And of course, you can have a lot more babies if you're going to pull them out after three months in the womb.

They're not going to survive. And so you have this pathetic situation today in a lot of churches, where people think they're born again. But they're not. Or they're premature, even if they are alive. And if you have a bunch of babies in a church, all premature, born at six months or something like that, they're going to have problems right from birth.

And that's the situation. That's the headache of a lot of pastors. Sometimes the pastors themselves are premature births. They can't lead anybody further. But God's order in nature is for a certain period that a baby has to be in a womb, and there is a time for it to be born.

And I, for one, don't want to hasten that process and get a premature birth, either in the natural realm or in the spiritual. And having followed that through many years now in many churches that God's raised up in India, where we have never sought for numbers, and where we have never sought to get people somehow into our church, or to grab people from some other church, having no interest in that.

No interest in hiring people into baptism, but willing to wait for people to be born, full term, in God's time. We've seen what it means to build the body of Jesus Christ, without strife. Where the primary mark is not anything external, but what Jesus said, that we love one another as he loved us.

This is the church Jesus is interested in building. And that's possible only if we come into a New Covenant life. And so I want to begin considering that, and leading up to everything that there is in the New Covenant, with Luke chapter 3, first of all.

John the Baptist and the Preparation for Christ

In Luke chapter 3, we read of people who, of someone who was sent by God in preparation to prepare the way for Jesus Christ. And that was John the Baptist. And here we read about the ministry of John the Baptist in a few verses, 1 to 18, or 1 to 20.

And why is the ministry of John the Baptist important? Because it says, he was the voice, verse 4, of one crying in the wilderness, prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his path straight. What did he come to do?

He came to prepare the way for the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. To prepare Israel for the coming of Jesus Christ. Prepare the road, we can say. And his ministry is important, because I believe that's the ministry we need to listen to.

To prepare the way for Jesus to come into our hearts. Just like he prepared the way for Jesus to come into Israel. It wasn't unnecessary. His ministry was not unnecessary. It was very important. He was, Jesus said, he was the greatest prophet in the history of humanity.

He said that in Matthew 11. He was not a man, not only the greatest prophet, but the greatest man born of women. From the time of Cain, who was the first man born of woman, from Adam's time, right up to Jesus Christ, the greatest man born was John the Baptist.

And he had a particular ministry, which was very important. Almighty God felt there was no way that the Lord Jesus could come to Israel without John the Baptist preparing the people for the coming of Christ.

And there's no way we can receive Christ into our life without listening to the message of John the Baptist. And in a sense, that message was the message the apostles preached to unbelievers too. John the Baptist's message was a message of repentance.

There are many, many people who have come, joined our church, our many churches in India, who were in other churches before. We've never asked them to leave. They've come on their own. In 25 years, I've never asked anybody to join my church.

It's not my business. I believe it's the Lord, as it says in Acts 2 .38, the Lord added to the church those who should be saved. And I believe that adding to the church is the Lord's business and not mine.

But like Jesus said, him that cometh to me, I'll never cast out. And the Lord is in our church, and those who come to us, we don't cast out. But we don't seek to go and steal sheep. Most of them are goats in any case, so there's no question of stealing a sheep.

They come and become sheep after they come to us. But what many of these people who thought they were sheep out in those churches, when they've come to us, and after sitting in our midst for two or three years, some of them have come to me years later and said, Brother Zach, you know, I wonder whether I was really born again in those days, when I thought I was.

I really never understood what repentance meant until I came here. And can you be born again without repentance? Is the ministry of John the Baptist unnecessary? No. Very important. Without repentance, there can be no salvation.

Repentance as the Missing Element in the Gospel

If any of you think that you were born again without repentance, you're deceiving yourself. The tragedy of a lot of preaching today is, in Christendom, I'm talking about evangelical Christendom. I'm not talking about liberal Christianity that doesn't preach the new birth at all.

I'm talking about evangelical Christendom, and I've heard, been exposed to a lot of it in the last forty years, of all the great preachers across the world. And I see the missing element is repentance.

You know what they all preach? Non-charismatics and charismatics, anti-charismatics and charismatics? They preach, believe. That's all. Believe. You know that song, To God be the glory, great things he hath done?

I'm sure we all know that. Have you noticed one line in that? The vilest offender who truly believes that moment from Jesus, a pardon receives. I don't believe it. Doesn't he have to repent, this vilest offender?

Does he have to believe? Is that all? You see, our singing can lead us astray. The vilest offender who truly believes that moment from Jesus, a pardon receives. I don't believe it. John the Baptist didn't preach that.

Jesus didn't preach that. The apostles didn't preach that. It's not found anywhere in the New Testament. But it's there. But people may say, well, what the songwriter means by truly believes is that he repents and believes.

But that's got to be spelt out to somebody who doesn't know what was in the songwriter's mind. And that's got to be spelt out to somebody who doesn't know the Bible. See, we're preaching in a country where people don't know anything about the Bible.

And you tell them, the vilest offender who truly believes that moment from Jesus, a pardon receives, he says, he thinks, I've only got to believe. I've got to believe that Jesus died for my sins. I remember once, two of us went to witness to a Hindu man.

And after giving him the gospel, we asked him, would you like to receive Christ now? He said, sure. I'm ready. And just before we spoke to him, before we prayed with him, the brother who was with me, I asked him, would you like to say something before we pray?

And he said, I don't know why it is, but the word Saraswati keeps ringing in my mind. See, Saraswati is the name of a Hindu God. And he asked him, does it mean anything? And that man said, oh yes. Saraswati is the God I worship.

So I said, well, I presume you're going to give her up to the female goddess. I presume you're going to give her up now that you accept Jesus Christ. He said, oh no. I want to accept Jesus Christ too.

In addition, he wanted Jesus in addition to all the gods he was worshipping. He believed. He hadn't repented. In repentance you give up something. And I believe a lot of Christians are in that position.

The God a lot of Christians may be worshipping may not be Saraswati. It may be money. Do I have to stop loving money before I receive Jesus Christ? It's not spelt out in a lot of gospel preaching. Jesus made that clear to the rich young ruler.

Today, we have multitudes of people who love money, who think they are born again. How in the world did that happen? It would be like having a multitude of believers in the church who worship Saraswati and worship Jesus Christ.

There's no difference. Absolutely no difference. What is repentance? Repentance is a turning from idols to the living God. I want to come back to Luke chapter 3 and I want to turn to this verse in 1 Thessalonians and chapter 1.

In 1 Thessalonians chapter 1 is a definition of repentance, which I think is one of the finest definitions of repentance in the entire Bible. And he speaks there about how when Paul came to Thessalonica, he says about what they did.

He says, when we came to you, they testify, verse 9, they themselves show of what manner of entering in we had unto you. And listen to this. Here is the definition of repentance. How he turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God.

You want a definition of repentance? Turning to God from idols. And that idol may be Saraswati, or money, or pleasure, or yourself, or anything, whatever it is. There are many idols, and the invisible idols are more dangerous than the visible ones.

The visible idols are easy to recognize. You would never think of a man as a Christian who in the morning bows down before some heathen idol and then reads the Bible. You wouldn't call him a Christian.

But there are lots of people who think they are Christians who bow at the idol of Mammon and think they are following Jesus Christ. Or bow at the idol of pleasure and self-centeredness, seeking to follow Jesus.

What is the missing element? Repentance. Oh, they believe all right. They believe everything. Everything from Genesis to Revelation. They believe it. They even use the right translation. They are not born again.

That's their problem. They believe everything that's written in the scriptures. And do you know that the devil believes everything that's written in the scriptures? If you make a doctrinal statement, the devil will be able to sign it.

Because he agrees with all of it. The Bible says the demons believe and they tremble. They do more than a lot of evangelical Christians. They believe and tremble. Many Christians only believe. It doesn't save the demons, and it won't save anybody else.

What is it that the demons lack to their intellectual faith? They've got a lot of intellectual faith. They know the answers to a lot of things in the scriptures. What they lack is repentance. The thing that can make their faith different from the faith of the demons is repentance.

If that's not there, our faith is no better than the faith of a demon. In fact, it may be less, because the demons believe and tremble. And we may believe and not tremble. Turning to God from every idol, in order to spend the rest of my life, not serving myself, not serving money, not serving what other people, not serving people, seeking to please them, not serving the traditions I have inherited from my forefathers, not seeking to please men or pastors or some church group, but serving the living and true God.

That is repentance. And anything less than that is not repentance, whatever else you may call it. This is repentance, which leads to true faith. And when a person turns like this, to serve the living and true God, then like it says in the next verse, he can wait for his son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead.

Any other type of waiting is not going to make us ready for the rapture. It's not going to make us ready for the coming of his son. There is only one way to wait for his son from heaven, according to these two verses, only one way.

And that is by turning to God from everything I have worshipped in my life, to serve the living and true God. Young people who are interested in marrying someone, when they come to God, they must say, Lord, you can take away that person I was interested in marrying.

I am not interested in that now. That person could be an idol. If you don't give up that idol, you can't become a Christian, because he or she may not be interested in turning from idols to serve the living and true God and to wait for his son from heaven.

And if you get married to that person, you're going to have a problem. A lot of things to give up. People can be idols. Your girlfriend can be an idol. Your boyfriend can be an idol. Money can be an idol.

Your job can be an idol. Your property can be an idol. Your car can be an idol. Your house can be an idol. Your ambitions, what you want to be in the future, can be an idol. I had ambitions as a young man of nineteen.

Great ambitions in the world. And I knew I had to sacrifice all of them on the altar, not most of them, all of them, if I wanted to wait for his son from heaven, if I wanted to serve the living and true God.

Repentance. Many, many Christians do not enter into the New Covenant because they don't repent. The Old Testament prophets preached about repentance, but not as much as we find in the New Testament. The Old Testament, if you read, there's very little emphasis on repentance.

It is mostly on circumcision and, you know, keeping the Sabbath and things like that. But they spoke a lot about idolatry, but the idolatry they spoke of in the Old Testament was the visible idols. But in the New Testament, it's those invisible idols that keep us away from God.

The Word of God Comes to the Humble

Now, let's turn back to Luke chapter 3 and see what it says there. About this ministry of John the Baptist, we read here in Luke's Gospel, chapter 3, verse 1. Now, this is a very interesting passage here, because I see something wonderful here about the New Covenant too.

In the 15th year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, now I want you to see all these great men in the secular world and all these great men in the religious world. By religious world, I don't mean heathen religions.

There is no mention here about leaders of heathen religions, and there were a lot of heathen religions in the world at that time. It was only the leaders of the true religion of the Jewish people, of Israel.

Leaders of the secular world, the greatest superpower in the world at that time was Rome. And so the name of Tiberius Caesar comes first, the one and only superpower in the world at that time. And his, the rulers underneath him, and the one and only true religion there was in that time was in Israel.

And the leaders of that are mentioned here. Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate, Herod, Philip, Tetrarch of Aetoria, and Lysanias. Here are the great secular leaders of that time mentioned in verse 1. Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate, Herod, Philip, Lysanias.

And then the great secular leaders, the great religious leaders of that time, Annas and Caiaphas. And now read this. The word of God bypassed all these great leaders, secular and religious, and came to an unknown man in the wilderness, called John the Baptist.

That's how the word of God comes today. That which is great in the eyes of men, Luke 16, 15 says is an abomination in the eyes of God. God doesn't care for great secular leaders who claim to be born again.

He doesn't care for great bishops and archbishops and popes who claim to have to be religious authorities. The word of God bypasses all of them and comes to unknown godly people who are despised by all these secular and religious leaders, but who seek God with prayer and fasting in the wilderness.

And that means it doesn't have to be a physical wilderness, but they get alone with God somewhere and they meet with Him. And the word of God comes to them. The anointing of the Holy Spirit comes upon them.

It wasn't any of these people who were filled with the Holy Spirit. It was John the Baptist. And he did not need any advertising campaign to get people to listen to him. God made sure that that voice in the wilderness would be heard, not by everyone, but by those who needed to hear it, those who were sincerely seeking after God in that nation of Israel, would somehow or the other know that there was a prophet in Judea.

Someone would, it would reach their ears. God is sovereign. Out of all the hundreds of thousands of people in Israel, God could sovereignly make sure that every God-fearing person would hear about a prophet in Judea.

It's not difficult for God. He does the same today. One of the prayers we prayed when we began as a little group of, we started with two and twenty-five years ago, and one of the prayers we prayed through the years, we never prayed the Lord would increase our numbers, but we prayed, Lord, if there's anyone in this area around us, where we live in our city, who is seeking after God, who is seeking for a godly life, please lead him to us in some sovereign way.

Maybe through a book, maybe through a tape, maybe through an accidental meeting in a bus, which is not so accidental, or in a train, or in a shop, or somewhere. Bring him in touch with us, or bring us in touch with him.

And if you don't do either of those two, please tell us what's wrong with us, so that we can set it right, so that we can be the type of church that you can recommend to someone who is seeking a godly life in this locality.

I've said to the elders of the thirty or forty churches that now God has raised up over the last twenty years, I said, if there is someone in your locality, like Job, a perfect and an upright man who fears God and turns away from evil, one whom God can point out to Satan, a God-fearing man who lives in your locality and who joins some other church, you need to ask God why.

What's wrong with your church? Why did God recommend some other church to that godly man? Why did he lead that man to another church? I would fall on my face, I'll tell you honestly. If I met a godly man in our city, who didn't become a part of our church, I would fall on my face before God and weep and repent and say, Lord, show me what's wrong with us, what's wrong with me.

We've sought God many times like that, and many times the Lord has said to us, you are too legalistic. In avoiding worldliness, you become legalistic. You're farisic, you look down on others, you're cold, you're not warm to sinners like Jesus was.

Jesus was a friend of sinners and we have repented. And as we have repented through the years, God has brought us in touch with people, some of the finest people I could ever have met in the nation of India.

Not only in India, in other parts of the world. That's God. He bypasses all these secular leaders and religious leaders in that time and even today. You can make the list of today, the list would be a little different, it's not Caesar and Pontius Pilate today, the list of the great men in the world, make them, make the list as long as you like and then make the list of the great well-known popes and evangelists and bishops and everybody else and the word of God will bypass all of these great men and come to some humble unknown man somewhere.

That's God's way. Just the same. Today we know about John the Baptist, that day nobody knew about him. John, somebody called the preacher John and Judea, no, never heard of him. That's how it was. Today the whole world knows about him.

Why do I say that? Some of you who are in lonely places, seeking to be a pure testimony for Christ, it's easy to be discouraged. We were very, very lonely when we started. But if you're in touch with God and you're sincere and you've turned from idols and you want to discover any other idol in your life that you need to give up and you're ready to give up, ready to serve the true and living God, God has amazing ways of leading to you, those who are seeking for a godly life.

It says all those in the region of Judea walked all the way to the wilderness to listen to John. Did he have an advertising campaign? Were there posters on the streets of Jerusalem that there's a man preaching the wilderness?

No. God made sure that they heard. Not everyone, those who were seeking a godly life, those who were seeking after godliness. And what did he preach to them? Repentance. And he came into all the country of Bag Jordan, verse 3, preaching the baptism of repentance for the remission of sin.

His message was repentance. That was his basic theme. If you went and heard him next week, he'd be preaching repentance again. He wasn't ashamed of preaching the same message. He preached repentance because people needed to repent.

And he spoke about various areas where people needed to repent. Through the years I've discovered that repentance is not something that I start with in the Christian life. It's not like learning addition and say, well, I've finished with addition.

Can we go on to multiplication now? It's not like that. Repentance is something which I need all through my life. And it's something we start with, repent, in the first gospel message that the Apostle Peter preached on the day of Pentecost.

What was his message after proclaiming Christ when we read there in the Acts of the Apostles, chapter 2, that the people said, what shall we do? And Peter said, repent. That was his first word. The very first word when people responded, what shall we do?

He said, repent. He didn't say believe. That came afterwards. The Apostle Paul says in Acts, chapter 20, that wherever he went, among Jews or Gentiles, he preached repentance toward God. Acts 20, verse 21, testifying both to the Jews and also to the Greeks.

Repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ. Two sides of a coin. Repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ. If you get a coin or a currency note printed only on one side, it's a counterfeit.

You wouldn't accept it. It's not valid currency. It's got to have something printed on the other side too. A gospel message with only faith is a counterfeit gospel. Equally, a gospel message with only repentance is also a counterfeit gospel.

It's repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. So if you've got only faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, no repentance, it's a counterfeit. Whatever gospel you receive is a counterfeit. Now, I'm not saying faith is not important, but because faith has been emphasized so much, I can speak a little more about that later, another session perhaps, but it's because faith has been overemphasized to the point where it has become counterfeit, faith, in most cases, that I believe there's a great need for the message of repentance.

Repentance Makes the Crooked Straight

And so that's what John the Baptist preached. And what did he say? As it is written, he said in the book of words of Isaiah the prophet, in Luke chapter 3, verse 4,. And there we have a little picture of repentance.

Repentance is lifting up the mountains, making the crooked straight, and making the rough ways smooth. That's God's work, God's purpose in our salvation. There are valleys in our life, there are mountains, there are crooked ways, there are rough places.

And repentance is to say, Lord, I want all these areas in my life dealt with. There are deep valleys caused by sin of many, many types. They need to be filled up. There are mountains caused by, produced by arrogance and pride, considering ourselves superior to others.

There's a lot of this considering ourselves superior to others, because of our race, because of our color, our intelligence, our wealth, our Bible knowledge, our traditions, and many other stupid things like that.

Mountains, repentance will bring them low. Crooked roads, unrighteousness in money matters, lies that we have spoken, the way we have taken advantage of others, crooked things in our life, which nobody knows, perhaps even your wife doesn't know, that need to be made straight.

Rough places, the way we hurt others with our words, the roughness in our life, scrapes others to be made smooth. A lot of things to be set right. And when we acknowledge, the first step to repentance is acknowledgement, Lord, that's true.

There are deep valleys of sin in my life caused by lust and yielding to the passions, sinful passions in my body, dirty habits that have dug deep valleys in my life, which were smooth level ground once upon a time when I was born as a baby.

But lust has dug and dug and dug and dug, and some of them, some of those valleys are so deep today. Can Jesus level them up? He certainly can. But you got to acknowledge that there's a valley there. You got to repent and say, Lord, I'm sorry for the way I've lived, that beautiful life you gave me when I was born as a baby, innocent and sweet.

I've corrupted and made such a deep valley with my lust and my passions. There are mountains, which was a lovely smooth ground when I was born as a baby, but I've built a mountain with my arrogance and my pride and my feelings of superiority, any type of superiority, race superiority, national superiority, religious superiority, whatever garbage you want to call it.

It's all trash. It's a mountain of trash, but I think it's a mountain of gold. That's how stupid man can get. And God says, it's got to be reduced. There's no way. It says here, it's only when all that is done that all flesh will see the salvation of God, verse 6.

Otherwise, all flesh will not see the salvation of God. They will see a Christianity in you which does not reflect Jesus Christ. Repentance is necessary. In the 1960s and 70s, we used to see a lot of people in India, who came from the United States and other countries, who were hippies.

They came seeking salvation in Eastern religion, and in transcendental meditation, and in the theories of the New Age. And they came to India. I used to see them in the trains. Initially, I thought they were very, probably poor people.

But I discovered many of them came from very wealthy families. I mean, they dressed like beggars, but they were very rich. And they came, many of them, from Christian homes. And they had rejected, not Christ.

They had rejected the Christ they had seen in their parents. They had rejected the Christ they had seen in their churches in Western land. They had rejected the materialistic, money-loving, prosperous Christ they had seen in Western land.

That was a caricature of the real Christ. I had never been to the West, and I didn't know much about what was here. But I wanted to learn a lesson for myself. Why is it that our Christianity does not reflect Christ more?

It's because we have not allowed repentance to deal with all these things. The message of Jesus, the last message of Jesus, in the Bible, is found in the book of Revelation. To the leaders, to the messengers, what's mentioned as angels there, means the messengers of the churches.

Messengers who had left their first love. There's no angel in heaven who has left his first love. Messengers who had a name that they were alive, but they were dead. Churches that had lost their first love.

Churches that were lukewarm, in Revelation chapter 2 and 3. Five out of those seven churches were backslidden. Five out of those seven churches, leaders, the leaders were backslidden. And the message of the Lord to all of them was the same.

Repent. To all five churches, his message was repent. No, it was not to the unbeliever. When Jesus was on earth, he was preaching to the unbeliever. Saying, repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand. John the Baptist said, repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand.

Peter preached that on the day of Pentecost to the unbeliever. Repent, you fellows, you unconverted people, repent. Paul preached that to the Jews and the Gentiles who were unconverted. Repent. But now, after sixty years of Christianity, in 95 A .D., in the book of Revelation is written, Jesus is now preaching that message to Christians in the churches.