Repentance - Part 1 — David Smithers

I'll give the shortened version to this since we've been here a while. I'm just so grateful for everybody's participation. Doesn't it make a huge difference when the body gets involved in worship? Amen.

The Glory of King Jesus Demands Repentance

We each have a part to play. Last night we talked about how the glory and majesty of King Jesus demands a response, didn't we? The glory of Christ demands a response. We talked about worship. I think we gave the Lord a response this evening, didn't we?

Praise God. I just hope we grow in that. Tonight I want to talk about how the glory and majesty of King Jesus demands another response. And we're going to talk about repentance. Repentance. Isaiah 6 is a good example that Megan quoted.

Isaiah’s Vision of Holiness and Conviction

Isaiah, this holy prophet of God, gets in the presence of the Lord. He sees the king high and lifted up. And he has to respond. He says, Woe is me, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell among a people of unclean lips.

That's a response, isn't it? When we really get before a holy God, we suddenly see ourself, our own heart in a way that we've never seen it before. And so you guys, I just want to talk a little bit about this, about how the kingdom of God, if we're going to be messengers of the king, if we're going to be messengers of God's kingdom, we must, we must preach repentance.

We must apply repentance to our own heart. Amen? God, you guys, we cannot preach the gospel accurately and biblically without preaching repentance. And we're going to go through some verses to really reveal that.

And I cannot emphasize enough, if somebody has given you a concept of sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ, which does not have repentance involved in it, it is not the same gospel that Jesus preached. I love the message of repentance, don't you?

Can you say that or do you go, I don't know if I do or not. Do you love the message of repentance? There's a great little book over here. There's a great little book over here. Called by Basilia Schlink and it's called The Repentance, The Joy-Filled Life.

Personal Deliverance Through Repentance

I'm so grateful to the Lord Jesus Christ when He started about 20 years ago, got a hold of my heart, started putting a squeeze in my heart, and He started getting me along, nobody was preaching to me, nobody was talking to me, nobody had got me in a Bible study, but He started showing me a list of all my favorite sins.

All the things that I drew my significance from, all the things I trusted in to give me joy and pleasure and delight. And He started to show me these things. He said, David, will you let go of these things?

Will you let me be the king of your life? For six weeks I looked at that list and scratched one thing off after another until I got to the point where I said, God, I don't care what I have, what I don't have, I've got to have you as king in my life.

At that moment, I was wonderfully and radically saved. And you guys, instantly, instantly delivered from some addictive sin patterns and habits that I had sowed in my life for years, for almost a decade.

I was delivered instantly from those things. Everything? No. But in such huge areas of my life that I knew He was king, I knew He was in control, and I knew He could handle whatever else was going on in my life in the days ahead.

Amen? Have you had that kind of experience with the Lord Jesus Christ? Where He is king, where He subdues things in your life. Where He delivers you from things. Where you know He's king, where He rules and reigns, and you can stand up straight and square your shoulders and look somebody in the eye and say, I know that God can set you free from that, because He set me free from that.

You guys, that is a message of hope. What are you going to share with the lost and dying world? Something your Sunday school teacher taught you? Second-hand religion? Half-baked leftovers? Or something that's alive and real in your life?

You don't know how many of you college guys over the last several years have pulled me aside, now tell me, brother, tell me, can you really be free from this? You know what I'm talking about, you guys?

Ladies, whatever the issues are, and it is wonderful, it is wonderful when you can look people in the eye and you can say with perfect confidence, yes. Boy, what hope that brings. I remember when God did a special work in my life about 12 years ago, I was sitting in the Park Honda Pratt's grocery store on the south side of Oklahoma City, and I got a hold of my heart, and I was so heart sick over the fact that there was some stuff in my life that was not right.

And I was there just weeping, and I said, God, make me a holy man so I can go to others and tell them that they too can be set apart, exclusively reserved for the delight and pleasure of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Holiness as Betrothal to Christ

Amen? The call to holiness, the call to repentance, is a call to be betrothed to the Lamb of God, to be married to Jesus. Ladies, don't you want a man that is exclusively set aside, reserved, pure, and set apart for your love and your love only?

Men, isn't that what you want from a woman? Doesn't the Lord Jesus Christ deserve just as much? When you get before the King and you see His love, and oh, does He love us, you guys? He loves us passionately.

He loves us. I just had such a sense, standing back there, that God was brooding over different ones of you, and He is so desiring your heart. He wants to meet places that you didn't even know need to be met.

He wants to touch you in such a special way. But we have stuff in our life, places where we will not say yes to Him yet, and we can't even get the thing that our heart is longing for, the love and mercy and intimacy of Jesus.

Does that make sense to you guys? What we trust in is King. Did you know that? What we trust in is King. When we trust in temporal pleasures, when we trust in sensuality, all kinds of things, when we trust in those things to drive some pleasure or sense of significance, some joy, rather than trusting in the Lord Jesus Christ, that reveals that those things are King to us and not the Lord.

What are we trusting in, you guys, this evening? The coming of the Kingdom of God demands biblical repentance. The message of repentance is a clarion call to abandon our self-serving ways and relinquish complete, absolute control of our lives to the King Jesus.

Repentance as Submission to the Kingdom

Repentance is choosing to be ruled by the sovereign authority of the Kingdom of God. Repentance is a willingness of heart to submit and obey our King in all things. Repentance is a 180 degree turn, a changing of loyalties from one king and kingdom to another.

How can we invite people into the Kingdom without saying, Repent? Turn from serving that king to serving this king. Do you see why it's necessary to preach repentance? But you know, if we haven't done it, we don't have authority to preach it, do we?

You can't lead somebody where you haven't been, where you're not going. Repentance is turning away from the kingdom of darkness unto the kingdom of light. Literally, the word repentance means a change of mind.

You're going this direction, and you make a 180 degree turn to go this direction. You're serving your own desires. You're serving your own wants. You're serving your own plans. You're serving your own pleasures.

And then you hear the call of the king. It says, Come, obey me, serve me, love me. You belong to me. Be married to me. And that call awakens something in your heart. It stirs a measure of faith, a measure of hope, and you turn and say, Yes, Jesus, I will follow you and go this way.

That's what repentance is. I'll give the shortened version to this since we've been here a while. I'm just so grateful for everybody's participation. Doesn't it make a huge difference when the body gets involved in worship?

Amen. We each have a part to play. Last night we talked about how the glory and majesty of King Jesus demands a response, didn't we? The glory of Christ demands a response. We talked about worship. I think we gave the Lord a response this evening, didn't we?

Praise God. I just hope we grow in that. Tonight I want to talk about how the glory and majesty of King Jesus demands another response. And we're going to talk about repentance. Repentance. Isaiah 6 is a good example that Megan quoted.

Repentance and the Call to Follow Jesus

Isaiah, this holy prophet of God, gets in the presence of the Lord. He sees the king high and lifted up. And he has to respond. He says, Woe is me for I am a man of unclean lips. And I dwell among a people of unclean lips.

That's a response, isn't it? When we really get before a holy God, we suddenly see ourself, our own heart in a way that we've never seen it before. And so you guys, I just want to talk a little bit about this, about how the kingdom of God, if we're going to be messengers of the king, if we're going to be messengers of God's kingdom, we must, we must preach repentance.

We must apply repentance to our own heart. Amen? God, you guys, we cannot preach the gospel accurately and biblically without preaching repentance. And we're going to go through some verses to really reveal that.

And I cannot emphasize enough, if somebody has given you a concept of sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ, which does not have repentance involved in it, it is not the same gospel that Jesus preached. I love the message of repentance, don't you?

Can you say that or do you go, I don't know if I do or not. Do you love the message of repentance? There's a great little book over here called, there's a great little book over here, called by Basilia Schlink and it's called The Repentance, The Joy-Filled Life.

I'm so grateful to the Lord Jesus Christ when he started about 20 years ago, got a hold of my heart, started putting a squeeze in my heart, and he started getting me along, nobody was preaching to me, nobody was talking to me, nobody got me in a Bible study, but he started showing me a list of all my favorite sins.

All the things that I drew my significance from, all the things I trusted in, to give me joy and pleasure and delight, and he started to show me these things. He said, David, will you let go of these things?

Will you let me be the king of your life? For six weeks, I looked at that list and scratched one thing off after another, until I got to the point and said, God, I don't care what I have, what I don't have, I've got to have you as king in my life.

At that moment, I was wonderfully and radically saved, and you guys, instantly, instantly delivered from some addictive sin patterns and habits that I had sowed in my life for years, for almost a decade, I was delivered instantly from those things.

Everything? No. But in such huge areas of my life that I knew he was king, I knew he was in control, and I knew he could handle whatever else was going on in my life, in the days ahead. Amen? Have you had that kind of experience with the Lord Jesus Christ?

Where he is king, where he subdues things in your life, where he delivers you from things, where you know he's king, where he rules and reigns, and you can stand up straight and square your shoulders and look somebody in the eye and say, I know that God can set you free from that, because he set me free from that.

You guys, that is a message of hope. What are you going to share with the lost and dying world? Something your Sunday school teacher taught you? Second-hand religion? Half-baked leftovers? Or something that's alive and real in your life?

You don't know how many of you college guys over the last several years have pulled me aside, and now tell me, brother, tell me, can you really be free from this? You know what I'm talking about, you guys.

Ladies, whatever the issues are, and it is wonderful. It is wonderful when you can look people in the eye and you can say with perfect confidence, yes. Boy, what hope that brings. I remember when God did a special work in my life about 12 years ago, I was sitting in the parking lot of Pratt's grocery store on the south side of Oklahoma City, and God got a hold of my heart, and I was so heart sick over the fact that there was some stuff in my life that was not right.

And I was there just weeping, and I said, God, make me a holy man so I can go to others and tell them that they too can be set apart, exclusively reserved for the delight and pleasure of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Amen? The call to holiness, the call to repentance, is a call to be betrothed to the Lamb of God, to be married to Jesus. Ladies, don't you want a man that is exclusively set aside, reserved, pure, and set apart for your love and your love only?

Men, isn't that what you want from a woman? Doesn't the Lord Jesus Christ deserve just as much? When you get before the king and you see his love, and oh, does he love us, you guys? He loves us passionately.

He loves us. He's so, you know, I just had such a sense standing back there that God was brooding over different ones of you, and he is so desiring your heart. He wants to meet places that you didn't even know need to be met.

He wants to touch you in such a special way. But we have stuff in our life that were places where we will not say yes to him yet, and we can't even get the thing that our heart is longing for, the love and mercy and intimacy of Jesus.

Does that make sense to you guys? What we trust in is king. Did you know that? What we trust in is king. When we trust in temporal pleasures, when we trust in sensuality, all kinds of things, when we trust in those things to drive some pleasure or sense of significance, some joy, rather than trusting in the Lord Jesus Christ, that reveals that those things are king to us and not the Lord.

What are we trusting in, you guys, this evening? The coming of the kingdom of God demands biblical repentance. The message of repentance is a clarion call to abandon our self-serving ways and relinquish complete, absolute control of our lives to the King Jesus.

Repentance is choosing to be ruled by the sovereign authority of the kingdom of God. Repentance is a willingness of heart to submit and obey our King in all things. Repentance is a 180 degree turn, a changing of loyalties from one king and kingdom to another.

How can we invite people into the kingdom without saying, Turn from serving that king to serving this king. Do you see why it's necessary to preach repentance? But you know, if we haven't done it, we don't have authority to preach it, do we?

You can't lead somebody where you haven't been, where you're not going. Repentance is turning away from the kingdom of darkness unto the kingdom of light. Literally, the word repentance means a change of mind.

You're going this direction, and you make a 180 degree turn to go this direction. You're serving your own desires. You're serving your own wants. You're serving your own plans. You're serving your own pleasures.

And then you hear the call of the king. It says, Come, obey me, serve me, love me. You belong to me. Be married to me. And that call awakens something in your heart. It stirs a measure of faith, a measure of hope, and you turn and say, Yes, Jesus, I will follow you and go this way.

That's what repentance is. It's a change of mind that leads to a change of heart that ultimately, by God's grace, leads to a change of action. Do you guys, come on, in this room, does the message of repentance bug you?

If you have a problem with the message of repentance, you've got a serious problem with the king. Matthew 3, 1 -12, is a little episode from the life of John the Baptist, you know, that guy we were talking about last night, that every time Christ shows up, all he can say is, Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

It's Jesus! Oh, I like that. Don't you? Don't you want to be that kind of person? Then when he shows up,.