I invite your attention back
to Acts chapter 20. In our Sunday morning Bible study,
we've been looking at Paul's letter to Timothy, his first
one. And it's all about what Paul
is teaching Timothy about the ministry of the Gospel of the
Lord Jesus Christ. And Paul had sent Timothy to
Ephesus to teach some that they preach
and teach no other doctrine than that which God had revealed to
them that was the doctrine of God's grace in Jesus Christ. And then last week we looked
at the second chapter of Ephesians. We saw what Paul had taught to
the Ephesian church in chapter 1 and chapter 2. And we find
him here in Acts chapter 20 in his last message, if you will,
to the Ephesian church before he goes to Jerusalem and is taken
into bonds. Now these men had heard that
he was going to Jerusalem, and they had, in a prayer, been given
a vision that he would be bound and chained there. And it did come true. The vision
they had did come true. They tried to talk him out of
going. He said, no. He said, I know the vision says
that, but I'm going because I'm supposed to go. If I end up bound
and chained, that's where I'm supposed to be, but I have to
go there. So there in Timothy and in the letter to the Ephesians,
and here in Acts chapter 20, we have the Ephesian church involved. A little bit of history about
the Ephesian church. The god of Ephesus was Diana. She was a multi-breasted female
god, had about a hundred breasts. And she was supposed to be able
to nurture and succor those who were in pain. And when the gospel
was preached, Diana's statues began to cast down and those
men who made money off of making little images of her turned against
Paul and against the gospel. But the church's emphasis was
established by Paul and went on to preach the gospel for many,
many years. And as he leaves these people
whom he loves, and cares for, he leaves them with some very
important and sound words concerning what the ministry of the gospel
is. Now, he's talking especially
to the elders who are ministers. And remember, the church didn't
meet in a building like we have. You had several houses where
families generally and maybe neighbors met together, and you'd
have an elder assigned to preach the gospel to that group of people. It wasn't until many years later
that the church began to build edifices where people could gather
together in one place. But he's talking to the elders,
to the preachers, but this goes to everyone concerning what it
is to declare the truth of the Word of God. In these verses
that we just read, he sets forth some really important principles.
The first of which, he said, I held nothing back from you.
I held nothing back. That's quite a statement. Not
long ago, a person told me that I was pretty hard in this matter
of preaching the gospel of grace, pretty narrow. And I said, I
hope before I die to get as narrow and as hard as God has got in
His book. Because I haven't. Because I'm
chicken. You know, I'd probably lose all
my friends. But it's just true. God is tough. Our Lord Jesus Christ wasn't
nice to religious folks. He called them snakes and vipers.
He just told them flat out, y'all guys are going to hell and all
y'all converts are going with you. That's the sweet Jesus that
everybody talks about today. That's the one who confronted
religion in his day and that's what he said to them. Paul said, I didn't hold anything
back from you. I declared it publicly from house
to house. Everywhere I went, I declared the truth. He also
said, that being the case, I am pure from the blood of all who
hurt me. That's quite a statement. No
man can ever bring a charge against me, he said, because I've held
nothing back. No man can say he didn't tell
me the truth. That's important, you see, to
tell people the truth. I remember Henry Mahan told me
one time of a man he went to see at the hospital who was had
been a member of his church for many years and was dying. Only
had a few days left and was suffering. And Henry went in, sat down in
his bed, took his hand and said, Are you ready to meet Christ?
And the man says, Well, if you told me the truth, I am. Boy,
there you go. If you told me the truth, I am. I'm pure from the blood of all
men, he said, because I have not shunned through declaring
to you all the counsel of God. And he's not talking about theology
here. He's not talking about all the books that lie in my
library. He's not even talking, he's talking about basically
about, I told you the truth about what this book says. I'm not
elaborated. I'm not stretched it out. I'm
not trying to come up with some theological notion or opinion
that's my own. The root word of opinion is, or opine in the
original language is heretic. To have an opinion in light of
the truth makes you a heretic. You're not to opine about the
scriptures, you're to believe the scriptures and bow to the
scriptures. And he said, I did this matter
of keeping nothing back from you and declaring all the counsel
of God unto you distinctly by testifying of the gospel of the
grace of God. I've preached to you the kingdom."
Now, when you see the word kingdom, it's not talking about the realm,
it's talking about the rule. Seek ye first the kingdom of
God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added
unto you. The kingdom of God is not His realm. It's the fact
that He sovereignly rules. Seeking the kingdom is to seek
the rule of the king, to be ruled by the king, to bow and submit
to the king as your king. Now Paul here is not exalting
himself, but is rather saying that he's done what Christ told
him to do. And it's really that simple.
It's really that simple. Paul says in verse 24 that this
is his course. His course. But none of these
things move me, neither count I my life dear unto myself, so
that I might finish my course. My course, being that this is
His course, is His acknowledgment that it is not something He chose,
but something that was chosen for Him. As He says over in Galatians
1, verses 15 and 16, when He talks about being converted
by Christ, He says, but when it pleased God, and that's when
it happens, who separated me from my mother's womb. That means
I was sanctified from my mother's womb to preach the gospel. He
didn't know that, but he was. And called me by His grace through
the preaching of the gospel that Ananias preached to him to reveal
His Son in me that I might preach Him among
the heathen. Immediately, he said, I conferred not with flesh
and blood. I didn't go to the seminary.
I didn't go to mom and dad to see if I was really saved. I
didn't go to the church. I didn't go to Jerusalem to talk
to Peter and see how I was doing, see if I was really an apostle.
I went out and was taught of the Lord. began to preach in
Asia and Asia Minor. I confer not with flesh and blood."
What's that? That's His course. His course
was planned before the world began. Like God told Jeremiah,
I've known you from your mother's womb and I've ordained you to
be a prophet to the nations. I've ordained you to be a prophet
to the nations. This He calls His ministry or
the ministry which He received from the Lord. This, in short,
is the ministry of those whom God calls and puts in the ministry,
and the ministry of everyone who knows and trusts the Lord
Jesus Christ. What is that ministry? It is
testifying the gospel, not of the gospel,
testifying the gospel of God's grace. And that means nothing
more, nothing less, and nothing else. Martin Luther wasn't wrong
when he said, solo Christus, solo gratia, solo fide, solo
scriptura, solo dia gloria. He was saying simply this, salvation
by Christ alone, by grace alone, through faith alone, revealed
in the Scripture alone, for the glory of God alone. That's what
it is, this ministry. Now some would say this seems
like an oversimplification. They may say it in different
ways. Some say that there's more to preach than Christ. I've been
told that. But the Spirit inspired Paul
to exercise the doctrine of reduction, to bring things down to their
basic values. The scope is trimmed down here,
if you will, made even narrower. Paul bases all his bold assertions
on two plain things, two plain things. Now he could say what
God had said in such a confident and courageous manner because
he had preached repentance toward God, and faith toward the Lord
Jesus Christ. You say, they don't sound like much.
Well, dig in them for a while, you'll find like it's a whole
lot. It's a whole lot. Repentance toward God and faith
toward the Lord Jesus Christ. And this is what it means to
keep nothing back. Does this assure that you are
pure from the blood of all who hear you? Indeed, it does. Because
Paul, by the Holy Spirit, said it did. Indeed it does. This is what
it is to declare all the counsel of God. It is the ministry that
the Lord gives His preachers to testify of the gospel or testify
the gospel of God's grace, repentance toward God and faith toward the
Lord Jesus Christ. Now these are spiritual things.
The world has a natural understanding and a natural definition of repentance
and faith. It's simply not so, but they
have one anyway. But these are spiritual things,
so they are foolishness to the world. No man can understand
them save he who has been born of the grace of God. Because
Scripture clearly declares that the natural man, the carnal man,
the man as he's born in this world cannot understand spiritual
things. Neither can he know them nor
discern them because of spiritual discernment. They are foolishness
to him. Not just foolish, they're foolishness. They're like silly
to a man. But he can't understand them.
True spirituality is silly to men. It's foolishness to men. It's silliness. The truth is
that there are hardly any two things in Scripture that religion
is more ignorant about and more abusive of than this concept
of repentance toward God and faith toward the Lord Jesus Christ. If you wish to know the broad
scope of these things, you can read Ephesians chapter 1 and
Ephesians chapter 2 and see a broader representation of it. But again,
it's saying the same thing. Because Ephesians chapter 1 and
Ephesians chapter 2 shuts you up to the grace of God, and shows
you what God has done, and answers the issue of repentance and faith
quite well. Paul here is speaking to the
Ephesian churches, addressing them in this passage. And this
speaks of the church that God purchased with His own blood.
That's what we read in verse 28. Do you doubt the deity of
Jesus Christ? I got an email from somebody
the other day who was talking about this new movie coming out
called The Son of God, and everybody's raving about it. Going to go
see it. Can't wait to see it. And I just happened to catch
a blip, blurb, what do you call it, a trailer about it. And one of the disciples asked
this fellow, the good-looking, fine-looking, tall, Caucasian,
bearded, long-haired gentleman, Wild Bill Hickok? No. But he
asked him, what are you doing? What are we doing? He says, we're
going to change the world. Never said that. In fact, he
said, my people are in the world, but they're not of the world. The ministry of Jesus Christ,
the ministry of the gospel is not about the world. We take
the gospel to the whole world, but the ministry is about God's
people and what He's done for them. And that is summarized
and put forth by repentance toward God and faith toward the Lord
Jesus Christ. But the deity of Christ said to Paul in certain
terms, He says, You are overseers to feed the church of God which
He hath purchased, bought, redeemed by His own blood, by the blood
of God, by the blood of God. Now most of us were taught from
our youth that repentance is from sins. We were taught that repentance
was ceasing certain societal evil or socially unacceptable
behaviors. For example, if one were to repent
of the sin of drunkenness, he would quit drinking, and that
would be called repentance. For one to repent of the sin
of adultery, he would quit cheating on his wife, or she would quit
cheating on her husband, and that would be called repentance,
or accounted as such anyway. Usually, but not necessarily,
this continuing of some illicit behavior, some societal evil,
was to be accompanied with a new beginning. That's the way it
always was at Antioch Baptist Church anyway. You repented when
you came down front and changed your ways, got right with God. Let me tell you here and now,
you can't get right with God. Somebody's already got right
with God for you, you're in trouble today. You're in trouble today. But those so-called repentances
were usually accompanied with more acceptable or laudable behavior,
such as going to church or making up all the time at the bar by
volunteering at the local crisis center. For a person who is born
an enemy of God, however, it's a little different. For a person
who is a sinner by amputation, by nature, choice, and practice,
who is incapable of understanding one spiritual thing, who can
do nothing but sin, stopping one bad behavior and taking up
a so-called good behavior is not repentance toward God. In
reality, though, society will appreciate it, and I will, if
you stop misbehaving and start behaving. I'll appreciate that.
That ain't repentance. That ain't repentance. The so-called
good behavior is as much sin as the bad behavior, according
to Scripture, because the heart is deceitfully wicked. Who can
know it? And the Ethiopian cannot change the color of their skin
or if their leopard changes spots. Therefore, you who are accustomed
or practice evil cannot do good. Even Paul who was a saint when
he wrote, I cannot do what I would, that which I would not, that's
what I do because there's a principle living in me that every time
I would do good, evil is present with me. We're sinners. That doesn't change. The natural
repentance. That natural repentance is nothing
more than behavioral modification. Psychologists do it all the time,
or what is commonly called reformation. People talk about reformation
all the time. It has to do with a particular behavior, nothing
to do with God, except in a kind of maybe abstract way, a notion
of a higher power helping you along the way. The higher power
is sometimes called the man upstairs. By the way, that's blasphemy.
The man upstairs or the standby go-to guy in time of trouble,
whatever men call him, his name is Jehovah God. And we know him
by the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. That kind of repentance
is the kind that is found under the old covenant where men simply
turn from bad behavior to good behavior. But that covenant is
no longer in force. And that kind of behavior is
restricted to turning from bad deeds to good deeds in order
to get a blessing or in order to avoid punishment. That's the
only reason it's done. The truth is, sin and sins always
find their source in our personal self-righteousness, which according to 2 Corinthians,
needs to be repented of. I think it was old Matthew Henry
who said we need to repent of our sin, our sins, and our righteousness. But it's really our righteousness
because every sin we do ultimately applies to us feeling like we
are making ourselves presentable. And even if we do some heinous
thing, we'll find a way to justify our behavior I had a man working for me and
I couldn't pay him. I kept his money and paid his
rent and bought him food, but he was a terrible drunk. Couldn't
stop drinking. He was hooked bad. Drank that
longhorn wine, that fortified wine. Had some good tasting stuff,
but it'll mess up your brain. Name was Bob Gibson. He was a
P-51 pilot during World War II. at a degree in engineering. He was pitiful. He was pitiful. And I'd tell Bob, you need to
stop this. Won't you come worship God with
me? Hear about Christ. He may do something for you,
may not, but I sure would like to hear. He'd say, oh, well, I ain't hurting
nobody. He justified himself. He wasn't hurting nobody. And
he didn't hurt nobody except himself. He had a cancer operation where
they took off his jaw and made him a new face out of a muscle
in his chest and he didn't look that good. He couldn't eat anymore. He had to take his food in through
a stomach tube. They found him outside a dumpster
behind a 7-Eleven. He'd scraped up enough money
to buy a couple of bottles of fortified wine and poured it
in his feeding tube. and died. He never hurt nobody. It justified his behavior. It's
kind of like a man standing for murder. The judge is about to
sit him and say, wait a minute, judge, I may have killed somebody,
but I ain't no serial killer. I only killed one person. People
will justify themselves if they can. All our sins are one form
or another a form of self-righteousness. And the ultimate goal of that,
Bob believed, since he hadn't hurt nobody, he believed this,
that somehow God would accept him based on that basis. What do you believe? Repentance toward God has to
do with God. If it's toward God, it has to
do with God, doesn't it? And since God is spirit, repentance,
the repentance to which Paul refers is spiritual. Natural reformation, no matter
how beneficial it may be in keeping you out of the penitentiary or
making you a pillar of society, is not biblical, spiritual repentance. Repentance has nothing to do
with being an ex-anything. Now, that's what most people
think it has to do with. Well, I'm an ex-drunk or I'm
an ex- this or an ex-that. It has nothing to do with an
ex-thing. Before repentance, Paul said he was a persecutor
and injurious. And after repentance, he said
he was the chief of sinners. How much change was there? What
was he an ex? He wasn't an ex-nothing, was he? He was the chief of sinners
after he had repented. After he had repented. The first
thing necessary to understand is there is no repentance where
there is no spiritual life. Dead men can't repent. Naturally
dead men cannot repent. Those who are spiritually dead
cannot repent. Only a regenerated person can
and will repent toward God. And every regenerated person
will repent toward God. And his repentance will be toward
God, not toward a particular behavior. Thus, repentance as
it is declared in the New Testament is not a condition for salvation
or a condition for the new birth, but is rather the effect and
consequence of regeneration in the new birth. Repentance is
not the cause of blessing. Blessing is the cause of repentance.
The Bible says it is the goodness of God toward you that leadeth
you to repentance. Punishment ain't going to make
you repent. Fear of death ain't going to make you repent. Fear
of hell ain't going to make you repent. Fear of the law ain't
going to make you repent. Social censure ain't going to
make you repent. God said of His people, He says, why should
I punish them anymore? They'll just rebel more and more.
Punishment doesn't change people. Make some meaning. Make some meaning. Punishment
will never make you repent. might make you change your behavior
for fear of the punishment, but it's not going to make you repent
toward God. Though repentance eventuates,
no doubt, in many changes in behavior, such changes are not
themselves repentance. Repentance in the New Testament
is such a narrow, narrow idea and notion and principle set
forth by God. Repentance in the New Testament,
in the original language, is metanoia. And it means a radical
change of mind. Now, that will affect behavior,
no doubt. But repentance is a radical change
of mind. What does that mean? It's radical
to start with. You understand that principle.
It's radical. It's radical. It means a complete
reversal of what you have thought up to
this point concerning God. A complete reversal of what you
thought of God because this is a change of mind. Complete reversal. Our Lord said, they that are
after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh. And they that are
after the spirit do mind the things of the spirit. Those two
are diametrically opposed to one another. Repentance is an
inward thing rather than an outward thing. Repentance takes place
in the inward man, the spiritual man, the new man, the new creature
created in the likeness of Jesus Christ, rather than the natural
carnal or physical man. Consequently, being in the heart
and mind, it is not visible to the eye. Reformation, everybody sees it. And they like it. And they can
gather around it. But what if your change of mind
about God nobody can see but you and God? You say, well, there's evidence
of salvation. There's only one in Scripture. Look up the word
evidence. Get out your concordance. It's
used, I think, three times in Scripture. And the only time
it's applied to salvation The evidence of salvation is
faith in God. Faith is the evidence of things
hoped for, the substance of things not seen. So people can see your
faith. No, they can't. I can't see your
faith. You can't see mine. You can say,
well, I believe he's a believer. I appreciate that. But you don't
know. I could be the biggest fraud
in the world. I could step off of this earth
having preached to you the gospel and wind up in hell. Because you don't know. You can't
know. And I can't know. I can't know. True repentance is an invisible
thing. Now as I said, it will affect behavior and it will affect
what you say and what you talk about God. But it goes on inside. Suddenly you believe one thing
about God and suddenly the total opposite is true. That's repentance. Repentance. Reformations are
by nature visible and are proved by sight and thus considered
by religion as evidence of salvation, but they're not. True repentance
is invisible and cannot be proven at all and is real only to the
one who has repented and he to whom the repentance is toward.
Repentance toward God and faith toward the Lord Jesus Christ.
Repentance is about a man and his God, not about a man and
his peers. What then is this radical change
of mind? Well, first of all, if it's a
change of mind, your mind cannot be changed unless it was somewhere
else before this change occurred. Your mind has to be going one
way if it's changed. Is that right? And to go another
way. That's just simple, right? If true repentance is a change
of mind toward God, then the mind you had prior to repentance
must have been against God, or ever moving away from God, or
just wrong about God. Though it may have traversed
a myriad of concourses, and it does, a lot of ways. They all converge at the end
of the line, and the end of the line itself And that is the abode
of your mind before God granted you repentance. It's about you
and not about God. Your mind was about the business
of establishing a righteousness that would recommend you to God.
That's what all religion is about. And man is born a religious creature. Man was made to worship. He was made to worship. That's
why he's got joints in the middle of his legs. He was made to hit
the dirt. That's why every knee shall bow and every tongue confess
that the Lord is, Jesus Christ is the Lord to the glory of the
Father. And our mind, as we were born into this world, is about
establishing a righteousness that God would accept, that would
recommend us to God. You've heard people say this,
Jesus is not going to like you if you do that. You've heard
people say that. Don't say that to your children, please. First, you're painting a real
bad picture of Christ. And Jesus don't like you or not
like you because of what you do or don't do. If He loved you,
He loved you in spite of yourself from all eternity. by various reformations, performing
good deeds or to undo or override bad deeds, straightening up your
life, straightening up and flying right, cleaning up your act,
however you want to put it, turning over a veritable forest of new
leaves, and generally endeavoring to make yourself a more presentable,
ennobled, polished version of yourself. That's reformation. It's not because it was the right
thing to do. It was not because you repeated.
At the heart of it was the idea that you would gain something
by it. Better your standing by it. Well, you say, isn't that commendable
behavior in the natural realm? Absolutely. And I commend you
if you're doing some bad behavior that you're hurting people and
hurting yourself. If you stop it, I commend you. And thank
you. And I appreciate you for doing that. But that ain't repentance
toward God. Generally speaking, somewhere
down deep where you live and where nobody sees what's going
on in your old corrupt mind and heart, you're going to make somebody
know about that. Somehow you're going to have
to leak out this change. Somehow you're going to have
to leak out this good behavior so people can pat you on the
back and say you've done a good job. What is that? That's self-aggrandizement. It's what it is. It's self-righteousness. It's not repentance. It is in
truth what the old scholars used to call splendida peccata. Peccatas means sins. You've heard
peccadillos. That comes from little sins.
Peccadillos are little sins. It's Latin. Splendida Picada,
Shining Sins. Shining Sins. Rebellion robed
in Egyptian gauze is what it is. Ultimately, the reason for
these acts was that they made you believe and feel and be assured
somehow that you were recommending yourself to God. I believed that
for years. I was raised in church. I've
told you this story. I was a member of Antioch Baptist
Sunday School before I was born. They had my booties. Miss Rachel
James was pregnant and they had the James baby on the Sunday
school board under the name of my booties. I've been in church
all my life. And after 32 years of false religion,
false teaching, and a thousand repentances, I thought. God granted me true repentance.
He changed my mind. Radically changed my mind. Doing all those splendid, noble,
recordable activities surely must count for righteousness.
and be enough that would enable you to breeze through with minimal
damage that judgment deal when you die and go meet God. And
that is the state of every son of Adam as he is born in this
world. It is the fig leaf apron. It is the victim ploy used. It's not my fault. I'm a victim
of circumstances. When God confronted Adam in the
Garden of Eden, He says, It's not my fault. It's that wife
you gave me. She made me do it. And when he confronted Eve, he
said, it ain't my fault. It's that serpent you made. He
made me do it. And you hear that all the time. It's not your fault.
Well, whose blasted fault is it? That's what I like to know.
When you screw up, whose fault is it? Oh, it's the way my mother
raised me. They ain't got nothing to do
with it. Had all this pressure. Where's this gone to? How far
has it gone so far? The young man who who drank and
drove fast and hurt people, maybe even killed somebody, I can't
remember, but they let him off on a, what was it? They let him off because of an
affluence defense. This is true. It happened in
Florida. Because his parents were rich. And he had never had
much discipline. And everything he wanted he could
pay for and get. The best car, the best this and
the best that. That he wasn't really responsible
because he didn't understand what was right and wrong because
he had such affluence in his life. It's not my fault. It is your fault! You're responsible! But repentance makes people think
they're not. False repentance. whether they
live a life of debauchery or dedication, profligacy or philanthropy,
righteous living, or spend their activity in moral duty. They
all tinker with reformation, visible transformation, tweaking
their behavior, believing they will gain heaven and avoid hell.
This is not repentance toward God, this is repentance toward
self. and it is in the opposite direction from God. Paul said, I've held nothing
back because I repeat repentance toward God. And that is simply, quite simply,
something else. If your mind is set on the notion
that your activities, your works recommend you to God, anything,
I'm just telling you, let's go through the list if you've got
one. If you think anything, you are, do, say, think. recommends
you to God, you're in trouble. You're in big trouble. Big trouble. Pray God will change your mind. And in this radical change of
mind is to embrace the fact that nothing you do, good or bad,
by human standards. Nothing you do, can do, have
done, will do. Nothing can recommend you to God. Nothing. Nothing whatsoever. It is changing your mind from
what you believe, true repentance, It's changing your mind from
what recommends you to God to what God says recommends you
to Him. It is disowning the righteousness
that is an abomination to God. And there are a lot of things
that are an abomination to God that people count very high. Do you know
the Bible says the sacrifices of the wicked are an abomination
to the Lord? You say, well, people are philanthropic.
That's a good thing. Well, it may be on this level,
but remember, we're in the world, but we're not of the world. But they stand and ring those
bells and put that money in those little buckets and things like
that. Wicked people come up and put the money in there. And when
I mean wicked, I'm not talking about debaucher. I mean religious
folks come and put that money in that tank. They believe they've
done something good, and it recommends them to God. Back when I was in the service,
I was bad to drink. I liked to drink. My drink of choice was Country
Club, malt liquor. Liked it. Tastes good. Still
tastes good. I really liked it. But when I got out of service,
after being four years of having a six-pack at least every night,
I decided I'm not going to drink anymore. Not going to drink anymore. And I
didn't for ten years, didn't have a drink. Well, it didn't go to alcoholics
and all this. I wasn't an alcoholic. I just liked to drink. I liked
to taste it. Now, when I was laying drunk
in a gutter somewhere, and I found myself in a few places like that
overseas, one morning I vaguely remember getting up and stopping
a milkman and buying a dozen eggs and a quart of milk off
of him and eating the eggs raw and wrecking the milk. That's
how bad off I was. I wanted to get over that terrible hangover. When I was like that, down there
in the depths of whatever I was in, I never had a notion anywhere
in my mind that that recommended me to God. I never thought, God's really
pleased I'm laying here in this gutter in my own vomit. God's really pleased. I never
thought that. But you know what I did think? And I made that
decision to stop. I thought, God's going to like
this. And right then, I was in more
trouble with God than when I was laying drunk in my own woman.
Because I believed that I was doing something and God would
accept me on the basis of what I'd done. I probably called that repentance
or something like that. The sacrifice of the wicked is
an abomination to the Lord. The plowing of the wicked is
an abomination to the Lord. The prayer of the wicked is an
abomination to the Lord. These are things that are in
Scripture. True repentance toward God is
submitting to and owning the righteousness that God has declared
in the Gospel to be the only basis of acceptance before Him.
My heart's prayer for Israel, Paul said in Romans 10, is that
they might be saved, and I bear them wicked. They have a zeal
for God, but not according to knowledge. For they go about
to establish their own righteousness, having not submitted to the righteousness
of God. And this is the righteousness
of God. Christ is the end of the law
for righteousness to everyone that believes. That's the righteousness
that recommends you to God. True repentance, repentance toward
God is this, Christ is my righteousness. Christ alone is my righteousness. And it is a radical spiritual
change of mind about who recommends you to God. Christ does, or you're
not recommended at all. The second thing that defines
this ministry, and I'll hurry, that frees the preacher from
the blood of all men, that is testifying of the grace of God,
and that is preaching the kingdom, is faith toward the Lord Jesus
Christ. Repentance toward God and faith
toward the Lord Jesus Christ. Again, this is a gift of God.
Men are not born with it. All men have not faith, saith
the Scripture. But those whom God gives it, has it. What is that faith toward the
Lord Jesus Christ? It is nothing more, nothing less,
and nothing else than believing from your heart and your mind
that your acceptance before God is wholly and completely and
totally conditioned upon the merits of the person and the
work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Faith toward Christ is not faith
in faith. It's not faith in your belief. It's not faith in your church
attendance. It's not faith in your praying. It's not faith
in your Bible reading. It's not faith in your giving.
It's faith in Christ. It's trusting Christ as the only
means by which God has accepted you. And you're the one who needs
accepting. I hate it when people talk about
accepting Jesus. He don't need accepting. You
need accepting. And to think that a human being,
a worm, a maggot of the dust would deem himself of such great
intellectual and spiritual power to decide whether or not God
Almighty is acceptable. That's blasphemy. But your acceptance, do you believe? that your acceptance is holy
based on what Christ did and who Christ is. All of it. The radical change of mind puts
your thinking in a whole new direction. And that new direction
is not about what you can do to impress God, but about what
Christ has done that impressed God. Repentance toward God is a radical
change of mind about what recommends you to God Faith toward the Lord
Jesus Christ is resting, trusting, and believing in who God has
declared to be the one who recommends you. Don't consider your works. Don't
look to yourself. Do not endeavor to think of anything
that you have or have not done. Just let it go. Can you do that?
Just let it go. Put it in a bag somewhere. Toss
it in the river. Do not begin to add up your life
alterations, your self-improvements, your prayers, your Bible reading,
your membership in the church, or even your doctrine of purity.
These are just putting a pretty ribbon on a pig. They're fools,
ghosts trying to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear and
are not viable tender to be bartered or exchanged for acceptance with
God. Solo Christus, Christ alone. Solo gratia, grace alone. Solo fide, faith alone. Solo scriptura, word of God alone. Solo dia gloria, for the glory
of God alone. Christ, the merit of His work,
imputation, substitution, satisfaction upon which God has fully and
freely accepted every one of His elect. He said they're already
accepted in the Beloved. The excellency of His person
is all in the world that will recommend you to God. That's
it. One day, a man who wrote hymns
at Spurgeon's church and had taught Spurgeon in Sunday school
when he was a boy. Spurgeon was walking down the
street and that man had been taken away in a straitjacket.
They were taking him to an insane asylum and back then it wasn't
a nice place. They were calling it Snake Pit. Spurgeon knew he'd
never see him again. Spurgeon thought, I bet he'll
never remember God. but God will remember him. Why? My hope is built on nothing
less than Jesus' blood and righteousness. May the sovereign majesty of
the universe grant us repentance toward Him and faith toward His
Son to believe that we have, are, and can do nothing to recommend
us to Him and that Christ fully recommends
us to Him. Christ is our righteousness,
our peace, our hope, our faith. God has made Him to be unto us
wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. Why? So that
if a man glories, he'll have the glory of the Lord. Paul said, I've kept nothing
back from you. I've testified the grace of God. I've preached
to you the Kingdom. I've testified repentance toward
God and faith toward the Lord Jesus Christ. Father, bless us through our
understanding of prayer in Christ. Amen.