[Gary Petty] In the beginning of the gospel of Matthew, Mark and Luke, we have the accounts of John the Baptist. Now it’s very interesting. Baptism means immersion. It means to be totally immersed into something. Water baptism means to be totally immersed into water. I was looking at a more modern translation recently, and John the Baptist was translated John the Immerser, which actually is more of an exact translation. John the Immerser – he put them in the water – totally under the water. But in that account – and we will cover that account in more detail in the next sermon – but in that account, the Pharisees come, and he’s telling people to repent, and they are confessing their sins. Water baptism is obviously a symbol of God washing away their sins. And he tells the Pharisees, “Bring forth fruit fit for repentance.” In other words, you are going to have to do something here to show that you have repented before God. Repentance, you see – if you read through the Old Testament – is a common theme. All the prophets brought messages of repentance – for Israel to repent, or turn back to God – and their nation would be saved.
 
In the New Testament, repentance is a common theme. Repent, turn to God, and receive His Spirit, and become part of His family as part of His church. In fact – we read in Acts 2 – we see the first instructions after the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. And on that Pentecost, the Holy Spirit was poured out on the church. Peter gave his famous speech there in Herod’s temple. And there were numerous Jews there that were that very moved by what he said – that Jesus was the Messiah that they had been expecting, and this was the time that they were to respond to God. So, it says in verse 37:

Acts 2:37 – And when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Men and brethren what shall we do?” They were just motivated to the core of their being – “What are we supposed to do now?” Remember, these were people who worshiped God – the true God – yet they realized there was something missing, because they had realized they had missed the Messiah. Peter said to them “Repent and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and you shall receive the gift if the Holy Spirt.”

That sentence contains a lot of information, because in that sentence we have a lot of the information, or the doctrines, that are contained in Hebrews 6. Last time I was here I started a series of sermons on Hebrews 6:1 and 2. Let’s go to Hebrews 6 and look at the list here, because two weeks ago I covered faith – not just in terms of how we may apply faith, but the doctrine of faith. What is at the core of the entire teaching about faith? In Verse 1 of Hebrews 6, Paul writes:

Hebrews 6:1 – Leaving the discussion of the elementary principles of Christ, let us go on to perfection. He says, “Okay, we have to know who Christ is or the Christian church has no meaning.” Christian – without Christ means nothing. So, we have to know who Christ is. We have to know what His work was, why He came to this earth, why He died, why He went back to the Father – what the whole purpose of this Messiah is. So, he says, “Looking at that – we now know who Christ is – let us go on to perfection” – which has to do with sanctification – living holy lives. So, he tells the church you have to live holy lives. He says” …not laying again the foundation. So, he is saying we know these things. We should look at them every once in a while. We should talk about them. And here we are going through a series of sermons on them, but we don’t have to doubt what these things mean. This is what we build the church on: …the foundation of repentance from dead works, of faith toward God, the doctrine of baptisms, of laying on of hands, of the resurrection of the dead and of eternal judgment. So, as we realize we understand Christ, we understand we have to go on to perfection, we have to live these holy lives, what do we build everything off of? He says you build it off of these things. You build them off of repentance from dead works, of faith toward God, doctrines of baptisms, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead and eternal judgment.

Two weeks ago, we went through faith. Now, I did that on purpose, because the next one we are going through today is repentance. But to really repent, there has to be a breakthrough in your faith to begin with. So, faith precedes repentance, although they work together, as we will see, and they lead to baptisms – that is plural – there’s a reason for it. We have faith and we have repentance. Now when we talk about faith, we talk about the beginning of faith that leads to baptism, but obviously faith is something we grow in our entire lives. We have a lot more faith now than we had when we were baptized. You will have more faith in the future than you have now.

The same thing is true about repentance. When we talk about repentance, we understand that there’s a repentance we go through before baptism, and then we begin to realize repentance is a state of mind. It is a lifestyle that you live for the rest of your life. You actually grow in repentance. You understand repentance more now, hopefully, than you did when you were baptized – when you were originally repented. So, we are going to look at repentance today. Next time – in two weeks – we will take the sermon and Bible study and we’ll cover baptisms and laying on of hands, because they are connected. Those two doctrines are connected. All these doctrines are connected to each other. They lay the foundation of so many of the teachings of the scriptures.

What is repentance? We are going to go through the doctrine of repentance, so what does it even mean? Most of you know how to define repentance. In the Old Testament, you have the Hebrew words…there are two basic words that are translated repent or repentance. One of them means to feel sorry – like an apology. “I am sorry.” It is repentant. “I wish I would not have done that.” The other word is interesting, because it means you are walking in one direction and you turn around and walk in the other direction. You’ve repented. “Oh, I am going this way, but I really don’t want to go this way.” So, you turn around and walk the other way. I think that is a strong visual understanding of repentance. Hebrew is a very visual language. It didn’t have that many words and when it uses a description it’s deliberately trying to create an image in the people’s minds. The image, then, had more power, if you will, than just a set of words. So, you are walking toward something and you turn and walk the other way.

Now the Greek word that is translated repent has no relation to the Hebrew words. The Greek word means to perceive afterward. Now, that is a very interesting concept – to perceive afterward. It means you see something, and then you understand it, and you say, “Oh, I didn’t understand that.” It can be literally translated to change your mind. That’s the word that’s translated repentance or repent much of the time in the New Testament. It’s like, “Oh I see that now.” You perceive something afterward you didn’t know before, and it literally can be to change your mind. You see something that is different – “I was wrong, I understand.”

This begins to give us an understanding when you put these words together, of the enormity of the concept of repent. Repentance is more than just saying, “I committed some sins. Here is a list of my sins.” You know, people come for baptism. I don’t ask for a list of your sins. I knew of a Methodist camp one time – a teenage camp – where they had the kids write down everything that they thought they had committed that was a sin, and then hold the paper up and go nail it to a cross that they had there. That’s a very visual thing to do, but repentance is beyond that. I understand the visual thing they’re trying to achieve, but repentance is more than that. Repentance is more than that. We begin to understand, as we repent and as we go through this, that once again, our repentance that we must do before baptism is just the beginning of repentance.

Okay, we have to repent. We have to change our mind. We have to turn and walk the other way. We have to be sorry. There is an emotion involved with repentance. “What am I supposed to repent of? Give me a definition.” Okay, sins. There’s that ugly word. You say, “Sin – that is so judgmental.” There is no good news – there’s no hope – without first confronting sin. Because the good news is how to save us from sin. That’s the good news. So, if we can’t discuss sin, because it is too judgmental, then the problem is, we can’t get the good news. Save you from what? “Well, what’s killing you? I can’t tell you, because it is too judgmental.” So, we have to deal with the reality of sin and its ugliness in our lives. It’s ugly when we understand what it is.

So, what is it? What is sin? I want to go through a passage that describes sin in the classic way, and then describes sin in a greater way. When people, who grew up in the church, say to me, “Can anybody understand what it’s like to grow up in the church – you know, it’s a different experience than those who didn’t?” And my answer is, “Yeah, I grew up in the church.” I mean, I was seven years old. I can remember Sunday school – I liked it. I remember Christmas and Easter and stuff. But I mean, for all practical purposes, I grew up in the church. But I want you to understand something. Every writer of the New Testament except Luke, grew up, if you will, in the church. They all grew up in Judaism, which was the church at the time. It was the church at the time. It was the only place where the true God was worshipped. Judaism was the only place where the true God was worshipped. Pagans didn’t worship the true God. They still went to the temple. They still kept the Ten Commandments. Yet every one of them had to repent. Every one of them had to repent.

There was a flaw in what? And that’s what Paul had to deal with. Paul saw himself as good guy, because he kept, as good as he could, the laws of God. He knew what the definition of sin was – to break the laws of God. He had never committed adultery. Paul had never stolen something. Paul had never killed anybody. So what did he really need to repent of? Then he has to confront Jesus Christ, or Jesus Christ confronts him. When he does, he begins to see things differently. In fact, he repents, and is baptized, and receives the Holy Spirit. Now remember, he’s following God, but he didn’t realize how incomplete his experience was. He didn’t realize it. Then suddenly he realized, “I actually have to repent. God doesn’t accept me exactly the way I am, even though I am a good guy.” And when we get to the book of Romans – and Romans is so fascinating, because Paul deals with so many issues in the book of Romans – one of the issues he deals with is – it is years…years had gone by since he had been baptized – and he’s still dealing with sin. You say, “Well, that has to be easy. He isn’t worshipping any idols. He’s not using God’s name in vain. What in the world would Paul be doing to break one of the Ten Commandments after years? I mean, here’s an apostle writing the scripture. Surely, he would have no trouble with sin!” But he has a problem with sin when he begins to understand it in its expanded understanding.

I’ll show you what I mean. Let’s go to Romans 7. This is why repentance – yes, we repent before we are baptized – repentance is a life long process. When we get to baptisms, you’ll realize that without faith, repentance, and baptisms of both water and the Holy Spirit, you cannot receive eternal life. We are commanded to do these things. That’s why Paul says – foundational doctrines here – “If you don’t do these things, you are not really part of the church.” So, these are important. Paul here is breaking into the middle of a thought, but you will see where he is going really quick – verse 7 of Romans, chapter 7:

Romans 7:7 – What shall we say then…. Now he had just made some very negative remarks about the law. Now Paul will go back and forth. People will say, “We don’t understand Paul. How dishonest he is. The law is bad. The law is good. You don’t have to keep the law. You have to keep the law. He seems to go back and forth.” You have to understand Paul’s experience to understand Paul. Now there are a few passages of Paul that I do not understand. And if I don’t understand before the resurrection, in the resurrection I am going to find him. “What in the world did you mean?” I have a couple of questions about Paul. But when you really understand Paul’s background, you begin to see the brilliance of how God is working through him, because he sees everything in a big picture of what God is doing. So, he just said what would appear to be some negative comments about the law.

What shall we say then, is the law is sin? Okay, the law is bad. He said: Certainly not! On the contrary, I would have not known sin except through the law, for I would not have known covetousness unless the law had said, “You shall not covet.” Now this is very important, because he zeroes in on the Ten Commandments here. In the book of James, James will talk about love God, love your neighbor and the Ten Commandments. He zeroes in on these things as really important. So he’s not talking about the Levitical priesthood laws. He’s zeroing in on the really important laws here, and he says, “How would I know sin?” So, the law defines sin. “I wouldn’t know it if there wasn’t a law,” he said.
 
Like John says, sin is lawlessness. So it is – it’s without law. The law defines sin. The natural human being doesn’t know that. If you don’t believe that, all you had to do was be with me two weeks ago, as I watched my two-year-old and the four-year-old. One has a toy, the other wants a toy. The other takes the toy away, the other one screams and hollers hits the other. The other one takes the toy and beans the other one with it. Okay? Of course, they always hate it when grandpa gets involved. I walk over and say, “Ugh, you little rug rats. It’s my toy now. If you want it back, you’ve got to fix this.” The little one has figured out. She says, “Grandpa….” “No, nah, nah….  We are going to fix this, or I keep the toy.” Or, like I tell them, when they come to my house, “Look around” – when they’re fighting over something – “see everything in this house? It belongs to me. You want it back? Then you fix it. Then you get it back.”

We have these conversations – not all the time, but once in a while. You realize that a child does not naturally know, do they? A baby is born, a baby is not evil, but it doesn’t take long to start saying, “Wait a minute. They are doing wrong things here” – losing their temper, fighting over a toy. No, you put a bunch of two-year olds in a room, and one of them sees a toy the other has, and they’ll just walk over and take it out of their hand. No concept that it’s stealing. It is not theirs. What they’re doing is wrong, but they feel they’re right. “I want that toy.” There is no process to even figure out why that’s wrong. They just go take it. So, Paul says, “I would not have known it. Even an adult, I would not have known right and wrong, except for the law.”

So that gives us our primary definition of sin. So, there’s no way to understand forgiveness without understanding the importance of God’s law. There is no way. Paul is going to take this to the next step. Remember, Paul kept the Ten Commandments. Paul had to repent. Paul kept the Ten Commandments better than, I guess, any of us did before we were baptized, and he still had to repent. What in the world did he have to repent of?  He says:

V-8-11 – ...but sin taking opportunity by the commandment, produced in me all manner of evil desire. For apart from the law, sin was dead. In other words, “I didn’t know about sin until there was the law. But I had a problem. The law showed me” – and we will see how he says this -
the law showed me,” Paul says, “how to live, and I could do the letter of the law, because I was pretty good, but the law just kept showing me and producing in me…I just kept finding ways to break the law – not overtly but covertly.” Look what he says: I was alive once without the law but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died. And the commandment, which was to bring life, I found to bring death. For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me by it killed me.

Now this is really interesting. The commandment came along, and I died. I’d looked at the Ten Commandments…. Now he didn’t believe that until he met Christ. He believed he was obeying God by keeping the Ten Commandments. But then he is saying, “I really saw the Ten Commandments,” and he says, “they killed me. I could not save myself, because sin deceived me.” Here’s his new definition – not new – expanded definition of sin. He says, “Sin is defined by the law, and now he says, “Sin is in me.” Paul will now define sin as a force – as a principle – not just an action, like “I am bowing down to a statue,” but it is a force within his being. Sin has now become a part of him – not just defined by the law, but part of his very nature. Sin is in him and it is killing him. And the law is pronouncing him dead – guilty. Now, suddenly he makes a statement that seems totally out of kilter with what he just said. Verse 12:

V-12 – Therefore the law is holy and just and good. Now wait a minute, he just said, “I was okay until the law came along, and now I am dead, and it’s in me, and the law is killing me. But it’s good, and it’s holy, and it’s wonderful.” And you think, “How can he say that? Is Paul crazy?” Well, verse 13:

V-13-15, 20 – Has then what has been good become death to me? Certainly not. So, he stops and he says, “Okay, I am not really saying that the law is evil because the law is killing me. That’s not what I am saying.” But sin…. He started with sin is the transgression of the law, and now it is something inside of him. But sin, that it might appear sin, was producing death in me through what is good, so that sin, through the commandment, might become exceedingly sinful. He says, “Sin, which is inside of me, I brought to the commandment. The commandment showed me what was good, but all the commandment did was expand sin.” “I didn’t know taking the toy from my little sister was bad and then my parents taught me. Now, every time I go to take the toy from my little sister, I still do it, but I feel guilty, because now my sin is exceedingly bad, when before, I liked it.” See the problem? Sin isn’t just the law. It’s inside us. “And I really, really, like taking her toy. And now I feel guilty. All this law did was make me know I was doing wrong. I liked it when I thought it was good.” So, Paul is going from, “I kept the letter of the law because I thought it earned me salvation to, “Oh my! It’s inside of me. I always thought this was an external thing. Don’t do this, and if I don’t do it, I have not sinned.” See, that is not how it is. The law can tell you, “Do not commit adultery.” The law can’t tell you, “You don’t want to commit adultery.”

See the difference? To want to commit adultery is something that’s inside of you. You can not commit adultery, but inside, you just want to do it. You desire to do it. So where is the sin? You haven’t broken the law. “I didn’t commit adultery.” Paul says, “No, you sinned,” which is what Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount – “you just lust after a woman and you’ve committed adultery.” He said, “The sin’s in there. Just because you haven’t done it, it’s still in you.” Paul goes on: For we know…. Now he’s going to say something good about the law again. For we know that the law is spiritual – but here’s the problem – but I am carnal, sold under sin. For what I am doing I do not understand. Now remember, this is a man who has been converted for, probably, close to a couple of decades, and he still looks at his nature, and he says, “Okay, I figured out the law defines sin. And then I took it a step further and now sin’s inside me. I realize it’s in there. It’s not just a matter of me keeping these rules, because I can try to keep the rules, but how do I get it out of me – out of my mind – because it is in there.” For what I am doing I do not understand. For what I will to do, that I do not practice, but for what I hate, that I do. Now, he goes on and describes the reason for this is, sin dwells in me.

It’s a remarkable breakthrough in understanding. Oh…. See, here’s the question: If a child was born – and of course, a little baby doesn’t sin – and we had perfect adults somehow teach that child – and we know there are no perfect adults, so we have a problem – if we somehow got perfect adults, and put this child in a perfect environment, and teach this child, the Ten Commandments perfectly…? Well, no, we can’t do that. It’s not possible. Sin becomes part of that child very early. It becomes part of their nature. It is part of our nature.

When we repent, we are not just asking God to forgive us of our actions, we are acknowledging to God that we are sinners. That is a huge jump sometimes for people to take. “I committed some sins. I know I have committed some sins. Here is a list of my sins.” Okay, those are just symptoms. Those are symptoms. The problem is in our own head. It’s in our own minds. In our own hearts. Sin has become part of us. And now God says, “Okay, here’s the law. Let’s start with that. Now let’s deal with the sin that is in you.” Real repentance takes us to the sin that is in us. You know, that’s what Paul, Peter, John, James – they all kept the Ten Commandments. They all kept the Sabbath. They all grew up in an environment that worshipped God. And every one of them had to come to the grips with what Paul did. “Oh! Sin is in me. Sin is in me and Judaism can’t take care of that. Only the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit can take care of that. Nothing else can.”

So, they had to take this to the greater understanding and they had to go through this process – just like those of us, who grow up in the church, have to realize some day. “Okay, I never went around and sold drugs, or robbed liquor stores. My list of sins is pretty long. I was a pretty rowdy kid. I mean, I can’t hide behind that.” But at the same time, there’s a point where you realize, “I am a sinner. Inside of me is something that’s terribly, horribly wrong.” You see why people don’t really like the real gospel? They don’t like the real gospel because they have to deal with something that is really ugly about themselves – the real need for forgiveness and change – to walk the other way, to perceive afterwards and change your mind.
 
Now you say, “Okay, how do I do that? How do I work up repentance?” You can’t. In the book of Romans here – Romans, chapter 2 – as Paul began to understand, “Okay, sin is the breaking of the law” – the first definition. “Second, ‘Uh oh, our nature is sinful. It desires sin. It wants sin.’ It just gets all messed up. As babies we just get all messed up.” So, he makes this very important statement. Once again, we are breaking into a thought, but this statement is pretty concise – verse 4 of Romans 2:

Romans 2:4 – Or do you despise the riches of His goodness – God’s goodness – forbearance and longsuffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance. Some translations say, leads you toward repentance.

You and I don’t wake up one day and say, “You know, I’ve done some bad stuff. I think I will go and repent today.” God reaches down and pulls us. He leads us toward repentance. In other words, if God doesn’t start the process, you and I can’t even repent. We don’t have the ability to do that without Him doing something. When you repented – if you were baptized – it’s because God came along and said “Hey, you’re messed up.” And you said, “Oh, I guess I am.” And He started working with you. Now, you can resist God leading you toward repentance. He doesn’t going to make you do it. We respond, but we don’t start any process. You have heard me say this over and over again. It is the grace of God that starts any process in your life. You didn’t repent because you are better than the person next to you. You repented because God gave you some grace and led you toward repentance, and you stumbled along, and repented.

Now I gave this sermon in Murfreesboro, and some of them said, “I really didn’t understand repentance when I was baptized.” I said, “Neither did I.” You just understand a little bit of it. That’s all you have – just a little bit. Because God is leading you. He’s drawing you into this repentance. Lots of people walk away from it. But He leads you into it. So you say, “What must I do to work up repentance? No, you go and ask God to lead you into repentance, because He has to take us there. Now we must follow. I’m not trying to make this irresistible grace – that God does something and you have to do it. No, you don’t have to. He won’t make you do it, but He has to initiate everything.

So, He initiates even repentance. He actually initiates faith. You say, “Well, how does He initiate faith? I believed in Him.” “How did you believe in Him?” “Well, I don’t know. I read the Bible.” “Where did you get the Bible?” “I don’t know. I just looked at creation and thought there was a God?” “Where did you get creation?” You see, He actually had to give you something to have faith in for faith to even start. Once again, we just don’t come to faith in a vacuum. One day you wake up, and say, “Ha! I never thought of it before, but there is a God.” It doesn’t work that way. Everything is God taking us, and pulling us, and saying, “Will you follow?” Repentance is the same way. That’s why no repentance, though, can truly happen unless you understand you have…. It’s not like you say, “I list my sins. You know, I have a short list of sins. My best friend in college, man, this guy was a reprobate! His sins were like thousands of sins! So I’m not as bad as him.” But when you accept that sin is inside you, it doesn’t matter how much is inside. It either gets fixed or it doesn’t. Any sin inside of you kills you. Any sin inside of us kills us. That’s why we’re born, and we’re already dying. Sin gets in there and we are already dying. Only the substitute of Jesus Christ – only the substitute of Jesus Christ – can buy us back from a judgment that is upon us – that we are worthy of death.

1 Peter 2, and verse 21 – he was talking here about the subject: if bad things happen to you, be patient. You know, if you are falsely accused, don’t get too upset over it. So verse 21 says:
1 Peter 2:21 – For to this you were called because Christ also suffered for us leaving us an example that you should follow His steps – who committed no sin, nor was deceit was found in His mouth – who when He was reviled, did not revile in return, when He suffered, he did not threaten, but committed Himself to Him who judges righteously…. Now this is all one sentence, so you have to get all of that to get where he’s going here. …who Himself bore our sins in His own body on a tree, that we, having died to sin, might live for righteousness – by whose stripes you were healed. Healing is a special blessing from God. By Christ’s stripes we can receive physical healing. But we receive more than physical healing. Now, “by His stripes you were healed” is a quote from the Old Testament. What is interesting here – it’s past tense. “By His stripes you were healed.” He’s expanding this out to even spiritual healing. We are spiritually healed by the death – the beating – the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ as our substitute. Because that’s what you and I deserve. There can be no forgiveness until you accept that. Because once you accept that, you can let go of the past when you are forgiven. You can let it go. It does not matter in the mind of God.

We carry around all this baggage of the past. Now this is why also repentance is a continual process. It’s a continual process, because well, we still sin. Then we can repent, and we can be forgiven, and it is no longer there. God doesn’t care. He doesn’t take away all the temporary penalties, but it’s no longer an issue between you and God. There’s no barrier between us and God. Because of this – and we keep coming back to this every year at the Passover – He forces us to come back to this every year at the Passover, and say nothing matters, if this doesn’t happen. That’s true. None of this matters if it doesn’t happen. None of your Sabbath keeping matters. Nothing matters if Christ didn’t die for us. It doesn’t matter. You say, “Wow! You are against the law.” See, that’s what they accused Paul of. No, I am not against that law. I just realize sin is inside of me. If God doesn’t fix that, there’s nothing there. There is nothing that will work. Repentance is dealing with that. When you are baptized, you only understand a little bit of it. As time goes on, you understand, “Sin is in me.” Decades after Paul was converted, he is saying – read the rest of chapter 7 – “Oh wretched man that I am! I’m a mess,” Paul says. Then he goes on in chapter 8, and says, “God has a way of fixing this, and fortunately, He is doing it in my life.”
 
Now John the Baptist said that we are to bear the fruits of repentance. What in the world are the fruits of repentance? He didn’t explain. And there’s not a lot of explanation of the fruits of repentance anywhere in the New Testament. But we do have a fascinating example.

In the Murfreesboro Bible study – Wednesday night Bible studies – we’ve been going through 1 Corinthians. It’s just…. My wife gets upset. “I don’t want to hear about these peoples’ problems any more. This church is a mess!” I say, “Don’t talk to me about the people in Nashville that way anymore.” No, she didn’t….  That’s what I tell people. If you think you’re in a bad congregation, just read 1 Corinthians, and all of a sudden, you just love your congregation. You just can’t help it. “Wow! These are the greatest people in the world!” But here we have this congregation - they fight, they argue, they tear each other apart. There are men going to prostitutes. There’s a man having an affair with his step-mother. There are people getting drunk at the Passover. Their Sabbath services are something you wouldn’t want to go to.  I mean, they’re hollering and screaming, and different people are giving different sermons at the same time – in different languages! Different people are singing different songs at the same time. It’s just bizarre! As we covered in the Bible study, at the end of the first book of Corinthians – actually, that’s not the first letter – we only have two of the series of letters saved – but at the end of what is called 1 Corinthians, he says, “I wanted Apollos to come back, but he won’t come.” Apollos just said, “I’m not going back to those people.” “Yeah, go back and fix it.” I think it is partly Apollo’s fault, to tell you the truth, but he’s not going back to fix it. Paul said, “Well, I’m going to have to come back and fix it, and it’s going to be ugly.” He basically tells them, “This is not going to be good. This church is so wrong, I am going to have to go back and fix it.”
 
2 Corinthians is a letter that says, “Wow! You actually got it. You actually read the letter and started to change. You repented.” And in the comments he makes about their repentance, we get to see some of the fruits of their repentance. So, let’s go to 2 Corinthians. He is talking in a group thing here, but as you go through this, you’ll realize that they, as individuals, had to do this too. As a congregation, many of them were going through this experience, and in doing so, they were exhibiting the fruits of real repentance. Verse 8:

2 Corinthians 7:8-10 – For even if I made you sorry with my letter, I do not regret it, though I did regret it. I love the way Paul will throw in these little very personal messages. Remember, he doesn’t know he’s writing scripture. When Moses sits down and writes Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, he knows he is writing the history of everything from the creation to the patriarchs to Israel. This is going to be passed on and on. Paul is writing some letters to some people, so he makes all these personal comments. “I wrote you the letter and I didn’t regret it, but you know, there was a time when I really regretted it. I thought, “I shouldn’t have written that letter. I was so hard on those people. They’re not going to listen anyway. When I show up in Corinth they might throw me out and stone me. I’ve been stoned by everybody else. Why not one of the churches?” So, he says, “I regretted it for a while.” But he goes on, and he says: For I perceive the same epistle – or letter – made you sorry, though only for a little while. He says, “I know I hurt you, but you’re getting over the hurt.” His correction hurt them. He knew it would, but he said, “I see you are getting over it.” Now I rejoice, not that you were made sorry, but that your sorrow led to repentance. For you were made sorry in a godly manner that you might suffer loss from us in nothing. “You produced a godly sorrow, so that now when I show up, there’s not going to be any problem between us. There will be no loss between us.”

For godly sorrow produces repentance leading to salvation, not to be regretted, but the sorrow of the world produces death. What in the world is Paul thinking about – Godly sorrow and sorrow of the world? I thought a lot about this. Worldly sorrow is what we naturally feel as human beings when we have done something wrong and we’re reaping the bad consequences. We’ve done something wrong and the bad consequences are in our lives. And so what we do is, we feel sorry about it. I have never been in a prison, and visited a person, who didn’t say, “I am really sorry for what I did.” In this sense of the word, they mean it. “If I could go back and re-do it, I wouldn’t do it.” But what it is about this worldly sorrow is, there is a sorrow for the consequences, but there is no desire to turn and walk the other way. In other words, “I want to keep where I am going, but I wish to have some acceptance from God, and I don’t want to suffer the consequences.” It is sort of like a spiritual drug.

Have you ever known a person that every time they have an ailment, they have a bunch of doctors they go to, and each give them a different drug – a different shot or a different drug? I have a friend of mine, who is an anesthesiologist. And he said what frustrated him the most was when people came in for operations, many times – he said he felt at least half the time – the people were there to have an operation, but the cause of the problem was the poly-drugs that they were using. They’d been taking drugs to mask symptoms, the drugs interacted with each other – never actually solved the problem – and now the body was breaking down. He said he had many people that came in that had as many as twenty drugs. Now I am not saying taking drugs is wrong, or taking many is wrong. You take what you need. But I’ve known people myself I’ve counseled, working with a doctor, to get them off certain drugs, and their health got better. They were using drugs that actually…and sometimes the pharmacist will tell somebody, “You do know you’re on drugs that produce a side affect that basically wipes out what they are both supposed to do, because they are interacting with each other.” And he said, “So many operations….” As an anesthesiologist, you have to study all the drugs the person is on, because there are different anesthetics that would kill someone, if they were using certain drugs. Is this the way get spiritually?

This is the what worldly sorrow is: “God, come to church, sing some songs and hear a nice message, see some people, get my spiritual shot. I feel better now. And I am just going to go live the way I’ve always lived.” That’s worldly sorrow. Nothing has really changed. “I haven’t really turned to walk the other way, but I get my weekly medicine.”

What is, then, Godly sorrow? Godly sorrow must respect, fear and love God. It is part of a relationship with God. Godly sorrow is based in, you are seeking God – seeking to love Him and you have a respect and even a fear – a proper fear. We’ll talk about that in a moment. It’s more than regret. With Godly sorrow, you actually mourn over your own sins – not because you say, “I’ve reaped bad things,” but because you say you believe and understand it is not what God desires. God desires goodness. God desires goodness and when we do things that are not good, then we know that we have hurt Him. We know that it affects Him. Godly sorrow opens our hearts and minds to be reunited with God – to turn towards Him and be reunited with Him.

Verse 11 begins an interesting list of things that these people did. And Paul says, “I understand that you actually repented, because I saw this.” He says – verse 11:

V-11 – For observe this very thing, that you sorrowed in a godly manner. What diligence it produced in you. Diligence – for some reason, the Corinthians had become very serious and active about dealing with sin in their congregation. They hadn’t been before. They, basically, were living their lives, you know. There just was no real diligence about sin – about right and wrong. Suddenly, they became very concerned, and they became very active – very serious about what was going one. He says: what clearing of yourselves. They began to remove sin from their congregation. Now we know they actually removed the man who was committing adultery with his step-mother, because in know in 2 Corinthians, Paul says, “Well, he has repented. You have to bring him back. Come on folks, bring him back. What are you doing? You can’t keep him out. He repented. He stopped and repented before God and you have to bring him back.” They had asked him to leave, which Paul told them to do. They began to clear themselves.

Now, remember this is group of people, so it’s happening individually in their lives. The reason I say that is, because it would have been just as easy for them to get into a self-righteous mode. “Oh, Paul, we wanted to let you know, the man that was committing adultery with his step-mother? We all took him out after services last week and stoned him to death. We thought that would make you happy.” “Well, see, now you are all murderers, and you’re all getting kicked out of the church. Nobody show up. Just don’t even come back.” He didn’t do that. So, we have to realize that self-righteous thing that could have happened here, didn’t happen. So, they’re individually clearing themselves. They’re dealing with their lives. It says: ...what indignation…. They actually become angry – angry at what is inside of them. Just like Paul could say, “Oh, the law is good and holy and just,” and David could say, “Oh, how love I thy law!” Both David and Paul could say, “Oh, what a sinner I am, and I hate it. It makes me distraught.”

And then, you read both the writings of Paul and the writings of David, and you find people who turned to God and were healed from that. He says: …what fear – what fear. You think, “Well, we should never fear God.” There’s a whole lot in the Bible about fear. I could create a whole sermon – maybe I will, some day – about the fear of God. There’s a remarkably simple statement made by Solomon that helps us understand something. He says, “The fear of the LORD is to hate evil.” We are to fear God, because we fear evil. Understand something. The loving God will not put up with evil forever. He will not. There’s going to come a time when He eradicates evil from His family. It is going to happen. There is a time when He judges evil people to the lake of fire. That’s real! I see God as a loving Father, but I also know He will do that – which is actually a comfort. Would you want to live in a universe filled with Adolf Hitlers for the rest of your life – for eternity? He’s not going to let it happen. We should fear evil. We should hate it. We should fear the results of evil. We only fear God when we are unrepentant. When we are repentant, and receiving healing from God, we don’t fear Him. He says we are to fear God and fear what evil can do. They began to fear what evil can do.

They began to realize it. …with vehement desire…. The Corinthians became passionate about their Christianity – passionate about it. When I baptize people…. I see so much of this in people when I baptize. I think it happens a lot. People are being baptized, and before they’re baptized, they will say, “I have to be baptized. I have to be baptized.” I’ve had people doing baptism counseling and suddenly, we don’t talk for about baptism for a year. And one day they call me, and say, “I have to be baptized,” and why. They’ll go through all these statements just like this. “You know, I hate my sin. A year ago, I thought sin was just breaking the law, but it’s more than that. It is that, but it is more than that. I have to be baptized. Without God’s Spirit, I’m hopeless. I have no hope for eternal life or salvation.” “I think you’re ready to be baptized. I’ve just been waiting for you to get there.” I see that happen a lot. “Yep, I can’t teach you anymore. I’m waiting for this to happen.” And there’s this passion! Think about the first year after you were baptized. You probably tried to convert everybody you knew.
They became passionate. It says: …what zeal…. Now they’re really working hard. They’re cleaning up their lives, and doing things, and suddenly Corinth has come from this church of confusion and sin and infighting to a place where God is working. And then he says: …what vindication…. Vindication is an interesting word. In Greek, it means vengeance. One translation says self-vengeance. “What vengeance you took out on yourselves to get right with God – to clean up your act and become right before God!”

You look at that list and you think, “Oh, there are the fruits of repentance.” Now obviously, the fruits of repentance would be, you start keeping the Ten Commandments – the letter of the law – because Paul could do that without God’s Spirit. Sometimes, someone will come, and say, “I want to be baptized.” “Okay, but you have to move out from living with your girlfriend. You can’t be living with your girlfriend and get baptized.” “Why?” “Well, we have some work here.” See, you can’t be just openly sinning like that and be baptized. So, you say, “Okay, I’m not doing it. I’m not living with my girlfriend. I’m not worshiping idols. I’m not taking God’s name in vain. I’m ready.” “Okay let’s deal with the sin inside you. Let’s at least talk about that, because you’re not going to get that until after you are baptized for a while – after you have God’s Spirit for a while, and then you really start to get it.” “Oh, wait a minute. I’m not just dealing with something out here. I am dealing with something in here.”
 
Repentance is a foundational doctrine. The church doesn’t really exist without Christ, going on to perfection, and these six doctrines in the middle. This is what things are built on. It was before the Passover, I gave a sermon on Psalm 51. Go back and review that. I didn’t intend to go through that today, but Psalm 51 is the heart of repentance. It’s the heart of repentance – a man that had sinned so horribly that he believed God was going to take his Holy Spirit away from him – because he was converted, and he sinned that horribly – and said, “If you will forgive me, I will write a psalm” – in fact, he was writing it – “and, in fact, I will sing it to everyone.” And we still sing it to everyone today. I don’t care if you go into a Church of God, a Seventh Day Adventist church, a Catholic church, a Methodist church, a Mormon church, a Jehovah’s Witness church, you know what you are going to find? A hymn of Psalm 51. God made sure that everyone is singing what David said – which shows God forgave him. God forgave him. He said, “I am going to hold you to it.”
 
Repentance is importance – before baptism and as a way of life. I’ve seen people be baptized who didn’t repent. They pretended to repent, and admitted they pretended to repent, and God never gave them his Spirit. And they’ve told me, “I don’t even know what God’s Spirit is. What do you mean, did I receive God’s Spirit? My friends were getting baptized, so I said what they said, and got baptized.” You say, “Okay, do you get this?” “No.” “Do you want to be part of this?” “No.” “Okay. It’s okay.” They walk away and never come back. I say, “If you ever want to come back, and you want to turn to God, let me know, because He’s not going anywhere.” But they never repented.

Salvation is a free gift from God. Faith is something He has to start and grow in us. Repentance is something He has to start and grow in us. And yet, both with faith and repentance, even though He starts this process, you and I have to respond for it to be completed. If you don’t respond, it doesn’t get completed. In theological terms, it’s called synergy. There is an actual theological doctrine called synergy – interaction between God and a human being – and it is a different scientific application. Synergy – between God and a human being – between Him and us. But He has to start it. Repentance involves the acceptance that you’re a sinner – not just that you have committed sins, but you are a sinner and condemned by God’s law. Repentance involves the acceptance of Jesus Christ as the substitute sacrifice for your sins. Repentance involves the total surrender of your life to God, and in doing so, you bear the fruits fit for repentance.

Repentance does involve the desire to be baptized. If you’ve truly repented, you will have a desire to be baptized. Repentance involves receiving a clean heart from God – and that’s what it says in Psalm 51. Paul says, “What I want to do, I don’t do. It is so confusing I go back and forth – and you see about four or five paragraphs – “Oh wretched man that I am!” It is almost poetry. Compare that with David in Psalm 51, and they are going through the same experience – except David’s a better poet. Paul is a better theologian, David is a better poet. David says, “Create in me a clean heart.” Create in me a clean heart – that’s what repentance leads us to – a desire for God to create in us, and get that energy of sin – that power of sin – out of us, and create something new in us.

So, we’ve seen how faith and repentance are the first steps of the process of responding to God – be converted. The next steps of what we will cover in two weeks, we will go through the doctrine of baptisms and the doctrine of laying on of hands.