And it came to pass, when David
had made an end of speaking these words unto Saul, that Saul said,
Is this thy voice, my son David? And Saul lifted up his voice
and wept. And he said to David, Thou art
more righteous than I, for thou hast rewarded me good, whereas
I have rewarded thee evil. And thou showed this day how
that thou hast dealt well with me. For as much when the Lord
had delivered me into thine hand, thou killest me not. For if a
man find his enemy, we let him go well away. Wherefore the Lord
reward thee good for that thou hast done unto me this day. And
now behold, I know well that thou shalt surely be king, and
that the kingdom of Israel shall be established in thine hand. Swear now therefore unto me by
the Lord that thou will not cut off my seed after me, and that
thou will not destroy my name out of my father's house. And
David swear unto Saul, and Saul went home, but David and his
men got them up unto the hold. Father, in the blessed name,
precious name of our Lord Jesus Christ, we come into your presence. We are thankful. We are a thankful
people. We are a blessed people. We are
a people singled out, a people that's been loved, chosen, separated
by the gospel, waiting for our glorification. waiting to you
to call us. You called us by your gospel.
Now we wait for you to call us home. And Lord, we know that
we don't know when it'll be, but what a blessed day it'll
be. The day you crossed our path
with the gospel, what a blessed, blessed day it was. And the day
you call us home, be most blessed day of our lives. And Father,
we pray that you'd meet with us here tonight God, enable us
to worship You, to learn something from Your Word, that You speak
to our hearts, speak to our understandings. And we pray for those who are
not with us. We pray for Kyle, pray for Annie. God bless them. Lord, I pray that she'll be well
and things will go very well. Pray for Fran, that You'd continue
to strengthen her and meet her needs. Pray for those who are
not with us tonight through your providence. Bring glory to yourself
through us. Have mercy upon our families,
sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.
Oh God, they're in your hands. To do with us seemeth good. But
Lord, what glory it would be to you to save sinners such awful
sinners as they are. For Christ's sake, we bless you.
Amen. In 1 Samuel, we're going to talk
tonight about false repentance. False repentance. Saul hunted
David like a man hunts an animal. He hunted him. Every time he
found out he might be somewhere, he went after him. Took 3,000
men with him. Hunted him just like a man would
hunt an animal. And David has shown Saul that
he had an opportunity to kill him. To destroy him. But he didn't. And David was very tender-hearted. Do you remember when he said
his heart smote him after he had cut the skirt off Saul's robe? And it smote his heart. smote his heart, very tender
hearted, and he felt like he had sinned and he confessed his
sin, he told his men, he said, the Lord forbid that I should
do this thing unto my master, he's the Lord's anointed. And
with these words he stayed his man. Well Saul, after David calls
out to Saul, said, look here, look what I've got. Held up that
material he cut off of his robe. Held it up. And boy, Saul began to repent. Began to repent. And I want to
take a look at this thing called biblical repentance. And Saul
bore many, many marks of repentance. But was it real? Was it biblical? And let me say repentance, and
we'll deal with it later, is a change of mind. And oh, what
a change of mind it is. It's a change of heart. Direction
of your heart. And the direction that you go
in. Direction you go in. And here's the first mark of
his repentance was he sorrowed over sin. He seemed to sorrow
over sin. Just seemed to. Look what he
says here in verse 16. And he said, when David made
an end of speaking these words, Is this thy voice, my son David? And Saul lifted up his voice
and wept. He began to weep. He had sorrow. He had sorrow, no doubt. But
why did he have this sorrow? Why did he lift up his voice
and weep? Was it because he was really sorrow over his sin? It
seemed like he was sorrow for what he'd done, or what? You
see, genuine repentance, instead of having this focus towards
something you've done to somebody else, it has this focus on God. David said it's against thee
and thee only that I've sinned and done this evil in thy sight
And I want you to keep this and I want you to look with me in
2nd Corinthians chapter 7 I want you to see something about repentance
and we're going to go through a few things here about it and
You know our Lord Jesus Christ When he began his ministry, he
began in Matthew 4.17, he said, he began to preach, repent for
the kingdom of heaven is at hand. And his last message to his disciples
was, he said, repentance and remission should be preached
in my name among all nations. So he started with repentance
and he told his people, now you go and you preach repentance
and remission of sins through my name. And look what he says
here now, Paul had wrote a letter to the Corinthians over this
man who had taken his father's wife back in 1 Corinthians. He wrote him a letter, rebuked
him, got pretty serious with him. And he said in verse 8,
for though I made you sorry with a letter. I do not repent, though
I did repent because I made you so sorry, for I perceive that
the same epistle hath made you sorry, though it was but for
a season." You just got sorry for just a little while. Now
I rejoice, not that you were made sorrow, but now listen to
this, but that you sorrowed to repentance. Now, whoa, what is
he talking about? You know, Saul's here sorrowing. He's weeping. Lifting up his
voice and he's crying. And he said, oh, this letter
brought sorrow to repentance. Now listen to this. You were
made sorry after a godly manner. What does that mean? That God
worked this sorrow in you. That's what it says in the book.
According to God. that you might receive damage
by us in nothing we didn't damage you with this letter you brought
you to repentance now listen to this for godly sorrow worketh
repentance to salvation godly sorrow does Now I tell you something,
beloved, men be sorry over a lot of things, but boy, whenever
you brought to a godly sorrow, and you sorrow before God Himself,
and you understand that what you said and what you've done
and how you've acted is before God. That's when your heart starts
breaking. That's when things are going
to happen. And godly sorrow worketh repentance
to salvation. Salvation not to be repented
of. But listen to this. But the sorrow
of the world, all that does is work death. You let a thief get
caught, and he's ashamed and he's embarrassed. And he may, even when he comes
back out of the police station, put something over his face so
people won't recognize who he is. But do you reckon that he's
sorry for being a thief? Is he sorry that he's a thief?
No, he's just embarrassed and ashamed of being caught. And
when God catches you, when God catches you, He catches you by
the heart. He gets you by the heart. He gets you by the soul.
He gets you by your heart. He goes after your heart. So
back over here in our text. See, genuine repentance has God
as its focus. Godly sorrow. And Godly sorrow,
listen, Godly sorrow causes us to have shame before God and
His holiness. Oh my, y'all know, let me ask
you a question. You know, you'll do something
and you'll say, boy, why did I do that? Why did I do that?
I've done that before and I've said, Lord, I'm sorry, I'm sorry,
I'm sorry. I'm sorry. But it comes to the
place where you say, Lord, I'm so ashamed that I do what I do. And I'm sorry for it. And because we understand that
before God that we have to do. And let me tell you something
else about Saul's repentance. Not only was it seen to be a
sorrow over sin, but Saul's sorrow was motivated by shame before
David's righteous behavior. Not before God. He says, listen,
you treated me good. You were righteous and you treated
me good. But I tell you what, you could
have killed me and you let me go. Said, well, hardly anybody's
got an enemy and let him go. But I was an enemy and you let
me go, David. You let me go. But he didn't
have any sorrow before God. He was just sorrow before man. And I tell you, beloved, True
repentance, true repentance, where God works repentance in
a man's heart, hurts our heart before God. When we feel like
we sinned, and I don't know what you felt like when you were being
brought to Christ, and we feel that what we said and done was
against Him. You know, I remember when God
taught me the gospel. And I heard the gospel clear,
heard it plain, like we sung that song. Make it clear, make
it plain. Make the message clear, make
the message plain. I heard it plain, I heard it
clear. I understood it clear. And I had such a sorrow of heart
and grief before God because I'd lied on God I misinterpreted
his word. I misrepresented God. I was worried
about what my ministry was going to be instead of realizing it's
God's ministry, not mine. It's God's church, not mine.
And I laid down on the floor and it was like I was going to
die. going to die. And I don't know
if you know, some people have a greater repentance. I don't
know. But I do know this, that our heart hurts us, hurts us
when we feel like that we've embarrassed God or we feel like
we've sinned against God. Scott used to get up and he'd
say this, he'd say, you know, I don't want to embarrass myself.
He said, when I get up to preach, I don't want to embarrass myself.
But more than that, I don't want to embarrass God. I don't want
to embarrass God. You remember him saying things
like that? I remember him saying that. And I understood clearly
what he said. And Saul confessed his sin. Look
what he said in verse 17. Here. And he confessed his sin. And look what he says here now.
Thou art more righteous than I. Thou art more righteous than
air. You know what he was saying? He said, I'm a righteous person,
but you're more righteous than I am. That's what he said, you're more
righteous than I am. So what he's saying is, David,
I'm a righteous man too, but you're more righteous than I
am. Is there any repentance in that? True repentance is a conversion.
Now let me tell you what I mean by that. When God brings true
repentance to a person's heart, that heart, when it has a change
of mind and God works in a man, what he does is he turns from
himself. He turns from sin. He turns from
everything that he knows that's against God and he turns toward
God and he turns all the way around. And I tell you, that's
something he didn't do. The new birth is something God
does for us. And conversion is something we
do in that repentance. We automatically turn toward
the Lord. When God works this repentance
in you, you turn toward the Lord and you start crying out for
mercy. Mercy. Huh? Saul just feels his
actions have been sinful. Just his actions. And that's
one of the faults of today's preaching and it always has been
preaching. They're all the time telling
people quit this sin, that sin, and another sin. And they're
pruning up the tree. Always trying to prune the tree. But it's not the tree, it's the
root. The root's bad. The heart's bad. And when you got a bad heart
and you got a bad root, you can have nothing but bad fruit. If
you deal with the root of the matter, Man's nature before God. Man's sinfulness before God.
That's when a man really understands he's a sinner. That's when he's
going to turn to God with his whole heart. He can't help but
do it. Oh, what Saul's saying is, David,
you're more righteous than I am, but I'm righteous. And I'll tell
you something about true repentance. True repentance owns sin as its
own thing. True repentance owns its own
sin. Not somebody else's. True repentance
confesses sin. You know, John said it like this,
if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, the truth
not in us. If we confess our sins, God is, confess our sin, not
sin, sin. We confess our sin, He is faithful
and just to forgive us our sin. Now I'll tell you something about
a lost man. I'll tell you something about a lost man. A lost man
doesn't see himself to be a sinner. He doesn't see himself to be
a sinner. I've said this time and again, the minute a man becomes
a sinner before God, you've found the man's already saved. Now ain't that right? Did I ever tell you all about
Albert Blalock? There's a lot of folks here remembering. Let
me tell you, a fella called me the other day and asked me to
tell him that illustration. He wanted to use it in a message.
But Brother Albert, everybody remember Brother Albert, little
old bitty fella. And he was pretty rough life, you know, he bootlegged
and he had a place out here on Vandiver Road and he had him
a big hog house that had a bunch of hogs in it. He had been coming
and hearing the preaching. So he called me and said, Brother
Donnie, would you come out to the house? I want to talk to
you. So we went out in that hog house
and he had some white buckets and we sat down on them white
buckets. Now a hog house is not a good place to visit. Not a
good place to have a talk about something. But that's where we
went. Went to that house and sat down
there on those white buckets. And you know what he said, first
thing he said to me, he said, Brother Donnie, He said, I feel
like garbage. I feel like garbage. I'm the
worst garbage that ever was. I don't think there's anybody
worse than me. He started telling me about how
bad he was, how sinful he was, how wretched he was. He said,
I'm worse than any of these hogs in here. And you know what I was thinking?
God done done a work. But I couldn't tell him. I couldn't
tell him. He got to tell me what God done
for him. I couldn't tell him. But oh my. Oh my. God done a work for him and all.
But this is the way he started out. He was owning his sin to
be this. He thought he was the worst person
that could possibly be. Oh my! But a lost man doesn't
see himself to be a sinner. If you tell a man that he's a
sinner without God making him a sinner, all you're going to
do is offend him. All you're going to do is hurt his feelings.
But I, Lord Jesus Christ, How many times did he talk about
calling not the righteous but sinners to repent? Christ receives
sinful men. One of the things that his enemies
found out about him and accused him of is why does your master
eat? Eat with publicans and sinners.
And our Lord said, I didn't come to call you fellows. And if a
man's righteous like Saul was, God didn't come to call him.
Christ didn't come to call him. He said, I did not come to call
righteous men. And if you got a righteousness
of your own in any way, Christ didn't die for you and Christ
is not coming to call you. And until your righteousness
becomes as a filthy rag, until a man's righteousness becomes
as an unclean thing, until he understands that he has nothing,
Christ is not calling him. He didn't come. He said, you
righteous men, you Pharisees, You enemies that find fault with
who I ain't with. He said, I ain't got nothing
for you. I ain't got anything for you. But
you see that sinner over there? You see Bartimaeus? You see Zacchaeus? You see that woman at the well
with her five husbands and now she's just living with a man?
You see Mary Magdalene out of whom seven devils come? He said,
you see that sinner over there? He said, that's the person I
come to call. And boy, boy, bless His holy
name. He'll make you a sinner just
so He can save you. He'll make you a sinner just
so He can save you. That's how gracious our Lord
is. He'll make you a sinner just to call you. Oh listen, it's like the two
men praying in Luke 18. One stood and prayed thus with
himself and said, Oh Lord, I'm not like this man, that man,
the other man. I do this, I do that, and I do
the other thing. But that other man, he was a sinner. He was a sinner. And he smote
on his breast and said, Oh God, Oh God, be merciful to me. Now listen to what he says there.
He says this, The sinner. The sinner. It's like that man
that was born blind. Those Pharisees came to him and
said, Who opened your eyes? Who opened your eyes? He said,
I don't know his name. Well, give God the glory, for
we know this man's a sinner. Talked about Christ being a sinner.
He said, whether he's a sinner or not, I don't know, but I do
know one thing, that he opened my eyes, and we know that God
heareth not sinners. God's not gonna do a miracle
through a sinner. That's what he's hoping. And
now, listen, they call Christ a sinner. And I tell you, our
Lord Jesus Christ, came to call sinners to repentance. It's like
Mary. You remember Mary was weeping
at his feet. And Simon the Sorcerer, Simon
the Leper's house eating dinner. He's in there eating supper.
And Mary came up and she began to weep at his feet. Began to
wash them with her feet. Her tears were so great that
they covered the feet of the Lord Jesus Christ. And the first
thing that Simon said was this, if this man were a prophet, if
Christ was a prophet, he'd know what kind of woman this is. He'd know what kind of woman
this is. But she just kept crying, kept taking her hair and wiping
his head. And oh, our Lord Jesus Christ
said, Simon, see this woman here? She had lots and lots and lots
and lots and lots of sin. But they're all forgiven. She had lots of it, but I forgive
it. I forgive it. Christ came to
preach repentance. I'm going to show you. You don't
have to look. I'm going to read them to you. I got a mark here.
In Mark 4, 17, from that time, Jesus began to preach and to
say, repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. And then in
Luke 24, 47, He said, and that repentance
and remission of sin should be preached in his name among all
nations beginning at Jerusalem. So old John the Baptist preaching
said, repent ye and flee from the wrath to come. Now listen,
when the Holy Spirit comes, here's what happens. He convicts a sin. That's the first thing He does.
Convicts a sin. He convinces. That word convict means He convicts
you of sin. When you're convicted of something,
you're guilty. And you own that guilt. When
He convinces you of sin, you say, yes, that's exactly what
I am. Then He turns around and He convicts
you of righteousness. What do you mean righteousness?
That you don't have one. And you can't produce one. And
you can't buy one. And you can't get it at the church.
You can't get it from the preacher. You can't get it walking an aisle.
You can't get it by decision. That this righteousness, you
don't have one. Well, where in the world can
I get one at? He convicts you of your righteousness as a filth
and repulsion. All my righteousness I count
but done that I may win Christ. And then He'll convince you of
judgment. Oh my! If Christ don't give me
His righteousness and me being the sinner that I am, I've got
nothing but judgment to face. And if Christ bore the judgment
of my sin and gave me His righteousness then I've already been judged
in Christ. That's what the Gospel tells
us. Huh? Oh my! And what happens when
that happens is, you know what happens? Your mind changes. What
a change it has! You know the first change your
mind changes towards? Listen to me now. You know, when
Isaiah saw the Lord, he said, Woe is me, I'm undone. Woe is me, I'm undone. You know,
it's a sign of Christ that convicts us of sin and righteousness and
judgment. And when we see that, our mind
is changed first and foremost about God. Doc was telling me about he took
care of a funeral of a friend of his, dear friend of his. And
he says, you know, this God of this age said He loves everybody
and even their dogs. That's the way it is, ain't it?
Even bloods are dogs. But oh, listen. Your mind is
changed about God. Do you remember when your mind
was changed about God? You start hearing about God.
And how holy and how righteous and how just. And how infinitely
eternal He was. And you start to see He's high
and lifted up. And He's sovereign in everything
that He does. And then when you see Him, Your
mind changes about yourself. And oh my goodness, anybody here,
how well do you think of yourself before God? How well do you think of yourself
before God now? Before, you're as good as anybody
else. But when nobody's no good, that don't mean anything. But you change toward God. So
you turn from yourself and you turn toward God. And then you change your mind
about yourself. You're like Elbert. If anybody
is worse than me, I don't want to meet them. Paul said, I'm
the chief of sinners. And the Scriptures tell us that
Christ came into this world to save His people from sin. True repentance is the person
that knows and thinks and knows himself to be guilty before God. Look over here at Psalm 32 with
me. Psalm 32. You know, Tim James was preaching
one time. This has been several years ago.
And you know, there's a lot of campgrounds over there where
he lives. Up on Big Cove. People go to them campgrounds.
And there some visitors came to the service one morning. And
Tim referred to himself as being a sinner. And she told him after
service, she said, I've never heard a preacher refer to himself
as a sinner. He always preached everybody
else was the sinner. Everybody else needs to change.
Everybody else needs to start living right. But he was okay. He said, I've never heard that
before in my life. And it shocked that woman. Because
all she had ever been preached to was preached at. But how can
I not be... I have to be saved the same way
everybody else does. I've got to know Christ the same
way. I've got to repent the same... And look what he said here in
Psalm 32 and verse 5. This is what David's talking
about. I acknowledged my sin unto thee. And mine iniquity have I not
hid. I said, I will confess my transgressions
unto the Lord. Now you see who he confesses
it to? To the Lord. And thou forgavest my iniquity. David said, O Lord, in your love
and kindness and tender mercies, remember me, remember me. I'm
going to tell you another true story about Scott. He had some folks come, and there's
a woman there, and she was pretty legalistic. And she had seen
people driving over the speed limit and all that. So she went
to Scott's office one day and caught him sitting in there at
his desk, and she said, Brother Scott, Yep. Said, you know the Bible says
that we're to confess our sins one to another. And you know
what he said to her? He said, well, you start. You start. She didn't have a
word to say. She got up and left. You start. That's a pretty good way to do
it, ain't it? Yeah, let's all stand up and
confess our sins. Who in the world would want to
stand up and confess sin? Todd told me here recently that,
I'm not going to name the preacher's name, but this happened years
ago. He had folks in a service get up and confess sin and he
said, there's one young woman here who's going to get up and
confess she's a harlot. That poor old gal got up and
Todd said, it ruined that woman's life. should run her life. Listen, David said, I acknowledge
my sins before you. The only person, we all know
what we are. We're not deceived in ourselves.
And we know every one of us knows exactly what we are. Every one
of us here. But it won't do you no good telling
me what sin you committed. I can't do nothing about it.
You can't do nothing about mine. But he can. He can. Tell him. Tell him. Oh my. Oh my. You know a person got
to be lost before he'll ever be found. and of true repentance,
a man sees himself personally guilty and responsible for his
sin. But a lost man measures himself
by other men as his standard. And when he does that, man, I'm
as good as anybody. I'm better than most. But a believer
measures himself by God's standard. And you know what God's standard
is? The law. And when you judge yourself by
God's holy law, All you can do is guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty,
guilty. Ten of them. Guilty. Just go ahead and put up ten
fingers. Guilty. Guilty. We don't have other people as
our standard. We don't even have our own opinion.
But when we face God and God's standards of holiness and righteousness,
all we can say is guilty, guilty, guilty. And God's keeping a record. He told them in Romans 2.5, He
says, You through the hardness and impenitence of your heart
are treasuring up wrath against the day of the righteous judgment
of God. And Saul, let me show you this
back over here and I'll hurry up and get done with this. Look
down here in verse 20 now. David set aside his sinful pursuit
of David. Look what he said. He said, And
now, behold, I know well that thou shalt surely be king, and
that the king of Israel shall be established in thine hand.
And he speaks kindly to David. Backed up, he said, Is this the
voice of David, my son? And he says, You know you're
going to be king? And then he says in verse 21,
Swear now therefore unto me. He asked for mercy when David
gets on his throne. Swear now therefore unto me by
the Lord that thou will not cut off my seed after me and that
thou will not destroy my name out of my father's house. He
pleads for mercy. He pleads for mercy. But what
was lacking in Saul's repentance was He didn't change. He never changed his heart. He
never had a change of mind. Look in 1 Samuel 26. 1 Samuel 26. And in this chapter,
when we get to it, you'll see that David spares Saul's life
again. But look what it says here, verse 1 and 2. Then Saul arose and went down
to the wilderness of Zeph, having three thousand chosen men of
Israel within him, to seek David in the wilderness of Zeph. Didn't
change. Did it change his heart? And
I tell you true repentance leads to a life of repentance. How
can you tell you've ever repented? Because once you do, you never
stop. It's a state of heart. And repentance
is a gift. Christ says that he was exalted
to be a prince over Israel to grant repentance unto the Gentiles. And it's like faith. You know,
the only way that you know you've repented is you never stop repenting. You never stop asking for mercy. You know, you say, Lord, forgive
me for letting my mind think this. Forgive me for letting
my mind do this. Forgive me for letting me think this. Forgive
me for letting, thinking this. Forgive me of what happened,
what I said. And you know, it just on and
on and on. And it's like faith, you know.
Faith and repentance are both active all the time. Well, I repented back there 25
years ago. That's my repentance. I can go
back to the time and place I did it. But I ain't changed. But I tell you what, if you ever
repented, you'll do it until you go to glory. And if you ever
believe, you're going to believe until you get to glory. Amen? Our Father, in the precious blessed
name of our Lord Jesus Christ, thank you for allowing us this
wonderful privilege to meet. Lord, I stand amazed at your
grace that's so greater than our sin. Grace that cleanses
us from all our sin, saves us, and works in us day and night,
day and night. and will not leave us alone.
And oh Lord, please never leave us alone. Never leave us to ourselves. And oh Lord Jesus, please cause
us to look to you, cleave to you, call on you, believe you,
embrace you, trust you, walk, walk by faith with you. Oh Lord Jesus, we need you. Thank
you for making us to be your people and getting us lost, making
us to be sinners, just so you could call us and cleanse us
and save us and wash us in your blood. We thank you for it. Christ's
holy name. Amen. Oh, how merciful, how