Sermon Transcript — April 8, 2006
The last time I spoke I was talking with Becky Bennett afterwards and she said, "Well the sermon was all right but I wrote down about three or four things before you ever got to the subject, I didn't know where you were going!" I told her that my wife has always told me that I spend too much time on the introduction and I need to get right into it and of course I don't pay any attention but I did want to let you know ahead of time that it will take me just a couple of minutes to sneak up on my subject today! Yesterday we entered the spring break for the Ambassador Bible Center and most of the students have left the area but we do have several here today, many have left the area to return home and to be with their family for the next couple of weeks. Like any students, they were certainly looking forward to having a few days out of classes and we certainly don't begrudge them that and in fact we might even admit that as faculty members, we're looking forward to a few days out of classes too, so that's all right!
If you've been in different areas, it's kind of interesting how the various schools take time off; you know it seems to vary a good deal. When we were in Pennsylvania, the first day of deer season was always a day off of school, so many fellows were going to be in the woods they just said there's no sense having school! Some of you have perhaps grown up in areas where there is a lot of agriculture and many times in those areas the schools are out when it's time to harvest the crops, especially years ago when everybody in the family had to be out there doing it.
We lived in Louisiana a few years ago in the early 90's and we learned that Mardi Gras is a day when all the schools and the businesses and so on are closed. Mardi Gras is literally French for "Fat Tuesday." It's an interesting celebration, it exists in some form or another virtually every place the Roman Catholic Church has a prominent position. It's observed every year the day before Ash Wednesday, which is the beginning of the observance of Lent. Lent is a forty day period of abstinence in preparation for Easter. Mardi Gras seems to have with it the idea that we need to live it up a little bit before we get to that forty day period of abstinence and doing without. Mardi Gras is noted as a time of virtual debauchery, excessive drinking, partying, even sexual promiscuity. There are often parades with openly sexual imagery where garish, sometimes almost demonic looking characters reward those who come out to celebrate. The same celebration exists in other parts of the world, perhaps with other names; one of the more famous ones is Carnival in Rio De Janeiro where this year the theme for Carnival is "The Kama Sutra." Now some of you will be familiar with the Kama Sutra, it is a book written in India about sexuality in just about every form anyone could ever imagine and the revelers were encouraged to produce or in essence imitate scenes from the Kama Sutra, this was a part of the celebration, right before we get ready for Easter.
Now of course when Lent comes along, people give up things, the Roman Catholic Church doesn't officially sanction Mardi Gras and sometimes they cluck their tongues at it but as far as doing anything about it, they really don't, but they do on the day of Ash Wednesday, encourage people to enter this period of preparation for Easter.
During this 40 day period of time, good Roman Catholics abstain from various pleasures as a way of kind of doing penance in preparation for Easter, they abstain, for example, from eating meat on Friday's except of course if you're in Cincinnati and St. Patrick's Day comes on Friday and then the local Cardinal lets you eat corned beef! So it's OK! They may choose to deny themselves some other pleasures during this time. Some may give up drinking alcohol, some may deny themselves chocolate, others give up desserts. My wife was telling me one of her coworkers was frustrated because she had given up candy for Lent and was really having a great M&M urge or whatever it was. Others may give up some other activity, golf for example. The idea seems to be that if you give up something you enjoy that God will believe you are serious about your religion and somehow God has apparently pleased when we suffer. That's basically the idea behind the concept of penance, God is pleased when we suffer and He will be merciful with us if we demonstrate our sincerity by somehow punishing ourselves. Formula is simple-penance produces forgiveness—or stated another way—if we make ourselves suffer enough, God won't make us suffer as much.
Now frankly it doesn't take a great deal of spiritual discernment to recognize that that entire process is in fact a counterfeit of what you and I have been doing as we're preparing for Passover and the Days of Unleavened Bread, we're not eliminating chocolate or alcohol or meat but we are eliminating leaven in its various forms. Now leaven can make food more pleasurable but that's not really the reason we get rid of it, we don't get rid of it so that we won't enjoy food, there are other reasons that are involved. But we should ask ourselves, why would Satan go to all the trouble of establishing this elaborate counterfeit? He is the great deceiver, so what's he trying to deceive people about? There are undoubtedly several erroneous concepts that he would certainly want us to accept in the process, he wants us certainly to associate good times, having fun, enjoying life with sin. When you sin you can party, you can have fun but when you try to live a life that pleases God you have to give up the enjoyable things and live a drab, dull, unpleasant existence. Sadly that's the way some people approach the Days of Unleavened Bread.
I was listening a few years ago, traveling somewhere and Dr. Laura was on the radio, she's an Orthodox Jew and she made the comment as she was talking, happened to be during the Days of Unleavened Bread, how much she enjoyed her cinnamon rolls and she couldn't have them and she described them in great detail and the smell, and it was so good…but I can't have them right now…and then she said, "I don't know why, that's just the way it is." And I remember sitting there thinking, you have a history of 3500 years of putting out leaven and you still haven't figured out why? But you know when you stop and think about it, if somebody came to you and said, What is leaven mean, why do you get rid of it, what's your scriptural basis, where would you turn? You'd probably have to turn to I Cor. 5 where Paul talks about it; you'd have to turn to Christ's statements about the leaven of the Pharisees. If you didn't have the New Testament to turn to, it frankly would be difficult to find an explanation that we could use, so I suppose it's not a great surprise that she would say after 3500 years of doing it we still don't know why we're doing it!
Actually the Days of Unleavened Bread ought to be a time when we anticipate all kinds of special things. The students have prepared special unleavened goodies, and a number of you have taken part and ordered those, and you're probably going to have to hold yourself back just a couple of days as you look forward to that. In our home it's certainly that way, my wife has her recipes; I have to be careful talking about that because after my last sermon, everyone's asking about apple pie! They don't remember the sermon but they do remember the apple pie! But probably many of you ladies have your own store of unleavened recipes that you use only during Unleavened Bread and as we approach that time the family thinks about that and they anticipate and look forward to it, that's the way it should be. I always feel sorry for those people who basically during Unleavened Bread, just get rid of all the leaven and then they substitute dull matzos and Rye Crisp! I never tasted Rye Crisp until the first time our family had the Days of Unleavened Bread and it reminded me of penance, I always thought Rye Crisp was like scouring pads you know? I said that and one year this young lady brought to me at services a Rye Crisp box and she had stuffed it with scouring pads! And I got up and I said, Look, I want you to know, you didn't fool me, I knew it was scouring pads before I finished eating the second one! So I feel sorry for people who approach it that way but Unleavened Bread is suppose to be a joyful time and it teaches us that living without sin, hey, this is good! This is something special, so it's good for us.
Satan would love for us to conclude that we can satisfy God's demands by temporarily eliminating the things that we enjoy, that if we'll do without them for a little while, then we can go back to them a little bit later. He would want us to believe that God derives pleasure from watching His people suffer or do without. But perhaps the most important of all, he would want us to be confused about repentance, if he can substitute penance for repentance, then he can actually defeat God's purpose in our lives. Scripture shows that Godly repentance leads to forgiveness and eternal life. If he can confuse people about repentance, if he can keep them from understanding what genuine repentance really is, then they'll believe they're forgiven when they're not, they'll still carry the death penalty for their sins. Since Godly repentance is essential for forgiveness and therefore necessary for salvation, if he can deceive people about repentance, he wins. So as we're going to see today, that's especially important at this time of the year.
What is Godly repentance? What comes to your mind when you hear the word repentance? How deeply do you understand Godly repentance? What role does repentance play in our preparation for Passover and the Days of Unleavened Bread? I think for all of us, each year as we prepare for Passover and Unleavened Bread and we examine ourselves, we come face to face with our sins, those things that we have done wrong as well as those things that we fail to do right. How many times have you decided in that process of looking at yourself and bringing the problems before God, how many times have you decided, "I'm going to grow, I'm going to overcome this problem." And then found that when the next Passover came along it was still there and maybe it was even worse. Have you ever found that or am I the only one that experiences those things? I daresay that all of us have.
How many times have you brought those same problems to God year after year and how do you feel about it when you do? Repentance is actually one of the seven key doctrines of the Christian belief. I'm not going to turn back to this; I have about ten scriptures I'm going to ask you to turn to today, but this one I'll just refer to — in Hebrews 6:1-2, the author says:
Heb. 6:1-2— Therefore leaving the discussion of the elementary principles of Christ, let us go on to perfection…which we would say is doctrine #7, going on to perfection, the first one he lists is…not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works.
At the very foundation of everything that we are as Christians, is this concept of repentance from dead works, or as some put it, repentance from works which produce death. There is to be a repentance from dead works. We must be careful I think because sometimes the doctrinal knowledge that God gives to us can make us almost smug in our outlook toward the world. We're confident in our teaching about Easter and Halloween and Christmas and those things and we can sometimes sit back with almost benign amusement as we watch the rest of the world do their thing. As we traveled out here today there were a couple ladies on the side hanging plastic eggs on a tree, can be amusing and yet in a sense when we really realize what it is, it's not something that ought to be amusing to us. For us repentance is not simply some doctrinal nicety, some little point that we pick up here and there, it's at the very core of what we are. Repentance was at the very core of Jesus Christ's message as well. In Matthew 4, this is one of the short verses to look up. Right after Jesus Christ's confrontation with Satan, immediately He begins His 3.5 years of ministry and it says here, breaking into the thought:
Matt. 4:17 — From that time Jesus began to preach and to say, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand."
At the very core of the message Jesus Christ brought was the word "repent." As one commentary put it, "Christ began His ministry with a call to repentance but the call is addressed, not as in the Old Testament, to the nations, but to the individual." In the Old Testament the call was primarily for national repentance, but this call was personal. Let's look at a parallel in Mark 1, again, just to emphasize what Jesus Christ was saying early on in His ministry.
Mark 1:14 — After John was put in prison, Jesus came to Galilee preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God and saying, "The time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God is at hand, repent and believe in the gospel." Or more accurately, "believe the gospel."
He tells us the gospel message, what He preached was the gospel of the kingdom of God, which is what we're trying to preach and that message includes repent. That's a part of what's very important for all of us. Many well meaning people have confused repentance with remorse, certainly those concepts are related but there's a very big difference between them. If you truly repented, when, how often? If you commit a sin and you repent of that and then you commit it a second time, does that mean you really didn't repent in the first place?
Satan's been amazingly successful in his deceptions; he's convinced millions of people that they really don't have the need to repent of anything, that repentance can be delayed, maybe even avoided all together. Jeremiah described that attitude very well; I'd like to turn back to Jere. 8 — Jeremiah's words which are, at this point, about 2500 years old certainly ring true to the world that we're a part of today. I'm going to read verse 6 but I'd like to read it from a different translation, the New Revised Standard Version.
Jere. 8:6 — "I've given heed (God is speaking) and listened but they do not speak honestly, no one repents of his wickedness, saying, 'What have I done?' All of them turn to their own course like a horse plunging headlong into battle."
Does that describe the way most people live their lives today, like a horse that's plowing forward into battle and it just follows its own course, you can't stop it or turn it aside, it's the way people seem to live their lives. No one says, "What have I done? What have I done?" Those words ought to be a part of what you and I are saying while we examine ourselves at this time of the year. Even worse, they're literally millions of people who think they have repented when in fact they haven't. How can you or I know that we're not one of those people? How do we know, I mean what makes us so sure that we've truly repented? In both the Old and New Testaments, God has called upon His people to repent. In the Old Testament, repentance primarily seemed to relate to a call to turn from one way of living to another. The primary Hebrew word that's used is "nacham" which interestingly has two meanings. About 40 times in the OT it is translated as "repent" and about 65 times it is translated as "to comfort." Interesting relationship that repentance has with comforting. The Hebrew word can imply a change of mind or heart but it generally refers to a change of ones conduct. In fact the majority of the times when it's translated as "repent" its actually referring to God. Now God obviously doesn't need to change His mind or heart, there's nothing wrong with it, He's faithful to His own righteousness, He doesn't need to change the way He thinks. His attitude toward evil never changes. But on occasion He does change His actions, when there's an individual whose been living the wrong way and he turns to the right, God may change in His actions toward that person or on the other side, if a person living the right way goes the wrong way, God may change in His actions and promises toward that person. But God's attitude, His heart, His mind, about evil about sin never needs to change so even though we see the word "repent" it again, very obviously refers to primarily a change of action.
In the New Testament, repentance focuses more on what's going on inside our minds, our hearts, not just our outward actions. Turning around is still important, but it isn't complete, which of course should be logical, certainly we would not expect that God would expect no more of us than He did of ancient Israel who didn't have access to the spirit of God in the way that you and I do. In the Greek there are two basic words and I'd like to look at those definitions for a moment and to see how they're used. The one word, which is not the most common but is used several times, metamellomai, it's made up of two words, meta which essentially means "after" and mello which means "to care for."
In essence that means "to care about something afterward, to care as a result of the consequences, to feel regret as the result of what one has done, to regret, feel sad about, feel sorry because of something, to change ones mind about something with the probable implication of regret," so the commentaries tell us. As an example we'll look at one, but let me just refer to this one because I think you'll be familiar with it in the way this word is used. It's in Matthew 21:28-29 and in this case it tells us about a man who had two sons and it says:
Matt. 21:28 — He came to the first and said, "Son, go work today in my vineyard." He answered and said, 'I will not,' but afterward (this is from the New King James) he regretted it and went.
Now this doesn't say there was a change of heart in the son, it doesn't say from this point forward, you know, I've been disrespectful to my father, I will always listen to him, it just simply says, in this situation he realizes, I shouldn't have done that so he changed what he did. He regretted it and he went out and did something different. An example we should turn to, more famous, in Matthew 27, we will immediately see the context here.
Matt. 27:3 — Then Judas, His betrayer, seeing that He (Jesus) had been condemned, was remorseful…I think again the Old King James says "he repented himself" which is not a bad description, well he was remorseful…and he brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, saying, "I've sinned by betraying innocent blood." And they said, "What's that to us? You see to it!" So he threw the thirty pieces of silver in the temple and departed and went and hanged himself.
OK, here we have a classic example of remorse, regret, leading to something, but what we don't find it leading to is repentance, it led to suicide, it led to self-destruction, it led to the conclusion that there is no sense going on. Now I think you and I would probably have asked ourselves the question, If Judas had really repented, would he have been forgiven? And I think the answer for all of us would be the same, well sure, if repentance was genuine, then forgiveness would have been there, but we didn't find that with Judas. What was it that upset him? Did he look at the situation and say, "Oh my, look, I've done a terrible thing." It says when he saw what happened, he didn't like the results, I'm really upset about the results but it evidently, he never really got back to the core of the problem, his own problem.
There are a couple of other examples that we could refer to, again, I'll just refer to them in passing. II Corinthians 7:8 and the reason I'll do that one in passing is because we'll read this entire passage in a little bit more detail later on. But in II Cor. 7:8, Paul is writing to the church there about how he had been very corrective to them and he said:
"Even if I made you sorry for my letter, I do not regret it, though I did regret it…" I was sorry that it happened, I felt sorry that I had to do this, but did Paul's attitude about the whole situation change? Did he suddenly say, Well I shouldn't have made a big deal about sin? No, there was nothing like that, it was simply a matter of, I was kind of sorry I had to be so strong with you, but I'm glad in the long run because it produced good results. Again, we'll see more of that as we go further.
One more brief example, just because we can see how the word is used, in Hebrews 7:21 it talks about priests and it talks about those who were in the office of priest and it says: "…they became priests without an oath." In other words, they simply became priests because of the bloodline, they were descendents of Aaron and they were the next in line so they became priests. "…but He (referring to Jesus Christ) with an oath by Him who said to Him: 'The Lord has sworn and will not relent…" and there is our word again, will not relent…'You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.'" The regret in this case, the relenting in that case, as God looked at it and said, "I'm not going to change My mind about this, I'm sorry to see what's happened to the priesthood, I regret that, but I'm not going to change my mind about establishing a new priesthood with Jesus Christ as the head High Priest."
We've all seen examples of remorse, I remember a number of years ago seeing a picture of a man who was drunk, sitting on the sidewalk and he was crying and he's just bawling his eyes out because he went somewhere and got drunk and he got in his car and tried to drive home and in the process, drove up on a sidewalk and killed a woman and a couple of her children. The man was distraught; he was sitting there just bawling. What was he going through? If he had just driven home and parked his car and hadn't hit anybody, just went in and slept it off, how many tears would have been shed for his drunkenness? None. He was so sorry for the consequences of his actions. Likewise, I'm sure that virtually every pastor and many other elders have had the sad experience in a local church area of dealing perhaps with a young couple, young teenagers, where the young lady has shown up pregnant. That's heartbreaking, that's one of the most difficult painful things to go through with a family and yet, in those cases, you look at it and you have to be very careful because here's a young couple, young people, and they're crying, I mean they're shedding some really genuine tears. The problem is not that the tears are not genuine, but you have to ask them the question, "Where were the tears for the sin?" The tears are for the consequences.
Now, again, in many of those cases, quite honestly I would have to say, that the tears were a good starting place and they did lead to repentance eventually, but we don't want to mistake them for repentance because at that point in most cases, they're sorrow. There's also a negative form of this particular word that talks about remorse and again, let me just refer to one. Romans 11:29 where it says: "The gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable." God is not going to change His mind about calling His people, about the gifts that He makes available to us as His people, so it's just simply using that description.
The other word, the most common word is metanoia or metanoeo, depending on how it's used and literally it means to "think differently after" or "to perceive differently after." To change one's mind or purpose. Always in the New Testament it refers to a change for the better, a repentance from sin. One of the commentaries, Vines, puts it this way: "In the Old Testament, repentance with reference to sin is not so prominent as that change of mind or purpose out of pity for those who have been affected by ones actions." In other words, in the Old Testament, there's kind of a change of mind because, "Oh, I'm so sorry others were hurt by what I did."
In the New Testament, the subject chiefly has to do with reference to repentance from sin and this change of mind involves both a turning from sin and a turning to God. Remember what we read in Hebrews 6:1 — "repentance from dead works." Now if you want to tie into your notes Acts 11:18, in this passage Peter is speaking to the brethren in Jerusalem who were upset, not understanding about Peter going to the Gentiles in Acts 10 and salvation being available to them, and when Peter explained the whole situation and what God had done, their reaction was this: "When they heard these things they became silent, they glorified God saying, 'Then God has granted to the Gentiles repentance to life.'" So we have that turning, repentance from dead works, repentance to life, from the works that produce death to the works that produce life.
The Louw & Nida Commentary or Lexicon puts it this way, "Though in English, a focal component of repentance is the sorrow or contrition that a person experiences because of sin, the emphasis in the Greek word seems to be more specifically the total change both in thought and behavior with respect to how one should both think and act. To change ones way of life as the result of a complete change of thought and attitude with regard to sin and righteousness."
OK, we've satisfied our intellectual curiosity about Greek and Hebrew words and that's fine, there are certain things they can teach us, they can add to our understanding, but at the same time we need to take it out of the realm of the intellectual and bring it to the personal. That intellectual information that we may gain about those words can supplement what we know by experience but it can't replace it. Repentance is a personal experience that Christians must go through.
Even after we've arrived at accurate definitions, we're still left with a question, how can a person know if he or she has truly repented? Or put in more personal terms, how can I know whether I've truly repented? You see no one else can answer that question for us and yet our salvation depends on our being able to answer it correctly. Repentance occurs at the very deepest level of the human heart, we don't have the ability to see one another's hearts. So we can't really tell one another, I can't come up to you and say you've repented or you haven't, nor can you come up to me, we can't see those things. In fact we've often been warned that we sometimes fail to see our own hearts. Jeremiah warns us about not trusting that examination of ourselves.
A couple of weeks ago Mr. Kilough mentioned that the first verse he remembers remembering after coming to the truth was Jeremiah 17:9 and I thought that was interesting because that's the first one I remember remembering too, memorizing after coming to the Church. It says in the New King James, "The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, who can know it?" I like the New Revised Standard Version, it adds a little bit to that: "The heart is devious above all else, it's perverse, who can understand it?" There is a personal warning that you and I need to be careful about trusting our own self evaluation — how do we know we've repented, can we really trust ourselves in that?
Thankfully God has not left us in the dark on this, I want you to turn back to Matthew 3 and we'll notice a very important passage here that John the Baptist spoke. John the Baptist was a unique individual and sometimes when we think about him we think that he was the inventor of baptism, but that's not true, he was called The Baptizer because the ceremonial washing was a part of what the Jews believed anyone who wanted to convert to Judaism should go through, so to have people go through that, to have a Gentile go through that was one of the three steps to becoming a proselyte, to be able to be a part of the Jewish faith, they had to be circumcised if they were male, they had to go through the ceremonial washing and they had to offer an offering at the temple, all of those made you a proselyte. Now John comes along, John the Baptizer comes along and he begins giving a message but instead of telling Gentiles, non-Jews, that they need to go through this, instead John's message is, You, you Jews, you who think you have salvation because you're of the descendants of Abraham, you need to be cleansed, and people were responding. So we see here in Matt. 3:7:
Matt. 3:7 — When he (John) saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to the baptism, he said to them, "You brood of vipers, you off spring of snakes, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?"
V. 8 — "Therefore bear fruits worthy of repentance,…fruits in keeping with repentance, as another translation puts it…and do not say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our father.' For I say to you that God is able to raise up children to Abraham from these stones."
You think your salvation comes from the fact that you're the descendants of Abraham? Well surprise, God doesn't need that, He can raise up children to Abraham out of rocks if that's what He needs. They were relying on something else to make them right before God, and he said, no, that's not adequate. If you want to be acceptable to God then you need to repent and you need to bring forth fruits in keeping with that repentance. Godly repentance, in other words, produce something called fruits. Now fruit makes a very interesting analogy for us because it's very instructive. If you have an apple tree, how would you measure the value of that tree? The tree may be covered with beautiful blossoms, pleasant to see and to smell and all of that, but probably many of us have trees in our yards that blossom and are quite beautiful and don't produce anything you could use. The shade of that tree in the summer may be very pleasant but ultimately the value of a fruit tree is dependent upon the quantity and quality of the fruit it produces, that's how you're going to evaluate that tree. When we find the example in scripture of the man who came into his vineyard and found the fig tree that wasn't producing anything, his evaluation, his judgment had nothing to do with how lovely the tree was, it's taking space, get rid of it! The evaluation of the fruit tree is based upon the quality and quantity of the fruit it produces. You know, you can't see what's going on in the heart of that tree, you can't see that tree drawing water, nutrients out of the soil, you can't see it converting sunlight into energy and to carbohydrates and all the things that go into that, you can't see what's going on in that tree, but if it's producing fruit, good fruit, then you know that those things are going on inside.
But this gives us a very helpful analogy, we cannot see inside the human heart, but if the right fruits are there, the fruits of repentance, then we can know that as a matter of fact, repentance is going on inside. So instead of trying to evaluate the invisible processes of the human heart, our task becomes looking for the fruits that John the Baptist said genuine godly repentance produces.
What are those fruits? Thankfully, once again, God doesn't leave us in the dark. In the book of II Corinthians, Paul has to deal with this very subject. In I Corinthians he had been very corrective to the Church because of some very serious problems that existed in the congregation and he had written very strongly to them and he was concerned, you read the accounts of what took place there, he tried to go over to see them, he went to Troas and he says, God opened a door there in Troas but I couldn't even go through it because I was so concerned about what was going on in Corinth and so finally Titus came and told him what was happening and he was comforted because the message was, the majority of those in Corinth had in fact responded and repented appropriately and had changed the way they were doing things, had changed their whole approach, he was comforted in that.
But you know, those people who had been corrected so strongly, probably you've been corrected strongly at times and you understand as well, those people who had been corrected in that way were still kind of walking along feeling kind of guilty, they were wondering, have we really been forgiven? It was a terrible thing for us to do, so in essence, Paul writes to them and as he goes through this particular section in II Cor. 7, which is where we're going to look today. In II Cor. 7 he in essence puts his arms around them and he says, "Look, I know you've repented." How do I know that? He invites them, and I like the way the Old King James puts it because I think it's better than this one. He says, Behold this selfsame thing, I want you to look at this through my eyes, you're looking at it too subjectively, you're right in the middle of it and it's hard to get a proper perspective but I want you to look through my eyes and see what I'm seeing and he begins to explain this to them and he says that in the process, I can see there's been a genuine repentance. So let's pick it up in II Cor 7:8.
II Cor. 7:8 — Even if I made you sorry with my letter I do not regret it, though I did regret it…it made me feel bad to have to do this…for I perceive that the same epistle made you sorry, though only for awhile.
V. 9 — Now I rejoice, not that you were made sorry, but that your sorrow led to repentance. There's nothing wrong with sorrow, there's nothing wrong with remorse, there's nothing wrong with regret, it's just that we can't stop there; your sorrow led to repentance. For you were made sorry in a godly manner, that you might suffer loss from us in nothing.
V. 10 — For godly sorrow produces repentance, leading to salvation, not to be regretted…there's nothing to regret about the changes that we make, as painful as the process is, sometimes it is a painful process but as painful as it is, once we've done it, no we don't regret it anymore, we're grateful that as a matter of fact God brought it to our attention and caused us to change…but the sorrow of the world produces death. There is a sorrow that doesn't produce repentance, it's just sorrow and it doesn't really change anything.
V. 11 — For observe this thing, that you sorrowed in a godly manner, what diligence it produced in you, what clearing of yourselves, what indignation, what fear, what vehement desire, what zeal, what vindication! In all things you proved yourselves to be clear in this matter.
In other words, he says your fruits, I look at these fruits and I see those fruits tell me you've proven yourself to have repented and if you repented, God forgave you and you're clear.
Now the words are slightly different in other translations but the sense is pretty much the same, Paul lists in one verse, verse 11, seven fruits of godly repentance. Fruits which he saw in the Corinthian brethren and which convinced him that they had truly repented of those sins. As he told them, if they repented in a godly manner, they could be assured of God's forgiveness. In God's sight, they were clear in this matter. So let's spend a few minutes looking at those fruits to see if we can find them in our own lives. If we can, then likewise we can be assured of genuine repentance. If not, then perhaps we need to consider repentance a little more closely.
We could all probably derive some slightly different meanings and sometimes I wish as we hear a message, I've wished that there could be four or five of us up here all discussing the same passage at the same time because each one seems to add a little different perspective and see it, so this is just one, there are more I'm sure that you could add to it. But let's at least get an idea of what Paul is saying without getting too bogged down in the details. I have written into my notes the Greek words, if anybody wants to see them, I'll show you Greek words but I don't think that's really where we're going right now, we're talking about what's going on here, not what's going on in Greece 2,000 years ago.
So what are we saying? He begins by saying "what diligence it produced in you." Other translations use the word "earnestness" meaning "to be earnest and diligent in undertaking an activity, willing to expend whatever energy necessary." In essence what Paul is saying to these people is, before they had repented, they had become somewhat careless about sin, instead of considering whether something was right or wrong before they took part in it, they just began to think, well, it's not really all that bad, it's not all that serious, not a big deal. It wasn't like they went out seeking sin; it just kind of crept in when they weren't paying attention. But now, after repenting, they're being much more diligent to consider what they were allowing themselves to do, to say. They were beginning to ask themselves, now wait a minute, is this something a Christian ought to be involved in because if it's not, I don't want it to be a part of my life, they'd begun to be a lot more careful, a lot more diligent about those things.
We could draw a simple analogy that we all know that at this time of the year we're a lot more diligent about leaven. Most of the time you don't go to the store and be concerned one way or the other. But now you do. My wife has kidded about the time she goes into the store and picks up a can and looks at it, sets it down, picks up something else, looks at it, sets it down, picks up something else, looks at it, set it down, walks out of the store! People think she's really hard up for reading material but we all understand don't we, that it's different this time of the year we're more diligent. Well repentance isn't just at this time of the year thing, but we are more diligent, we're more careful, we're more aware of what's going on. For these people, being a Christian has taken on a new importance for them and that was very important for them to see.
The second one he mentions I think is a little bit more difficult to explain but I think we can illustrate it as well. He says, "What clearing of yourselves" or as other translations put it, "what eagerness to clear yourself." Eagerness to clear away accusations, eagerness to prove your innocence. Now part of this may be an eagerness to prove themselves in the sense of proving that they would no longer commit such sins and that's fine, but there's another aspect to it that I think is important as well. They were guilty of sin, there is no way they could prove themselves innocent of those sins that had been committed. They were guilty; they could only prove that they will be innocent of that sin in the future. If you've done wrong, how are you going to go about clearing yourself with the people you've hurt? How do you clear yourself?
Well let's imagine a situation — someone said something to you, inappropriate, whatever it may be and they really hurt you in the process. Suppose they come back to you and they say, "You know, I understand that you were very hurt about what I'd said or what I did, well I'm really really sorry that you got your feelings hurt." OK, how do you feel about that? I mean in essence what they have done is they've blamed you for being hurt for their actions. Are you going to trust them the next time? Have they cleared themselves? Probably not. But let's say on the other hand, they come back to you and they say, "You know I've been thinking about what I did and I realized that was a terrible thing to do, I have no excuse whatsoever, that was something I should never have done and I am deeply sorry and I hope that you will forgive me for it and I promise you, I will do my best to see that I never do anything like that again." Well how do you feel about that? Well, you may still be hurt a little bit because it does hurt, but you're probably a lot more likely to be willing to trust that person and to forgive them of what took place. What's the difference? The difference is they accepted their personal responsibility for the sin, I did this and it's my fault, it wasn't because I came from a dysfunctional family, it wasn't because of the people I was with, I made a bad choice, I did the wrong thing and I don't want to do that again, I'm so sorry that I hurt you.
Most ministers have had an opportunity at some point or another to visit people in jail. It's a very popular thing for guys in jail to invite ministers to come visit them, it looks good when they get a parole if you've had a lot of ministers visit you. That's quite honest, that's a lot of what happens. I know that as I talk to those prisoners, sooner or later I will always ask them one question, "What are you in here for?" And the vast majority will say, "Well you know I really shouldn't be in here, I'm not really a bad person, I just happened to be with the wrong people at the wrong time and I got caught, but I'm really not that kind of person." And when I hear that, I know there's been no repentance, they've never accepted responsibility. Every once in awhile you come across one of those people who said, "I'm here because I was dumb, I did a stupid thing and I'm really sorry I did it, but I can't blame anybody else." And you know; ah, now we've got something to work with, maybe we've got something here that we can deal with.
Several years ago, as different example, we had a teen activity, it was a basketball game and before the game we had four fellows who went off and somehow got a six pack of beer, split it between them, now four guys splitting a six pack, nobody was drunk, but it was against the law and it was against the standards we had and the standard of conduct that we were suppose to live by and they broke it. I found out about it so I thought, OK, the best thing to do is to go to them and their parents. It was interesting to me that in every case, the parent's response was exactly the same, every one of them said, "I told them they shouldn't run around with that group of guys." In each case we had to stop and help them realize, you know, your son made a choice, it was his choice, he did the wrong thing, it's not the end of the world, but nonetheless, let's face the fact, the problem here is not the guys he was with, it was his choice.
Certainly all of us have committed sins in ignorance, for many of us, we were Sabbath breakers for years because we didn't know about the Sabbath, there were many things we've done in ignorance, all of us have been guilty of those things. But beyond that, we also know that everyone of us have been guilty of sinning with the full knowledge that we were doing what wrong and we simply chose to do it because it looked good to us, because it appealed, because we wanted to. If a person has truly repented, then he acknowledges that he's sinned because he chose to and when people can admit that, then they've taken a big step toward being able to rid themselves, to clear themselves of the sin.
The third fruit that Paul lists here, he says, "what indignation." That means "a strong state of opposition and displeasure against someone or something judged to be wrong." The indignation here was not against Paul or anyone else. When you're upset with the person who revealed your sin, that is a sign of worldly sorry, not genuine godly repentance. The repentant Christians of Corinth were angry with themselves, they knew better, they knew better but they let down their guard and they allowed sin to gain a foothold. They were upset with themselves, determined not to let this happen again. Now this is not self hatred, I'm not talking about that, but haven't you at times looked at yourself and been kind of mad at yourself, "I knew better, I didn't have to do that, I knew not to do that, I knew not to go there, I knew not to be in this situation, I did it anyway, can't blame anyone but me."
The fourth one he mentions is "what fear." Other translations say "alarm." "A state of severe distress aroused by intense concern for impending pain, danger, evil etc." The people of Corinth, before they repented had made a very dangerous mistake of ceasing to fear sin. It seemed small, benign, harmless, maybe even appealing. Now they had come to fear allowing sin in their lives. A person who has truly repented recognizes that sin has the power to destroy forever. Have you ever stopped to ask yourself why God hates sin? Why is God so opposed to sin, what's so bad about it? God loves all His children. Parental love that we may have in this life is in many ways a shadow of the love that God has for His children. Research tells us that there is nothing you as a parent can go through is more painful or difficult than the loss of a child and it really doesn't matter how old that child is, because as you parents know, you're always a parent, you never quit and no matter how old they are, to lose that child is devastating. But in the midst of a loss like that, we have been given this incredible blessing of a promise of the resurrection—a promise that even if that child that we hold so precious has died, there is a promise that they'll live again, that we'll see them again, we'll hold them again. It's still a very painful loss, but what a tremendous comfort that is. How would you feel if that hope were taken away from you? If you knew that if your child died, you would never ever see them again, wouldn't that be a terrible thing? You see, sin has the power to cast God's children into the lake of fire, from which there is no resurrection. God hates sin because it deprives Him of His children forever. If we fear something, then there is an eagerness to get it out of our lives. We don't try to see how close we can get to it without being harmed.
Now I've spent a good bit of time in the southern part of the country and enjoyed that, but down there we have a nasty varmint called a water moccasin and imagine this situation: suppose that you, it was dark and you didn't have a light on and you stepped out and suddenly turned on the light and you realized you're standing right beside a large water moccasin getting ready to strike. What would you do? Now I had similar experience although in my case it was a large copperhead and at that point I will say that I earned the world record in the standing broad jump! I mean, I moved quickly and you would too, wouldn't you? Standing right next…you think you'd stand there and look at this venomous snake and say, "I wonder how close I can get without him getting me?" Wouldn't that be stupid? Yet how many people do that with sin? How close can I get and it won't get me? How much can I still do the old sinful way and I can still manage to eke it out into God's kingdom? If it's a man, "Well I know a man's not suppose to have long hair, but how long can I have it and still get by?" "A woman's suppose to be modest, but just how short can I get my skirt and it's still going to be OK?" If we have that approach, have we really repented? A person who's truly repented is frightened by sin and wants to get as far away from it as he or she can.
The fifth thing Paul mentions as a fruit, he calls "vehement desire." Other translations call it "a longing." To long for something with the implication of recognizing that you're lacking it. We all know the passage that tells us in Isaiah 59, I'm not turning back there, the first two verses, "…sin separates us from God, behold the Lord's hand is not shortened that it cannot save nor is His ear heavy that He cannot hear but your iniquities have separated you from your God and your sins have hidden His face from you so that He will not hear." Aren't those words sobering, even frightening?
I mean God will not hear. None of us what to be in that spot, none of us wants to be in that spot where God will not hear. But the scriptures show us that without genuine repentance, we have no relationship with God. Remember the passage at the beginning of Luke 13 where the people came to Christ and they said, "Well what about these people who were slain, these Galileans where Pilate mingled their blood with the sacrifices?" And Christ's response was, "You think those people were bad? You think they were worse than other people? I tell you, if you don't repent, you're going to perish the same way."
And He gave them another example — "What about those people where the Tower of Siloam was and it fell and killed all these people, were they worse? No, if you don't repent, you'll likewise perish." Basically He's saying, if you don't repent, God leaves hands off, what happens, happens. So if you don't repent, you don't have a relationship with God, it's that important to us. And if we have truly repented, we have come to realize that relationship has been harmed and we long to see it restored. When we're in the midst of our sins, we do not recognize that separation but when we repent we become acutely aware of it and we long to heal the breach between us and God and that's going to show itself with renewed zeal for prayer, for bible study, for fasting.
The sixth fruit he mentions is zeal or concern. "To have a deep concern for or devotion to someone or something." A truly repentant person rededicates himself or herself to the commitment he or she made at baptism. Our lives are to be devoted to God and His way and no half-way commitment is adequate, we all remember the passage of Romans 12 that our bodies are to be a living sacrifice, there's no such thing as a partial sacrifice. It's a complete dedication to God and if we've repented, we rededicate ourselves to that.
The last one (seventh) he mentions is vindication. Now frankly as I prepared this sermon I began to read the words for this, it opened up something I really hadn't quite seen in this way before. Other translations said, "a readiness to see justice done" and another translation translated it simply by the word "punishment." It's an unusual thing. One of the commentaries puts it this way: "To see punishment as rightly deserved, to give justice to someone who has been wronged." In other words, there's a duality to this word. It includes both the concept of willingly accepting any appropriate discipline and a desire to make things right to the ones who are wronged by our sins wherever that is possible.
So how did you do? Looking at those fruits, how did you do? For most of us, we probably see some of those things more fully than others and I hope that we see all of them to some degree or another, that's good, that's encouraging, that's what Paul said for those people in Corinth. He did see that in them and we hope we can see it as well. But before we wrap up the examination of godly repentance, let's look at two more brief aspects.
Remember how we used to talk about their being two ways of life—the give way and the get way? Genuine repentance is the doorway into the give way of life. In instructing the ministry what to look for in someone who wanted to be baptized, years ago Mr. Armstrong said to look for someone who had completely surrendered his will to God. Godly repentance involves a complete, unconditional surrender of our wills to God's will. People like to talk about God's unconditional love for His people, but there is another side to that coin. The give way of life is a way of unconditional obedience to God. The get way is a way of conditional obedience. "I will worship God as long as it looks right to me, but if it doesn't look right to me, I'll do what I want to do, what looks right to me."
That way of thinking is going to always produce sin and death. So repentance involves a complete surrender to God.
And finally, many people see repentance only in the context of things that they do or fail to do; they see sin only as a specific action which is contrary to God's law. But repentance involves more than lists of do's and don'ts. That's what Paul told the church in Corinth. I Cor. 5, he put it in the context of keeping Passover and the Days of Unleavened Bread. In verse 7 he talks about purging out the old leaven, which is proper. In verse 8 he says:
I Cor. 5:8 — Therefore let us keep the Feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
That word "malice" refers to an evil way of thinking. The word "wickedness" refers to a way of living that is the outgrowth of that evil way of thinking. If we think of sin only as the actions that are involved and we try to repent at that level, it's kind of like going home and eliminating all the bread, all the crackers, the cookies, the cakes but keeping the yeast and the baking powder and those things which produce the leaven in the first place. Perhaps it's best illustrated by a lady that I knew a number of year ago, I was counseling for baptism in a little backwoods town in West Virginia and as we were going through the counseling, I reached the point where I asked her, "Well, just why is it that you want to be baptized?" I remember at that point she looked down at the floor for a moment, when she looked up her eyes had begun to tear up, her chin started to tremble and she said, "Because I'm sick of being me and I don't want to be me anymore." To me she captured the sense of repentance better than anything I've been able to say today, that's for sure. "Because I'm sick of being me and I don't want to be me anymore."
Godly repentance is not essentially about what we did, it's about what we are. Repentance is not a point we reach before baptism, it's not a task we can scratch off of our to-do list and go on, repentance is process, a life-long process. In this human life, it is an unfinishable task but the good news is that God is eager to help us in that process. You remember, again, I won't turn to it, II Peter 3:9, "The Lord is not slack concerning His promise as some count slackness, but is long suffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance." That is God's desire.
I'd like to turn to one final passage, Romans 2 and we'll read it in the New King James here as most of us have, but I also want to share another translation with you which I thought is a very good grasp of this.
Rom. 2:4 — Or do you despise the riches of His goodness, forbearance and longsuffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance.
That's fine, there's nothing wrong with that, the goodness of God leads to repentance, that's what it's telling us. It's put this way in another translation and I think it captures it well: "Do you fail to understand that God is kind, because He wants to lead you to repent?"
The reason for God's kindness is to lead us to repent. As we prepare for the Passover this coming week, we need to seek genuine godly repentance in our lives, if this is a part of our preparation for the Passover and the Feast, as we go through that Feast and symbolically live out the promises the Passover and the Days of Unleavened Bread offer to us, then we'll be able to move forward with a sense of confidence, purpose in living the Christian life that God has called us to live.