Todd's Road Grace Church would
like to invite you to listen to a sermon by our pastor, Todd
Neiberg. We are located at 4137 Todd's
Road, two miles outside of Manowar Boulevard. Sunday services are
at 1030 a.m. and 6 p.m. Bible study is at
945 a.m. Wednesday services are at 7 p.m. Nursery is provided for all services.
For more information, visit our website at toddsroadgracechurch.com.
Now here's our pastor, Todd Nybert. Our text is in Matthew chapter
11. I'd like to begin reading in verse 20. They would have repented long
ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I say unto you, it shall
be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the day of judgment,
that day when God rewards men according to their works. It'll
be more tolerable for them than for you on the day of judgment. They repented not. What does it mean to repent? To repent means you change your
mind. You were thinking in a certain
way and you stopped thinking that way. You change your mind. And with true repentance, there's
always with it a change of attitude and a change of actions. Now,
these people heard the preaching of our Lord Jesus Christ. They
heard of His mighty works, and the Scripture says, they repented
not. Now, when the Lord began His
public ministry, He began with these words in Matthew chapter
4, verse 17. From that time, Jesus began to
preach and to say, repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. His first public words, repent. And then right before He ascended
back into heaven after His resurrection, we read, He says in verse 46
of Luke chapter 24, He said unto them, Thus it is written, and
thus it behoove Christ to suffer and to rise from the third day,
and that repentance and remission of sin should be preached in
His name, beginning at Jerusalem. So His final words In giving
the church His marching orders, it was that they were to preach
repentance and the remission of sins. And yet, our Lord says
regarding these people in Matthew chapter 11, that they repented
not, even though they witnessed His mighty works. Now, the message
of the Gospel was and is a call to repent. Now, these people
heard the preaching of the Lord Jesus Christ, and they saw His
mighty works. They saw the divine power that
He manifested, and it gave testimony to the fact that He is God. Jesus Christ is God, and He testified
with His mighty works that He had the mighty power of God. For instance, He controlled the
weather. Who can do that? Men can't. Demons cannot. Satan can't control
the weather. Only God can control the weather. He could say to the raging wind
and the billows of the sea, Peace, be still. And there was a mighty
calm. They witnessed Him giving sight
to the blind. They witnessed Him healing lepers,
making the lame to walk, and they repented not. They watched demons grovel in
His presence in fear. The demons were afraid of Him.
They couldn't make one move from one place to another without
His permission. They saw this, and they repented not. They watched Him bring matter
into existence that was not there before. He fed 5,000 people with Five loaves and two small fishes. Matter brought into existence.
He demonstrated creative power and they repented not. They witnessed Him raising the
dead. Only God can do that. And they repented not. Now what that tells me is that
true repentance, whatever it is, is not produced by seeing
miracles. You can see all the miracles
in the world. These people did. They saw the
mighty works that the Lord Jesus Christ did. And yet there was
no change of mind within. They didn't change their mind
concerning Him in spite of all the things that they witnessed.
Repentance is not produced by seeing miracles. Repentance is
not even produced by fear of hell. If you read Luke chapter
16 of the rich man who was in hell, tormented, he said, tormented. He asked Abraham to send Lazarus
back from the dead to warn his brothers about this place. And
Abraham said, well, they have Moses and the prophets. Let them
read them. He said, no, but if one rose
from the dead, then they'd repent. And Abraham replied to the rich
man, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither would they
be persuaded, though somebody be risen from the dead and even
experience all the flames of torment and warn people, don't
come to this awful place. That won't cause one person to
repent. Now, when the Apostle Paul gave
a summary of his own preaching, he said in Acts chapter 20, verse
21, I kept back nothing that was profitable unto you. But
I've showed you, I've taught you publicly and from house to
house, testifying both to the Jews and also to the Greeks.
Same message for everybody, whether in public or private. And here's
my message. Here's the message God has given
me. Repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ. Wherever there is repentance,
there will be faith. Wherever there is faith, there
will be repentance. But the message of the gospel
is repent. And we read concerning these
people that they repented not. Now, I was thinking about that
phrase, had it in my mind a couple of months. They repented not.
And I was reading through the book of Revelation, and four
times we read where they repented not. Beginning in Revelation,
Chapter 2, verse 21, speaking of Jezebel, the Lord Jesus Christ
says, I gave her space to repent of her fornication, and she repented
not. It was her duty to repent. Christ
gave her space to repent, but she repented not. And then we read in Revelation
9, verse 20, of some people witnessing awful judgments of God. And we
read, as they witness this, and the rest of the men which were
not killed, a third of the population is killed in John's vision by
these scary beasts of some kind. And these people witness this. They see what's taking place.
And they see that this is God's judgment. But we read in verse
20, and the rest of the men which were not killed by these plagues,
yet repented not. After seeing all this, yet they
repented not of the works of their hands, that they should
not worship devils and idols of gold and silver and brass
and stone and wood, which neither see nor hear nor walk." In Revelation
chapter 16, we read in verse 9 where some men, not only did
they see God's judgment, but they felt it. The Scripture says
in Revelation 9, and men were scorched with great heat. Now, look what they're experiencing. I don't know what all that means,
but it says they were scorched with great heat and they blasphemed
the name of God which had power over these plagues and they repented
not to give Him glory. And then we read in verse 11
of the same chapter that these people blasphemed the God of
heaven because of their pains and their sores and repented
not of their deeds. Now I want us to consider all
four of these passages of Scripture where it was said, they repented
not. Now first we're going to talk
about Jezebel who refused to repent. Now the Lord is speaking
to the church at Thyatira. Remember the seven letters to
the churches in the first three chapters of the book of Revelation.
The Lord sends a letter to each of the seven churches of Asia
And he's speaking to the church at Thyatira and he commends them
for some things. But then he says in verse 20
of Revelation chapter 2, Notwithstanding, I have a few things against thee,
because thou sufferest, you allow, you permit, you're okay with
this, you suffer that woman Jezebel, which calleth herself a prophetess,
to teach and to seduce my servants to commit fornication. and to
eat things sacrificed unto idols. And I gave her space to repent
of her fornication, and she repented not." Now, right off the bat,
you know from the New Testament that a woman is not to be a pastor
or a teacher. And this woman was Jezebel. Now, the Lord rebukes the church
for allowing her to teach, But the content of her teaching was
to teach and to seduce people to commit fornication and to
eat things sacrificed to idols. Now does that mean that she was
getting up and teaching, now here's what we need to do to
please God. We need to commit fornication. We need to have
sex outside of marriage and that'll be well pleasing to God. And
if we eat meat sacrificed to idols, He'll be pleased with
that too. And this will make us better Christians and better
religious people if we do this. You know she wasn't teaching
anything like that. That's not what was taking place. Now, that
might end in her teaching. That might be the end of it because
where there's spiritual fornication, there will be physical fornication
probably no doubt behind because anything goes at this point.
But what is fornication? It's sex outside the marriage
covenant. Sex outside the marriage covenant. Now, when you marry somebody,
You're to look only to that person in that covenant for all things
with regard to marriage in a relationship, and that picture's the covenant
of grace. What she was doing was teaching
the people to find some kind of assurance, some kind of happiness,
some kind of safety, some kind of sense of God's favored for
them outside of the covenant of grace, outside of the marriage
covenant. Now, the covenant of grace, somebody
may be thinking, what do you mean by the covenant of grace?
The covenant of grace, there's two covenants, the covenant of
works and the covenant of grace. The covenant of works is salvation
conditioned upon something you do. The covenant of grace is
salvation conditioned upon what Christ has done for you and what
Christ has done in you. David said this in 2 Samuel 23
verse 5, he said, Although my house be not so with God, yet
hath he made with me an everlasting covenant ordered in all things. And sure, now this covenant was
made before time began and in this covenant all of salvation
was conditioned upon the Lord Jesus Christ agreeing to be the
Savior of those the Father gave him. He said, All that the Father
giveth me shall come to me And all of my assurance, all of my
hope is in this covenant that the Lord made for me in my behalf
to save me. That's all my salvation. It's
like David said, that's all my salvation and all my desire.
And this woman was seeking to cause people to look for assurance,
to look for acceptance with God, to look for favor somewhere other
than the covenant of grace, which is spiritual adultery, spiritual
fornication. And when she was teaching the
disciples to eat things sacrificed to idols, we know from what Paul
said in 1 Corinthians 8.8 that there's nothing inherently wrong
in eating meat that was sacrificed to an idol. There was, that was
an issue in the New Testament days. There were sacrifices to
false deities, and then that meat that was used to be sacrificed
to those false deities would be sold in the marketplace. And
some people said, well, you shouldn't eat that, since it was used for
such a sinful purpose. And Paul says it doesn't make
any difference as far as what you eat. What you eat or what
you don't eat isn't going to commend you to God or make you
worse. So, there's nothing wrong with eating meat sacrificed to
idols inherently, but what she was teaching was to find nourishment
in that which is contrary to the gospel. To have for your
food that which is nothing more than idolatry and can't really
satisfy. Now, the Lord said to Jezebel,
repent, and he says in verse 21, I gave her space to repent
of her fornication and she repented not. And that leads us to Revelation
chapter 9. And the rest of the men, verse
20, which were not killed by these plagues, they saw God's
judgments. It says, they yet repented not
of the works of their hands, that they should not worship
devils. That's what they'd been doing, worshiping devils. And
they refused to repent of that. And idols of gold and silver
and brass and stone and of wood, which neither can see nor hear
nor walk. They repented not. Well, what
was it they didn't repent of? Their religion. They repented
not of their religion. They were worshipping idols of
gold, silver and stone. And the scripture says they were
actually worshipping devils. Now, did they know they were
worshipping devils? No, I believe that they thought
they were worshipping Christ. But any time, if my religion
has something to do with salvation by works, Ultimately, it ends
up as demon worship. You know, the Lord called what
Jezebel was teaching the depths of Satan. Now, please listen
to me carefully. This is a very important point. And I don't really understand
repentance if I've never really repented of my religion. Now,
what do I mean by that? What does the Bible mean by that?
Well, there are only two religions. Men are religious beings. Someone
says, what about atheists? Well, they make a religion out
of their atheism. You know, they can be passionate
about it and evangelical about it. Everybody's religious. But
there's only two religions. There's the religion of works.
And there's the religion of grace. Men are religious. All men are
by nature religious. And there are only two religions.
The religion of works and the religion of grace. Now, what is the religion of
works? The religion of works is salvation,
acceptance with God, is ultimately dependent upon what I do. It ultimately rests in my hands. It's ultimately dependent on
man. Now, it comes in many forms,
sizes and shapes. But there is one common denominator.
Salvation is ultimately dependent upon you. It may go under the
name of Buddhist. It may go under the name of Baptist.
It may be Muslim. It may be Methodist. It may be
paganism. It may be Presbyterianism. I
mean, it goes under so many different forms, but it ultimately makes
salvation dependent upon you. It may have a complicated system
of rules and regulations you need to follow, and if you don't
follow those rules and regulations, you won't be saved, or it may
be you have to keep certain laws or you won't be saved. It may
be something as simple as believing salvation is ultimately dependent
upon your free will. that God loves everybody, Christ
died for everybody, He offers salvation to everybody, Christ
paid for everybody's sins, He's made salvation available and
offers salvation to you, but your salvation is not dependent
upon Him, it's dependent upon whether you decide of your own
free will to accept or reject His offer of salvation. Salvation
is ultimately dependent upon you in that way of thinking. Or it may be even more secret.
Someone might say, yes, salvation is by grace. It's all of grace.
But where you'll be in heaven is dependent upon how obedient
you were here after you were saved. Your position in glory
will be determined by your works here on earth. That is salvation
by works. If you put works anywhere in
there, as far as salvation being dependent or contingent upon
something you do, it is a message of salvation by works. That's
one religion, the religion of salvation by works. And then
there is salvation by grace. What's that? Ephesians 2 says,
by grace you are saved. Salvation is not an offer. Salvation
is an accomplishment. By grace you are saved. Every
aspect of God's salvation is by grace. You talk about election,
it's a grace. You talk about redemption, we're
redeemed by His grace. You talk about being born again,
that's the gift of His grace. The fact that God's people preserve
or persevere all the way to the end and they never quit, that's
because of His grace. Every aspect of salvation is
by grace. Now those are the two religions.
The religion of works and the religion of grace. Salvation
dependent upon what you do, or salvation dependent upon what
Christ has done for you. Now, if I'm participating in
the religion of works, it is, according to the Lord in Revelation
9.20, devil worship and idolatry. If you believe in works in any
way, if I believe in works in any way, I'm following my Father,
the devil." That's what the Lord said to the Pharisees. He said,
You're of your Father, the devil, and the lusts of your Father
you will do. Salvation by works in any form
is satanic. And I say this with a broken
heart, but when I think of all the religion going on in this
world, all the people waving their hands and singing and all
the different things that are going on under the name of Christianity
and under the name of Christ, and yet if it's salvation by
works, it's nothing more than devil worship. Paul called Satan
and his ministers angels of light. They masquerade themselves as
angels of light and ministers of righteousness, but these people
refuse to repent of their religion. Now, have you ever repented? Have a change of mind about your
religion and seeing there's no salvation in that? Now, in Revelation
chapter 16, we read in verse 11, And they blasphemed the God of
heaven because of their pains and their sores and repented
not of their deeds. They didn't see them to be all
that bad. I mean, maybe they're not great, but they're not as
bad as I could be. They refused to repent of their
deeds. Once again in Revelation 9, verse
21, it says they didn't repent of their murders or their sorceries
or their fornication or their thefts. It's not that bad. I
wouldn't call it murders. I wouldn't call it sorcery. I
wouldn't call it fornication. I wouldn't call it theft. It's
not that bad. They didn't have a change of
mind regarding their deeds. They didn't agree with what God
said. They didn't take sides with God
against themselves. There was no true change of mind
regarding their deeds. They didn't see them as so very
sinful, and they didn't see their need of God's grace. They repented
not of their deeds. And then we read in Revelation
16 verse 9, And men were scorched with great heat and blasphemed
the name of God which had power over these plagues, and they
repented not to give Him glory. Now, here we see what is essential
in true repentance. True repentance gives God glory. Now, glory is essential to God. It's His nature. He said, My
glory I will not share with somebody else. God is glorious. And when one fails to repent,
One fails to acknowledge His glory. Now, what is the glory
of God? Moses, in Exodus chapter 3, verse
18, was praying to the Lord. And he said, I beseech Thee,
show me Thy glory. And God answered that request. He said, I'll make all my goodness
to pass before Thee. God is good. He's essentially
good. Everything He does is good. Everything He does. Let me repeat
that. Everything He does is good. Because He is good. He said,
I'll make all my goodness To pass before Thee, I'll proclaim
the name of the Lord before Thee." His name is who He is. That's
His attributes. It's who He is. His justice,
His holiness, His grace, His mercy. And He said, I'll be gracious
to whom I will be gracious, and I'll show mercy and have compassion
on whom I will show mercy and have compassion. His grace is
sovereign. He saves whoever He is pleased
to save. Now, true repentance glorifies
God's righteous and holy law. I don't look at God's law as
too strict and too severe. No, it's glorious. All of His
requirements are glorious. We don't look at Him as some
kind of cosmic killjoy, but He's glorious. True repentance glorifies
God's justice. Now listen real carefully. If
God would send me to hell, right now. And this is if I do not
believe if I do not if I have no repentance if I'm Not someone
who Christ has died for, but understand this, if God would
send me to hell, you know what it would do? It would glorify
His justice. God is just. And I would be getting
exactly what I deserve. I deserve to be in hell. And I'd glorify God's justice
in that sense. Whatever He does is right. If
He sent the whole world to hell, He'd be right. Because God is
gloriously just. And true repentance glorifies
His sovereignty. It knows it has no claims on
God. It claims no past, present, or
future merit. And if He passes me by, He's
just. I understand that salvation is
not in my hands. It's in His hands. It's not up
to me to accept Jesus as my personal Savior. The Scripture doesn't
use language like that. It's not, well, I accept Him. The
question is, will He accept me? Now repentance bows before His
sovereignty and gives Him glory and most especially repentance
gives glory to His way of saving. Oh His way of saving is this
according to Romans Chapter 4, verse 5, "...to him that worketh
not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly." His
faith is canon for righteousness. Now, the only hope I have is
that He justifies the ungodly, and that's what He did on the
cross. My sin was put away. His righteousness is given unto
me, and I'm justified. And repentance glorifies God
for that. Now, I don't want to be somebody
who repented not. I change my mind about my old
religion, salvation by works. It's nothing more than devil
worship. I change my mind regarding my deeds. I take sides with God
against myself, and I plead for mercy. And I change my mind and
give Him all the glory, for all the glory is due Him in saving
a sinner like me. I give Him the glory. Oh, I don't
want to be one of these people who do not repent. I want to be someone who truly
repents and gives Him glory. Now, we'd like to invite you
to services at Todd's Road Grace Church. Our service begins this
morning at 945, or Bible study 945, morning worship, 1030, and
this evening, 6 o'clock. And we'll send you this message.
We have it on DVD, CD. Call the church right or email
and we'll send you copies. It is not that I did choose thee,
Lord, for Lord, that could not be. To request a copy of the
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