Repentance (Part 2)

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the

Apostle Paul said, "'But we did not yield in subjection to them "'for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel "'would remain with you.'"

In short, if you like smooth, watered -down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you.

By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her

King. Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry. My name's

Mike Abendroth, especially caffeinated today because I broke my

French press yesterday morning. 20 years, that Bowdoin French press, large glass press served me, and then

I didn't have it, and so I went to Walmart. I'm sorry to admit that I went to Walmart, but I went to Walmart to buy a new one because it's the closest place in town.

Yes, I saw the show about the high cost of cheap living or whatever it's called, and I know it's not the best, and certainly my friends in Santa Cruz, they don't even have one there because they're zoned out.

They did get a Target, though, recently, so, but that's Capitola, not Santa Cruz. Anyway, I went to go buy one sold out, so I got the thing that you put on top of the coffee mug.

It's plastic, I don't know, they have a name for it, but I don't remember the name. I think it's infralapsarian cup, and then

I put the filter on there. I don't really like to filter coffee, and then the ground Peet's coffee, straight from my friends in Lake Tahoe, and then pour the hot water over it, and man, it is amp -ville, it is caffeine -ville.

This is monster drink time, I think. I actually had a monster drink the other day, too.

I don't know why, probably trying to cut calories, and some of the new monsters, the low carb ones don't have aspartame, they have sucralose, so formaldehyde isn't so bad for you.

Only once in a while, though. If you give up soda, what are you supposed to do? So today we're talking about repentance, and I believe it's part two for repentance.

Repentance is a valuable doctrine, a key doctrine, critical doctrine, and since those are all true, you can think of Jesus in the

Great Commission in Luke 24, and preach repentance for the forgiveness of sins, right, to all nations, then certainly it comes to no shock to our system and to our minds, to our theological systems.

This thing's under attack, this thing being repentance. The world hates repentance. We have a new word, tolerate.

Satan hates repentance, and so we do ourselves an injustice if we just forget about repentance and only focus on belief.

I certainly think belief is key, and if you wanna call people to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, I would be very thankful for that, but we must not forget repentance.

I have come to call the righteous, no, Jesus said, I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.

And so today we're gonna continue to talk about this great subject. Some have thought to themselves, what is first, faith or repentance?

Which one is logically prior? A very interesting comment here.

It says that John Murray maintained, this is in his book, page 113, no priority in the act of faith and repentance.

Here's what Murray said. The question has been discussed, which is prior, faith or repentance? It is an unnecessary question, and the insistence that one is prior to the other is futile.

There's no priority. The faith that is unto salvation is a penitent faith. And the repentance that is unto life is a believing repentance.

And I think that is excellent. And so we don't have to set faith and repentance at each other.

They're not enemies. Yes, you say to me, what about 1 Corinthians chapter 15, where it discusses the gospel?

Remember when Paul said, I deliver to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.

And you say, well, it doesn't have the word repentance. Well, we don't need the word repentance there.

Actually, we don't have the word belief there either. Why? Because strictly speaking, to use

Bobnick's terminology, faith and repentance, to believe and to repent, are not part of the gospel.

Think about the law paradigm. Think about law gospel paradigm. Think about the gospel paradigm.

Think about indicatives, statements of fact, imperatives, commands. And so we don't have either, we have neither repentance, nor do we have, well, have my norths and my neithers right?

Neither nor. Remember, I am a product of the

Omaha, Nebraska public school system. And I did find it interesting that while I attended

Master's Seminary, and then later Southern Seminary, I went to an elementary school.

First, Laura Dodge. I think Laura Dodge was some, probably some feministic pioneer in Daniel Websterian education.

Or Dewey, maybe it was Dewey's stepdaughter. Anyway, I went to Master's then,

Master's Elementary School, the Master's Monarchs. So then we go to the,

I think it's the Master's College Mustangs. Isn't that right? I'm not too sure. Let's remember that repentance, that's a bad segue.

Hey, you tried doing this five days a week for five years. In the old days,

I would probably record over that right about now, but hey, we've got to fill up the time, don't we?

Let me just give you an overview of repentance. Calling people to repent in the scriptures.

A little bit from the old, mainly from the new, because I just want you to hear these verses. And so when you hear such an array of verses, you will say to yourself,

I probably should be telling people to repent. And so if you're a Christian and you're preaching the gospel, tell them the good news of what

Jesus has done. And then you tell them the response. You must repent.

You must believe. I hope you say repent and believe. Why don't you just put it into your vernacular? Why don't you just put it into your response to your...

This is a response to the gospel. Just put that in there. Repent and believe. Repent and believe. Just like I like to say, died on the cross and was raised from the dead or the risen savior.

Just get death, burial and resurrection together. Every time you talk about one, talk about the other. And then every time you talk about belief, talk about repentance or vice versa.

So repentance, preach through the ages. And I don't mean Luther, although he did. Calvin, although he did.

Whitefield, although he did. Tyndale, although he did. Et cetera. John.

I want you to hear it in some biblical history. Old Testament Ezekiel.

Ezekiel 14 .6. Therefore say to the house of Israel, thus says the Lord God, repent and turn away from your idols and turn your faces away from all your abominations.

Ezekiel 18 .30. Therefore I will judge you, O house of Israel, each according to his conduct, declares the

Lord God. Repent and turn away from all your transgressions so that iniquity may not become a stumbling block to you.

Repentance is preached, both with the word repent and with the word to turn. John the

Baptist, Matthew 3. Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

I love to ride bicycles. Well, just one at a time. And I love to ride by Scott and Cindy's house and they have lots of kids and they're outside.

Haven't ridden by for a while, but I used to ride by and always shout out, repent for the kingdom of God is at hand.

I have a new one now. You have to switch things up once in a while. Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Jesus preaches repentance.

Mark 1 .15. The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the gospel.

Matthew 4 .17. From that time, Jesus began to preach and say, repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

Matthew 11 .21. Woe to you, Chorazin, woe to you, Bethsaida, for if the miracles had occurred in Tyre and Sidon, which occurred in you, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.

Luke 13. Verse three. I tell you, no, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.

Luke 13 .5. I tell you, no, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.

Remember the passage there in Luke and people thought back in those days with a

Job -like influence, if you sin, you're gonna get it.

Now, ultimately that's true, right? The wages of sin is death. But we're thinking more

John 9 type of theology where this man's born blind, who sinned?

The guy who's blind or his parents? This direct correlation. And sometimes there is a direct correlation, right?

Herod exalts himself, Acts chapter 12, I believe, and then he dies and the worms eat him.

And so these Galileans who were probably in the temple area must have been Passover, so they had access and Pilate's henchmen, the

Jewish henchmen of wicked Pilate, this scoundrel who ruled with an iron fist for 10 years, often murderously, sends his men through the court of the

Gentiles, through the court of the women, into areas where no Gentile is supposed to be. He kills those making sacrifice, mingles their blood, their, the sacrificers' blood with the sacrificed animals' blood.

And the people wanna know, hmm, not a political commentary. Tell me about Pilate, Jesus.

Jesus whacks eloquently about democracy, the Roman invasion, senators.

No, these Galileans were bad, weren't they? And so Jesus then says, I tell you, no.

This is not the right correlation. Galileans did a lot of bad sinning, therefore Pilate got them.

No, unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. In other words, what's the lesson?

When the twin towers fall, our response is sadness, compassion, grief, lots of those are common and right and good responses.

But if you forget the key response, that is, you're going to die one day as well.

It might not be tragic, but it could be. And you need to be ready so you have your sins forgiven, so you can meet

God, so you're not destroyed on judgment day, that is to say, not annihilated, but cast into perdition, cast into the lake of fire, ultimately.

And so remember Jesus in chapter 12 is talking to the folks saying, you know, when you see the certain clouds, you know it's gonna rain.

You feel a certain kind of wind, you know what's coming. You can discern these times, but can you discern tragedy?

People say, well, how could a good God do these things? You know, how, why, what's going on?

Theodicy, why, why, why, why, why? Well, some things you're not gonna be able to solve, but these things should serve as road bumps, speed bumps.

So you say to yourself, I'm going to die. The famous, I don't know the guy's name, driver, actor rather, who died in Valencia, Santa Clarita, kind of the new

James Dean kind of guy. What's the lesson there? Well, there's lots of lessons. Oh, kids, don't drive fast.

Oh, kids, don't do this. Don't do that. Look what fame and fortune will get you. You know, one day you're gonna have to stand before God as well.

That's the response. And then Jesus said the same thing again.

Remember there was a tower and, you know, the first one you might think, well, humans did it.

What about the second one? The second one in Luke chapter 13 is more of least what insurance companies would call an act of what?

God. And this is not pinned on a wicked man's sinful slaughter.

This is maybe the scaffolding wet out. Maybe it's an earthquake. We don't really know, but the

Tower of Siloam falls. And then we have a number of people who die. What's the lesson there?

Now, when you're thinking about the temple, don't you think that'd be a safe place? This tower, safe place.

These towers are supposed to be safe. That's why they're made protection. You're in a safe place and you're doing something that's good and it's a religious sacrifice.

And then you're killed. Are you ready to die? And then you're in a nice safe place.

Let's say you're in, I don't know, Fort Knox. Let's say you're in Annapolis.

Let's say you're at West Point. I don't know what's safe. You're in the White House and you're on a tour.

And then what? So the response to the people that died with the tower falling on them is not, they were really bad and what comes around goes around.

Of course, we all deserve hell. We all deserve judgment, but this is a different context.

This is Job's kind of confounded friend's deal.

That was what the Jewish people were thinking. And Jesus says, no, unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.

Jesus sends out the 12 to preach what? What's their response to the good news?

What do they tell people their response to the good news should be? And they went out and preached that men should,

Mark 6, 12, repent. Ezekiel preaches repentance. John the

Baptist preaches repentance. Jesus preaches repentance. The 12 preach repentance. What about Peter? Any guesses what he's going to preach after the ascension of Christ?

Acts 2, 38, and Peter said to them, repent and let each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins and you shall receive the gift of the

Holy Spirit. Acts 3, 19, repent therefore and return that your sins may be wiped away in order that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the

Lord. Acts 8, verse 22, therefore, any guesses? Repent of this wickedness of yours and pray the

Lord that if possible, the intention of your heart may be forgiven you.

We ought to be preaching repentance. I don't know if they still do it in Russia now, but pre the

Berlin Wall coming down, when you would ask someone in Russia, Soviet Union, when did you believe?

When were you saved? When were you converted? When did the Spirit of God quicken you?

They would give the human response of, I repented on this particular day.

That's common in lots of cultures. Not I believed on, but I repented on such and such a day.

Paul preaches repentance, Acts 17, 30, very familiar passage, therefore, having overlooked the times of ignorance,

God is now declaring to men that all everywhere should repent. Acts 26, 20, but kept declaring both to those of Damascus first and also at Jerusalem, and then throughout all the region of Judea, and even to the

Gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God, performing deeds appropriate to repentance.

You can't get to heaven without repentance. Spurgeon said, repentance is a discovery of the evil of sin, a mourning.

You, there's a you in that mourning, that we have committed it, a resolution to forsake it.

It is in fact, a change of mind of a very deep and practical character, which makes the man love what he once hated and hate what once he loved.

Mike Abenroth here, No Compromise Radio Ministry. You can write me, info at nocompromiseradio .com. If you wanna see our videos, noco90 .com.

Thanks, John, for doing that. J .I. Packer writes, repentance means turning from as much as you know of your sin, to give as much as you know of yourself, to as much as you know of your

God. And as our knowledge grows at these three points, so our practice of repentance has to be enlarged.

Well, what about deathbed repentances? Many talk about this.

I really, in one sense, I understand why it's such an important topic and why people wanna talk about it.

There's a very practical pastoral ministry related component to this.

I think sometimes it's just a seminary question. It's an academic question. It's a like infant kind of question.

But here, there is something to be said for, you've got a loved one and they have not followed

Christ. They have not repented. And they are trusting in works righteousness. They're trusting in religiosity.

They're trusting in a system. They're trusting in an ism. There's trusting in themselves. And you go to them, they're in the

ICU, and you talk to them about Christ. They have not wanted to talk about Christ before.

They have barred you from the subject, but now they're on their deathbed and so they're willing to listen.

Matter of fact, if you go to somebody's hospital room, you should go talk to them about who Jesus is in the response of repentance and belief.

And lots of times if they're even zoned out and they're sleeping or they're, you don't know if they're conscious or not in ICU, well then just talk anyway, just preach away.

Then certainly they're not going to tell you to stop. And I think you'll be glad you did.

But anyway, deathbed repentances. Yes, they are true because we see a couple in scriptures, at least one, the thief on the cross, right?

There are two thieves on the crosses next to Jesus. One thief on one side, one thief on the other side.

And in the middle, Jesus is there on Barabbas's cross, essentially. And both thieves earned their crucifixion.

Both thieves were bad guys. And God grants new life to one of the thieves.

And we hear about Jesus saying to him, today you're going to be with me where?

In paradise. Remember me in your kingdom, the man says. And Jesus says, yes, today.

Today's the day. And so I'm glad there's a deathbed repentance in scripture because when we go to someone's hospital room, when we have a loved one, a mom, dad, brother, sister, spouse, child, it's nice to know that God could still save someone at the end of their life, right?

Jesus's death is that great. God is that magnificent. He has so much righteousness that he could give someone, even on their deathbed, 80 years, 90 years, 969 years of sin.

If Methuselah was not a believer, my guess is he was, but if he wasn't still, and also if he was a believer, 969 years of sin, he still got credit for Christ's righteousness because of what

God did and because of God's love that he has poured out in Christ Jesus. So you're preaching the gospel to people in their deathbed and some do respond.

Now, Pastor Steve would also say that Samson was the other person who repented on their deathbed.

Now, it wasn't a bed, but we have the same idea. So when Samson was saved,

I don't know. When he was regenerated, when he believed,

I don't know. You look at his life early on in the book of Judges, in his account, he's a bad guy.

He doesn't commend himself to the hall of faith from our perspective, but in fact, he is in there.

Hebrews chapter 11, Samson will be in heaven and maybe he was a deathbed repenter. I can grant that to Steve.

I'm not exactly sure he's preached through it. I haven't. And so we're happy. I believe it was

Spurgeon who talked about there's one deathbed repentance in scripture. He was talking about the thief and that is to help us be hopeful, but also to keep us from presumption.

We don't wanna presume that, well, hey, I'm an unbeliever and I'll just wait to the end.

See, sin is fun for a season and I'll just sin as much as I want to and at the end,

I'll repent. So that's bad thinking in light of Luke 13 that we just talked about.

Spurgeon said, little hope have I for deathbed repentances. This is the negative side, so you're not presuming.

If you're alive today and you haven't repented, don't wait, in other words. Spurgeon said, never trust them.

I beseech you, my own conviction is that they, deathbed repentances, have been very, very, very, very, very few.

In fact, I do not remember a case in which the person who recovered has been at all what he said he would be when he thought that he was on the borders of the grave.

We read in scripture of only one who was saved at the last, the dying thief on the cross. So you wanna be careful, but you can also be hopeful because if it really is true repentance, it's not the repenting that saves them, it's

Jesus's life and death that saves them. It's God's great grace. Ralph Fenning said, late repentance is seldom true, but true repentance is never too late.

And so you don't wanna wait. And so we want to be hopeful, but we don't wanna be presumptuous. Dow said this, and this is a rough one.

Deathbed repentance is burning the candle of life in the service of the devil, then blowing the snuff in the face of heaven.

Stern, S -T -E -R -N -E, the man said, whatever stress some may lay upon deathbed repentance, it is but a weak and slender plank to trust our all upon.

So today's the day. If you are not a Christian, you must repent and believe the gospel.

Drexilius said, I will tomorrow that I will, I'll be sure to do it.

Tomorrow comes, tomorrow goes, and still you are to do it. Thus still repentance is deferred from one day to another until the day of death has come and judgment is the other.

So if you have not believed, you must repent. If you have believed, if you have repented, you can go back to the cross and be thankful, and you can be boasting that God knows you and that now you know

God. And you would realize that Jesus Christ is your savior, not repentance, for repentance didn't die on the cross.

Repentance wasn't raised from the dead. Repentance didn't live a perfect life. Repentance is a command, yes, but it's also a gift.

And God granted you eternal life. He granted you repentance. He granted you belief. And what's response? Praise, thanksgiving, adoration.

And a response is a life to serve the King, not to earn your salvation, but because God has saved you.

My name is Mike Abendroth, this is No Compromise Radio Ministry. You can write me at info at nocompromiseradio .com.

No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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