Corinthians chapter 7. Let's
begin reading in verse 9. Now I rejoice. This is Paul writing
to the Corinthians, believers. He says, Now I rejoice, not that
you were made sorry, but that you sorrowed to repentance. For you were made sorry after
a godly manner, that you might receive damage by us in nothing. For godly sorrow worketh repentance
to salvation, not to be repented of. But the sorrow of the world
worketh death. For behold this selfsame thing,
that you saw it after a godly sort." He's going to tell us
here what true repentance is. He's going to give us seven gifts
of true repentance. He says, "...what carefulness
it wrought in you, yea, what clearing of yourselves, yea,
what indignation Yea, what fear? Yea, what vehement desire? Yea, what zeal? Yea, what revenge? And in all, he says, in these
seven things, you have approved yourselves to be clear in this
matter. Now, the Apostle Paul was forced
to rebuke the saints at Corinth strongly. He had said, you know,
out in the first letter, he said, I was determined to know nothing
among you save Jesus Christ and Him crucified. He was determined
to preach Christ to them. But there was some trouble in
Corinth and they, when he would just told them, you know, this
needs to stop, they didn't listen. And they went a little further
in it. And any time you go further in error, it becomes bigger error,
and bigger error, and bigger error. And they got to the point,
they were so distracted, they could not hear the gospel. And
so, Paul had to strongly, personally, write them a letter and personally
rebuke them strongly. Now, that was right. You know,
that was the right thing to do. Now, usually, by and large, the
rebuke comes through the preaching of the gospel. We're not of those
that Paul condemns in the book of Galatia, where he says they
constrain you to this and that, that they might glory in your
flesh. That's not what we do. We preach Christ. And I've told
you this before, the sharper the axe, the less force you have
to use. And the more clear the gospel
is, and the more clearly it's set forth, the less you have
to personally rebuke. Because the gospel does the rebuking.
God does the rebuking through the gospel. But sometimes you
do have to speak a word. And Paul had to speak a strong
word to them. And it didn't do them damage,
though. It helped them. If he had not have rebuked them,
it would have done damage to them. That's why he said, we
did this that there would be no damage done to you. But it
did cause them sorrow. This is the golden chain. Rebuke,
sorrow, repentance, salvation. But that's a good chain. That's
a golden thread right there. And that's what happened. He
rebuked them, they were made sorry, but it woke them up and
they repented unto salvation in Christ our salvation. The thing I want to focus on
here is the seven things that Paul said that are the marks
of true godly sorrow, true godly repentance. Now, the worldly
sorrow stops short of this. This is true godly sorrow, true
repentance. There are seven things given
here. Now, all of these come from God. You know, Acts tells
us the prince of life, Christ, is risen that he might grant
repentance. And He does. He gives repentance.
He gives faith. They're two sides of the same
coin. If you repent, you believe. And if you believe, you've repented.
They go right together. Here we have seven marks, seven
gifts of repentance. These are gifts from our Lord.
The first is, He says, what carefulness it wrought in you. Now, while
we're dead in sins, we saw this this morning, we don't know what
sin is, and we don't have any concern about our sin. And Isaiah
describes it this way, well, the Lord describes it through
Isaiah. He said, the man who's dead in his sin, he feeds on
ashes. He's feeding on ashes. And it
says, "...and a deceived heart has turned him aside, so that
he cannot deliver his soul, nor can he say, is there not a lie
in my right hand?" He can't see. He can't understand that the
God he's calling on is an idol. It's a God he made in his imagination.
And he's feeding on ashes. And he can't save himself, and
he can't say, this is a lie. He can't do it. And likewise,
believers, sometimes we fall into a stupor. We have an old
man and a new man, and we get to feeding that old man, and
the old man gets a little stronger, a little stronger, and the new
man gets weaker and weaker, and we get into a stupor. So in the
first hour, and in every hour after that, God must grant us
repentance. Repentance is not a one-time
thing, no more than faith is a one-time thing. We're constantly
repenting from our sins, and constantly coming to Christ.
God wakes us up. He wakes us up. And God causes
us to sorrow over our sins. Now, He does it in the light
of Christ. In the light of Christ. A mere
sorrow for sin is not repentance. A man can become sorry over his
sin because he's convicted of guilt, or because he's afraid
of some temporary trouble that it's going to cause him, or because
he's afraid of hell. A man can become sorrowful over
sin and it not be true repentance. But we really only know our sin
when we see our sin in light of the Lord Jesus Christ. Everything
is at the cross. Everything is seen at the cross. When you look at Christ on the
cross, there you see how God regards sin. Because Christ who
knew no sin was made sin for His people. And when He was made
sin for His people, God spared not His only begotten Son. In order for God to be just,
Christ had to die. In order for God to justify His
people in a manner consistent with justice, Christ had to die. And when God makes you to look
upon Christ, He said, they'll look upon Me whom they have pierced. And He makes you to see, I pierced
Him. I put him there. My sin is the
reason he died. And he says, and when they look
upon me whom they have pierced, then they'll mourn for me as
one that mourns for his only begotten son. He makes you to
true repentance, true sorrow is to mourn that your sin is
against Christ. That's true repentance. That's
true sin, true understanding of sin. And when this, when he
gives you this, It causes a carefulness. A carefulness. The word means
it turns us from our sins speedily, diligently, and earnestly. You
want to be turned. You want to be done with the
sin. Look at Isaiah chapter 30. Isaiah chapter 30. In verse 21, here he's speaking
about what will happen when he gives his people faith, repentance,
when he begins to speak, and he says that from that day forward,
and this is the same from the first hour from that day forward,
and he says this, Verse 21, he says, where does it start? Verse
20, he says, Though the Lord give you the bread of adversity
and the water of affliction, though you're going to go through
trials, he says, yet shall not thy teachers be removed into
a corner anymore, but thine eyes shall see thy teachers. He's
going to provide you with the truth. And He said, "...and thine
ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, This is the way,
walk ye in it." When you turn to the right hand and when you
turn to the left. And this is what's going to happen.
Here's this carefulness. You shall defile also the covering
of thy graven images of silver, and the ornament of thy molten
images of gold. Thou shalt cast them away as
a mistress' cloth. Thou shalt say unto it, Get thee
hence. You ever played that game where
you're blindfolded or you're in a dark room or something and
you stick your hand on something and try to have to figure out
what it is, you know, and somebody does something, puts something
that feels gross up there, you know, so when you feel of it,
it feels like it's all something nasty, you know. Well, when God
turns the light on and makes you see your sin and the light
comes on, He makes you to see that that That God you thought
was God, and that righteousness you thought was righteousness,
and those works that you thought counted for something, you're
holding on to a minstrel's cloth. And you go, get away from me.
I don't want it. That's what this carefulness
is. It brought in you carefulness, Paul said. It made you want to
diligently, earnestly, quickly be done with sin. That's the first gift of true
repentance. But it doesn't stop there. Here's
the second thing. When he rebukes in truth, God
makes us seek to clear ourselves. He says, "...not only wrought
carefulness in you, yea, what clearing of yourselves." The
Greek word for clearing is the exact word we get our word, apology. Apology. But it's much more than
just an apology like you and I apologize. This is much more
than that. The Corinthians didn't deny their
sin. They didn't try to justify it.
They didn't try to clear themselves in that way. That's not what
we're talking about. They confessed that now the man
that's haughty, arrogant, self-righteous, trusting in his works, when he
hears the gospel and hears the truth come, he'll defend his
works, he'll defend his righteousness, he'll defend his holiness, he'll
defend himself. In doing so, he's defending his
sin is what he's defending. Because it's all sinful outside
of Christ. And then he's defending his sin.
He's not trying to clear himself. The only right that we have as
sinners is a right to hell. But a man that's defending himself
will try to defend his right, his will, his works, all that.
You ever hear somebody apologize to you and they say something
like, well, I'm sorry you're offended. That's not an apology. There's no admittance there of
wrongdoing. That's blaming the one that's
offended. I'm sorry you're offended. That's not an apology. When somebody's
really apologizing, we get a picture of it over here in Psalm 51.
This is what clearing of yourself is. This is what David did whenever
the Lord rebuked David. He says, Psalm 51.1, Have mercy
upon me, O God, according to Thy lovingkindness, according
unto the multitude of Thy tender mercies, blot out my transgressions. wash me throughly from mine iniquity,
and cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge my transgressions,
and my sin is ever before me against Thee, and Thee only have
I sinned, and done this evil in Thy sight, that Thou mightest
be justified when Thou speakest, and be clear when Thou judgest."
Can you imagine if somebody came and apologized to you that way?
Huh? Wouldn't you? Wouldn't you? It'd
move you to have mercy on them, wouldn't it? If they confess
to you that, God will have mercy on a man who comes to Him that
way. He's acknowledging my sin. To clear yourself is to seek
God's mercy. It's to say, God be merciful
to me. I'm just nothing but a sinner. To clear yourself with God is
to seek God to cleanse you. He said, wash me throughly of
my sin. To clear yourself is to confess
that our sins are against God. He said, against thee and thee
only have I sinned. To clear yourself is to clear
God. He says that thou mightest be
justified when thou speakest and be clear when thou judgest. That's when a man is taking sides
with God against himself. And that's what clearing of yourselves
is. It's to clear God and it's to show, I'm nothing but sin. I need you to wash me. I need
you to clothe me. I need you to robe me. I'll tell
you what the Lord has said in Micah 6.8. He showed thee, O
man, what is good. Now if you hear God say that,
we ought to pay attention. He showed you, O man, what is
good. What does the Lord require of
thee? He says, to do justly with thy God. That's what David did
when he said, Lord, against you and you only have I sinned, that
you might be justified when you speak. Deal justly with God.
Take your place before Him under His justice and confessing your
sin. And then he says, and to love
mercy with thy God. That's what David was doing.
He was saying, Lord, be merciful to me. I need you to withhold
from me everything that I deserve. And he said, and to walk humbly
with thy God. That's what David was doing.
Later on in that psalm, he says, a broken and a contrite heart,
that's the sacrifice of God. You won't despise that, O Lord,
a broken and a contrite heart. Now that's clearing of yourself
with God. That's the second gift of repentance. And it's not only that, brethren,
it's to clear yourself with your brethren. Look at Luke 19. Luke 19. We have an example of
that in Luke 19. This is when the Lord had called
Zacchaeus. He came right to where he was,
he knew exactly who he was, and he called the man's name. How
did the Lord know that? He never met him before. His
name was written in the Lamb's Book of Life before the foundation
of the world. Christ knew Him from the beginning.
Christ came to Him. He didn't come to all those other
people. He came to Him and He called Him. And before that man
got down out of that tree, he had a new heart and repentance
and faith and Christ had saved him. He hearkened to the Word
that was spoken. He heard and came unto Christ
before he ever even came down off of one limb out of that tree.
That had happened in his heart. And so when he came down, this
is what he said concerning his brethren. Luke 19, 8. Zacchaeus
stood and he said unto the Lord, Behold, Lord, the half of my
goods I give to the poor, and if I've taken anything from any
man by false accusation, I'll restore him fourfold. And Jesus
said unto him, This day if salvation come to this house for as much
as he also is a son of Abraham. God makes a man, the sinner,
so lowly and meek before his brethren, he wants his brethren
to forgive him. He wants to be a restorer even
to his brethren because he sees himself as the chief of sinners.
Everybody's better than him. You don't have to worry about
sinners exalting themselves over one another as long as we keep
hearing the repeated message that we're worms. When you're
in the dust as a worm, you can't exalt yourself over somebody.
It's when we think we're better than that that we start trying
to exalt ourselves. We've got to be put in the dust
and we've got to stay in the dust. But when God puts you there,
it's like the old preacher said, a man's dog and his cat start
being treated better. They're better off when a man's
saved by grace. He treats everybody better. And
that's what happened here. Now, first he brings us to carefulness,
then he brings us to clear ourselves. Here's the third gift. God rebukes
in truth. He fills us with indignation.
Indignation. Look at 2 Corinthians 7.11. He
says, yea, what indignation. God giving repentance is a radical
change of mind. It's a new mind. It's a mind
that was not there. It's not just your old mind being
changed and you're going in a new direction. It's a mind that was
not even there. It's a new mind that's put within
you. And when God puts this in a person,
everything changes. When we were dead in sins, the
thing that was bitter, we said, that's sweet. And the thing that
was sweet, we said, no, that's bitter. And this is what we did. Some of you sitting here don't
know the Lord. You've never been born of His
Spirit. You don't know Him. And you think you're wise, and
you're going around saying things, and you're calling bitter sweet
and sweet bitter. And everybody that has spiritual
life, one day you'll find out how gracious they've been to
you. Because I remember, I thought I knew everything when I was
dead in sin. I thought I was authority on
God. and didn't know a thing. And when God saved me, I realized,
my brethren have been very gracious to me. I've been walking around
opening my mouth like an idiot, and they've been very gracious
to me. But when He gives you this heart, He puts in there,
there's a righteous indignation against sin. against all things
false. And now you see that which is
really sweet is really sweet, and that which is bitter is bitter.
And you hate that which is false. You hate that which is sinful.
I love God's law. I love it. I love God's law. It's holy, it's just, and it's
good. People accuse me of being an antinomian, of being lawless,
because I preach that Christ fulfilled the law. But I'm telling
you, the person who preaches Christ fulfilled the law loves
the law more than the person who's telling sinners they can
keep the law. Because to tell a sinner you can keep the law,
you have to diminish the law. You have to bring the law down
so a man can get above it. And that's not loving the law.
Loving the law is to tell a man clearly, you have never kept
it and you can't keep it. Because the law is holy. The
law is God in a commandment. And you're not like God. And
I'm not like God. And we can't do what God requires. But the reason I love the law
is it showed me that. The law, when the commandment
came, sin revived. Sin came alive. I was alive without
the law once. I had it. I thought I was saved
by it. I thought I was keeping it. But
then the commandment came. Then God spoke. And when He did,
law became alive, and law, I heard what the law said, and when that
happened, sin revived, and that man that I thought was so alive
and so righteous and so holy, he became a dead, worthless thing
to me. That's when Paul said, when he
wrote Philippians 3, and he said, that which I thought was gain,
all of those, that stuff I thought was in the plus column, it all
of a sudden became in the minus column, and I realized it's nothing
but dumb. And when he does that, he makes
you hate it. He makes you hate it. Look at
Romans 7. Men will say, well this is Paul when he was lost.
No, this is a saved man. A lost man don't say this. Romans
7 verse 15. This is a saved man. This is
a regenerated man right here. Romans 7 verse 15. He says, that
which I do, I allow not. For what I would, that do I not. But what I hate, That's what
I do. That's a saved man. That's a
man who sees what I really want to do is, I want to keep the
law. I want to do the law. But you know what I do? Exactly
what I hate. That's what I do. Sin is with
everything I do. And I hate it. And it makes me
to say, verse 24, O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver
me from the body of this death, I thank God through Jesus Christ
our Lord. He delivers me. He delivers me. And in that new man, we saw this
the other day, God creates a heart there to where you hate those
who speak falsely of God, you hate those who speak, speaking
about an exalting man, you hate that. He said in Ephesians 4.26,
Be ye angry. That's an exhortation. Be ye
angry. And God gives us a heart to be
angry, indignation. Be ye angry, but sin not. Put it in God's hand, trust God
with it, and don't let the sun go down on your wrath. But there
is a righteous indignation in a man's heart. I've told you
this before. Before God saved me, I was raised in a sovereign
grace church and heard the doctrine of grace preached the whole time,
for as long as I can remember. And I learned the doctrine of
grace. I could tell you tulip backwards and forwards. I could
tell you total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement,
irresistible grace, perseverance of the saint. And I could argue
it with folks and show folks in the scriptures where it was.
But I wasn't born again. And I didn't have the love of
God in my heart. So if you wanted to believe in the false god of
free will and the false god of works and a god that's depending
on you and he wants you to help him out and he can't do nothing,
that didn't offend me. Because I didn't have the love
of God in my heart. But when God put the love of
God in my heart, Now you're talking about my Father. Now you're talking
about Christ who redeemed me. And now I can't hear that message. It makes me angry. It fills me with indignation.
Because I don't want to hear God spoken against as if He's
trying to do something. If you think you can stop God
from doing something, start with this. Tomorrow morning you get
up bright and early and you stop the sun from rising. And the
day you can do that is the day you can stop God from doing whatever
God pleases. God's going to do as He will.
And we can't stop Him. He's sovereign. And He's sovereign
most of all in salvation. He's sovereign in salvation.
John said this, If any come unto you and bring not this doctrine,
receive him not into your house, neither bid him God's speed.
For he that biddeth him God's speed is partaker with his evil
deeds. You see, if I walk in and I sit
down and I'm going to say, you know, y'all come with me, there's
a church down here that's having a meeting tonight and I know
that there's going to be a bunch of works preached there. And
man's going to be exalted and God's going to be preached down.
By simply going and hearing that message, I'm condoning that message. I'm bidding them God's speed.
I'm being a partaker. I might as well be preaching
that message. That's what he's saying. Or if I have one of them
to come here and preach to you. But I'm not going to do that
because I cannot hear God spoken falsely against. This is a mark
of repentance. A man that doesn't have this,
he doesn't repent. If you want to read repentance,
you go read Philippians 3. Paul didn't say, you know, but
when I was in Phariseeism, and when I was trusting that I was
a child of Abraham, and when I was trusting in my will, and
when I was trusting in my works, and when I was trying to keep
the law, I was saved. He didn't say that. He didn't
say I was saved in that, and then later I came to the doctrines
of grace. You hear that all the time. How
was you saved and you didn't know God? That's what the doctrine
of grace is. God, teaching you who God is,
how can a man be saved if he don't know God? But Paul said this, what things
were gained of me, now I count them done. That's repentance. That's repentance. He turned
from it. Here's the fourth thing. When God rebukes in truth, He
fills us with true fear. In 2 Corinthians 7-11, He said,
Yea, what fear! Yea, what fear! Now this is not
a fear of hell and condemnation only, although that's included. I don't want to go to hell. I
mean, I fear God's condemnation because I know the terror of
the Lord now. I see what God did to my Savior on the cross.
And I see what the terror of the Lord is. so it does include
that but it's not just that it's not just no you know nobody wants
to go to hell everybody you know it's not that this is this is
a This is a true reverence, a true
filial fear, a true childlike fear, like a child has for their
father. A real reverence, a real desiring
to please and honor that one. This fear is reverence for God. And it's given to a man when
he's made to see his sin and see that he's been forgiven.
Scripture says, If thou, Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord,
who shall stand? But there is forgiveness with
thee that thou mayest be feared. That's what Paul said in Romans
2. It's the goodness of God that leads you to repentance. When
you see that God has sent His Son, and God came in the person
of Christ His Son, and He came, and He fulfilled His own law.
He put away the sin of His people Himself. He, by Himself, satisfied
His own justice for His people, so that now God can be just,
and He is the justifier. Now, when He makes you see that,
there'll be a reverence for Him. there'll be a true worshipful
reverence and adoration in the heart. When He speaks to you
and says, there is therefore now no condemnation to them who
are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh but after
the Spirit, that's when He gives you a real reverence for God,
a real fear for God. And when you have that, you know
what happens? You want to serve Him acceptably with reverence
and godly fear. You don't want anything evil
spoken of against God, against the doctrine, against the Christ
we believe, the doctrine we believe and teach. You don't want anything
spoken against that evil because of you. Because of something
you've done. You fear that. Because you want
Him to have the glory. You want Him to have the honor.
And so, this is the motivation. This is being constrained by
His love because there's a real fear in the heart. It does affect
us. It'll change your dress. It'll change your attitude. It'll change everything about
you. Where you go, who you hang out
with, it'll change everything about you. Because we don't try
to change those things. We're working from the inside
out. God gives you a new heart. He puts His fear in your heart.
And it does make you want to depart from those things that
dishonor Him. And we have to be careful. People are going to say things
about you that aren't true. They're going to misrepresent
what truly happened and mischaracterize what truly took place. And so
it looks worse than what it is. But here's the thing. This is
why Paul said, abstain from even the appearance of evil. If it
just looks like it's something that somebody can speak evil
against you about it, abstain from it. That's what he said.
And a man, you can't put that in a man's heart and make him
do it in a way that God is pleased with until God Himself puts this
fear in the heart and makes you repent from that which will dishonor
Him. He has to do this. Now, this
next thing is this. When He fills us with repentance
and brings us to true sorrow, it says, verse 11, "...yea, what
vehement desire." That's an earnest desire. God gives a new heart
to His child, and the first thing you begin to desire is you begin
to hear Him preached in the Gospel. That's the first thing. Before,
I can tell you this from a fact. Before, my mother and dad, my
mother, she would have to get me up in the morning. She'd have
to splash water in my face. She'd have to get me dressed.
She'd have to dress me. She'd have to wrestle me. She'd have to pull me, push me,
get me in the car, lock the doors to keep me from getting out,
and take me to the church. It was just about that bad because
I didn't want to go. But when God saved me, I began,
I've told you how, my grandfather would preach on a Sunday. I wouldn't
even ride home with him. I didn't even want to be in the
same car with him because I was afraid he'd want to talk about the message
and I didn't want to hear it. And I didn't want to have to
try to answer him something I didn't understand or care anything about.
And I wouldn't even go see him for two or three days. But then
I found myself, after God gave me this new heart, I found a
desire to go down and sit with Him out by His garden and ask
Him, what does this mean? and have him tell me in the scriptures,
show me in the scriptures what it meant. That desire wasn't
there before. But it was there after he gave
me a new heart. And I wanted to go here. Now
I was going because I've been studying this this week and I
want to go hear what it means. I want to go hear what he's going
to preach on this week. Then I'd ride home with him and
talk about it all the way home. And then get home and go down
to his house and say, now, you know what I was thinking, does
that match with this scripture? Yeah. And he'd show me more,
you know. None of that was there before. And Scripture says this,
we preach Christ crucified. Unto the Jew it's a stumbling
block. What I've been saying this morning about Christ being
the fulfillment of the law, if you're a Jew after the flesh,
if you're a Pharisee after the flesh, you're having a problem
with it. Because I'm taking away your refuge. It's taking away
all your works and everything you got your confidence in and
you're tripping up over this message of Christ being the fulfillment
of the law. And it says, and to the Greeks it's foolishness.
If you're Greek by flesh, that means you love philosophy, and
you love to follow my own course, and to chart my own destiny.
And you love to hear, you know, just this man speak of his grand
ideas, and this man speak of his grand ideas, and he's not
right, and he's not right, and we're all right, and blah, blah,
blah, blah, blah. And so you're having a horrible time with this
message that says this is one way. You're saying that's narrow-minded,
that's bigoted, and all that stuff. To the one is foolishness,
to the one is stumbling block. But to us who are called, called
from among the Jews, called from among the Greeks, we all came
from one of those two camps. We either came from religion
or we came from philosophy. But to us now is the power of
God unto salvation. We love the message of Christ
and Him crucified. And also there's a desire for
God's continual abiding presence to keep us separated unto Him.
before we were afraid of God. Now we want God to abide with
us. In Exodus 33, 15, Moses said, If thy presence go not with me,
carry us not up hence. For wherein shall it be known
here that I and thy people have found grace in thy sight? Is
it not in that thou goest with us? So shall we be separated,
I and thy people, from all the people that are upon the face
of the earth. The only way we'll be separated is for Christ's
presence in our hearts. And that's what we desire. The
vehement desire for Christ. Don't... Do you ever pray this? Lord, please don't take your
spirit from me. I pray that. I do. Because I don't want his
presence removed from me. I just don't. And there's an
honest desire to walk in a new way, a way of honoring to God.
There's three reasons given in Titus why we want to honor God
in our walk. In Titus 2.7 he says, "...in
all things showing thyself a pattern of good works." If God's going
to ever use you, and He's going to use you, somebody's looking
at you. If you're a believer, somebody's
watching you. And you want to set a pattern
for them. a pattern of good works for them to teach them. That's
the first reason. Here's the second one, verse
8. Sound speech that cannot be condemned, that he that is of
the contrary part may be ashamed, having no evil thing to say of
you. You do not want to unload another man's gun for him so
he can shoot at you. You don't want to give somebody
something evil to say against you. And here's the third reason.
This is the chief reason, Titus 2.10, that they may adorn the
doctrine of God our Savior in all things. That's the number
one reason. To adorn the doctrine of God
in all things. In all things. Now, here's the
sixth thing He gives us. And I've got to hurry. He gives
us a zeal. Verse 11 says zeal. This is the
sixth gift of repentance. Now, I almost put this with the
last point. because I thought zeal and a
vehement desire was the same thing. But I looked it up. And
this word zeal means jealousy. It means jealousy. Like a bride
for her husband. Jealousy. Like a husband for
his bride. You know, God said in the first
commandment, He said, You shall have no other gods because I,
the Lord thy God, am a jealous God. A jealous God. And when He saves us from our
sins, and He puts His everlasting covenant in our hearts, He makes
us jealous for Him and for His glory. Jealous for Him. Remember Hosea and Gomer? Hosea
is a picture of Christ naming Savior. Gomer is a picture of
us. She was a harlot. And He married
her. Christ married us before the
foundation of the world, but she went back to her harlotry.
And he kept on putting oil and wine and wool and flax at her
door. He kept providing everything
for her at her door. And that's what Christ did for
us while we were in our sin. And then he took all that away
and he brought her down to her nothingness to discover to her
her lewdness, to show her what she was. And that's what Christ
did to us. And he brought her down to the
slave block. And people were bidding on her,
but nobody was bidding very high because nobody wanted a whore.
And Hosea went forth. Just imagine if this was your
wife. He went forth and there she is,
stripped naked on a slave block before a bunch of men, a common
whore that nobody wants because she's a shame to be around. And
he said, what's the price? I'm going to pay it. And he bought
her. That's what Christ did for us.
And this is what he said when he brought her home. He said,
Thou shalt abide for me many days, thou shalt not play the
harlot, and thou shalt not be for another man, so will I also
be for thee. And that's what he does in our
hearts. He makes it to where we're married to him and we're
jealous. We're jealous for him and he's
jealous for us. We don't want to turn, we don't
want to look at any other gods or any other way but him. That's right. Now, seventhly,
And this is appropriate. This is the number seven, which
means perfection. And this is the seventh gift
of repentance, right here. He says, yea, what revenge. This word revenge means just
and right. That's what it means. The Corinthians,
to put it simply, they did what was right and was just in this
matter. Because they loved righteousness. They loved that which was just.
They loved that which was right. And they did what was right and
what was just when Paul told them how to deal with this issue.
Now when God grants repentance, He makes His child to love the
glory of God's righteousness. That's what he puts in our heart.
Before, if you listen to most of the stuff that's called religion
and called preaching, they don't talk about righteousness. I talk
about it every time I preach to you. I talk about God being
just and justified every time I stand here because that's the
gospel. And when God gives you a heart and grants you repentance,
you hate what's unjust now. You hate what's not righteous.
You love righteousness. You don't love righteousness
apart from mercy, because we need mercy. But here you see
how He has righteously made mercy and righteousness kissed together
in harmony in Christ. And you love righteousness now.
We know this, that the righteousness of God is by the faithfulness
of Jesus Christ. And it's to us who are sinners,
because we come short of the glory of God. And we know this,
that we're justified freely by His grace through the redemption
that's in Christ Jesus. Because God set Him forth to
be the mercy seat through faith in His blood. And we trust Him.
And when justice becomes our friend, when justice demands
our release, because the law satisfied. And that's what happened
with Christ. He satisfied the law. So the
law demands That law that was saying the wages of sin is death,
they must die. When Christ became our surety
in eternity, when Christ shed His blood at Calvary, that law
demanded they must be given life. They must be set free from the
bars and chains of their depravity. They must be given eternal life
in order for God to remain just. So justice becomes our friend.
And when justice becomes your friend, you start loving that
which is right. Because you see what great price
God paid to establish justice. That's God's chief attribute.
His holiness, righteousness. And He makes you to love it.
He makes you to love it. And now look at this. This is
the good news. When He's given you repentance, That last verse
there says this, in all things, it's saying in all this, you
have approved yourselves to be clear in this matter. And when
God's brought you and given you these seven gifts of repentance,
you're going to flee to Christ. And when you flee to Christ,
God will say into your hearts, in all of this, you have approved
yourself to be clear in this matter. You justify. You're free. That's right. Look at 1 John
1. I'll show you that. We'll end
with this. 1 John 1. Look at verse 9. Verse 8, if we say that we have
no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth's not in us. If
we confess our sins, He's faithful and just to forgive us our sins
and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned,
we make him a liar and his word's not in us. My little children,
these things write unto you that you sin not. And if any man sin,
we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. And He is the propitiation for
our sins. Not for ours only, but for His
elect. He's saying there, not for us
only who are Jews. He's saying, but for those who
are all over the world. They call the Gentiles the world.
And He's saying, but for His people who are Gentiles as well. He is our propitiation. It means
we're justified in Him, because He justifies. clear in the matter. You want to be clear in the matter?
I want to be clear in the matter, don't you? Before God. Seven
gifts of repentance. All right. We're going to observe
the Lord's table. Robert, will you pass these out?