What Is Repentance? — G.W. North

Temporary Blessings and Eternal Salvation

I think it was last night I was pointing out that those people who followed the Lord Jesus and stayed with him long enough, they were the people that got the sort of bonus that after they stayed with him for about three days or so, he required nothing of them, no faith, no effort on their part, just that they stayed around, stuck with it long enough.

He sat down and he showed them that there were providential blessings in the realm of grace, just like there are providential blessings in the realm of nature, because grace is God's fixed attitude arising out of his nature toward us in this dispensation.

So they sat down and did nothing but say thank you, at least I hope they did, when the bread and the fish was put into their hands, and perhaps beyond what happened in the good old King's Day way back in Israel's history when they went home all happy and they had a cake of figs and a flagon of wine and it was all so wonderful.

They went home and said we saw a marvellous miracle, I experienced it, I sat down and I ate this food and so on and so on and so on, and then somebody said excuse me but you didn't experience a miracle at all, you didn't experience a miracle at all, you just partook of the result of it, it's not miraculous to sit down and eat food, nothing miraculous about that, and so people get out in a fantasy world, they never really get to reality.

Here then is the tragedy, could overtake somebody in this conference, you can sit down, you can be gathered and you can partake of blessings and no doubt many will abound, I feel that many have abounded so far, though we've only had two meetings and I expect you've had fellowship in the intervals between two and it's been very nice, but Jesus had come for greater purposes than that and here is the thing that you and I have to lay to heart.

Now there is no way, please will you listen, it's a terrible thing to be deceived but the worst thing is to be self-deceived, listen, there is no way into the eternal blessings of God for it was only a temporary thing to eat bread and fish, they were hungry again at supper time, and this is what people are always crying out, they're all saying they're hungry, they're all saying this, I hear it in meetings, Lord we're hungry for you, Lord we're thirsty for you, or something like that, they get temporary blessings.

When you come to a meeting, if you're really in the things of God, you ought not to come hungry, you ought to come so full from your knees, or something, it's all wrong, people have got the wrong idea, if a preacher man came hungry to a meeting, whatever would you get, nothing but the reflections of his own hunger, perhaps that's what's happening, I don't mean particularly here, but it says in the scripture of his fullness of all we received and grace for grace, and that was the word made flesh, the man, and so of the fullness of the minister you receive, and that's a tremendous and glorious thing, but that's another matter.

Repentance as the Door to Eternal Life

I want to say that there is no way into the eternal and abiding life and blessings of God except by repentance first on your part, and if I said to you beyond an academic expression, so to say, well what does repentance mean, and you may be able to come up with that old fay, if I said to you what is repentance, I wonder what sort of an answer I'd get.

Now not only from experience, but also from scripture, I want to bring the truth of repentance before your heart. I hope that it has dawned on us all that God did not labour in vain, when he raised up a man specially to preach repentance and ministry, and that before they ever clapped eyes on Jesus the Saviour.

They had a clear period to repent before ever they saw the Saviour. Now have you got this clear? I hope so, for your soul's sake, repentance. God laid a foundation of repentance long before Jesus started to preach, and then when he came he said the same thing, repent, repent.

That was John Baptist's message. He is one of the most important men in the whole of scripture. I hope you understand this. More important than Moses, if you happen to be of Jewish extraction in the bloodstream, he was the one that God raised up specially performing a miracle, as you know, that he should even be born.

And it was to get us used to the idea that God was now going to proceed along a line of miraculous births. Starting with John Baptist, a greater miraculous birth with Jesus Christ, and a more miraculous birth too, for men and women, because of Jesus Christ.

That I cannot stay and explain at the moment. But he's proceeding along this line. Now before ever men and women got even a sight of it, or got a hearing of it, they had to listen to a man saying, repent, repent.

Day after day they went out to John Baptist. They heard him saying the same thing. He never had a variety of sermons. He never had a black bag out of which he pulled moats to preach on. He never expounded the prophets.

He never expounded Moses. Read your New Testament. You won't find a reference to it. He stood there and he went with one mighty and terrible and continuous voice. He thundered out, repent, repent, repent.

They heard it from morn to night. Day following day, weak, hard upon the heels of a weak. That's how it went on. And it went on after Jesus Christ had come through. He continued it, repent. He didn't say, well now he's come, it's all over.

His ministry was gradually phased out, after Jesus Christ had come. And Jesus Christ took up John's word as though he was an echo of John. Repent, repent, he said. Repent. I hope also that you're aware, and again I may remind you that last night we were thinking a little over this same ground, though not precisely, that he called his twelve disciples.

He named them apostles. He kept them with him for quite a while. And then, you can read about this in Mark 3, the first of the great selective calls. And then in Mark chapter 6, that's 4, 5 and 6 chapters in between, he sends them out.

And they went out, he said, I've got to give you, you know, he gives them power, he gives them cast out devils, he can heal the sick. But this was their message. They went out and preached that men ought to repent.

That's what they preached. They also said, be sure, Jesus told them this, to tell them that the kingdom of God has come upon them. And so you see, the kingdom of God can only be entered by repentance.

Clear, isn't it? At least I hope it is. It's written large upon the pages of scripture. And this is precisely, dear beloved friend, whoever you are, if you are not in that blessed state of entire salvation, as God has provided it for us in Christ, in this age, it's precisely because you haven't come to a true and basic repentance.

Paul's Call to Repentance in Acts

Now, this was not exclusive to the gospel era. If I may turn with you to scripture, you will find, say, in the Acts of the Apostles. And here I am quoting an apostle who did not himself follow Jesus whilst he was on earth, that is, Paul.

You will remember at that time, he was a Christ rejecter, as Saul of Tarsus, an educated Pharisee, and a Christ hater, and a church hater, and it proved a God hater, though he thought he was doing God's service.

Mind you, Jesus had warned his disciples about it. He said, the time will come, and now think, if they persecute and kill you, they're doing God's service. And Saul was the great living proof of that, until that glorious day, when God met him.

And I want to say to you, that at that moment into his life, there erupted a great power of repentance, at that moment, tremendous. And he went about preaching, and perhaps if we just catch it up, in that wonderful chapter, in the Acts of the Apostles, 20, and he says this.

He's calling now for the church at Ephesus. Now, you will remember that this was one of the great churches on the earth. Now, he's testifying to them, and they're going to bear witness. They're either going to say, Paul, you're a liar, or it wasn't like that at all.

Now, listen to him. He said, in verse 18, you'll know, I'm in the middle of the verse, from the first day that I came to Asia, after what manner I have been with you at all seasons, serving the Lord with all humility of mind, and with many tears and temptations, which befell me by the lying weight of the Jews, and how I kept back nothing that was profitable unto you, but have showed you, and have taught you publicly, and from house to house, testifying both to the Jews, and also to the Greeks, repentance.

He didn't say, ooh, come and learn to dance, the kingdom of heaven's here, and you won't find any of them preach that. Not one of them will you find. Search and see. He went and he said, this is my testimony.

I testify to you that you've got to repent. Jews or Greeks made no difference to him, nor to God, for this man had realized something, and we'll look for it in that great chapter, 16, where the Lord had dealt with them, I'm sorry, 17, and in the, this time he was at Athens.

Now you will know, at least I hope you know, that Athens was a great cultural center in the East, and do you know that so far as we know, nothing in scripture to say there was, there was never a church founded at Athens, did you know that?

But he stood in the midst of these people of culture, and so on, and he says this, verse 28 of chapter 17, in him we live, and move, and have our being, a certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring, forasmuch then, as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man's device, and the times of this ignorance God closed his eyes to, but now commandeth all men everywhere to repent, praise the name of the Lord, so you will see that repentance is a tremendous message, and it's a tremendous experience, and may I say again, and I shall say it probably again and again before we're through, that except a man and a woman, a boy or a girl, a Jew or a Gentile, uneducated or educated, except you repent, you'll go to hell, and there is no power in heaven or earth that can prevent it, except you repent, and I say God raised up John Baptist especially, his baptism at that time in water, for people who underwent it, just meant repentance, that's all it meant, it means a lot more in these days, but in those days that's all it was for, amen, and listen, he did not believe, neither did God, neither were either John or God prepared to accept that a man or woman had believed the message sufficiently to repent, unless they were baptized in that Jordan, that was the sign, not that God merely believes in mere signs, but the glory of it all is, that God laid this foundation so firmly, Jesus Christ taking it up as we've already seen, the apostles going out in preaching their primitive gospel, for it was only primitive, they could not at that time preach the death and resurrection of Jesus, they preached the gospel they knew, the same as John did, the same as Moses did, they all preached a gospel of a kind, but here beloved, they went out and they said repent, even if it's into a limited belief, even if it's into a limited experience, you've got to repent, God again raises up this other man to whom he gave a special revelation, unto whom we are eternally indebted, for his great revelation and passing on of the message of the church which is his body, what a glorious truth it is, and he went out, it doesn't matter where he went, and it was unto the Ephesians I tell you that he gave the great revelation of the body of Jesus Christ, he said, I testify to you, I did it publicly, I came into your homes, I looked you straight in the eye and I said repent, that's it, publicly, individually, repent, that's what he said, he's saying it to you, I said last night and it's true, I've lived a fairly long life now, and though I haven't been all round the world, as brother Edgar has, at least east or west, he's never gone north or south, his name's not Peary or Scott, he hasn't been that way, but wherever I've gone, I've come to the conclusion that the great need in the world is the need for repentance, and this is why people do not get in, despite all their believing of this, that and the other, they do not get into God, what all that God has for them, simply because they've never come to a true repentance, and beloved, because God has exercised my heart about it, and because I'm concerned, and because also, that God has already spoken in this meeting tonight, he's already said what he would do, he's already given us the call, we all know that he's fully love-orientated and his heart is bounding and abounding with grace, then I say unto you that if you will come to a true repentance, then you can answer and come up into all that God wants you to have, without repentance, you will not have all that God has for you, is that clear to you?

Repentance Versus Regret and Remorse

Amen. Now repentance, you and I must understand, must not be confused with such words as regret, there are lots of people who have done lots of things, and regret that they have done them, but God did not send out somebody to call us to regret, he sent someone to call us to repentance, and as though John was not sufficient for it, he sent his son to say it, and as though those two were not sufficient, he raised up his apostles to say it, and as though their testimony and their age was not sufficient, he raised us up penmen to give us it in the Bible, and he's raised up translators to give it to us in our own native tongue, God raised up ministers that shall preach it in power and positive, glorious truth, that it may be applied to our hearts, for you may as well reach for the moon, as reach for the great blessings of God, unless you come to repentance, you say aha the moon, they're getting on the moon today, but you don't get onto the moon except from a launching pad, even the scientists don't, you've got to come on the right foundation and ground, they don't start off from the soft mud of Rorah, or Ock and Heath, I have no preferences, neither has God, the great thing about it is, that you've got to get on the right foundation for it, so don't let's get repentance mixed up with regret, regret can be genuine enough, if you've never done anything of which you have come to a place, about which you've come to a place and said well I regret it, then you, there's something wrong with you, of course we regret things, I hope you never regret coming to Rorah, and don't get it mixed up with remorse, remorse is going to be the cause, now are you listening, of those things that you read about in scripture which go like this, falling from the mouth of the lips of the blessed Lord himself, there shall be weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth, remorse, remorse can take you to hell as sure as murder and lust and adultery and thieving, and inward moral impurity, remorse, now indulge in it, but that's not repentance, blackness of darkness forever, remorse, being in torment, you know who I'm quoting, he lifted up his eyes and he said father Abraham, I'm quoting Jesus, send Lazarus that he may dip his finger in water and moisten the tip of my tongue as burning remorse, scripture, he could remember it all, vivid hell, there's a great gulf fixed between those that suffer remorse and those that have repentance, and so God makes things plain to us, you know I've been in prison, it was a long time ago now, I sometimes like to say you don't expect jail birds or ex-jail birds to come and talk to you, but I haven't got broad arrows on me, not now, I've walked round inside prison walls talking to prisoners, oh the remorse that grips some men's hearts, not all, some are so hardened they never even come to remorse, but some do, but they don't get out because they come to remorse, they're shut up with it every night in their cell, remorse, oh I wish I'd never done it, can't be undone, only God can undo things, only God, while I'm on this note you'll be pleased seeing that you live quite adjacent to the palace in Dartmoor prison, not so long ago, God saved a man, I saw him, only met him last week I think it was, or the week before, stood up tall, big and tough, he was making tea, it was lovely, God had tamed a lion, made him into a lamb, he got saved in Dartmoor, that's good news for you, what a tremendous thing it is, and oh to see this man, and even though we were together just for a short week, and only two sermons a day, God worked on him and softened him, he came to me several times saying I can see it, he found me once or twice, he goes Luke I can see, yes, and he was rejoicing in the glory of the proof beloved, that was transforming him inside, because he'd come to a tremendous repentance, there is no way that God almighty himself can put you straight, blot out your sin, get the record right, and make you acceptable to himself, unless you give him the opportunity to do so, by repentance, I'll say more about that later, now this is the important thing, I want to say also at the risk of repetition, for I say this quite often, this is the explanation why people after they say they've been saved and baptised in the spirit and filled with this and filled with that, have still got vast areas of stuff in their life that's so contradictory to the gospel they've embraced, and so on and so on and so on, it's because they're sort of brought in and it's just come to Jesus' position and they're never told to come to repentance, so it's there, it's still there, that's my confession to you, after decades of ministry amongst men and women, it's still there, and so they write books on soul healing and mental, you can go into bookshops and half of them are full, with how to get your emotions healed, how to get this healed, how to get something else healed until I get sick of it, it's another gospel, you don't read any about it in the New Testament, read it and see, but we ignore the New Testament and turn to these new gospelers, which is not another gospel, it's a perverted gospel, get a little this week, come back next week, six weeks time, come back again, God will do a little more on all this vast horror, this pit inside, this empty hate, this terrible thing that we can't explain, this that makes me act so contradictory to the thing I say I believe, and all the rest of it, as though the mighty blood of Jesus Christ under the plunging power of the Spirit, like fire from heaven, setting the blood a-coursing through you, can't do the job, that's why I chose the hymn, would you be free from your burden of sin, there's power in the blood, it's not in your adept manner of applying a certain text to you, there's no skill in it, the heathen never had the Mosaic scriptures to whom Paul went, the heathen never had the New Testament scriptures until he wrote them, part of them himself, or his friends John and Matthew did, it's what this man read out, he said it pleased God to reveal his son in me, that I might preach him among the heathen, called me by his grace, reveal his son in me, that I might preach him, he didn't preach Moses, the early church decided, you may read it in Acts chapter 15, they said Moses had read to them every week, every week they had the scriptures read to them, every week they went through it all, oh for a mighty coming of the glorious conqueror of sin and hell and death into men and women's lives, and he couldn't get in, he couldn't even begin to get into his ministry until God had sent John Baptist to preach repentance, repentance, repentance, he couldn't begin, he couldn't begin to come to these words, but we borrowed them because they'd been written in scripture by men, they're true, but they're no substitute for him, so we make a plaster and a poultice of words, instead of him, oh God, we cover the lesion with a dose of Romans 8 or something like that, instead of him, repent, repentance, now, you will know, of course, that that word repentance, we simply want to be academic about it, just means a change of mind, seems so simple, but don't you realise that it's the hardest thing in this world to get a person to change their mind, have you ever tried it, have you ever tried to get a person to change their mind, it's comparatively easy to do what we call change a person's mind, compared with what God has to do in that we present an argument, you see, this morning, not that an argument was presented, and if you weren't here, I'm so sorry for you, I hope you, well I hope you had a real reason for staying away, God, the Lord presented truth to us this morning, that I guess changed people's thinking on certain issues, let them speak up and say, that was a comparatively easy thing, compared with what I'm talking about, for when God talks about the change of mind, he means changing the inward states of it, he doesn't mean changing your mind about thinking what is a cherubim, that, we all have that done for us, I went into a fruit shop the other day, I'm one of the privileged people, I can go into a fruit shop and pick out what I want and somebody else pays for it, but don't you try that, I went in and I saw a box of peaches, and I looked in and somebody said to me, well you can have some if you want one, want them, well I said, he didn't say one, what do you want, presumably I could have taken a boxful, but anyway, I saw a nice peach, I picked it up and I looked in and then I picked up another one, he said, don't squeeze the fruit, so I didn't do that, I picked up this one and then I went and picked up that one and then I put that one down and I picked up one from somewhere else, and what was I doing, changing my mind, it looked alright, till I got hold of it and turned it round in my hand, then I changed my mind and said, no I don't want that, I want that one, that's easy, but when God talks about changing your mind, listen, he's got to change your mind from the condition that can only live with the devil and in hell forever, he's got to change it into the condition that can live with God in heaven forever, that's what he's got to do.

Did you understand that? It's not like changing from voting liberal in North Devon because of certain events to conservative, it's not that, it's a great dynamic operation of God and unless you let God do it, you're doomed, you can believe everything.

I used to live next door to a man, he was an organist in a church, years ago now, he knew every psalm, I don't suppose you do, and he had them all word perfect, and he was as unsaved as the seat he sat on to play the tunes.

It isn't that, that won't do it, to come into this world of charismatic, that won't do it, use charismatic terminology, that won't do it, neither will it do it using Wesleyan language like lots of us do, that won't do it.

Do you not see that repentance is a great, deep, wonderful, miraculous operation of God upon you and I lay it to your heart tonight in the name of Jesus Christ that you are under direct commandment from God to repent, commandment.

Repentance as a Divine Command

Well, this is a tremendous thing, look, just look back into that 17th chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, here it is, let's go shall we. The unknown God was speaking in verse 23, speaking through his apostle, now you must not think that because these men were idolaters and they had effigies, ugly or pretty, gold or silver or studied with precious stones or made of dung like some of them were, some idols and that we don't do that, we know better than that, that that means that we know God.

They didn't know God, they thought he was like this. People in England don't know God and they think he's like this or like that or like something else. Here it is, God, verse 24, made the world and all things in it, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands, neither is worshipped with men's hands as though he needeth anything, seeing he giveth to all life and breath and all things and hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth.

Are you listening carefully to this? This will show you the determined plan of God in the spread of the gospel, not that the church has kept pace with God. Alright, he's determined the times before appointed and the bounds of men's habitation that they should seek the Lord, if happily they might feel after him and find him, though he be not far from every one of us.

For, listen to it, in him we live and move and have our being, that's every one of us, whether we be sinner or saint, deserving or undeserving in this element in which our brother was speaking this morning of the aerial heaven, the first heaven.

God is here, moving and in him, as we know that in this universe we exist, so it is in him and by his grace that we're here and especially in this place tonight to hear his imperishable gospel. In him we all live, move and have our being, now note the church has been chosen in Christ, there's a distinction here that I don't want to discuss at the moment.

Alright, let's go on. Your own prophets have said so, verse 28, and then he says where is offspring, and then he says in verse 30 that the times of ignorance God closed his eyes to. But now he commands all men to repent, you might say well what have I to repent of, and so someone may come along and say well you've done this, you've done that, you've said the other, but it's on this broad basis first.

The very fact that God is and that God created mankind and God gives you the breath to breathe and God that gives you the strength, the strength wherewith you went into sin. You drew a breath that God gave you and when it came out you lied with it.

He caused the food to grow on the ground that you should stretch out your hand and hurt somebody with it or take something with it or put your hand where it never ought to have been. And God gave you that strength, that's why and presently for I'm going to take liberties with time if I may, we'll read it in that great psalm of repentance.

David that tremendous man of old said it's against thee, thee only have I sinned and done this great wickedness in thy sight, in the sight of God you dared to sin. Using his breath, living under his sunshine, eating the food that he gave.

You've got to repent, how can you stop going to hell and less to food. That's leaving out all the other reasons. Paul dealt with them on this reason. They were ignorant of Jesus Christ, the times of this ignorance.

He said you didn't know Jesus Christ. He could have said I'm the first man that's come and preached the gospel to you. And God's prepared to say alright, alright, but now from this moment, now you can look back to your mother, to your father, to your grandfather, to everybody else.

They all lived having what was God's and lived in sin. Now that's the position. Do you see that? That's the foundation. You've got to repent of that. When the message comes, you say well I wasn't, no you weren't held responsible for anything.

But once you hear the message, that's it. From that moment, so I say to you, would you be free? If you would, here is news for you. You can. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Providing that you come to an utter repentance in the sight of God.

Amen. It's a wonderful thing to repent. Come with me into the Roman letter. Now you and I will at once understand that God must be a very good God. Why didn't he smite you down the first lie you told?

Why didn't he destroy you the first time you moved against his majesty? Why didn't he do it? Well we can use the word grace. We can use all sorts of things. But I'm going to use the word that this man Paul used.

It's a tremendous and wonderful truth. Verse 1 of chapter 2. Therefore thou art inexcusable, O woman. You see it says man. Yeah I know but I put woman in it you see. As well as man. Thou art inexcusable, O woman, O man.

No excuse for anybody. There is no excuse for you, my precious friend. None. You can't plead extenuating circumstances. You cannot plead ignorance. You cannot plead a merciless God. You can't plead inexorable states.

You can't do it. Here it is. Thou art inexcusable, O man, whosoever thou art that judges. Wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself. Thou that judgest doest the same things. But we are sure that the judgment of God is according to truth against them which commit such things.

And thinkest thou this, O man, O woman, that judgest them which do such things. And doest the same that thou should escape the judgment of God. Or despises thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering.

How old are you friend? How old are you? Ten? Twenty? Thirty? Forty? Fifty? Sixty? Forbearance? You and I deserve to die the first sin we committed. Despises thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering.

Not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance. God is good. That's why you're here tonight to hear again this glorious truth. God's been good to you. Don't argue in terms of, well, you know, I've been an ill person or I've not got much money or I went to university and can't get a decent job.

Has God been good to me, friend? You're arguing in the wrong realms. We're largely the victims of a world that's now getting too small to hold us all. And too defiled and too rotten and too riddled and rattled with sin and jiggery-pokery and murder and lusting for greed.

Don't blame God for what the devil's done. Don't blame God for that. And don't concern yourself with those things chiefly. The goodness of God to you, and he has been good to you, even in the things I've already enumerated, the things that we might call providential in the natural realm.

He's been good to you, and he's been good to you precisely for this reason, that he should lead you to repentance. The real trouble, beloved, if I may just refer back to that famous incident to which I've already referred, that he was good to these people.

They sat down, and they just put out their hand, and they didn't even have to say grace. How about that? They didn't sing anything like, man shall not live by bread alone, or anything like that. They didn't understand it.

They just took what Jesus gave them, and they said, well isn't he good? Isn't he marvellous? Or take the wine, the water that was turned into wine at the wedding of Cana of Galilee, and they said, isn't he wonderful?

Look at this, our wedding would have been absolutely ruined if he hadn't done this. Isn't he good to us? But he wasn't good to them just in order to be good to them all, though he likes to do good things for the sake of it.

That's his nature. His hope always was, and still is, that by a succession of good things, he will finally waken you up to the need that you must repent. But people want to keep putting their feet on all the good things and saying, this is marvellous, until they come to a place where they know they're at a full stop.

True Repentance and Godly Sorrow

This is one of the great, I know you'll cross me off, and I don't know whether Malcolm will ever ask me to come back to Aurora any more, or Edgar will ever want to minister side by side with me again, but this is one of the great tragedies in this present praise craze that's come.

You see, everyone thinks it's by praise. So they've got to keep inventing new choruses, new this, we've got to express praise. It's all being done by praise. It's not being done by praise, though I'm sure some of you will misquote me and think I mean that you shouldn't praise God.

It isn't that. Where are you going to in another few years' time? I'll praise God. Hallelujah. That's not what I'm talking about. But you see, they're all sort of wrong means to get somewhere. Friend, the goodness of God is to bring us to repentance.

Lord, my attitude to you has been wrong. My thinking's been wrong, but oh God, I couldn't help thinking that way, there was that in me. We talk about blocks, we talk about frustrations, we talk about eruptions, we talk about all sorts of things.

They may not use my terminology. Inside, and I think this or this happens. Why? Precisely because you've never come to repentance. Repentance is the change of that condition. If nobody's ever told you before, that's it.

Why do you say repentance? It means being sorry. Well, obviously, that's involved in it. But don't think that just being sorry is repentance. Please. For if you do, you'll land up in the same cul-de-sac, no through road.

You know that all cul-de-sacs have an entrance. All cul-de-sacs have a certain distance you can proceed to them. See? But isn't it terrible to have to turn around and retrace your steps to realise that this wasn't the through road at all.

I'm talking about some of your spiritual experiences, aren't I? Amen. Now, repentance. What is it? I'm going back to Psalm 51. Now, I don't think that I need recap all the circumstances from which this psalm arose.

Suffice it to say, not for me to advertise a certain person's sin, that David had gone wrong. He'd gotten into sin and he knew it. Now, he didn't say, come on now, let's all go down to the temple or the tabernacle and sing some psalms.

I'm feeling depressed today. You understand that? Somebody didn't come along and slap him on the back and say, now come on, get up, it's all okay, let's go down and sort of praise God. Everything will be alright.

God doesn't get some of these errors right out of our mind. We'll never get anywhere. Listen to it. This man had sinned. That's all you need know about it. What sin is not important. Here he comes. He brings me from my sin, for I acknowledge my transgression.

And my sin, it's ever before me. You'll never get to repentance unless sin's like that with you. All the time the devil can deceive you, get you to switch your eyes on this, get you to switch your eyes on something else.

Read this book, go there, go somewhere. Mind off it. Keep my mind on it. God kept his mind on it. You say, man, I'll go mad. Better go mad than go to hell. That's God's eternal madhouse. That's the place for the spiritual schizophrenic.

People that thought at one time they'd become a Christian, and then they didn't. And they were split. People that tried some road or another, but never got there, never got to the right one. Listen. My sin, he says, it's ever before me.