In the 20th chapter of Acts,
the apostle Paul is speaking to the elders of the church in
Ephesus. He says in verse 20, I kept back
nothing that was profitable from you, but I have shown you and
have taught you publicly and from house to house. In verse
27 he says, for I have not shunned to declare unto you all the counsel
of God. And then in verse 21, he explains
what the whole aim and drift of his ministry was. Testifying
both to the Jew and also to the Greeks, repentance toward God
and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ. The apostle Paul was
not satisfied merely to inform the minds of men. He was not
satisfied merely to reform their lives, but it was his aim, his
purpose, his goal to serve by preaching the gospel to profit
the souls of men eternally. He preached with the aim, with
the hope, the desire, and the expectation that those who heard
his gospel might be given repentance toward God and faith toward our
Lord Jesus Christ. I pray that that's truly my heart's
desire for you as well. I want to do more than interest
you with my subject. I want to do more than to impress
you with my speech. are to impress you with some
learning or some wisdom that I might attain by much study. I pray that God the Holy Spirit
will grant to you who hear me both repentance and faith. That
he will truly grant us repentance and faith. It is only through
repentance toward God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ that
men and women obtain eternal salvation. Now I realize that
through the heretical influence of modern dispensationalism,
most people do not realize that true saving faith is always accompanied
with repentance toward God. I listened with disgust and humor So a fellow Sunday evening on
the way home from church, trying to convince everybody that Demas,
the apostate, was really Demas, a truly saved man, who simply
lacked commitment to Christ. He had faith, the fellow said,
but he had no evidence of that. He had faith, the fellow said.
But he, rather than turning from the world to God, turned from
God to the world. Most people are of the opinion
that repentance was necessary in the Old Testament. The prophets
certainly taught it. And that repentance was necessary
during the apostolic era while our Lord was still upon the earth.
While John the Baptist preached repentance and our Lord preached
repentance. They say it was necessary then
because they were still under the old law. And then we're told
that repentance will again be necessary in their imaginary
period of great tribulation that they think is yet to come, when
there will be sort of a second opportunity for folks to be saved. But that during what they call
the gospel age, or the church age, or the dispensation of grace,
Repentance is not necessary at all, and yet no one can deny
that Paul's language in Acts chapter 20 was certainly in what
they would say is the church age. No one would deny that Paul
was preaching to men in the distanciation of grace. He was speaking to
the local church at Ephesus, and he declared that the constant
theme of his ministry was repentance toward God and faith toward our
Lord Jesus Christ. Both are necessary. Both are
vital. There's no such thing as repentance
without faith, and there's no such thing as faith without repentance.
Both are essential to salvation. If you do not have repentance
toward God and faith toward the Lord Jesus Christ, you're lost. You have neither part nor lot
in the matter of salvation. Repentance and faith, I say. No, God says. Repentance and
faith must be together to complete each other. You cannot have the
one without the other. What God has joined together,
let no man put asunder. And these two things God has
made inseparable. Repentance and faith. May God
the Holy Spirit plant bones in your heart and mind. And if it's
already planted, may he be pleased to nourish it and cause it to
grow. In this day of such confusion, men are told in this easy-believism
generation, in this day of mass evangelism, that if you will
just say the center's prayer, and believe that Jesus lived,
died, and rose again, you'll be saved. And about everybody
in this country has done so. About everybody has done so.
Most people get caught in the snare while they're still young
children, and they're brought up in religion, and brought up
in the church to think that they have eternal life, and that all
is well with them, though they have never experienced repentance
towards God. Now listen to me carefully. Yes,
salvation comes to those who believe. Believe on the Lord
Jesus Christ and you shall be saved. But salvation, that faith
that brings salvation, is always identified and always accompanied
by repentance toward God. Nothing is more simple and nothing
more misunderstood Nothing is more important and nothing more
neglected than repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord
Jesus Christ. One of the old preachers, Richard
Cecil, was lying on his deathbed when he heard someone remark
a bit critically that all he ever preached was repentance
and faith. And when he heard that comment,
he said, if I could arise from my deathbed and preach again,
I would preach upon the same subjects continually. I am much
of the opinion of Philip Henry. If I were to die in the pulpit,
I would like to die preaching repentance toward God and faith
toward our Lord Jesus Christ. And if I should die out of the
pulpit, I would like to die practicing These two things are vital. These
two things shall be my subject this evening, repentance and
faith. I want to make four statements. I hope that you will follow me
carefully, and I pray that God your Holy Spirit will speak through
me to your heart. First, true repentance is repentance
toward God. You see that in the text? Repentance
toward God. Satan is a tactic master deceiver. He's been at it a long time.
He knows that the surest way to keep us from true repentance
and true faith is to give us a counterfeit repentance and
a false faith. Oh may God give us discerning
heart tonight. that we may not be deceived with
accountability. There is a repentance, you see,
that is not toward God. Paul didn't just preach repentance,
he preached repentance toward God. I have experienced in my
time, and some of you have, various forms of repentance that are
short of this thing of repentance toward God. A sensitive conscience
will cause me to feel the guilt of my sin and may even constrain
me to both confess my sin and turn away from it with great
sorrow. Younger children experience this. As they get a little older, they
learn by much skill to subdue their consciences. But a child
does something that mother or dad has told the child absolutely
not to do. How disappointed I would be if
you did this, or if you said that, or if you did the other
thing. And that child willfully goes against the dad's law. Willfully
breaks its mother's will and purpose. And when it's done,
even though mom or dad don't really know what's happened,
the child's conscience is at stake. The child's conscience
makes it tormented and uneasy. And so the child comes and tells
mother or dad what's going on, what it's done, and with great
sorrow turns away from evil. Now that happens in religion.
man commits sin, or he commits various sins, and his conscience
begins to bother him. And so he is under the pressure
of some kind of a emotional meeting, a revival meeting, or an altar
call, or something of the kind. He's persuaded to come and make
everything right with God, and get it off his chest, and make
a clean confession and a clean break with things and when he
does he feels better because he has made a priestly confession
to a man and his conscience is soothed with that but that is
not repentance toward God. It is not repentance toward God.
Pride may compel me to repent of my evil deeds. Well how on
earth did pride cause you to do so? Well you see pride doesn't
like to be embarrassed. And if you get caught doing something,
you're embarrassed. You lose the respect of men. You lose you lose the respect of friends,
you lose the respect of relatives. And so because you're caught
for some evil deed, not that you're ashamed of the deed, not
that you're ashamed of what you've done, not that your heart is
broken over the evil itself, but because your evil has been
dragged out into open light and you're embarrassed, then you
may with great bitterness repent and turn away from that evil
deed. I don't know that it's so. I was reading and read just
recently that there are various people in other lands in the
oriental countries, eastern countries, where it is not considered a
terrible evil to lie. It's only considered a terrible
evil to be such a poor blundering liar that you get caught at it.
And that's the way most of us are about many things. It's not
the evil that we oppose, it's being exposed to evil. And pride will cause us to turn
to that which causes our faces to blush. But that's not pretending
to work out. Grief. Grief that's caused by
the painful consequences of sin may cause it to be and may even
cause me to forsake my evil deeds. When I realize the difficulty
that what I do brings upon me and brings upon people that I
care for, then the consequence of my sin and the pain of seeing
what's happened may cause a person to change, may cause you to forsake
the way you've been living, may cause you to make a real change
of life. Let me illustrate it for you.
We read later on in the Book of Acts how the sailors were
in the ship that was about to be destroyed in a storm. And they took the cargo and began
to throw it overboard. Same thing took place with children.
They threw all the precious prized cargo overboard. Now, it was
not because they hated the cargo. It was not because they despised
the riches that they were carrying in the ship that they threw it
overboard. But rather, they realized that
that cargo, if they kept it, was going to lead to their ruin.
Therefore, it must be put away. in much the same way a drunk
may one day wake up with a terrible headache and look in the mirror
and see his bloodshot eyes and his dirty clothes and see his
ragged children and his ragged wife and he may say look what
this is doing to me and so he makes an about-face. He puts
his bottle down. he shaves, and he takes a bath,
and he goes and gets a job, and he goes about the community as
a respectable man. Not because he loathes the drunkenness,
but he loathes what the drunkenness is doing to him. Man may be an
adulterer, and see that it's ruining himself and ruining his
family, ruining his health, ruining his children by his own behavior. And so the man says, okay, I'll
quit this and I'll start to live respectably. A gambler may see
how he's lost everything and he's headed toward absolute ruin
and say, wait, I've got to stop this. This is insane. It doesn't
make sense. And so he turns to gambling.
Religious leaders use those forms of psychological manipulation,
and they get men to make a profession of faith, and to change their
lives, because after all, look what this is doing to you. And
they join the church to make a profession of faith, and everything's
straightened out as far as they're concerned. They have left their
old habits behind, but it's not their sentence to work out. The
fear of hell, the horror of eternal damnation, may cause me to weep,
may cause me to repent, it may cause me to change my ways. I
do know something about that. Now I do not doubt that God may
use legal fear to bring some to true repentance. But if repentance
is nothing more than a selfish desire to escape punishment,
it's false repentance. I know many of whom I fear that
if they knew there was no punishment, if there were no just consequences
to evil, they would never have forsaken their evil ways. And if they knew that there would
be no punishment in doing so, they would quickly return to
their evil ways. I know some who even say that.
I've heard preachers say, well, now if you believe that, then
you can go out and live any way you want to. If you believe that
salvation's all together by grace, and that a man's justified entirely
by the blood of Christ, and that man standing before God does
not in any way depend on what he does, if I believed that,
I would go out and live like hell! Would you? Would you? It's not repentance toward God
that is a fear of punishment. My friends, there's more, much
more to repentance than just a fear of poor men. Repentance is a sorrow for sin
itself. It's more than a dread of death,
the wages of sin. It's the dread of sin which earns
the wages death. Again, a sense of emptiness,
unworthiness, and futility of my life may cause me to repent
and change my way of life. I could give you many illustrations. I think of two immediately. A
young man that I attended high school with We used to be buddies,
we ran around a lot together. After I had begun to preach,
I tried to witness to him, tell him the gospel. Well, he made
a profession of faith. Sometime later, he joined up
with the Bible College group, you know, did a little preaching. He was very adamant about this
thing that they used to call hyper-Calvinism. They still do.
He said, I want you to understand this one. He said, I never had
any conviction of sin. That's not the reason I trusted
God. He said, I never felt that I was nothing. That's not the
reason I trusted God. He said, I never had any real
conviction of the evil of my heart. That's not the reason
I trusted God. He said, I had just come to rock bottom and
the only thing I could do was trust Christ. No. No, you don't trust Christ just
to get out of rock bottom. You don't do it. I have another
man. Went to college with him. He's
a little older than I am. As a matter of fact, his name came
across my desk a while back and I wrote to him, hoping maybe
God had taught him something, but he hasn't. He's a missionary,
been a missionary for 16, 17 years in Johannesburg, South
Africa. One day he was saying, no, I never have experienced
any conviction of sin in my heart. I just trusted Jesus. And that man today is leading
multitudes of others. in the same path to destruction.
A mere sense of emptiness, worthlessness, and futility of life, so that
you say, I've got to do something in my life. I've got to accomplish
something in life. And you change the direction
of your life. That may be something that men
approve of, and men applaud, and men delight in, but it is
not repentance toward God. True repentance. Now listen to
me. True repentance is toward God. The essence of repentance
is toward God, for the essence of sin is toward God. Repentance
in its essence involves a change of my heart toward God. In its essence, repentance involves
a change of my heart toward God. A man who was a drunk may become
sober and even become a preacher and never know repentance toward
God. A man who was a thief may become
honest and even become a deacon and never know repentance toward
God. It's not necessarily a change
of manners, though it may be, but repentance in its essence
is a change of my heart toward God. Let me illustrate it for
you. Turn back to the book of Luke,
Luke chapter 15. Here's the prodigal son. In verse
14, he had spent everything he had, and in a time of famine,
he began to be in want. He went down and tried to work
his way back up to somebody, being paused. In verse 17, he
came to himself. Now in verse 18, look at what
he says. I will arise and go to my father. And I will say
unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and before thee,
and am no more worthy to be called thy son. Make me as one of thy
hired servants. Now the prodigal might very well
have said, I will arise and go to my elder brother, for I've
left him at home all this time. to take care of my father, to
take care of the farm, and to take care of the chores, and
he's had no help. I've done great evil against
him, but that wasn't the essence. He may have said, I will arise
and go to my father's servants, my dear nurse who raised me on
her knee and who taught me things as a child and whose heart has
been broken all these years for my rebellion. I will arise and
I'll go to her and I will make repentance toward her. I'll apologize
for the way I behave. But that's not the essence. He
says, I will arise and go to my father, for I sinned against
my father. And he's the one who must be
appeased. He's the one offended. He's the one I must deal with.
Turn over to Psalm 51. Psalm 51. This is David's penitential
psalm after the matter of Uriah the Hittite. Now listen to the
way David confesses his sins. He says in verse four, against
thee, thee only have I sinned and done this evil in thy sight. Now, wait a minute, David. Uriah
is in the ground because you killed him. Wait a minute, David. Israel is mocked because of your
adultery. Wait a minute, David. Your servant
Joab is aware that his king has lied and has plotted and executed
murder and God is mocked because you represent God. Wait a minute,
David. Bathsheba. Bathsheba was made
an adulteress by your demons. And you say against God only
have you sinned? Yes. Yes. nor Uriah, nor Bathsheba, but
rather it was his rebellion against the throne of God. Do you see
what I'm talking about? The essence of sin is against
God, and it's got to be dealt with there at the throne of God.
Let me give you some characteristics of true repentance toward God.
I am repentant toward God When my heart acknowledges, my heart
acknowledges that I have wronged God. I lived the days and years of
my life in neglect of God. You may think that's insidious. God created me. gave me breath every second of
every day. God fed me, clothed me, and sustained
me in life. And I never even offered a thank
you. Never one day. Never even offered
a thank you. Never even from my side turned
to God and acknowledged that without Him, I would surely perish. If I were in an accident and
survived, I'd say, boy, I was lucky that time. If I were sick
and got up off my bed, I would say, well, I was lucky this time.
If I had been in a fight with some fellas and I got away with
my life, I'd say, well, I was lucky that time. Ascribing all
good things to luck or to fate or some kind of a mystical chance,
anything, I've had a few dogs, and I've shot
one or two of them, because they were good for nesting. They were
good for nesting. They'd eat a pound of food in
two seconds. Gone! And they'd lay down and
want another pound. They wouldn't even bark if a
cat walked across, much less a thief. They wouldn't obey. They wouldn't come when I said
come. They wouldn't sit when I said sit. I could beat them
and then lay down my men and get up and go right at it again.
And I've had occasions when a dog would turn and snap at me while
I'm standing. And every time I ever had one
snap at me, he's dead. He's dead. I never had a dog
snap at me. I didn't kill it. Never. And
yet God Almighty sees and follows. and protects us day after day
after day and we regret it. How often have I misrepresented
God? There have been times I suffered
a little trouble. We get over it. almost always
as a result of something I've done, of Satan. And I used God to make me cruel
and unjust. Why would God do such a thing
to me? Why, what have I ever done to
deserve this? He was the shelter of the poor.
He was on that level. Virgins said that he would misrepresent
God by worshiping idols. We misrepresent God by our murmuring,
and our complaining, and our thoughts, that there is pleasure
in sin, and weariness in divine service, and that all of these
things have come upon us, all of these trials and troubles,
because God is not treating us the way we ought to be treated. I wonder, if I experienced what
Job experienced, as you read a little bit ago, I wonder how
long it'd take me to bow and dance, to get around to bow and
dance and worship. How long would I rather murmur
and complain, maybe not with my lips, after all I'm a preacher,
I can't do that, but in my mind, and in my heart, murmur and complain
against God's prophecy, and weep like some kind of a whip-puff
as though God has done some terrible thing to me. He gave, and he's taken away. That's his blockage. That's his
blockage. His wife said, look at you, Job. Why don't you just curse God
and die? I'm tired of looking at you.
I'm tired of this misery. I'm tired of this... He said,
woman, you speak like a heathen. You speak like a pagan idolater! Shall we receive good at the
hand of the Lord, and shall we not also receive evil? And in all who chose sin not
shall charge God with falsehood. Not only have I neglected the
Lord God, and misrepresented the Lord God, But I have walked before him
absolutely disguised. Now, I am repentant toward God
when in my heart I acknowledge. It's tough to say it privately
or publicly. But hubris is a whole lot tougher
in my heart to accomplish. It's a whole lot easier for me
to stand here and tell James Lee Rankin that I've been a man
in rebellion and enmity against God than it is for me to kneel
on my face and tell God Almighty that I hate him. That's the reason it's popular
to go to a priest. I'd heapsite rather tell a priest
what I am than tell God what I am. It's popular to go to a
preacher. I'd heapsite rather deal with
the preacher than deal with God. The children of Israel said,
Moses, speak to God for us. Don't let him speak to us. We
don't want anything to do with him. You speak to God for us. You're going to have to speak
to God for yourself and not for you. I am repentant toward God
when my heart acknowledges Not only that I've wronged him, but
that I've offended him. The man generally thinks much
of offending man. And thanks be to God. You remember
Lot's life. You can look this up. It's in
Genesis 19 verse 26. God had given us an express command.
He said, now you get up and flee away from the city and don't
And as they were fleeing under Zohar, Lot's face was set steadfast
at the Zohar, and the scripture said that Lot's wife looked back
from behind her. She didn't want him to see her
looking back. She didn't want him to see her cast a fond glance
at one day she saw him. She had respect for Lot. She
didn't know his face. and she became a filler herself. What are you getting at? I've got to interrupt here and
tell you bad news. One of our assemblies was committed
a horrible crime. and you're warned by the law
shame will be you you need me I call you sinners and you almost
take it as a compliment because you see sin is an offense against
God he doesn't matter he doesn't But I stand here and tell you
that you're a criminal, wanted by the law, sure to be imprisoned. If I could convince you that
I was really talking about you personally, you'd be enraged. Not me. No. No, sir. Not me. And you'd defend yourself. And you do everything in your
power to convince this congregation. No, he's not talking about me!
He's talking about somebody else! Because, you see, Brian is a
victim of things against women that he doesn't believe. He's
not. He's a criminal against the high
court, and it is so. Wanted by the law of God. Each one. Each one. Oh, but everybody's sinners.
Yeah, but you are the one I'm talking about. We were sinners. I've offended a lot of men in
my life. I've offended some men who caused me to be afraid of
them. I've offended some men who were
influential and I wanted to be certain. I've got things set
straight with them. I'd either look them up, write, give them
a call, write them a letter, and I'd try to make certain that
they were not offended by me, that they didn't misunderstand
my actions, and that I didn't mean to offend them. because
I was fearful of the consequences. I say, I repent. I'm repentant toward Him in my
heart I acknowledge. I'm repentant toward God who
I acknowledge in my heart. every day of the year. The hatred of God's providence is righteousness, justice, and
truth. Why on this earth would a man
steal? Because he hates God. Hates God. Hates God's law. Hates God's
righteousness and justice and truth. Why on earth would a man
commit murder and then get upset because he's elected? Because
he hates God. That's why. He hates God. He
hates God's law. He thinks it's wrong for God
to tell him what to do. He thinks it's wrong for God
to execute justice. Oh, it's all right on somebody
else, but not on me. Not only does man hate God's
holiness, but man is in rebellion against God's sovereignty. Man
breaks the law of the law. It's because he hates the God
who put the sheriff in town. Man's in rebellion. He's in rebellion
against the throne of the sovereign God. He says, God has no right
to rule me. God has no right to determine
my destiny. God has no right to tell me what
I must do and how to do it. Step aside, Jehovah. I'm taking
over. I am repentant toward God. When I fall on my face and acknowledge Lord God, here I am, a worm in rebellion against the
throne of God. A maggot with a heart of hatred
for the holiness of God. and I'm repentant toward God
when in my heart I take sides with God against myself. Turn back to Psalm 51 again,
I want you to see this. Psalm 51. David says in verse four, against
thee, thee only have I stand and done this evil in thy sight,
that thou mightest be justified when thou speakest, and be clear
when thou judgest. Do you see David's language?
The prophet came and told David, now David, the sword is not going
to depart from what I have. David prays that God will deliver
his child, and God killed his child. According to what the
prophet said. He recalls what David said. And David says, God's dead. He hasn't done anything wrong.
He's just. He's not done anything wrong.
He's not done anything wrong. When God takes out his sword
against me, God's doing what's right. God's doing what righteousness,
justice, and good require. God is doing what I as king in
Israel would do if another man behaved as I have behaved. He's
doing what's right. He's doing what's right. What
I'm saying is this. No man, no woman is broken until
that man or woman sits with God in judgment upon himself, until
that man or woman abhors himself, as God abhors him, by revealing
himself, and then pleads for mercy on the basis of pure grace
through the marriage of God. God is merciful. God be with the bitches who try
to be. God look upon thee in grace for
themselves. Why? Why? Why? Tell me a reason. Tell me a reason. I don't deserve it. I deserve his wrath. I'm a sinner. My sin, what I am in here, it
deserves eternal damnation. My sins, what I think and do,
deserves eternal damnation. My righteousness, the best deeds
I have to perform, deserve eternal damnation. I have nothing to
plead, nothing to give me hope, but the grace of God and the
Spirit of Christ. a couple of observations,
and I'll let you go home. Those who have repentance toward
God, they believe in God. Let me resume a little bit with hope. I think that maybe God has awakened
someone here who senses sin and now he has
a heavy heart, a broken heart, a repentant heart of his. Paul declares that he preached
repentance toward God and faith toward the Lord Jesus Christ.
Therefore, I conclude that where there is repentance Now that's good news to a man
laboring under the load of sin. While you're laboring under guilt,
while you're burdened and heavy laden with sin, while your heart
is crushed with sorrow as you lie before the Lord, you may
now, right now, right now, trust Jesus Christ. I wish somehow I could convince
folks the gospel I deal in this book isn't sin. I'd be a sinner if the gospel
was evil. I'd be a sinner if the gospel
was evil. Are you hungry? I mean in your
soul are you hungry for the living God? Christ is good. Are you thirsty for righteousness? Christ is the water. Are you
naked? Christ is the road of righteousness. Are you weary? Christ is the
way. Are you helpless? Christ is my
rock and my shield. While your soul is in distress,
though you're ready to perish, There's hope, but you can do
it. You have God's permission to
live in it. Do you feel your own unbittenness,
burdened as you are with sin? Is the Holy Spirit's witness,
Christ, inside you, it or is it? You see, God, whom you have
offended, has himself provided a hope. The atonement that Christ
accomplished at Calvary was made for guilty sinners. God himself
invites, no, he commands you to believe. He commands you to
believe. It's not an option. God commands
you to believe. There can never be any possibility
of peace between you and God until you believe. I know something about what conviction
is. I do know something about what
it is to wrestle under the terrible oppressive load of guilt and
sin. And I know what it is to try
to find ease and peace with God by reforming my life, walking
a church aisle and saying a little prayer behind a preacher. the
decision of joining the church. I know what it is to try to appease
God, satisfy God, satisfy my conscience, to silence the preaching
of God. I know what it is to try to do
so by saying, I do. You can't do it. You'll never
have peace with God. until you fall down at the throne
of Christ and trust him. But I'll tell you something,
when you come to Christ, he will not turn you away. He will not
turn you away. He never said, not in his decrees
and not in his word, seek ye my face in vain. He did say,
seek and ye shall find. He said, you'll find me when
you seek for me and search for me with all your heart. Your only saving faith is faith
toward our Lord Jesus Christ. You just can't come to God any
other way. You just can't come to God but
by Christ. But if you believe, if you believe,
you have everlasting life. Everlasting life. Now one more thing. Repentance
and faith always go together. Always. Every now and then, which
comes first, repentance or faith? I don't know. I don't know. Try to get a picture of a cart
spoke, please. Now, watch it. Look at those
spokes. Look at those spokes. Now, when the axle starts to
turn, which spoke moves first? Well, preacher, that's silly.
Yeah, it is. Nobody knows. And it's kind of
silly to sit around and debate which comes first, repentance
or faith. Nobody knows. Take a piece of paper, take a
pencil or pen, punch a hole through it. Now you tell me which came
first. The hole making way for the pencil
or the pencil making the hole? I don't know. I don't know. But
I know that you're not going to have a hole with a pencil
in it unless you got the hole and the pencil. And I know you
don't have eternal life. You don't have salvation unless
you have repentance and faith. Repentance is like Leah. Fair
eyes. But come then. Faith is like
Rachel. Beautiful to look upon. But you
can't have ratio unless you take Leo also. And you can't have
faith unless you have repentance toward God. Repentance is the
result of faith unperceived. For it comes as a result of seeing
Christ. And though you may not know the
faith is there, there's no repentance unless the faith is already there.
Repentance grows as faith grows. I have repented in the past, and don't misunderstand me, I
do yet repent over what I have been and have done, but I repent so much more right now over what I am right
now, right now. You see, the more I see the Lord
Jesus Christ, His grace and His glory, His mercy and His majesty, the more I know I see Him. Repentance increases as faith
increases. Like John the Baptist said, he
must increase and I must decrease. He must be increased, I must
be decreased. He must increase himself, and
I must decrease myself. That's repentance and faith.
Repentance and faith. And you can't have a hill without
a valley, so you can't have the hill of faith without the valley
of repentance. Oh may God be pleased to grant us and faith toward our Lord Jesus
Christ. Amen. Sometimes I think we have such a tendency to forget
what's said. We want to talk about everything
else, sing a song and just kind of push aside what's said. I
don't want you to. There was a preacher who lived
a long time ago. This is a true story. He went to the doctor. He'd gotten sick, and his wife
persuaded him to go to the doctor, and he did. And the doctor was
just tickled to death to see him. He told the preacher how
glad he was to meet him. Anything he could do for him,
he'd be happy to. He said, I've heard you preach often, and God
has spoken to my heart by your ministry. And the doctor gave
him a prescription, told him what he ought to do, how to take
care of himself. And the pastor started to leave,
and the doctor constrained him to stay. And they talked a while,
and they talked about everything under the sun. They just got
acquainted real good. Had a good visit. Stayed there
for an hour or two. Came home, and his wife said,
did you see the doctor? He said, sure did. We had a good
visit. You know who his daddy was? You ever think, you know, he
was really impressed. She said, what did he tell you
to do? Oh, I forgot. We got so carried away, I just
forgot what he said. Don't forget what I said. Don't
forget what I said. Don't pay any attention to me.
Any gesture, the volume of my voice, the skill or the clumsiness
of my preaching. But hear what I say. Repent toward
God and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. Let's just have a word of prayer
and we'll be dismissed with that. Speak to our hearts, Father. Lord God graciously preserve us from the wiles of
the devil, his craftiness, the snares he
lays for our souls. We are but sinful, frail, ignorant
men and except you preserve us, we
shall at last be found in the way of presumption and the way
of destruction. We cast ourselves upon thee with
truly repentant hearts You know all things, Father. Lord God, my Savior, You know
my heart. It's bitter if I reason in my
sin. But as a sinner, I come to you and have peace. Oh, thank God for peace through the precious blood of
Jesus Christ. Will you grant repentance and
faith to these who hear me? For Christ's sake, amen.