entitled the message tonight,
Faith and Repentance. In Jonah chapter 3 the verse
first says, and the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second
time. Remember the first time he ran
to Tarshish or tried to by going on the ship to get in the ship
to go to Tarshish and the Lord sent a storm and ultimately he
was cast into the sea. The Lord sent a fish to swallow
him and then the Lord told the fish to spit him out on the land
and he then went to Nineveh. And so the word of the Lord came
to Jonah the second time and said this, Arise, go to Nineveh,
that great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee.
Clearly God is sending Jonah with the message God wants him
to preach to the Ninevites. So Jonah arose and went unto
Nineveh according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was
an exceeding great city of three days journey. And we've talked
about that a bit in the past. A day's travel might be 10 to
20 miles depending upon the person walking. And so this city could
have been anywhere from 30 to 60 miles across. Big, big city. And Jonah began to enter into
the city a day's journey, and he cried and said, Yet forty
days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown. So the people of Nineveh believed
God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth from the greatest
of them even to the least of them. For the word came unto
the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, and he laid
his robe from him, and covered him with sackcloth, and sat in
ashes. Pretty astounding that the king
heard Jonah's message, and therefore got off his throne, took off
his royal robe, and covered himself with sackcloth and ashes. and
sat in ashes. And he caused it to be proclaimed
and published through Nineveh by the decree of the king and
his nobles, saying, Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock
taste anything, let them not feed nor drink water. No food,
no water for anybody, not even the animals. But let man and
beast be covered with sackcloth and cry mightily unto God. Yea, let them turn, every one,
from his evil way and from the violence that is in their hands.
Who can tell if God will turn and repent and turn away from
his fierce anger that we perish not? And God saw their works,
that they turned from their evil way, and God repented of the
evil that he had said that he would do to them, and he did
it not." We could have entitled this message, When God Didn't
Do What He Said. That'd be an interesting way
of looking at this. God said he would destroy them,
but now he didn't destroy them. So we can see here, first of
all, that God gets his way with Jonah. God gave Jonah the message. God
sent him to Nineveh. God made sure he went to Nineveh.
And so we see here the first lesson that God always gets his
way. And his way was mercy toward the people of Nineveh. It is
in God's mercy that he actually prevents us from getting our
way when he saves his people from their sins by the Lord Jesus
Christ under the preaching of the gospel and then gives them
his spirit in order that they might believe Christ. So God
gets his way not only in Jonah's life, but in our life too. And
it's a way that prevents us from going our own way. That's what
Jonah was doing, going his own way. God sent Jonah to preach
to Nineveh after he commanded the fish to spit Jonah out on
the dry land. And after the Lord Jesus Christ
rose in triumph over our sins and the death we deserved, the
Lord Jesus Christ, who Jonah was a figure of, sent his gospel
by his ambassadors to save his people in every nation of the
world. So we see here a parallel. Jesus,
the Lord, said in Matthew chapter 12, as Jonah was in the whale's
belly for three days and three nights, so the Son of Man would
be in the heart of the earth three days and three nights,
and that Jonah was a sign to that generation, meaning a sign
of Christ in him crucified. Very, very important. The Book
of Jonah, ultimately, is only understood when we understand
it about Jesus Christ and Him crucified. This is very important. So, when the Lord Jesus Christ
rose from the dead, saw His disciples, showed Himself to them, then
ascended to heaven, He sat down on the right hand of God, and
from there He sent His Spirit and enabled his apostles to preach
the gospel with power, and under their preaching thousands were
saved. So the Lord not only got his way with Jonah, but he gets
his way with all of his people when he saves them from their
sins under the preaching of the gospel. Now it says here also
that when Jonah preached, the people believed the Lord. The
people heard Jonah, they heard the message that God gave him
to preach, they believed God when they heard that message,
and because they believed God, they turned. They repented. Now, faith comes every time,
it comes to us, every time it is increased by God, it comes
under the hearing of the Word of God. And repentance is the
result, the result of God's gracious gift of life and faith to us. It doesn't produce life in us,
it's spoken of as repentance unto life. In our experience,
we repent when our minds are changed, when we believe Christ
as sinners, when we find ourselves before God guilty, helpless,
and hopeless, and then find, by God's grace, in believing
Christ, that great peace and joy that comes in looking to
Christ alone. That's the gospel. That's what
Jonah teaches us. He's the one sign of Christ and
Him crucified. What is the object of repenting? What does repentance mean? How
do we know if we've repented? Those are questions that I think
many have misunderstood, and so we want to understand this
today. Now, in John 6 and verse 28 and 29, if you remember, the
Jews asked Jesus this when he made the bread, when he multiplied
those five loaves and two fishes and fed 5,000 men plus the women
and children. They asked him, what shall we
do that we might work the works of God? Now, remember what Jesus
said. He said, this is the work of God. that you believe on him
whom he has sent." So the work that God has required of us to
do is to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. And the work he
enables us to do which is to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ,
is His work in us. Remember Philippians chapter
2, verse 12 and 13, it is God who is at work in you, both to
will and to do of His good pleasure. So faith is a work like no other,
because faith is that one work that is itself no work. It has
no merit, faith has no merit, and faith looks to Christ for
all of its merit, all of its righteousness, and finds it all
in the Lord Jesus Christ. This is the gift of God to us.
It is a gift of great grace, and it's a most precious gift
to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. Faith is our own, but
it's given to us by God, and faith, that is saving faith,
the one thing that saves us, which is God-given faith in Christ,
has but one object of confidence. What is it? What is the one thing
God has told us to do? To believe on the Lord Jesus
Christ. Remember, this is the work of
God, that you believe on Him whom He has sent. And throughout
Jesus's ministry, there was this contention between the Jews and
the Lord, and he kept pointing out to them that though he had
spoken to them, they did not believe him. John, in the Gospel
of John, chapter 20, verse 31, he says, these things were written
that you might believe. So the object of the gospel is
what? To bring sinners to faith in
Christ. Therefore, repentance always
has, as its goal, faith in Christ. And it's important, if we understand
that, it helps us to understand what repentance actually is,
what gospel repentance is. It says in scripture, in Romans
chapter four, verse 16, that salvation is of faith, or justification,
as it's talking about there, is of faith, that it might be
by grace to the end, or for this purpose, that the promise might
be sure to all the seed. So God has designed our salvation
to be through faith. Faith divests itself, it claims
no merit. It doesn't look to itself, it
looks outside of itself. And the object, the one thing
faith considers is Christ. In considering Christ, faith
finds all of its salvation in what the Lord Jesus Christ has
done. And so repentance is unto life
because repentance brings us to seeing Christ, trusting Christ,
being persuaded that our salvation is in Him and in Him alone. And
it's therefore all of grace because faith ascribes to God all the
merit, all the work in our salvation. Faith doesn't claim any confidence
in itself. Faith says all of my salvation
is Christ and claims all confidence and assurance in the Lord Jesus
Christ. Now, I want you to understand
that the objective of all of Scripture, the revelation of
God in all of Scripture is to make known and point sinners
to Jesus Christ and Him crucified, risen, reigning, interceding
for our complete salvation. Isn't that true? All of Scripture
is designed to point us to the Lord Jesus with faith in Him. Now, this is very critical that
we hold this continually as the guiding principle in understanding
scripture. The one doctrine that clarifies
all of scripture, that ties it all together, that explains the
whole thing, the one doctrine that not only clarifies and explains
all of scripture, but also, like a dagger, stabs the heart of
false religion, that one doctrine, that one teaching, is Jesus Christ
and what he accomplished by his death, his substitutionary death
on the cross. This is so essential. Our entire
standing before God was accomplished by Jesus Christ himself, all
by himself and done outside of our own lifetime, our own historical
experience. Nothing in our historical experience
makes us righteous before God. Nothing. Only what God has seen
and provided in the Lord Jesus Christ. And this is so essential
that understanding this we see the reason why God has given
scripture. Every account in scripture ultimately
directs us to the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. His place
as Son of God who took our nature and in our nature fulfilled God's
law, satisfied His justice, made an inheritance for us that's
ours because of His merit, and then reigning, seated in heaven,
intercedes with Himself in His own blood at the right hand of
God, having conquered our sin and all of our enemies, and giving
us what He obtained for us. Okay? So this is so essential
that all of religion in the world combats, is at war and hostile
against this truth. The truth that we're justified
for the righteousness of Christ, period. God has provided Christ
for us. When we look at everything in
scripture, we see this. We discover ourselves to be sinners. We discover righteousness in
Christ alone. We discover that God has provided
another in our place and has received him and told us about
him and directed us to him. And we see this in many places. For example, in the book of Hebrews,
which we're studying on Sundays, The Hebrews looked to the ceremonies
of God's law and their own obedience for righteousness and perfection
before God. And it was in the book of Hebrews
that it says that perfection never came by that old covenant,
that Old Testament law. The book of Hebrews also proclaims
that the Lord Jesus Christ is the perfection. He is the perfection
of the law. And it also says it's by His
one offering that we are made holy, that we are perfected forever
before God, and that all of our sins are remitted, our eternal
redemption is obtained, and the eternal covenant God made with
His people in Christ before the foundation of the world is fulfilled
in His blood so all blessings flow to us again. The book of
Hebrews is about Jesus Christ and him crucified as the justifying
righteousness, the mediator who intercedes on our behalf to God
with his own blood and his own obedience and his own prayers
and all of it counted ours by God. God credits to us what Christ
has done all by himself outside of our experience. So the gospel
is about what Jesus Christ has accomplished. the Son of God
in our nature, what He's actually accomplished before we were ever
born. And so the book of Hebrews takes
that dagger of the truth of Christ and him crucified and the justification
of his people and stabs it in the heart of the octopus that
has many tentacles in man's religion and puts that false religion
to death in that single blow that Christ alone has accomplished
the eternal salvation of his people. It's his righteousness.
And the Book of Romans does the same thing. And I'm pointing
these out as examples. Remember, the Book of Romans,
the theme there is the righteousness of God. But what is that righteousness?
It's everything the Lord Jesus Christ did in his life and death
to save us from our sins. He fulfilled the law. He fulfilled
God's eternal covenant. He did everything for us as our
high priest. And he took the place of king
over all on our behalf because he fulfilled all righteousness.
And so that God shows in the book of Romans that we and ourselves
are ungodly and unrighteous and God's wrath is against us. But
in spite of that, in spite of our idolatry, our self-righteous
idolatry, and because in spite of the refusal we have naturally
to what God has done in Christ, the Lord himself by the gospel
causes us to be obedient in believing Christ and in believing Christ
we find all of our righteousness from God in Him. So that's what
the book of Romans is about. It talks about election, how
God chose us not for faith foreseen but actually for unbelief foreseen. Because we would have damned
ourselves, but God had to save us. And so that's what that's
about. And in the book of Galatians,
the same thing. God presents two kinds of people in the book
of Galatians, and two kinds of religion. First, there are those
who seek justification before God by a combination of what
Jesus did and what they do. And those people are rebuked
because justification comes only by the death of Christ. He argues
this in Galatians 2.21. He says if righteousness come
by the law, then Christ died in vain. And if Christ didn't
die in vain, then certainly righteousness does come by his death. And that's
in Galatians 2.21. And then they also, in Galatians,
they tried to obtain the Spirit of God by their own personal
obedience to the law. They thought that if they obeyed
the law, then the Spirit of God would be given them, but they
didn't. It's just like today with Pentecostalism. The Spirit
of God is claimed to be some greater blessing, as if Christ
and Him crucified didn't obtain everything for us, that we're
not complete in Christ. There's something better than
Christ and Him crucified. Absolute heresy. And so the book
of Hebrews and Romans and Galatians continue to hammer that one truth
which explains all of scripture and puts to silence every false
religion and all of the pride and self-righteousness of ignorant
and unbelieving men. And so in the book of Acts, Peter
and Paul and Philip and all the others that preached there throughout
that book emphasized that they were justified. These Jews were
justified not by keeping the commandments of God, but in believing
Christ who did keep those commandments for his people to fulfillment
and establish their everlasting righteousness for their justification. Peter said, God which knows the
hearts, bear them witness, giving them the Holy Ghost. This is
talking about Cornelius and his members of his household. He
said, giving them the Holy Ghost even as he did us, and he put
no difference between us and them, purifying their hearts
by faith. You see, that's the action of
faith. Faith sees Christ, His blood
shed, my sins washed by what He did, and faith lays hold on
that. That's mine. I have to have it. It's all my hope. It's my only
hope, but it's all sufficient. And so that's that purifying
of the heart by the Spirit of God showing Christ to us, the
sprinkling of our conscience. Now therefore, Peter said, why
do you tempt God to put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples,
which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear? But we
believe that through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, we
shall be saved even as they. All right, now notice that throughout
these things, in the book of Hebrews, in Romans, in Galatians,
in the book of Acts, what I'm summarizing here for us is that
God has emphasized Jesus Christ and Him crucified as the justifying
righteousness, the sin-cleansing propitiation to God, offered
for us, who obtained our eternal redemption, made our reconciliation,
established our everlasting righteousness, sanctified us and perfected us
by His own blood. Everything is given to us. Everything
that Christ has is given to us because of His merit alone. Now, it says also this in Scripture,
that the just shall live by what? Faith. Faith in Christ. The law is not of faith because
the law says the man that does those things shall live in them,
but the scriptures through the prophets say this, the just shall
live by his faith. Behold, Habakkuk said, his soul
which is lifted up is not upright in him, but the just shall live
by his faith. Habakkuk 2.4. So, since the just
live by faith, And repentance is a repentance unto life. We
know that repentance has as its end, or has as its terminal point,
faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. No one repents who doesn't believe
Christ. All who believe Christ have repented. Now, we've got to understand
this. We often take the Old Testament, and I've seen this done to the
damage of Scripture. You can't hurt Scripture, but
the heretical teaching, they create a heretical teaching when
you take the Old Testament and you ignore the New. and especially
the emphasis the New Place is on the gospel of Christ and Him
crucified, and you try to interpret the Old just by itself. Can't do it. You'll never get
it right. Well, you might get it right, but it will only be
because you've been influenced by the explanation in the New
Testament. So if God says, and it's an inviolable
truth, that the just shall live by faith, therefore all who are
righteous in God's sight are righteous only by what? The imputed
righteousness of Jesus Christ. They don't have that righteousness.
They look to Christ who is righteous. And God looks to Christ for them,
and he counts them, he credits them with what Christ has done. his sin-cleansing blood, his
obedience to God, his prayers, his fear, his trust, everything
he has done. was credited so that all that
we are, we are in Him and all God sees in Him, He sees in us.
He sees for us and He gives to us, He treats the merits of Christ
as our merit and He gives the inheritance He gives to Christ
to us because of His righteousness. And this is what faith brings
us to see and rely upon. So when the Ninevites repented
toward God, they had to be brought to this view that salvation is
in Christ alone and we don't bring anything as a contribution
to it. Not our faith, not our repentance,
not our dedication or any other kind of spiritual work or spiritual
virtue that we bring in ourselves. In fact, we discredit ourselves. We come like the publican. God,
be merciful. Look upon Christ and Him offered
to God for our sin for me. Look upon the propitiation, the
propitiating sacrifice. That's what the just do. They
look to Christ. The just live by faith. And it's
not fully stated there, but it really is saying faith in Christ
alone. Remember what the Apostle Paul
said in Galatians 2.20, I live by the faith of the Son of God.
who loved me and gave himself for me." There it is in a nutshell.
So there's no righteousness before God but Christ, and all who are
righteous in God's sight are righteous only in His righteousness,
which He gives to them, imputing to them Christ's obedience, and
crediting them with His righteousness out of God's pure grace alone. Now, we are here. We are sinners. We don't produce good works.
If you just think about your own thoughts and conscience and
words and motives and works, you'll find everything sinful
in them. And so you can't just say, well,
I did my best, and God will understand the rest. Or I'll do 80% of it,
but on the sly, I'm going to do these other things, because
I can't really be perfect. I mean, who's perfect? No one's
perfect. God understands. I'm just a man. Yeah, He does. That's why He says, there's none
righteous, no, not one. There's none that understand.
There's none that doeth good. No, not one. And so God's preaching
of the prophets, remember, in 1 Peter 1, was by the Spirit of God was given
concerning the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should
follow. It's all about Jesus Christ and
Him crucified. And so the only thing that saves
a sinner is what? What Christ has done. And God
gives faith to every saved sinner to look to Christ alone. When
He does, we know then that Christ is ours and we are His. because
God made him so. The Spirit of God given to us
joins us in spirit to the Lord. 1 Corinthians 6, verse 17. He that is joined to the Lord
is one spirit, and that joining to the Lord is by the work of
the Spirit of God. And what is His work? It is to
direct us in faith to Christ. We lay hold on Him because He
laid hold on us. And so I want to look at some
scriptures now with you concerning this faith and repentance. Because
we read about repentance in Jonah chapter 3, these people turned,
but notice in Jonah chapter 3 in verse 5, so the people of Nineveh
believed God. That was the first thing here.
Oftentimes, when you read the scripture, or you hear a sermon
about repentance, it's always hammered, repent, repent, repent. But first of all, you can never
preach, you can never truly preach correctly, you can never preach
repentance without preaching faith in Christ. If you do so,
you do damage to men's souls. You divest the scripture of their
one message, which is Jesus Christ and him crucified. So the people
first here in Nineveh, they first believed God, and because they
believed God, then they did these things. They proclaimed the fast,
they sat in sackcloth, and they said, who can tell if God will
have mercy? And they were supposed to cry
mightily to God. They trusted God. They believed
the message. But the message that Jonah spoke
here is only recorded as, yet 40 days and Nineveh shall be
overthrown. And you wonder, is that all that
Jonah said? Well, if you look at Matthew chapter 12, I think
we have to draw the conclusion that no, that wasn't all that
he said. He says here in Matthew chapter
12 and verse 38, Matthew 12, 38, certain of the scribes and
Pharisees answered Jesus, saying, Master, we would see a sign from
thee. But he answered and said to them,
an evil and adulterous generation seek after a sign. And there
shall no sign be given it but the sign of the prophet Jonah.
OK, what was the sign? Jonah. And what sign would be
given to this generation he's talking to here, this evil and
adulterous generation? Just one, the sign of Jonah.
What is it? Verse 40, For as Jonah was three
days and three nights in the whale's belly, so shall the Son
of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.
The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation,
and shall condemn it, because they repented at the preaching
of Jonah, and behold, a greater than Jonah is here. What was
it Jesus was telling these people they were not doing? They were
not repenting as the Ninevites repented. The Ninevites heard
Jonah, these people heard Christ. Jonah had a message, Christ had
a message. The Ninevites repented, but what
did they first do? They believed God. These people
heard Christ, what did they first not do? They did not believe
Christ. So we see here that there was
a sign given by Jonah, God gave it, and that sign was him being
three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. And it
was given by Jonah and with the preaching of the gospel here
to the Ninevites. Therefore the Ninevites must
have known that Jonah had spent three days and three nights in
the heart of the whale, or the belly of the whale, the fish.
That's why it seems that when he preached, the message was
so powerful to them. I don't know how they knew this.
Maybe he told them, like he had told the mariners, the reason
the storm is here because of me. He probably did. Whatever it was, Jesus is saying
that he was a sign to that generation. And that generation here in Jesus'
day and the Ninevites saw Jonah, They saw that he was, they heard
what he had to say. They must have known that he
spent three days and three nights and God brought him out of that
in order to bring this message. Therefore, the message Jonah
said to them had a real impact. They were convinced of it. That
was a sign to them. Jonah was a sign. is being spit
out and then preaching to them three days and three nights.
I don't know, maybe there was a way where they followed him
through the city for that. It took him a whole day to get
to the center of the city. Maybe while he was going there,
he was mentioning to this person or that person and the word spread.
However it happened, the word got out. The point here in Matthew
12 is the big issue. The Jews would not believe Christ. and there's no other sign that
would be given to them except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. If you don't believe this sign,
then the people of Nineveh are gonna rise up and condemn you
in judgment because you didn't believe the one greater than
Jonah and they only had Jonah and they believed his message.
And so the point here is, therefore, the message God has for us is
the work of Christ in our salvation. We have to believe him. We have
to trust in what he did alone. We don't bring something to the
table. We don't trust in, we don't have confidence in our
flesh. We don't refuse to submit to his obedience, trusting in
our own righteousness. We trust Him alone. We forsake,
in repenting, we forsake all other confidence and we look
away from all those idolatrous notions that we could be favorable
or accepted by God or blessed by God by something we are or
do and we look to Christ alone and we say, God, if God's gonna
bless me, if He's gonna receive me, if He's gonna wash my sins,
if He's gonna treat me as righteous, Then he's going to have to look
upon his son and do it out of pure grace, in spite of my sin. And this is the way we first
begin. This is the way we walk and live. Repentance is not a
one-time act. In fact, it's a continuous act.
Just like we grow in grace and in the knowledge of the Lord
Jesus Christ, so faith increases, and with it, this continuous
turning from all that we formerly trusted to look to Christ alone. And now I want to look at some
scriptures with you that teach this. But if you look here in
Matthew 12, while we're there, It says in verse 31, Matthew
12, verse 31, Jesus said, I say unto you, all manner of sin and
blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men, but the blasphemy against
the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men. And whosoever speaks
a word against the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him, but
whosoever speaks against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven
him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come. Look at
verse 33. Either make the tree good, and
his fruit good, or else make the tree corrupt, and his fruit
corrupt, for the tree is known by his fruit. What fruit? Keep
reading. O generation of vipers, poisonous
snakes, how can you, being evil, notice, speak good things? What was the fruit? Don't make
the tree good and his fruit good or make the tree corrupt and
his fruit corrupt. Oh, generation of vipers, how can you being
evil speak good things? What was the fruit? What they
confessed to be their trust, their hope. what they confessed
to be their righteousness, how they were righteous before God.
Keep going. For out of the abundance of the
heart the mouth speaketh. What does one who believe Christ
say? He's constantly confessing in
prayer and to his brethren. I am a great sinner and nothing
at all. Do not credit me with anything. Look to Christ. Don't trust me. Look to Christ. Isn't that what
we say? were pointing others like John
the Baptist. Behold the Lamb of God. He must
increase. I must decrease. This is the
confession of the heart of the believer. Christ is everything. His answer is my answer. If it's
not, I have no answer. His obedience is my righteousness.
If it's not, I have no obedience or righteousness. His prayers
were heard, not mine. His were heard, and he hears
them. God hears me for his sake, or I am not going to be heard.
Justice was received full payment from Him, or I have no payment
and I have to suffer for my sins. That's the believer's confession.
That's what we believe. We hold to this. We live by this.
We're constantly being brought back to it. Because in the troubles
of our lives, we're thrown back and forth and up and down, and
these troubles can come from within or without. They're always
trying to dislodge us from this one great truth, this one confidence,
this one hope, this one assurance that everything God blesses me
with, everything for which God receives me is found in Christ. And this is such an important
truth that it explains all of scripture, it's the confidence
of believers, our one hope, it's the way we live, the just shall
live by faith, it's what we confess. And so verse 35 of Matthew 12,
a good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good
things, and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart
brings forth evil thing. But I say unto you that every
idle word that men shall speak they shall give an account, give
account thereof in the day of judgment." What do you talk about? What are you saying in your heart,
in your prayers, in your supplications, in your conversation? You're
talking somehow, you're getting it back to your true and only
hope what you truly treasure, what you think of. When you boil
it all down and draw the string tight, I have one thing that
I want in this world. Upon a life I did not live, upon
a death I did not die, I stake my whole eternity. That's what
we say, isn't it? I mean, those are the words of
Horatius Bonar, but that's the expression of the thoughts of
our heart. Whether we can articulate it as well as he did, we're saying,
Jesus Christ. He's the way, the truth, and
the life. We might quote scripture, we might put it into clumsy words,
but it comes out, he says in verse 37, for by thy words thou
shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned.
Because out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.
Verse 34, that's what he said. Whatever's in you, what you truly
believe, that's what you're gonna say when you're pressed. When
trouble comes, when your sin is weighing heavy on your conscience,
when you don't know how you're ever going to be free from the
power of sin in your old sinful nature, what do you do? Lord,
I have no hope, no strength. But when I was yet without strength
in due time, Christ died for the ungodly. So even if I start
again from the beginning, if that's necessary, if that's where
I have to start as an unbeliever, a total reprobate, Lord, save
me for Christ's sake. And it doesn't, we're always
being brought back to that, aren't we? And this is what the repentance
unto life does. It brings us to the foot of the
cross, looking upon our crucified Savior, saying, this is my hope.
Okay, so now look with me about how God saves us in this way
as sinners and as believers. See how the Lord has testified
of this. I won't have time to get through all of this tonight,
but let me just take you to a few verses of scripture. First of
all, repentance and faith are parallel. You can't separate
them. There's no repentance without
faith. There's no faith without repentance because it's the same
coin looking at it from a different side. And I want to show this
to you in scripture. As I said before, if there's
true repentance, it leads to faith in Christ. If there's faith
in Christ, then it's because we have turned in our mind. We
have been convinced by God, Christ is all, and I have no hope. I'm
unrighteous before God. I'm condemned and justly so.
I can't look within. Faith looks without. I turn from
looking within to look to Christ on his throne, crucified and
risen and justified and me in him. and I come to God by His
blood. If I look within, I'm always
gonna be dissatisfied. If I'm honest, or I'm gonna be
deceived, and I'll think everything's okay. So I never wanna look within. Examine yourselves whether you
are in the faith. Is Christ your all? If not, you better get busy. Look to Christ. Let me take you
to a few scriptures here. Look at Isaiah chapter 45. Isaiah
chapter 45. We gotta be brought back to this. over and over, this is the experience
of our life, to learn again Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Isaiah
45 verse 22, look unto me, Jesus Christ says, look unto me and
be ye saved, all the ends of the earth for I am God and there
is none else. I have sworn by myself the word
has gone out of my mouth in righteousness and shall not return that unto
me every knee shall bow and every tongue shall swear. Surely, this
is what one's going to answer in judgment, one shall say, in
the Lord, here's the confession out of the abundance of his heart,
in the Lord have I righteousness and strength. Aren't you thankful
God has taught you that? Aren't you thankful God is teaching
you that? And that same one, he says, in
the Lord have I righteousness and strength, even to him shall
men come. And all that are incensed against
him shall be ashamed. All who reject Christ and him
crucified as the one thing they need and refuse to submit to
his righteousness, they'll be put to confusion and shame. Verse
25, in the Lord shall all the seed of Israel be justified and
shall glory. In the Lord, not in ourselves.
but in the Lord, okay? Look at Jeremiah chapter, I point
that out because the Lord Jesus Christ is commanding all men
everywhere to look to Him. This is the Lord's command. What
a universal command it is and those who hear it are given grace
to obey it. Jeremiah 31 verse 18, he says,
Jeremiah the prophet says, I have surely heard Ephraim bemoaning
himself thus. Thou hast chastised me, and I
was chastised, as a bullock unaccustomed to the yoke. Turn thou me, and
I shall be turned, for thou art the Lord my God. Surely after
that I was turned, I repented, and after that I was instructed,
I smote upon my thigh. I was ashamed, yea, even confounded,
because I did bear the reproach of my youth. Here God is teaching
us that until He turns us, we cannot turn. We don't repent
of ourselves. Remember Ephesians 2.8? Faith
is not of yourselves. And we can put repentance right
there too. Repentance is not of yourselves. And yet God says,
repent and believe the gospel, doesn't he? Where does it come
from? With the command comes the grace. And that grace comes under the
preaching of where, of what we are to believe. Jesus asked the
blind man, do you believe in the Son of God? Who is he, Lord,
that I might believe him? And he says, it is the talks
with you. Oh, I believe, it's you. See,
he had to preach, he had to explain himself for the faith to be there.
And that's the way the gospel is. It has to be explained to
us. We have to have this faith that comes by hearing the gospel.
So the first principle is this. Repentance, like faith, is not
of yourselves. If it were of ourselves, Jeremiah
wouldn't have said, turn me and I shall be turned. And then also
in Psalm 80, in Psalm chapter 80, it says the same thing. It
affirms the same truth that repentance like faith is not of ourselves.
Psalm chapter 80, notice the prayer of the people of God.
Verse one, give ear, O shepherd of Israel, Speaking about the
Lord our God, who is our shepherd, the Lord is my shepherd, the
Lord Jesus Christ. Give ear, O shepherd of Israel,
thou that leadest Joseph like a flock, thou that dwellest between
the cherubims. And where are the cherubims?
They're over the mercy seat. And what's there that they're
looking upon? The sprinkled blood that makes
atonement, that obtains our redemption. And He speaks to the Lord as
the shepherd of Israel who dwells between the cherubims, who considers
the offering and sacrifice of the Son of God for His people,
looking upon that lid, as it were. considering Christ in him
crucified for them. All that the law commands them,
which was in the ark, was fulfilled by him. And Aaron's rod that
budded, Christ in him crucified, risen and justified for his people. And the manna, that's Christ
in him crucified, the life for his people. And the cherubims
are there. God who dwells within the cherubims,
we're calling upon you. Shine forth before Ephraim and
Benjamin and Manasseh. Stir up thy strength and come
and save us. Psalm 80 verse 2. And now in
verse 3, turn us. again, O God, and cause thy face
to shine, and we shall be saved." When God causes his face to shine
in the Lord Jesus Christ through the gospel, then we are saved
because the gospel of Christ crucified for our justifying
righteousness and all of our inheritance are standing before
God, our holiness, everything. That gospel is the power of God
unto salvation. Turn us again, preach the gospel
of Christ and him crucified to us, and we shall be saved. Look
at verse 17 of Psalm 80. He says this, let thy hand be
upon the man of thy right hand, upon the son of man whom thou
madest strong for thyself. It's for God's name, for his
glory that he brought this salvation through his son. He did it. It's
all to his glory. It came from his heart, according
to his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace. That's
why he says, let your hand be upon the man of thy right hand.
And he goes on, verse 18, so will we not go back from thee?
Quicken us, make us alive, give us life, and we will call upon
thy name. Turn us again, O Lord God of
hosts, cause thy face to shine, and we shall be saved. You see,
repentance comes from God, and look at Acts chapter five, Acts
chapter 5. It comes from God. It doesn't
come from us. And notice, therefore, it's the
gift of God. In Acts chapter 5, in verse 31, I'll read from verse 29. Then
Peter and the other apostles answered and said, We ought to
obey God rather than men. The God of our fathers raised
up Jesus, whom you slew and hanged on a tree. Verse 31. Him, the
one you killed, the one that we ought to obey,
him has God exalted with his right hand to be a prince and
a savior, a king and a savior for to give repentance to Israel
and forgiveness of sins. Is forgiveness of sins earned
by us? Do we earn the forgiveness of sins? No. Neither do we earn
repentance. I think most people think that
repentance means stop sinning, start obeying, stop doing wrong,
do all that's right. That's what repentance seems
to mean. But biblical repentance, according to the interpretation
of the gospel, is being turned from all that opposes Christ
to trust Christ alone. And all that opposes Christ comes
from this wicked, self-righteous heart. This stubborn, proud,
ignorant, foolish heart of mine. And that's what has to be subdued.
And so the Lord tells us, Christ was exalted as king and a savior
in order to give this salvation to his people, which are called
here Israel, the elect of God. He gives them repentance and
the forgiveness of sins. Look at Acts chapter 11. Acts
11 and verse 13. Peter is describing how God spoke
to him and sent him to Cornelius and his household. In verse 13,
he showed us how he had seen, Cornelius showed us how he had
seen an angel in his house, which stood and said, send men to Joppa
and call for Simon, whose surname is Peter. Notice in verse 18,
what is Peter gonna do when he sends for him? Who shall tell
thee words, whereby thou and all thy house shall be saved.
What words? Well, the words that he told them then about Jesus
Christ, you can read them in the previous chapter, he talks
about it. And then he says in verse 15,
and as I began to speak the words, the gospel of Christ in him crucified,
the Holy Ghost fell on them as on us at the beginning, verse
16. Then remembered I the word of
the Lord, how that he said, John indeed baptized with water, but
you shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost. For as much then
as God gave them The like gift, as he did to us, the Spirit of
God, who believed on the Lord Jesus Christ, what was I that
I could withstand God? And when they heard these things,
they held their peace and glorified God, saying, then hath God also
to the Gentiles granted repentance unto life. He gave them this
repentance and faith that is the result of life and that takes
from Christ and lives upon him in life. Repentance and faith
are the work of the Spirit of God. We see that in all these
scriptures we're looking at here. Christ from his throne grants
it. repentance and faith are not of ourselves they're the
gift of God and it is his goodness that leads us to repentance,
gives us repentance, grants us to the acknowledging of the truth.
Look at 2nd Timothy 2nd Timothy in chapter 2 the T's are in alphabetical
order Thessalonians, Timothy, Titus 2nd Timothy chapter 2 And verse 24, the servant of
the Lord must not strive. Paul tells Timothy, you're not
supposed to get out there and argue with people. It's not a
debate, it's a declaration. The servant of the Lord must
not strive, but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach. Patient
in meekness, because you're a sinner saved the same way that those
you're preaching to will be saved. In meekness, instructing those
that oppose themselves, if God, per adventure, will give them
repentance. To what? To the acknowledging
of the truth, which has got to be the gospel. Okay, look at
Titus. Titus chapter three, I want you
to see these amazing words. Titus chapter three, verse six.
Titus chapter three, verse six. Which he shed on us abundantly
through Jesus Christ our Savior. What did he shed on us abundantly?
Well, let's read verse seven first. That being justified by
his grace, we should be made heirs according to the hope of
eternal life. Why were we made heirs? Because
we were justified. How were we justified? By His
grace. How did God shed abundantly upon
us what He gave to us? Through Jesus Christ our Savior.
I read these two verses first so that we can see that the outpouring
of God of His Spirit by grace, granting us faith and repentance,
is the work, is the result, is the reason, the reason for it
is the justifying work of Christ for us. He shed this on us through
Jesus Christ, our Savior, by His command, by His merit, that
being justified, we know that's by His righteousness, according
to God's grace, we were made heirs, heirs of everything Christ
has given. Now look at verse five. Titus
3 verse 5, Now it is not by works of righteousness which we have
done, but according to His mercy He saved us by the washing of
regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost, which He shed
on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior, that being
justified by His grace we should be made heirs according to the
hope of eternal life. First we're justified. Then the
Spirit is given to us. We're regenerated. Then we turn
and we believe the Lord Jesus Christ. And we're discovered
to be, in our own experience, heirs according to the hope of
eternal life. But God knew it all along when
Christ shed his blood for us and fulfilled our righteousness. Okay? I hope that makes sense.
Look at Acts chapter 20. Acts 20. chapter 20. Talking about repentance
here, because that's what happened in the book of Jonah, chapter
3. Acts chapter 20 and verse 21, Paul says that he had been
testifying, Acts 20, 21, testifying both to the Jews and also to
the Greeks, repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord
Jesus Christ. Look at, hold that thought right
there, maybe hold your finger there, look at Mark, the book
of Mark, chapter one, and see what Jesus said here. Mark chapter
one, verse 15, and maybe I'll have to stop here. He says, the
Lord Jesus is talking here in verse 14. Now after the John
was put in prison, Jesus came into Galilee preaching the gospel
of the kingdom of God. So he's preaching the gospel,
isn't he? There's only one gospel. And he said this, the time is
fulfilled. All of history has come to this
point. And the kingdom of God is at hand. Notice what he says next. Repent
ye and believe the gospel. Now this is very, very important.
The Lord Jesus is directing sinners to himself in the gospel. Believe the gospel. Believe him. Turn from what you used to hold
as the basis for your salvation. Turn from your pride. that you
wanted to retain some dignity in yourself, in your own spiritual
dignity or confidence in yourself. Turn from your lust. You're always
seeking your own way. You have to look to Christ as
the way. forsake everything that's not
Christ and cling to Christ alone. That's what he's saying here.
Repent ye, forsake everything, let go of all self-defense, relinquish
every plea and cling to Christ alone in coming to God and believe
the gospel. Just lay hold on the Lord Jesus
Christ. That's a beautiful, explanation
here of Acts 20, 21, testifying both to the Jews and the Greeks,
repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ.
Remember what was God's work He gave us to do? Believe on
the Lord Jesus Christ. Believe on Him whom He has sent.
And how does that come? Well, it's not of ourselves,
it's the gift of God. And who gives it? Christ, from His throne,
sends His Spirit, and into the preaching of the gospel, explaining
Christ and Him crucified as our justifying righteousness. Not
all these other things. Not your self-improvement. Not
your introspective consideration of how well you're doing. Come
as a sinner, and don't come any other way. Otherwise, you haven't
come at all. Come to Christ, look to Christ
alone, look unto me and be ye saved all the ends of the earth.
I am God, there is none else. There is none good but God and
Christ is the one who is speaking those words. God's grace always
leads us to Him. The power of God to salvation
is the gospel of what Christ has done for all of our salvation. It clarifies the truth of all
of scripture and it stabs the heart of the great dragon of
man's false religion. And just as we grow in grace,
we always need to grow in faith and repentance too. Let's pray.
Lord, we pray that we would hear from the Lord Jesus Christ, who
came into this world, lived his life in perfect obedience to
God, and then suffered under the weight of our sins, and suffered
the punishment of our sins, and overcame our sins and death,
the death we deserve, and rose from the dead, and is our justifying
righteousness, all of our hope, we are complete in him, nothing
more need be added, because all that we have, we have through
His work alone. Help us to forsake every other
confidence, cling to Him only, and be thankful in our hearts
and worship You by Your Spirit. We pray, Lord, that we would
take no confidence in our flesh, but we would take every confidence
in the Lord Jesus Christ, and we would bless the Lord with
all that is within us, and all of our soul, and all of our life,
and live for Him. And we would understand that
Your Scripture, Your Word, and our life the providence of your
hand in our life, guiding us, leading us on to Christ, so that
in the end we will stand and see Him whom our soul desires,
and we will be like Him, because we will see Him as He is. And
so we trust you, Lord, to fulfill your word, not because of who
we are, not because of our prayer even, but by the Lord Jesus Christ. We trust Him, and we come to
you asking you to do what you've said, asking you to consider
what He has done, to consider His prayers and His intercessions
for us and consider us only in Him. And for this we give you
all praise and thanks. In Jesus' name, Amen.