It's been a great weekend with
Greg, and Lord's blessed the class Saturday, the service this
morning, and we're looking forward to hearing you tonight. Greg said he's going to preach
on repentance, and I guess like every other subject, that's a
subject that Not too many people have any understanding of it
all. And I hope the Lord will give us the grace to hear the
gospel and the power of the Holy Spirit. So Greg, come preach
to us. What Todd didn't tell you is
that he also told me that he's heard very few good messages
on the subject of repentance. And I thought, oh no. I hope
he doesn't say that again after tonight. Our text tonight will
come from Isaiah chapter 3. And while you look for that,
many of you know that that I go to Sarasota, Florida on Sunday
nights and we have services there every Sunday night and they are
watching our service here tonight. So I want to welcome the brethren
in Sarasota and thankful for them. Have you ever changed your mind
about something? You thought one thing was so,
And then after being convinced otherwise, you completely change
your mind about it. Sure you have. We all have. That's
what repentance is. That's what repentance is. In
short, it is a change of mind. We come into this world thinking
that things are a certain way in terms of who God is, in terms
of who we are, and in terms of how it is that God is pleased
to save sinners. And we sometimes go to the Bible
with those presuppositions, trying to figure out, you know, how
this works. And the Lord has to do a work
of grace. Repentance is just that. It's the other side of
the coin of faith, if you will, and it comes with regeneration. Now, as you just, your pastor
just read from Mark chapter 3, 4, 5, 1. Thank you. I was thinking about the passage
where Peter, you know, that was our Lord beginning his public
ministry and he commands us to repent. And when Peter preached
that first message on the day of Pentecost, the scripture says
that they were pricked in their hearts and they said, men and
brethren, what shall we do? And Peter said, repent and be
baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ for the remissions
of sins and you shall receive the Holy Ghost. What God requires, God must provide. Repentance is not a decision
that you make. Repentance is a work of grace,
just like faith. The Scripture commands many things
of us, commands us to believe, commands us to repent, commands
us to come, commands us to follow. All these things are The means
by which the Lord shows us our need for His grace. What He requires,
He must provide. And so this change of mind is
when the Lord takes out the heart of stone and puts in a heart
of flesh and gives us the mind of Christ and causes us to see
things different and to believe everything different than what
we used to think. You have your Bibles open to
Isaiah chapter 3. Isaiah is prophesying 200 years
before the fulfillment of these prophecies take place in terms
of the history of Israel. Israel is enjoying a period of
prosperity and they have forsaken the Lord and God has raised up
a prophet to rebuke them and to let them know that there's
going to come a day when they're going to lose everything and
God's going to correct them. Now that's all we need to know
historically about this passage because those events as they
took place in the history of Israel do nothing for my sin
sick soul. I need to know what this passage
means to me. What does it mean to me? And
I hope the Lord will enable us to understand this in light of
His work of grace in the heart. For behold, verse 1, the Lord,
the Lord of hosts, doth take away from Jerusalem and from
Judah, the stay and the staff, the whole stay of bread, and
the whole stay of water." Now what Isaiah is telling us is
God's going to do a work of grace and he's going to take away from
you that which you have leaned upon. Now prior to the miracle
of the new birth, we lean upon our own understanding. And we
need for the Lord to give us something that we can lean upon
for the hope of our salvation that is going to be substantial,
something that's going to be sufficient to save us. And that's what Isaiah is talking
about. I'm going to come And in that
day, I'm going to pour out the spirit of grace and the spirit
of supplication on Jerusalem and on the house of David. And they shall mourn. When I
pour out this spirit, they're going to change their minds. I read a definition that someone
wrote recently that said repentance is to turn from sin and not return
to it. I stand before you tonight to
say to you, if that's the definition of repentance, I know nothing
about repentance. I know nothing about repentance.
To turn from sin and not to return to it. And there was a time when
I thought that's what repentance was. Because at that time I thought
that sin was nothing more than a behavioral problem. And so
I knew in my conscience that there were things I was doing
that was wrong. And I thought, well, I can change those things
and so I'll stop doing them. And some of those things I never
returned to. And I thought in my own heart
that I had repented. Now the Lord has changed my mind,
and he's caused me to see that this problem with sin goes much,
much deeper than behavior. Sin is not what we do. Sin is
what we are. Let me show you a passage in
Exodus, chapter 28. that tells us as clearly as I can see in the Scriptures what
this problem with sin really is. Isaiah chapter 28, the Lord
is instructing Moses on the role that Aaron will play as the priest
for the people of Israel. Now the priest was to offer gifts
to God and the priest's responsibility was to intercede on behalf of
the people for the forgiveness of their sins. Aaron is a picture
of the Lord Jesus Christ. And in Exodus chapter 28 beginning
in verse 36, and thou shalt make a plate of pure gold and shall
grave upon it like the engravings of a signet holiness to the Lord. Holiness to the Lord. Now in
another place in scriptures we read, all have sinned and fallen
short of the glory of God. That's a pretty good definition
of sin. What in your life falls short of the glory of God? I can actually give you a one
word definition for sin and that one word definition is a one
letter word and it's the middle letter in the word sin. That's
really it. Sin is what I If I lay my hand
to it, it's been infected with sin. Now Aaron's got this miter,
he's got this headpiece, and across the front of it it says,
Holiness to the Lord. And thou shalt put it on a blue
lace, that it may be upon the miter and upon the forefront
of the miter, that it shall be. And it shall be upon Aaron's
forehead. that Aaron may bear the iniquity
of the holy things which the children of Israel shall hallow
in their holy gifts and it shall be always upon his forehead that
they may be accepted before the Lord. And what that passage means
is that what you and I are doing right now we need to be forgiven
for. What I'm doing, what I'm trying
to do right now to preach Christ to you, I'm in need of being
forgiven for it. I got a call early this morning
letting me know that somebody had broken into our church sometime
since Wednesday night, I guess. And they had taken the offering
box off the wall and tore it up, I guess, looking for money.
And fortunately, they didn't do any other damage to the building. And I thought, you know, does
that unconscionable act need forgiveness? Certainly. Certainly. But you know what else? Every
time you and I put an offering in that box, I hope we do it
regularly, I hope we do it willingly, I hope we do it joyfully. We
need to be forgiven for it. We need to be forgiven. Aaron
wore holiness to the Lord. God is holy. Everything that
fall. That's why Isaiah, when Isaiah heard, or when he saw
the seraphim hovering over the throne of God crying, holy, holy,
holy is the Lord God of hosts. Heaven and earth is filled with
his glory. And what's the first thing out
of Isaiah's mouth? Woe is me for I am undone. I'm a man of
unclean lips. I live among a people of unclean
lips. Lord, forgive me. Everything we do we need to be
forgiven for. I like what Jonathan Edwards
said when he said the tears of repentance need to be washed
in the blood of Christ in order to find acceptance before God. We need a priest to intercede
on our behalf. There was a time when I thought
sin was nothing more than bad behavior and now God has done
a work of grace, giving me repentance. He's changed my mind about this
thing called sin and caused me to know that sin is what I am. And I'm in need of a priest to
make whatever I do and am acceptable before God. We find our acceptance
only in the Beloved. Christ came to save sinners,
Paul said, of whom I am chief. It's a worthy saying, worthy
of all acceptation. There was a time, the Lord said,
I'm going to break the stay and the whole stay of bread and the
whole stay of water. There was a time when I leaned
upon the the broken cisterns of my own free will for the hope
of my salvation. I thought, well, I've made a
decision. I've invited Jesus into my heart. I've done the
right thing. And then the Lord changed my
mind. In the miracle of the new birth, he calls me to know that
it's not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but
of God that showeth mercy. And that my will is in bondage
to my nature. And I, yeah, I'm doing what I
will to do, but the problem is until, until God gives me a new
heart, I don't will to come to Christ. I don't will to believe
upon the Lord Jesus Christ. So I will not come to him. I
don't want to come to him. You can't do something you don't
want to do. There's no power. in man's will
to save himself. There was a time before the Lord
broke the stay of bread and the stay of water when I thought
I went to the Bible with the presupposition that God loves
everybody. I just assumed that was true. The natural man thinks that.
God loves everybody. Christ died for everybody. God
wants everybody to be saved. He's doing everything he can
do. And then I saw that God loves righteousness and hates iniquity.
Jacob I have loved, Esau I've hated. I've loved my people with
an everlasting love. God's love is holy and pure.
And true, and he has the sovereign prerogative to place his love
on whomsoever he wills. He's the potter and we're the
clay. And he can make from the same lump of clay some vessels
of honor and some of dishonor. No man can stay his hand, no
man can say unto him, what doest thou? Why hast thou made me so?
Who art thou, O man, to speak against God? You see, we have
to have our minds changed about these things. This is the miracle
of repentance. There was a time when I thought
that what the Lord Jesus Christ did on Calvary's cross was an
offer of salvation to save anyone that would decide to accept it. And the Lord changed my mind.
He laid down his life for the sheep. He didn't waste a drop
of his precious blood. He effectually secured the salvation
of his people through his death on Calvary's cross. His sacrifice
was particular. It was a time when I thought
that God wanted everybody to be saved. Surely that's the God. It was a God of my imagination.
It was an idol. It wasn't the God who is. The God who is will accomplish
His purpose and His will. And if He wills someone to be
saved, they'll be saved. They'll come and they'll believe.
He's going to see to it. It was a time when I thought
this book was nothing more than a rule book for Christian living.
If I would just learn the rules and regulations and do my best
to put them into practice, that God would be pleased with me
and I'd be able to die with some peace. And then the Lord showed
me in the volume of the book it is written of me. I heard
the gospel from your pastor and the Lord rewrote my Bible. Beginning with Moses and Psalms
and the prophets, he expounded unto them those things concerning
himself. The Lord told the Pharisees,
you search the scriptures. That's what I was as a Pharisee.
You search the scriptures because you think in them you have eternal
life. But these are they which testify
of me. I couldn't see that this was a book about Christ. It's all about him. The Lord had to break the stay
and the staff, the whole stay of bread, the moldy bread that
I was eating, the Lord had to take it away. Everything I was
leaning on, the Lord had to take it away. There was a time when
I thought that faith was my contribution to salvation. Basically, God
voted for me and the devil voted against me and I broke the tie
by exercising my faith. That's what I believed. God had
to change my mind. Faith is not the cause of our
salvation, it's the result of it. When the Lord regenerates
us, he gives us faith. Faith is what the regenerate
heart does, believes God. And God has to do that work of
grace first. This is repentance. There was
a time when I thought that Sanctification was progressive. And so I competed
with my religious peers, trying to see who was holier and who
was better. And I thought I was getting better. And comparing
myself to myself, I took pride in the fact that I was learning
some things and getting better. And comparing myself to other
men, I could always find somebody I was better than. Comparing
myself to the law, I thought, well, I'm getting along pretty
good. And God changed my mind, and he caused me to see that
he that sanctifieth and they that are sanctified are all as
one, that God has made him to be our wisdom and our righteousness
and our sanctification and our redemption, that all of my holiness
is bound up in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, and that
really, sanctification is, if you're going to say anything,
you've got to say it's regressive, not progressive. As I grow in
grace and in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ, I become
more and more aware of how much sin abounds in my life, and the
more sin abounds, grace does much more abound. I need Christ more now than I've
ever needed Him before. I see more of my sin now. This
is repentance. The natural man thinks like I
thought. And God has to do a work of grace
to change our mind. I want you to notice in the first
verse of Isaiah chapter 3, for behold, behold, isn't that what
Job said after the Lord made Job to be a sinner? Job saw the
Lord and he said, behold. Behold, I see something I've
never seen before. I am vile. And now the Lord is saying, Behold.
Behold, look at this. The Lord, you notice the word
Lord, the first one is capital L, small o-r-d, which is Adonai,
and the second one is all caps, which is Jehovah. Now Adonai
is his mediatorial name. It tells us about what he has
done. It tells us about him being our
sin bearer. It tells him about It tells us
about Him being our substitute, about Him being our surety before
God, bearing all the responsibility of our salvation. It tells us
about Him being all our righteousness and all our sanctification and
all of our justification before God. All that is bound up in
His name, Adonai. It tells us what He has done
for us. And then the second word, Lord,
is the word Jehovah. That tells us who he is. That's
his covenant name. That tells us about his nature. That's the name that he gave
Moses at the burning bush when Moses said, whom should I say
sent me? And he said, tell them I am hath sent thee. I am. I am the Lord. And I change not. It's a description
of his immutability, and he says, I change not, and that's the
only reason that you sons of Jacob are not consumed. I'm always
changing, but he changes not. He's established a covenant of
grace before time began, whereby he sovereignly chose a particular
people and ordained the Lord Jesus Christ, his only begotten
son, as the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world to
accomplish the redemption of his elect people. God the Father
and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit entered into a covenant
promise and the Holy Spirit said, I'll go and I'll make them to
believe. I'll give them repentance. I'll
give them repentance. I will change their minds. They
can't change their own, but I can do it. The Lord. The Lord God. And what He's saying to us is,
trust me. Trust me. Trust in the Lord. With all your
heart, lean not on your own understanding, but in all of your ways, acknowledge
Him. Acknowledge Him as Adonai. Acknowledge
Him as Jehovah. Acknowledge Him for what He has
done. Acknowledge Him for who He is. And rest, rest all your
hopes on Him. Paul said, I know whom I have
believed, and I'm persuaded that he is able to keep that which
I've committed unto him. I'm trusting him for everything. The other day, my wife, Tricia,
and I were out during the day. It was during lunch hour, so
the highway was real busy. And the vehicle we were driving,
I could not see the oncoming traffic. There was a thing between
the windows, and I just couldn't see. She's sitting on the passenger
side, and she's telling me when there's going to be a gap in
the traffic. It was so hard for me to pull out. You know, she
said, OK, it's clear. I knew there was a lot of cars
coming. She said, OK, it's clear. You can pull out now. And I did. And she commended me for that.
She said, boy, I'm glad to see you trust me. And I said, well,
we've been married a long time. I said, but mainly I trusted
you because you were on the blood side of the car. The Lord's on the blood side.
He said, trust me. I'm the Lord. I'm Adonai. I'm Jehovah. Trust me. Behold the Lord, the Lord of
hosts. He doth take away from Jerusalem and from Judah all
the things that they leaned upon for the hope of their salvation.
He gave them repentance. He changed their minds. Look with me at verse 2. The
mighty man. That's what we were, mighty in
our own strength, believing that we had the power according to
our own decision to tip the scales in our favor, believing that
our works were somehow going to earn us favor with God, believing
that we had the strength to manipulate the will of God for our salvation. believing that somehow our attempts
to keep God's law were going to be sufficient. I was talking
to somebody just the other day and they were 89 years old and
afraid of dying. And so I asked them, I said,
I said, well, what is your hope? What do you think God requires
of you to enter into glory? And they said, well, to keep
the commandments. And I said, well, how are you
doing on that? And they said, well, I'm doing my best. And
I said, well, I don't blame you for being afraid to die. If that's
where my hope was, I'd be afraid of dying, too, because your best
isn't good enough. God requires absolute perfection,
and He'll settle for nothing less. There's only one man that
ever did that. He kept the law. He stands in
our stead, presents himself before the Father for our righteousness. Is he not the mighty man, the
strong man? The scripture describes him as
the strong right hand of God, and God brings repentance when
he causes the mighty man to bow to the mighty man. The man of
war. The man of war. We thought, well, We were at enmity with God. We could engage in some sort
of warfare with God and we could speak words that we thought would
give us some favor with God. We could pull out the sword of
our tongue and say all the right things, pray the right prayer. And then the Lord had to beat
our swords into plowshares and our spears into pruning forks.
and cause us to see that he's the man of war. Comfort ye, comfort
ye my people, saith the Lord. Speak ye comfortably unto Jerusalem. Tell them that their warfare
is accomplished. We came into this world with
our fists clenched and our tongues speaking lies about God. And
when he granted us repentance, we bowed before him and listened
to what he had to say, acknowledging the fact that It's his war. It's his battle. The Lord said,
the battle's mine. It's not yours. It's not by might
nor by power. It's by my spirit, saith the
Lord. We're not the man of war. We thought we could engage God
with some sort of warfare and conquer sin and silence the law. And then the Lord gave us repentance.
And the mighty man was humbled. to bow to the mighty man, and
the man of war was humbled to acknowledge the real man of war. And look at the next one, the
judge. The judge. We judged ourselves
better than other men, justified ourselves by our works, defended
ourselves before God, and then the Lord broke the stay of water
and the stay of bread. granted us repentance and caused
us to see that he's the judge and he sees everything and he
knows everything, he judges righteously and he'll not let one sin go
unpunished, not one. If the Lord should mark iniquity,
if the Lord took the best thing that you and I have ever done,
the best thing, The one second of our lives where we thought,
you know, I've done pretty good, and used that to judge us by,
we'd be condemned to eternal hell. All the judgments that we made,
and now we come to see in the repentant heart that He is the
just one, and He is the justifier of them who believe, and he satisfied
his divine justice when he plunged the sword of his wrath into the
heart of his own son, shedding his blood. He said, when I see
the blood, I'll pass by your sin. That's the only thing that's
going to cover our sin. Oh, but what a covering it is. What a
covering the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ is for all our sins. He is the just one, and his judgment
is perfect. Here's what the Lord changes.
He changed the mighty man. He changed the man of war. He
changed the judge and the prophet. The prophet. Oh, there was a
time when we handled the Word of God deceitfully and merchandised
men's souls and wrested the Word of God and made it to mean things
that it didn't mean. And then we saw through the repentant
heart the heart of faith, the heart that God gave us when he
changed our minds, that the Lord Jesus Christ is the prophet.
He's the prophet of God. He's the one who came with the
Word of God as the Word of God and spoke truth to our hearts.
And he said, if you know the truth, the truth will make you
free. Where the Spirit of God is, there is liberty. Oh, we thought we were so wise
and so able until we met the prophet. And the prudent, the discerning
one, got it all figured out, wise in our own sight, and then came to see. through the gift of repentance
that God has made him to be our wisdom. All prudence, all wisdom,
all judgment, all truth is bound up in the person Jehovah and
the work Adonai of the Lord Jesus Christ. Who he is and what he's
done is the only hope that we have to stand in the presence
of a holy God. All these things we leaned on,
these are the things that men find for their stay and God says
it's polluted water and it's moldy bread and it will not save. It will not save. Lord, this
person I was talking to the other day, I told him, I said, you
would rather risk the salvation of your soul, rather than admitting
that you're wrong. Your pride is so strong that
you cannot come to admit that you're wrong. And they can't.
They can't. Unless the Lord gives them repentance. God has to change their mind. The means by which he does that
is the same means by which he gives us faith and everything
else. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing
comes by the word of God. So we declare the gospel to folks
in hopes that the Lord's going to make it effectual to their
hearts, but he's got to do it. Man can't do it. He's got to
break the stay. Those things that we lean upon,
those things that we hope in for our salvation. The ancient
one, you see that? The elder, oh, the one who trusts in his experiences in
life for the hope of his knowledge. And then the Lord caused him
to realize that everything he ever thought, everything he ever
believed, and everything he ever understood in life was wrong.
and showed him the ancient of days, the Lord Jesus Christ in
whom is all truth and all hope and all salvation. The mighty man, the man of war,
the judge, the prophet, the prudent, the ancient, the captain of 50. Oh, I've got folks following
me. I can lead. I can be in charge,
I'm somebody. And the Lord breaks the stay
of that hope, causes us to see that we've got to be followers
of Him. He's the one who has to be the captain of our salvation. The honorable man, the honorable
man, the one who enjoys the praise of other men. Folks patting us on the back,
telling us how good we are. All praise belongs to Him. Psalm
115 verse 1, Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto Thy name,
unto Thy name be all praise and all honor for Thy mercy and for
Thy truth's sake. And when John saw the church
singing in glory in the book of Revelation, what did he say?
What did they say? Worthy is the Lamb to receive
glory and honor and power and praise. He's the one that's worthy. We were praising ourselves, praising
one another, and then the Lord granted us repentance and caused
us to turn all praise to Him. The counselor, the counselor
always had the right answers. Could counsel ourselves and counsel
others out of whatever problems we were in. And then the Lord gave us repentance.
Caused us to see that the governments were upon His shoulder. And his
name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God, the
Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. And now we find ourselves
running to him for counsel, don't we? We used to get counsel from
other men. What do you think? What do you
think I should do? Seems like these days everybody's in therapy.
Everybody's getting counsel from unbelievers. Oh, ask God to give
you repentance that you might flee to Christ and get your counsel
from Him. He's a perfect counselor. What's
anybody else? You see, if you get counsel from
another man, he doesn't know anything more than you do. The cunning, Artificer, a skillful
artisan, fashioning things in his own hands. And we had fashioned
idols that looked like us and worshiped the creature rather
than the creator. Idolaters, that's what all men
are by nature. I stand before you confessing
that I came into this world and spent 40 years of my life as
an idolater. All I could do was just fashion
gods with my own hands, and then the Lord caused me to put away
those idols, caused me to see that it's the strong right hand
of God. He's the only one. He's the only
one to be trusted for the hope of our salvation. repentance,
repentance, a change of mind. The eloquent orator, all proud of our ability to defend
ourselves verbally with other men, and then came to see never
a man spake like this man before. Oh, Lord, speak to my heart.
Speak truth to my heart. Reveal Yourself to me. When the Lord Jesus Christ stood
and preached that inaugural message in Luke chapter 4, the Scripture
says, they wondered at the gracious words that proceeded out of His
mouth. Oh, Lord, cause me, cause me
to stand in wonder of the gracious words that proceed out of Thy
mouth. No one else, no one else is an
orator worth listening to. Repentance, what God requires
for the salvation of our souls, He must provide. It comes in
the miracle of the new birth and He changes our thinking about
everything. who we are as sinners, what sin
is, who he is in his holiness, what it is he's accomplished,
how it is he puts away our sin. All these things radically changed
when God is pleased to give us the mind of Christ. Lord, don't
leave me to my own understanding. Enable me, enable me to believe
things as they are. What kept coming to my mind while
I was listening to that message, which was a great message, the
Lord blessed it to me, but I remember when I first heard the doctrine
of election, that God chose who would be saved before time began,
and that there was nothing you could do to make yourself one
of those people. And my response was, that's not
fair. That takes all control out of
my hand. I'm utterly helpless. And I did
not like that. I love it now. my mind has been
changed. Let's pray. Lord, we ask that you, by your
grace and by your Spirit, would change our minds in everything
that's contrary to thee, that we might truly repent. And Lord, we know that if we
repent, what goes along with that is really believing your
gospel. Lord, give each person here according
to your will the grace to repent and believe the gospel. Dwight, what do you got?