I'd like us just to spend a little
bit of our last little time together looking at verse 30 and the last
part of that verse. There have been times of ignorance
for the Gentile world, but now God commandeth all men everywhere
to repent. And then he says in verse 31,
and Lord willing we'll look at this next week, because he is
appointed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness
by the man that he hath ordained, whereof is he given assurance
unto all men in that he has raised him from the dead. He's given
assurance to all men that there is this day of judgment, an appointed
day. He's given assurance to all men
that the judgment will be a just judgment. because of the just
judgment that fell upon the Lord Jesus Christ. There'll be a just
judgment because He's near to all people and He hears and sees
and all sin is done in His presence. But the question I'd like us
to ponder a little bit in this time we have left is, what is
repentance? What does it mean? The Lord said
in those teachings in Luke chapter 13 about the tower that fell
on them and the Galileans that were slaughtered by Pilate. He said, nay, except you repent,
you shall likewise perish. And the 18 at the Tower of Siloam
fell on them in Luke. 13 verse 5, I tell you nay, except
you repent, you shall likewise perish. So like all aspects of salvation
and all words that are prominent in the scriptures, it needs to
be defined in such a way that we are relieved of the the troubles
that the religious world puts to these things all the time.
The religious idolatry of this world clouds the things of the
Lord Jesus Christ. It clouds His glory and it clouds
His salvation and clouds the wonder of the eternal covenant
and all of the blessings of God creating and drawing His people
to Himself. But repentance is normally understood
in that if you turn from your sins, you turn and you're sorry
for your sins and you never do them again, then you have repented
and your sins will be forgiven. That's how I understood repentance,
wasn't it? It's to be sorry, it's to turn
from your sins, and it's to never do them again. Some people get you to sign a
covenant about the fact that you're going to live a life of
holiness, you're going to live a life of saying no to ungodliness
and yes to holiness, and encourage others to do the same. The reality,
brothers and sisters, is that's not what penance in the scriptures
means, but also there's no gospel in it. There's no gospel in it. You ought to turn from your sins.
Sins are horrible in every way. And you ought to be sorry for
your sins. are grievous, they're grievous
in terms of our relationship with God, they're grievous in
terms of our relationship with other people, and the tentacles
that go out from sin reach further and further. So there is a sense
in which the Lord's people will be sorry for their sins and there's
a sense in which the Lord's people will turn from their sins. But
are there any sins that you've turned from and never returned
to again? See, believers do mourn and they
grieve and they organise over their sins. But if someone says, as I was telling my friends
about a fellow that my acquaintance in this town who said that he
only had one sin left, that was 10 years ago, he'd reduced all
the sins in his life and he only had one left that he was working
on. He had truly, in his mind, repented. See, people can turn from sins
outwardly, but not in their hearts. And there might be sins that
you don't commit, but you actually still love them in some way. See, without repentance, there
is no salvation. Without repentance, there is
no faith. In our story, in our pictures
here in Acts chapter 17, God now commandeth all men everywhere
to repent. And we have the typical example
of people who repented. Dionysius, the Areopagite, and
Damaris were people who repented. One of the wonderful things about
true biblical repentance is that when God commands, God achieves
what he's commanded. Always, when he commands, he
gets the results of his command. And the evidence of true repentance
is what happened to these two people, isn't it? The evidence
of true repentance is faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. They declared
to Paul and believed. And the evidence of true faith
is repentance. See, true repentance, biblical
repentance, means a change of mind. That's what the word means. It means to change your mind. Just like Dionysius believed
in all of the philosophy of the Athenians and he believed in
the power of the gods of the Athenians, he actually In response
to Paul's preaching, he realised that that ignorance, and that
ignorance is overcome by revelation. He had a changed mind. To repent
is to have believed something and not to believe it anymore. Repentance. Repentance is how
the Lord Jesus Christ and John the Baptist began their ministry.
If you turn to Mark chapter one, for example, John describes himself as verse
3 of chapter 1 of Mark, a voice crying in the wilderness, prepare
ye the way of the Lord, make his path straight. John did baptise
in the wilderness and preach the baptism of repentance for
the remission of sins. So John's baptism was like all
Christian baptism. See, baptism represents the death,
the burial, the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. And
when you're baptised, you're confessing that my hope is that
when the Lord Jesus Christ lived on this earth and lived before
God and lived before men and perfectly kept the law of God,
I lived in him and I kept the law in him and I kept it perfectly.
And when he died under the wrath of God, I died with him and in
him. And when he was raised again,
because my sins were put away, I'm raised together with him. See, baptism pictures how sins
are remitted. It's all to do, it's all to do,
like all things in salvation, it's all to do with the Lord
Jesus Christ, which is why baptism is an immersion. and that baptism
is for believers. John's baptism is a baptism of
repentance for the remission of sins. So it's a baptism of
repentance. It's a change of mind regarding
the remission of sins. If you turn to some passages
in Acts chapter five, beginning in Acts chapter five, we'll see
that repentance is actually a theme that's discussed and illuminated
much in the Book of Acts. Peter. Peter suffers that persecution
of these religious leaders in Jerusalem. And they bring them
before them and they were commanded not to speak. And Peter says,
we ought to obey God, verse 29. We ought to obey God rather than
man. The God of our fathers raised
up Jesus whom you slew and hanged on a tree. Him have God exalted
to his right hand to be a prince and a saviour for to give repentance
to Israel and the forgiveness of sins. Repentance and the forgiveness
of sins are intimately linked together. Peter says something
similar over in Acts chapter 11 verse 18 when he's challenged
again by this time the believing Jews in Jerusalem about what
is done in Cornelius' house. And when they heard these things,
verse 18, when they heard these things about the Gospel coming
and the Lord Jesus Christ coming to Cornelius' house and them
being born again by the Holy Spirit as they were in the day
of Pentecost. When they heard these things, they held their
peace and glorified God saying, then has God also to the Gentiles
granted repentance unto life. So repentance in the religious
world is an activity of man, isn't it? Repentance in the scriptures
is an activity of God. It's a gift of God to change
your mind about how sins are forgiven. Romans 2.4 is a well-known
verse, isn't it? The goodness of God leads to
repentance. When you have issues with people,
2 Timothy 2.24 is a powerful and significant verse, isn't
it, about those who differ. of God must not strive, but be
gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient in meekness, instructing
those that oppose themselves." People who are opposing the Gospel
and opposing the preaching of the Gospel and opposing what
the Gospel says about the Lord Jesus Christ, they oppose themselves. If peradventure, God will give
them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth. Repentance is a
gift. It's the repentance for the remission
of sins, if we go back to Mark. That word for means an entrance
into, and it's a place entered. I remind you again that this
idea that if you repent of your sins they will be forgiven, you
have to turn from them, you have to be sorry for them, you have
to not return to them again, and that is what remission of
sins is and that is what repentance is. That is not what the scriptures
are saying, brothers and sisters. Repentance is a change of mind
regarding or concerning the remission of sins or the forgiveness of
sins. We're all naturally religious
and we're all naturally born into a covenant of works in our
Father Adam. And we naturally think that we
have to do this and that, and these things we have to turn,
we have to read the Bible some more, we have to witness some
more, we have to pray some more, we have to do some good works,
you have to fill in the blanks in the covenant that you have
signed. And if you do all of those things,
you'll be repenting and your sins will be forgiven. See, biblical
repentance is a change of mind about all
those things. The Jews, in Acts 17, and the
idolatrous Athenians, with all of their philosophy, were equally
in the same situation before God. They all needed to repent. The Jews thought that their forgiveness
of sins and their standing with God was on the basis of their
activities. The Athenians had made their gods and they'd worship
them in ways which weren't a whole lot dissimilar. See, the forgiveness
of sins, the forgiveness of sins is not a reward for what you
have done. Salvation doesn't end with the
forgiveness of sins. It's not the end of a process.
Salvation begins with the full, free and complete forgiveness
of sins. See, forgiveness of sins is not
God's response to you doing something. Forgiveness is God's response
to what His Son has done. What's His Son done? His Son has done it all, and we have
nowhere else to look. I love what Ephesians 4.32 says,
and be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one
another, even as God, for Christ's sake, hath forgiven you. See, he doesn't forgive you because
you're sorry. He doesn't forgive you because
you've turned. He's forgiven you, and he forgives
you completely and fully and freely, purely on the basis of
who the Lord Jesus Christ is and what he has done. Now wonder
Hebrews 9.22 says, without the shedding of blood there is no
remission of sin. God saves and God forgives sin
for Christ's sake. See, biblical repentance is repenting
of anything contrary to that. People think that you have to
confess your sins. Repentance is part of confessing
your sins. Can you imagine what was happening
down there by the Jordan? Multitudes turned up to be baptised. Did they all confess their sins?
How long would it take? for them to confess all of their
sins. You can imagine the crowd there and all the disciples waiting
in line. There's this line of people who
say, well, John Newell's here, just give me another couple of
hours. Then I've got to deal with that Ben over there. So you don't confess your sins to
a man. You don't confess your sins to
a preacher or to a priest. What's to confess sins? To confess
sins, the word confess, please note it, the word confess is
made up of two Greek words. I don't like talking about Greek
words much, but these two are really important. One is called
homo, and the other one is legaio. It is to say the same thing. To confess your sins is to agree
with God about your sins. It's to take sides with God against
yourself. It's to declare yourself as guilty
as charged. So you don't have enough time
in the day to confess all your sins, and you don't know enough
about all your sins to confess all your sins. You don't have
a clue how sinful you are. I don't have a clue how sinful
I am. I'm horrified by what I see and
what I have to live with. But as soon as I go to the point
of wanting to start confessing them, I'm lost. See, confession is agreeing with
God about your sin. And that's what baptism pictures,
doesn't it? It pictures that you are united
to the Lord Jesus Christ and the only way you can be saved
is by what baptism depicts. See how many sins. Baptism says
you're immersed and you're hidden and dead with him and your only
hope is that you're in him He kept the law for you and he obeyed
God perfectly for you and he lived a life of perfect sinlessness
before God and man and that sinlessness is yours and he bore the wrath
of God for all your sins in his own body on the tree. He was
put to death because of our sins, says Romans 4.25, but he was
raised because of our justification. So what is biblical repentance? Acts 20.21 says that Paul preached
this very moving passage that we will get to, Lord willing,
in the not too distant future. but he kept nothing back from
them that was profitable to you and showed you and taught you
publicly and from house to house, testifying, verse 21, both to
the Jews and also to the Greeks, repentance toward God and faith
toward our Lord Jesus Christ. See, repentance is repentance
towards God. Dionysius in our passage here,
he had a change of mind regarding the character of God. And he
realised that all of those gods of the Athenians were nothing
but idolatry, the figments of man's imagination. They had no
power to save, they had no power to do anything else. And that
he was in the hands of a sovereign God. He had a change of mind
regarding the character of God. God's children who have repented
all have a change of mind regarding the character of God. And they
find the things that were most offensive about God, now the
things that they most delight in. I love the fact that God
is absolutely sovereign over all things. I love the fact that
he's so near that he sees everything I do and every thought that I
ever thought. I love the fact that he's close. I love the fact
that he's here with us. I love the fact that he's holy.
I love the fact that he's so indescribably holy. That word
holy means to be other. He's so separate from us, and
yet here he is in the midst of his people. I love the fact that
he's a just God, as we read in Isaiah 45. He's a just God and
a saviour. I love the fact that he won't
save anyone without honouring his strict justice. I love the
fact that he's a God of grace. I love the fact that he's a God
of mercy. I love the fact that he creates worshippers. I love
the fact that he loves us and therefore he creates love for
him. I love the fact that when he
died on Calvary's tree, he died with a specific purpose in the
eternal purposes of God. And he died on Calvary's tree
as one who was perfectly united with his bride and he bore all
of their sins and they're gone forever. in the courts of God,
he now takes his bride and he presents them before. And he's
now in heaven interceding for us. I love the fact that he's
sovereign over all things. I love the fact that he elected
a people. I love the fact of particular
redemption. See, we have God's children,
we have a changed mind regarding those attributes of God. That's
what repentance is, we've been changed in our mind. We've had
Him come and reveal Himself to us in the preaching of the Gospel
by opening up His Word of truth. and making their spirit and life
to us. And now we love the things that we once hated. We like Adam. We're happy to hide from God
and weave ourselves the robe of righteousness. And we love
the fact that God draws this to himself and he takes it all
away. Paul repented, didn't he? He thought as a Jew that he had
all of these good works that commended himself to men and
particularly commended himself to God. And he could say with
honesty that he's kept the law. He's blameless before the law.
And he met the Lord Jesus Christ. And he had a complete and utter
change of mind about God. He had a complete and utter change
of mind about his works. They were just done, he says.
Filthy rags. See, repentance is repentance,
as we just read, Acts 20, 21. It's repentance toward God. And repentance is a change of
mind about yourself. Job is a remarkable picture of
a child of God going through trials. And all of those trials,
as painful as they were, were not the cause of Job repenting.
Having those miserable comforters coming to him weren't the cause
of Job repenting. He lost everything, his family,
his health, his wealth, and none of it caused him to repent. So
what caused Job to repent? I love the order that God brings
in his word. Those miserable comforters spoke
and challenged Job, and Job defended himself and defended his own
righteousness. Then Elihu comes along, and he preaches the gospel
to him. And then God comes after the
gospels preached, and he speaks to Job. And in chapter 40 of
Job, God speaks to him. And Job answered and said to
the Lord, this is Job who had been defending his righteousness
all the way through. He said, behold, I am vile. And then over in verse 42, God
spends those two chapters intervening by challenging Job and asking
him question after question after question, where were you, Job? Who are you in relation to me?
How dare you challenge my righteousness and my justice by defending yourself? Job answered, Verse 42, Job answered
the Lord and said, I know that thou canst do everything, and
that no thought can be withholden from thee. Who is he that hideeth
counsel without knowledge? Therefore I have uttered what
I understood not. It was ignorance. Job was ignorant. things too wonderful for me which
I knew not. Here I beseech thee and I will
speak and I will demand of thee and declare there unto me, I
have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eyes
seeth thee. Therefore I abhor myself and
repent in dust and ashes. See, true repentance is not you
turning. True repentance is God changing
your mind by revealing himself to you. It's repentance toward
God. It's repentance about yourself
and your good works. It's repentance, as Hebrews 6.1
says, it's repentance from dead works. Every religious work,
before the Lord gave me life." All of them are dead works. All
of this religion of this modern world where people talk about,
I gave my heart to Him and I accepted Him into my heart and I opened
my heart to Him and I invited Him in and I made Him Lord of
my life, all of the religious nonsense is dead works and it's not repentance. See, it's to repent and to believe
the gospel, to believe how that Christ died according to the
scriptures, to believe that he put away all my sins, to believe
that I'm robed in his righteousness and all the glory goes to him.
I'm relying on him. It's a change of mind about your
works, as we just said, regarding Paul. It's a change of mind regarding
the remission of sins. It's a change of mind about how
you think sins are forgiven. So people think that the forgiveness
of sins is the reward or the result of you doing something. To repent is to change your mind
from that corrupt way of thinking about the Lord Jesus and his
work on Calvary's tree. It's a way I thought about God. That's why Hebrews 10 says, we
read that verse in 9.22, without the shedding of blood there is
no remission of sins. And Hebrews 10, it speaks of
where remission of these is, There is no more offering for
sin. So repentance is not to offer
God anything for sin. Don't offer God anything. God
is not worshipped, as Acts 17 says. He's not worshipped by
man's hands. He's not worshipped in man's
temple. He's not worshipped at man's altar. Nothing but the
blood of Jesus. So repentance, biblical repentance,
is a change of mind. It's a change of mind towards
God. It's a change of mind about ourselves and our works. It's a change of mind about how
sins are forgiven. It's a change of mind about the
character of God. It's saying what God says about
His holiness and my sinfulness. True repentance just acknowledges
the character of God. As Paul said to these Athenians,
you are in his hands. He has the right to do with you
as he sees fit. And whatever he sees fit to do
is right because it's he who does it. That's why Eli said,
when the news came of his sons, it is the Lord. It is the Lord. True repentance acknowledges
God's right. True repentance acknowledges
God's right to judge. True repentance. True repentance gives God all
the glory in salvation. And true repentance is not a
one-time event. True repentance is something
that God's people are in the process of doing all the time. Our minds are continually being
renewed and continually being changed and our minds are continually
taken off from our works and our activities onto Christ's
work and his activities. And God commands it and God gets
it. He commands all men everywhere
to repent. Dionysius clung to Paul. It means that he was joined with
him, joined with him in a bond like glue. He was joined with
Paul's saviour and he's joined with Paul's gospel. True repentance
looks solely to the Lord Jesus Christ for salvation. True repentance claims nothing
of our past, nothing of our present, and nothing of our future. True
repentance always involves faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Dionysius
believed. He was commanded of God and he
believed. There are so many beautiful pictures
of biblical repentance in the scriptures, aren't they? One
of the best is the prodigal son. The prodigal son had a sense
of entitlement, didn't he? I have a right to all of these
things and I'll have them now, he said to his father. And then
he wasted all his substance and he spent it all and he had nothing
and he was in need and in famine. You know the story, he was there
in a pig pen and he was envious of the pigs with the husks they
were eating. It's a picture of man-made works religion. And he was bound to a citizen
of that country. He had no rest, no satisfaction,
and he came to himself. But what did he think in repentance
when he came to himself? He realised how good his father
was. He realised how forgiving his
father was. And he says, the servants in
my father's house are better than me. And you know the story,
it's a glorious story of biblical repentance, isn't it? The father's
out there looking for him, and waiting for him to come home,
and he runs to him. The only time in all the scriptures
there's a picture of God in a hurry, and he comes to him. And he puts
the best robe on him, the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ. He
puts that ring on him, that love that had no beginning and no
end, a sign of the everlasting covenant. And he puts shoes on
his feet, the best shoes, grace to persevere in this world. And
he brings a fatted calf, and it's a celebration. What brought
him to repentance? It wasn't all the troubles that
he went through. It was a picture of the glory
of his father and the goodness of his father. A true repentance, as a dead
without man, brings a celebration in the midst of enemies who mock. Dionysius and Paul and Damaris
rejoice together, all forgiven, joined together in the Lord Jesus.
Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we pray that
you might grant us changed minds about who you are. Our sin clouds
your glory. from us, our Father, and we need
you to bring light, to illuminate our darkness and show us once
again the glory of salvation in your dear and precious Son,
that we are made your children, Heavenly Father, accepted in
the Beloved. The Lord Jesus Christ has done
everything that's necessary for us to delight in your presence
now and forever. Heavenly Father, grant us changed
minds about who you are and who we are, and how your dear and
precious Son saves sinners like us. And grant us, Heavenly Father,
the faith that necessarily comes with repentance, that we might
find ourselves completely and utterly relying upon Him, that
He might become all to us as He is to the saints in heaven.
Grant us the grace of repentance, our Father. Grant us the peace
that true repentance comes as we find ourselves at rest in
Him. Grant us to remember Him, Heavenly Father, as we take these
elements that remind us of His broken body and His shed blood. Make us to remember Him often,
our Father. For we pray in His name and for
His glory. Amen.