The setting is Paul's missionary
visit to the city of Athens. While he is there, he beholds
the city given over to idolatry. He enters into disputation and
discussion with men, and in this particular setting, he is on
Mars Hill, discoursing concerning the nature and character of God
And bringing his sermon to a conclusion, he says in the verses I now read
in your hearing, Acts 17, 30 and 31, the times of ignorance
God therefore overlooked. But now he commandeth men that
they should all, everywhere, repent, inasmuch as he hath appointed
a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness by
that man whom he hath ordained, whereof he hath given assurance
unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead." We're
going to consider this text this morning under the general heading,
God's Inescapable Command. Now the scriptures are full of
commandments. Some of those commands are directed
to specific segments of society. certain facets of the total fabric
of humanity to whom God speaks with peculiar and with special
reference. When God says, for instance,
in the Ten Commandments, Children, obey your parents or honor thy
father and thy mother, this is a commandment directed particularly
to sons and daughters. When God speaks, as he does in
many parts of the epistles, that is, the letters to the various
churches in the New Testament, he speaks on the one hand to
servants, and to masters, to fathers, to mothers, to husbands,
to wives, and so there are many commandments which zero in upon
a particular segment of God's creation. But here we have a
text which applies to all men without discrimination. There
are fathers here this morning. There are mothers. There are
husbands. There are wives. There are employees. There are
employers. And if I were to treat a text
which applies particularly to one of those segments, though
there might be something there for all of us, and I would seek
to show the relevance of that command to everyone in a general
sense, I don't care who you are this morning. This text comes
directly to you as an individual. Regardless of your present status
as son or daughter, husband, wife, father, mother, employer,
employee, none of these distinctions enter whatsoever. For this text
is an inescapable, a universal command to all of us. And so
then, let us study the text under this general heading, the inescapable
command. First of all, consider with me,
who gives this inescapable command? When somebody starts throwing
commandments around, especially when they start throwing them
in my direction, the first question I ask is, what right do you have
to issue commands and throw them in my direction? In other words,
all of us have a built-in safety mechanism that learns to disregard
commands when they come from a source which has no authority
over us. If someone, in the process of
my driving home today, should step off the curb down there
on Westville Avenue or on Bloomfield Avenue, dressed in summer short-sleeved
shirt and tie as I am dressed, and stick up his hand and say,
hey, pull over, I would probably promptly ignore him. Because though he's giving me
a command, I do not recognize in him any basis of authority
for that command. But should that same individual
appear tonight when I make my way home by the same route or
route, depending on which part of the country you come from,
the same individual dressed in a blue uniform and a badge and
a cap and a whistle, and made the same gestures and said, pull
over, venture to say I would promptly obey his command. Now the difference you see is
not in his words, or his whistle, but the difference is that I
recognize in him the symbols of proper authority to give that
command. Now here is a command in our
text. Someone is commanding all men
everywhere to do something. That means somebody is commanding
you to do something. And so you have a right to ask
the question, who is giving the command? Should I obey on the
basis of the source from which the command comes? And the Apostle
Paul clearly indicates in this text that it is nothing other
or no one lesser than the living God Himself who gives this command. Look at the text. The times of
ignorance therefore God overlooked, but now He commandeth all men
everywhere to repent. It is God who issues this command. Now when Paul said God, what
did he mean? Was he just using some kind of
a religious symbol and said God and by that he just said well
you make it mean anything you want it to mean? Of course not. packed into that little three-letter
word that we use, God. It's a four-letter word in the
language in which Paul was speaking in the Greek language. Paul was
packing everything that he himself understood of the nature and
character of that God, everything that he had already been preaching
in the bulk of his sermon. You see, the idea that men instinctively
know who God is and we've just got to tell them the way to God
and how to know God is entirely erroneous. Sin has so darkened
our minds that we do not know who God is. Sin has so perverted
our thinking that we have made God after our own image. And
so the Apostle Paul was very careful in the first part of
this sermon to buttress this command that God gives by describing
who God is. And I want to follow the same
pattern that Paul did. So look with me very quickly
at the fundamental facets of the character of God that Paul
has already set before his hearers so that when he says to them,
God commands you to repent, they might bring before their minds
this great God of whom Paul has been speaking. Notice then, he
starts by saying in verse 24, the God that made the world and
all things therein. He, being Lord of heaven and
earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands, neither is he
served by men's hands, as though he needeth anything, seeing he
himself giveth to all life and breath and all things." Where
does Paul start? He starts with the fact that
the God who gives this command that is inescapable, this command
that comes to all of us, That God is the creator of heaven
and of earth. God that made the world. Now you see this cut right across
the grain of what these particular Athenian people thought. Their
philosophical frame of reference was either that of the Epicureans
or that of the Pantheist. The Pantheist is the man who
believes everything is God and God is everything. We received
in our church mail sometime this week a mimeograph sheet inviting
us to come and hear some Indian holy man who's coming to Passaic.
And we were informed that he's going to teach us that God is
everything and everything is God and God is within us and
until we discover the God within us we never discover God. That's
just plain old pantheism that has plagued the world since the
fall of man. But you see where Paul starts?
He says, God that made the world and all things therein. Well,
if he made it, he is before it. He is above it. He is separate
from it. The world is no more God and
God is no more the world. In this context, it cannot be.
And He gives these people to understand at the outset that
if God made the world, He is eternal. He existed before the
world. He is transcendent, that is,
He is above His world. He is independent of it. He doesn't
need that world to make Him complete and to make Him fulfilled. That's
the first thing you and I need to understand about God, that
He is Creator. And if He is Creator, He is eternal,
He is almighty, He is independent. And He goes on to say that He
is not only Creator of the world, but He is Creator of mankind,
verse 26. He hath made of every nation
of men, He hath made of one every nation of men to dwell upon the
face of the earth. He is man's creator. Man is not
God. God is not man. Man is not simply
a product of the inescapable forces of the evolutionary process. God made of one, that is of one
blood, all nations of men to dwell upon the face of the earth. Man's life comes from God. Man's life is sustained by God. Look at verse 25 and 6. He giveth
to all life and breath and all things. Here these people are
breathing God's air, and Paul wants them to know it. He gives
life, and He gives breath. He not only imparts life, but
sustains life. Now you see how this command
is beginning to take on new overtones? Who is uttering the command of
verse 30? That men should repent. Who's
giving that command? Is this some command that comes
from some ecclesiastical court, a group of bishops or priests
or reverends get together and they decide they ought to have
something to preach about, and so they come from their convocation
and say, we've got an idea, everybody ought to repent. Of course not. This command comes from the God
who made you. The God who not only made you,
but holds your life in His own sovereign hand, who gives you
breath, And who can take that breath? Now when that God starts
talking to you, you better listen. When that God starts telling
you what to do, you better pick up those ears and you better
listen. Because you're not trifling with
some God who's simply everything that is, and you're God and God
is you and all this other foolishness. You're dealing with that living
and true God, that person who is Creator of the world, who
is your Creator. But Paul not only preaches Him
as Creator, look what he does in verse, later on in verse 24. It says that He being Lord of
heaven and earth, He not only made His world, He's the Sovereign
and the King over His world. He is Lord of Heaven and Earth.
He is the Master and the Sovereign of the world that He has made. And what a difference this makes
when we begin to realize this. Who is speaking to me? Not only
the God who brought me into being, but the God who governs and controls
me and all my actions and all the actions of all of His created
universe. Then he goes on to tell these
people that that God, verse 25, is not served by men's hands
as though He needed anything. He is the totally independent,
self-sufficient God. The idea that you ought to accommodate
God because He'll sort of be frustrated if you don't, that's
rubbish! God will go on for eternity being the ever-blessed God! Even
if you never acknowledge who He is, and bow before the claims
of His commands. He is God, who is not served
by men's hands, as though He needeth anything. He is Creator,
He is Sovereign, He is Independent. Verse 24, He says He doesn't
dwell in temples made with men's hands. He is spiritual in nature. You see, these Athenians had
a clever concept of God. They got their God boxed up in
a temple somewhere, in an altar, so they could go once a week,
twice a week, no matter how many times they were supposed to go.
Bring their little offering, satisfy their little deity, leave
their God where they left their offering, and then go on out
and be scot-free to do as they please. You see, a God who dwells
in a temple somewhere, who is only present in your religious
exercises, that's a very convenient kind of God. He doesn't bother
you, what you do on your dates, what you do in your social life,
what you do with your money, what you do with your time, what
you do with your thoughts. That kind of God is very convenient
to live with when men are in a state of impenitence. And Paul
wants them to know right at the outset, look you Athenians, You
thought that when you came and brought your little offering
and laid it there in front of your little God and went your
way, your God was there and He didn't see you in your crooked
business dealings. He didn't see you in your immoral social
relationships. He wasn't around to know what
you said when you spoke angrily to your wife and you churlishly
treated your children. But He said, I have news for
you. The Most High God dwelleth not
in temples made with hands. He fills heaven and earth. The
eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding the evil and
the good. Now you see how this command
takes on again new overtones? Who is commanding you to repent?
It's the God who made you, the God who sustains your life, and
the God who knows you. The God who has been present
in the midst of every thought and every attitude and every
deed that you've done contrary to His holy law, and has beheld
it with His all-knowing eye. Then he goes on to proclaim him
as the God who is imminent. He hasn't washed his hands of
his creation. This was the philosophy and the
thinking of the Epicureans. The world's here and God's out
there. Ah, he goes on to say, he has
set the bounds of their habitation, verses 26 and 27, that they should
seek God, if happily they might feel after him and find him,
though he is not far from every one of us, for in him we live
and move and have our being, as certain also of your own poets
have said. He says that though this God
is created, He is above us and beyond us in might and power
and majesty, He has not abandoned us. We are His creatures, made
in His image, and though we have sinned against Him and turned
our backs upon Him, and though our sins have separated us from
this God, He has not abandoned us. He has moved to us in grace,
common grace and special grace. Then he goes on to conclude his
sermon, proclaiming that this God is the God who will be judge
of the world. We'll look at that in more detail
later on, but just notice it now for a moment. Verse 31, He,
this God, has appointed a day in which He'll judge the world.
And so I say to every one of you gathered here this morning,
the God who utters this inescapable command is no lesser being than
the God revealed here in this very passage. He is Creator. He is Sovereign. He is Spirit.
He is Sustainer of the world and the universe. He is near
us in His grace and in His mercy. And it's that God with whom you
and I have to do. So much then for the God who
gives this inescapable command. Consider in the second place
To whom does the command come? And the word of the text is very
clear. The times of this ignorance therefore
God overlooked, but now he commandeth men that they should all, everywhere,
repent. That is, this command comes to
all men in every place. Now words cannot be more general,
more all-inclusive than these. all men in every place, Jew,
Gentile, cultured, uncultured, in New Guinea, Africa, US, Europe. It does not matter, Paul says,
this command comes from this living and true God upon all
men and to all men in all places. Now why? Well, for the simple
reason that whatever sets us apart and makes us different,
whether we think of it racially, culturally, economically, temperamentally,
our inclinations, no matter what changes or differences there
are in men that set them apart, cause them to dwell in different
lands with different cultures, different colors of skin and
attitudes, every one of these changes, put them all together,
are very surface differences. Essentially what makes us men,
there is no difference between us whatsoever. Every one of us
was made in the image of God. He hath made of one blood all
nations of the earth for to dwell upon the face of the earth. We
have this in common, that we are the creatures of God made
in His image. Secondly, we all fell in our
first father, Adam. Romans 5 in verse 12, as by one
man, sin entered into the world and death passed upon all men
for that all sinned. When? In Adam. So whatever cultural,
racial, economic differences there are, these are surface
differences. We are part of Adam's fallen
race, 1 Corinthians 15, 22, as in Adam, all die. No superiority. All of us. leveled in that great leveling
experience of the Garden of Eden, and there is no explanation for
the history of mankind if you deny the fall of man in Adam. Look at the complexity of our
present generation. All of the different cultures,
all of the different perspectives, all of the various influences
that have led to these perspectives and cultures and attitudes, but
what is the common denominator of every culture, every perspective,
every racial and ethnic group? Here's the common denominator.
Man has a heart wedded to his sin. He's alienated from God,
and he can't find his way out. And what's the explanation for
that? There is no explanation. But the Bible explanation, as
in Adam, all die. By one man sin entered and passed
upon all men. That's why this command is addressed
to all men in every place, because basically there is no real essential
difference between men in any place. Created in the image of
God, fallen in Adam. Thirdly, we are all by nature
rebels against God and helpless to recover ourselves. The Apostle
Paul treats this subject formally in the Epistle to the Romans,
and he comes to his conclusion in verses 10 through 19 of chapter
3, and he says, as it is written, There is none righteous, no,
not one. There is none that understandeth.
There is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of
the way. They are together become unprofitable. There is none that doeth good.
And he goes on to describe the effects of sin, and then his
concluding statement, What thing soever the law saith, it saith
to them that are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped,
and all the world may become guilty before God. All the world
guilty, every mouth stopped. Now you see, The Apostle Paul
was not ignorant of the various differences that separate men
in their common experience as far as culture and the rest.
He was very conscious of this. He said, when I'm amongst the
Jews, I adopt, as it were, a Jewish face. I submit to Jewish custom
and tradition that I might not unnecessarily prejudice the gospel.
To the Jews, I become as a Jew. He was conscious of their cultural
and religious heritage. He said to the Gentiles, I become
as a Gentile. I don't carry into my Gentile
contacts all of my Jewish scruples. He was not ignorant of racial
and cultural and religious differences. No, he was very conscious of
it. But he said those differences
are surface. Jew and Gentile alike, created in the image of
God, fallen in Adam, rebels against God, under the wrath of God,
hopeless and helpless to recover themselves. And so I say to you
present here in this place this morning, many of whom I've never
met before, but one thing I know beyond a shadow of a doubt about
every one of you. Whether you are people whom I
would count intimate friends or total strangers, you were
made in God's image. You fell in Adam. And by nature,
unless grace recovers you, you're a hopeless rebel under the wrath
of God, and you can't do a thing to rescue yourself. That's what
God says about you. And you'll either bow to that
indictment and seek the remedy or go to an everlasting hell
as a monument of the folly of rejecting God's assessment of
what you are. This command comes to all men
in every place because we are essentially the same in our creatureliness
and in our sinfulness. And so God is speaking to you
without exception this morning, this great God whom we've looked
at, the God who gives this inescapable command. Secondly, we've considered
to whom that command comes. Now in the third place, consider
with me what is the essence or the true meaning of this command.
This great God speaks to all men everywhere, and this is what
He says. God commandeth all men everywhere
to repent." Now, what did the Apostle Paul mean when he said,
God command you to repent? Well, sometimes this word repent
is used in a very limited sense. It is the negative part of a
saving turning to God through Christ. It's set in parallelism
with faith. Paul says in Acts 20.21, he preached
repentance toward God and faith toward the Lord Jesus Christ.
Repentance turning from sin. Faith turning to God through
Jesus Christ. Together, repentance and faith
comprise the totality of a saving response to the gospel. Sometimes
the word repentance describes grief and sorrow for sin and
that turning from sin involved in true godly sorrow. Sometimes
it is used to describe the whole of our turning unto God through
Christ. And that's the sense in which
Paul uses it here. The same way you have it in 2
Peter 3.9. God is not willing that any should perish, but that
all should come to repentance. That is, that they should come
into a saving relationship with the living God through Christ.
Now, what is involved in that repentance? which is unto life. When Paul said, God commands
all men everywhere to repent, what is the irreducible minimum
of what's involved in that repentance? Let me give you three very simple
thoughts, and I'm greatly indebted to one of the masters of the
past for the frame in which these come to you, and I'm quoting
him as I give them to you. First of all, repentance involves
a painful sense of sin and its deserved wrath. Jesus said in
Matthew 9.13, I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners
to repentance. Well, we know that no one is
righteous absolutely. So Christ cannot mean that there
are some people who don't need to repent. What He's saying is,
I have not come to call the righteous, that is, those who are righteous
in their own eyes. Those who say, oh well, Adam's
race may have fallen, but I'm the one exception. No, no. He said, I've not come to call
the righteous, those who say, well, I've got a few kinks and
kinks in my armor, but I'll make it all right on my own. He said,
I've not come to call those who don't feel their helplessness
and their hopelessness. But I am come to call sinners
to repentance, those who have a painful sense of their sin
and deserved wrath. That's why repentance is described
as fleeing the wrath to come. Matthew 3, 7. John said, Who
hath warned you to flee the wrath to come? You don't flee from
a wrath that you don't believe is coming upon you. You don't
just flee from nothing. You flee from something that
you feel is a very real danger, and a very real danger to you. You don't find people in the
middle of the plains, prairie states up in central Canada,
running from the lava that may pour down from some active volcano
in the Philippines. It's the people who live under
the shadow of the sparks and the constant reminders of the
activity of that volcano, which when they begin to see it bellowing
up skyward, they flee. Why? It's a real danger to them.
People in the plain and prairie states of Manitoba don't do it.
And so you see, a Christian is one who does not take the doctrine
of sin in a general sense. Oh yes, all manners. No, no.
He sees himself standing beneath that mountain of God's holiness
and justice and God's wrath against human sin, and he feels that
the lava of divine judgment is flowing down upon his own back,
and he flees from the wrath to come. And until you've had that
painful sense of your own sin and deserved wrath, you'll never
repent. You're living in a fool's paradise.
You've made your bed on the lip of the volcano of divine wrath
and anger, and you sound asleep. God have mercy on you to see
that your sin cries out to heaven for vengeance. It cries out to
Almighty God for judgment. And so the first facet of true
repentance is that painful sense of sin and its deserved wrath. What a beautiful example of this
you have in the story of that publican who went up to the temple
to pray. It's recorded in the Gospel according
to Luke chapter 18. And we read in verse 13 concerning
this man, Luke 18 and verse 13. But the publican, standing afar
off, would not lift up so much his eyes unto heaven, but smote
upon his breast, saying, God, be thou merciful to me, a sinner. He smote upon his breast. Why? Were there television cameras
there in the boom with the microphone, you know, doing this for some
religious broadcast to come over Channel 4 on Sunday night? Was
this some kind of play acting? No. He wasn't conscious that
any eyes were upon him. The eye of God was upon him.
This man had been brought to the place we realized what I've
been trying to expound to you simply and clearly this morning. God is my Creator. I was made
in His image, but in Adam I fell. And I have, as it were, ratified
that fall by my own choice a thousand times over. I've chosen to live
my own way. I've chosen to do my own thing.
I've chosen to turn my back upon God, to live independent of God,
and I have nothing that I can claim from God. I deserve His
wrath. I deserve His judgment. I deserve
His anger. But I see revealed in God mercy
and grace by means of sacrifice, and probably with His eye upon
the very altar of sacrifice. He does not so much as lift his
eyes to heaven. I personally believe his eyes
were upon that sacrifice. And he says, Oh God, God my Creator,
God in whose image I was made, God against whom I have sinned,
be merciful to me, a sinner. And he felt the pain where he
beat, even upon his breast. He wasn't just going through
some ritual, mouthing some words, I'm a sinner, Christ died, going
through the motions. He felt the pain of his alienation
from God. Have you ever felt it? I'm not
asking you if somebody dragged you into a little room somewhere
and you prayed a little prayer, God be merciful, he saved me
for Jesus' sake. I'm not asking you that. I'm asking as though
somebody wounded you in your breast, in your heart, in your
bosom, and you felt the pain of your sin and your alienation
from God. Have you felt the pain of it?
I'm asking you, have you felt the pain of your sin? Not what
it's done to you, what it's done to God. What it did to His Son. The first part of true repentance.
Painful sense of sin and deserved wrath. But secondly, it involves
a sight and confidence of mercy in Jesus Christ. A sight and
confidence that there is mercy in Jesus Christ. When the Apostle
Paul preached that men should repent, he went on then to say
that this repentance is in the light of that day in which Christ
shall judge the world, even the Christ whom God has raised from
the dead. So our response to this God must
be in terms of His Son whom He sent to die and whom He raised
from the dead and set at His own right hand. There will be
no true repentance unless there is that sight and confidence
that there is mercy in Jesus Christ the Lord. So when Christ
Himself authorized His apostles to preach and commanded them
to preach to all the nations, He said, and I read now from
Luke chapter 24, He said in verse 47 that repentance and remission
of sin should be preached in His name among all the nations.
And what does it mean to preach repentance in His name? To preach
it in the setting of verse 46. Thus it is written that Christ
should suffer and rise again from the dead the third day and
that repentance and remission of sins be preached. Oh, what
a wonderful proclamation to make. I have declared to you on the
authority of the Word of God that you fell in Adam. That you
are helpless and hopeless to recover yourself. What a wonderful
thing to declare on the same basis of authority that God so
loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever
believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For
God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world, but
that the world through Him should be saved. And it's that sight
of God's mercy in Christ, Christ coming to bridge the gap between
a holy God and sinful man by taking upon Himself our nature,
and in our nature living a perfect life, in our nature dying upon
the cross, swallowing up to Himself all the pillows of divine wrath
against the sins of His people, And it's when we behold in Christ
the way of mercy, the way of forgiveness, the way of acceptance,
then and only then can there be true repentance, that repentance
which is joined to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Then in the
third place, that repentance which God commands all men, not
only involves that painful sense of sin and deserved wrath, a
sight and confidence of the mercy of God in Christ, but it will
always involve a sincere grieving for and a forsaking of sin and
giving ourselves up to the Lord. True repentance will involve
a sincere grieving for and a forsaking of our sins. In 2 Corinthians
7.10 the apostle says, Godly sorrow worketh repentance. In other words, there is no path
into true repentance but the path of godly sorrow. I see what
my sins have done to the God who made me. I've lived indifferent
to His commands all my life. He made me to glorify Him. And
I've prostituted, I've squandered all that He's invested in me
as a creature made in His image. Sin has turned all of this inward
upon myself and handed it over to the service of the devil.
What a tragedy! Made to glorify God. And I've
been doing everything but that. And when I see that, it produces
grief that I've sinned against my Sovereign. I've sinned against
the privileges that He showered upon me. This is why Robert Murray
McShane, a godly Scottish preacher of several generations ago, said
in these very simple words, a broken heart alone can receive a crucified
Savior. If your heart's not been broken
at the thought of your sin against God, sin that opened up the wounds
of Christ, there's never been a saving embrace of Christ. But it must not only be a sincere
grieving for, but a forsaking of sin. Proverbs 28, 13, He that
covereth his sins shall not prosper. But whoso confesseth and forsaketh
them shall have mercy." There's all the difference in the world
between the mere slobberings of self-pity, telling Delilah
to get off your lap and kiss her goodbye forever. See what
I mean? Oh, it's easy, because conscience,
that little monitor within our own minds and hearts, condemns
us. It's a hellish thing to live
with a nagging conscience. And some people allow the terror
of that conscience to build up until they have some kind of
an inner catharsis, and they have a good week, and a little
slobbering party amongst themselves, and then they feel better. And
they leave their sin alone until conscience, as it were, goes
back to sleep. And then they go right back to the sin. until
conscience starts thundering so loud until there's that awful,
burning, hellish fire of gnawing within, and then they lay off
the sin long enough until conscience goes back to sin. That's not
repentance. That's not repentance. Repentance
is saying to that sin what Jesus described in Matthew 5. You should
be cut off. You should be clocked out. It's
saying no to the sin. It's abandoning the sin. It's
turning from the sin. That's why when that woman at
the well, you know, she was all ready to make a decision. Common
parlance. The Lord's been talking to her
in John 4 about living water. She said, Lord, I'd like to get
in on this. This sounds great. I'd like some of that living
water. Well, Jesus didn't put his hand on his shoulder and
say, well, let's have a word of prayer and you pray after me the following
words. He said, go call your husband. I can just see the look
on her face. She went from white to red to
purple. Well, I, well, I just, I don't
have a husband. He said, yeah, that's right.
You don't have a husband. And that's not the whole story.
I know all about your checkered past. And when I offered you
the water of life, I offered it to you in grace. I know all
about you. Knowing all that I know, I still
say you can have a well of water in you springing up to everlasting
life. What an offer of grace! But he says, Woman, that grace
will come in a way in which I am going to impose my government
over you. You want living water? Then you
face the demands of my government. Call your husband. You have living
water only so far as you're ready to face your past, your present,
your sin. God's law, my demands over you. Call your husband. You want grace? It'll come with government. That's
repentance, a grieving for, and a forsaking of sin. Listen to
the words of Paul in 1 Thessalonians 1. He says, they themselves report
of us what manner of entering in we have unto you, how that
ye turn to God from your idols to serve the living and the true
God. They turned to serve. There was no idea, well I'm going
to snatch a few benefits from the Lord and then I'll go spot
free without any fear of punishment. They turn from their idols to
find pardon and mercy, but also to become the willing subjects
and servants of that God. All of this is put together so
beautifully in such vivid pictorial language and description in the
Prodigal Son. Though the main purpose of that
story of the Prodigal is to magnify the grace of the God who receives
sinners, there are many secondary lessons And you have one of the
clearest examples of these elements of true repentance in that parable. I want you to consider with me
briefly what those elements are. First of all, you remember what
happened to that young prodigal in Luke 15. He's left home, squandered
his money, given himself over to sin. And then we read in verse
17, But when he came to himself, he said, Luke 15, 17. How many hired servants of my
father's have bread enough in despair and I perish here with
hunger? I will arise and go to my father
and say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and in
thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son. Here's
this man, this young man, coming to a sensible and painful awareness
of his sin. I have sinned against heaven,
Father. I did not simply cast off the
restraints and the mores of society. When I bolted the restraint of
your government, and when I broke the traces of the government
of the law of God, I wasn't sinning against you, Dad. I was sinning
against heaven. My problem is not primarily horizontal,
it's vertical. And I say to everyone in this
place this morning, your basic problems are not horizontal,
but vertical. You become aware of your problems
at the horizontal level, and because you become aware of them
there, you think that's where they lie. No, no. They are simply
the manifestation of your real problem, which is vertical, the
ruptured relationship with God. is the person whose marriage
goes in the rocks and they say, something's fundamentally wrong
with me. I can't live with this woman. My problem is here. No,
no. That's simply a manifestation
of what your problem is. You can't live with that woman
or that man because there's something wrong between you and your God. That's the problem. You say,
my problem is I can't relate to other people and to society.
Oh, but that's not the problem. That's just a symptom problem. It's this way. That's what this
prodigal came to see. He came to see I've sinned against
heaven, this sight of his sin and deserved wrath. But then
he knew that there was something back in that household called
mercy and grace. He said, I will arise and go
to my father. And though he says I will confess
my unworthiness, there's no question that the father will be there
in mercy. And that's what gave him encouragement in the midst
of all the living reality of his sin. To return was he knew
there was mercy back at that home. And so with us, it is not
enough that we see ourselves alienated from God, deserving
of His wrath. If we get no further than that,
we'll either kill ourselves or die in hopeless despair. And
if I speak to some this morning who are in that first category,
you see yourself alienated from God, deserving of His wrath.
But there is that despair. Oh, I preached to you this morning,
despair no more, Christ died. Christ rose, Christ lives. He is mighty, He is able, He
is willing to save. Then there was this sincere grieving
before His sin and forsaking it. He didn't run around and
find some of his old girlfriends and say, look, I'm going back
home. You want to come along with me? When he left the hog pens,
he left everything connected with them. The harlots upon whom
he'd wasted his living, the old associations, he left the whole
business and went back to the government of his father's home
in which righteousness reigned. There we see true and biblical
repentance. I ask you as you sit here this
morning, have you and do you experience the things I'm describing? Do you know what it is to have
been brought to a painful awareness of sin and deserved wrath? Has
the Holy Spirit brought you through the Word to a sight of Christ
in His mercy and grace? And have you been brought to
that place of a sincere grieving and forsaking of your sin and
a giving of yourself over to the Lord Jesus Christ to be His? To be His? To be saved by Him? To be kept by Him? To be governed
by Him? Simply to be His? Well, the Apostle closes his
sermon where I want to close it this morning, by buttressing
this command with this great reason why men ought to seriously
regard that command. And you may sit there this morning
wondering in your mind, why in the world should I take this
command seriously? Well, I'll tell you why you should,
for the same reason that Paul told these people why they should
take that command seriously. Look at verse 31. God commands
all men everywhere to repent. Why? inasmuch or because he has
appointed a day in which he will judge the world. God commands
you to repent because he has appointed a day of judgment.
In other words, this command comes to us couched in the context
of the final day of judgment. And in that day, no other issue
will be important but this. Did you repent? Nothing else
will matter. Nothing else will matter. In
that day, it won't matter a hill of beans how much money you made.
Can you imagine the folly of a man, a woman, a fellow, or
a girl coming into the presence of the living God? against whom
they've sinned and lived in rebellion. And the books are opened and
the record of all their thoughts and words and deeds are spread
before them. Can you imagine them reaching
into their pocket and flashing a few hundred dollar bills and
saying, God, maybe this will help me out a little bit. While
I was there on earth, I lived for money and things, and that's
all I've got, God. Take these. Maybe that will help
me. This stupidity, the folly of
it is evident to the youngest here this morning. What good
will your money do? What good will your cars and
your homes and your things do when you come to judgment and
your sins are not forgiven? What about the person who's lived
for pleasure? How are you going to capture
those moments of sensual pleasure and put them in a box or a bottle
and stand in the judgment and say, here, Lord, here are all
my pinnacle moments of ecstatic pleasure. Maybe they'll help
me out. You see how stupid it is? You
see how foolish it is? Oh, my friend, the day is coming
when one thing will matter. Did you repent? Not how much
money you made? Not what pleasures you've had?
Not what church you belong to? or didn't belong to? One thing
will matter. Did you experience repentance
unto life? Now look at what Paul says about
that day very quickly. He says it is an appointed day,
inasmuch as this God has appointed a day in which He will judge
the world. If men could get together say,
on July 1st, and all around the world in every little hamlet
and village and tribe as well as the great centers of the world,
Paris and New York and London and Cairo, Egypt and Peking and
all the rest, and we're going to have a worldwide referendum. And here is the issue at stake.
Shall there or shall there not be a day of judgment? Vote yes
or no. I have no question as to what
the outcome of the ballot would be. Apart from God's elect, His
salt sprinkled throughout the earth, it would be an overwhelming
vote, no day of judgment. Because even in the mind and
heart of the most careless sinner in this place or wherever he
be this morning, there is that gnawing awareness, my sins one
day are going to stare me in the face. when I stand before
God. Oh, how men would love to blot
out the reality of that day. They can't do it in their own
conscience, let alone in reality. And the reason they can't do
it in their conscience is because Almighty God Himself has appointed
that day, and nobody's going to change His appointment book.
No secretaries can take God's appointment book and scribble
out His appointments in writing on it. The God who made the world
is the God who's determined to judge the world, and no one will
alter that determination. It's an appointed day. The second
thing Paul says about it is that there'll be an appointed judge
taking charge in that day. He has appointed a day in which
He'll judge the world by the man whom He hath ordained. If men couldn't pass their referendum
to cancel out the judgment day, they'd love to do the second
best thing. pick their own judge, one that they could pay off,
one they could bribe, one whom they could threaten, one who
could be cajoled into altering the standard of inflexible judgment. But God's already made the choice
of His judge, and He's not going to alter it. He has not only
appointed the day, He's appointed the judge. And He says it's that
person whom he has raised from the dead in order to give assurance
of his appointment. In other words, the resurrection
of Christ is God's validation upon his appointment to judge
him. He didn't look like the judge
of the world when he was hanging on a cross. He himself was judged
by the creatures of that world, condemned to be worthy of death. Hung upon a cross in weakness,
he died. But he now lived And the resurrection
of Jesus Christ is God's irrefutable argument for the fact that this
appointment will be kept. When I hear men trying to talk
themselves into the conviction that Christ is not risen, I have
to laugh under my breath. So indelibly impressed upon men
is the reality of Christ death and resurrection and His appointment
at judgment, that they marshal all of their energies to try
to scrub that concept from the minds of men. They can live so much more comfortably.
And all the so-called intellectual arguments against the gospel
are nothing but man's futile attempts to scrub from his mind
the awful, haunting realization an empty tomb in Palestine is
the certain pledge of somebody who's going to sit on a throne
and judge me. All judgment has been given unto
the Son, John chapter 5. And part of the gospel, according
to Acts 10 in Romans 2, is the preaching that Christ is judge. And then in the third place,
He's going to judge by an inflexible standard. Look at the text. Appointed
the day in which He'll judge the world. How? In righteousness. That is, by the inflexible standard
of His own holy law. Oh, how we love a sliding scale
of judgment. Let somebody else say what they
say, and that's gossip. But then we adjust the scale,
and to us it is just just criticism. Let somebody else do something,
and we can judge it as lie, untruth. We slide and adjust the scale
and call it with reference to what we say that's in the same
ballpark. We just call it diplomacy. Let somebody else do something,
and it's this, and we slide the scale and adjust it and squeeze
it and stretch it. But not this judge. He judges
in righteousness. He has a standard of absolute
inflexibility, the holy law of God. And every thought, word,
and deed that is not mathematically parallel to that law, if it is
not covered by the blood and mediation and righteousness of
Christ, will be met with justice pure, simple, and unmixed. He'll judge the world in righteousness. And if anybody here is foolish
enough to want to enter into discussion with God about your
life when it's faced with the law of God, then God have mercy
on you. I, for one, I want to be found
hiding beneath the righteousness of Christ, hiding beneath the
covering of His blood. For I know that in me that is
in my flesh dwelleth no good thing, and all my righteousnesses
are as filthy rags. I do not want to face a standard
of inflexible righteousness unless I meet that standard, and I cannot
meet it in myself. But blessed be God, I meet it
in Jesus Christ. He is made unto us wisdom, what? Righteousness, sanctification,
and redemption. And so, if you're in Christ,
you may not fear that day. If you're out of Christ, you
should tremble. Then, that day will be consummated
with an irrevocable sentence. He will judge the world in righteousness. He will not only bring in the
evidence and issue the sentence, but He will pronounce that sentence
as irreversible and irrevocable, depart from me, cursed, into
everlasting fire." Well, you read at your leisure what happened
when Paul preached along these lines. Some people, they mocked. They said, that's a bunch of
stupid religious ravings. Some other people, they were
a little more polite and said, well, we'll hear you another time.
But thank God, it says, some claimed to him and believed.
Oh, may God grant that this morning as this inescapable command of
the living God has come to us from the Scriptures, that we
shall not destroy ourselves by the mocking born of human pride,
or by the evasion born of human diplomacy. Well, that's all right
if that's your cup of tea, but oh, that we may be subject to
the authority of the Word of God. Hear this God who made us,
saying, I command you to repent, acknowledge your sin, flee to
my Son, flee from your sin, give yourself unto Him. God grant
that in that awesome day I may be found clear of the blood of
every one of you. Some of you may never darken
the doors of this place again, but you will never escape what
you heard this morning. as much as you would love to,
you cannot escape the haunting conviction that what I've told
you is true. Because being made in God's image,
though sin has defaced that image, whenever God's voice is heard
through the Scriptures, there is an echo to that voice, an
Amen, in the depth of our own hearts. And we try to stifle
it, we try to squelch it, drown it out, Oh, blessed is the man
to whom that amen becomes so thunderously overpowering that
he says, Oh God, I can fight against you and your truth no
longer. Here I am naked before you in
my sin and uncleanness. But, oh God, if there is hope
for creatures like me, be pleased to receive me and pardon me and
forgive me for the sake of your dear and only begotten Son. God commandeth all men everywhere
to repent, because He has appointed a day in which He will judge
the world. Let us pray.