Deepening Faith: The Essential Role of Repentance

Joel Beeke addresses the role of repentance in Christian life, discussing its theological basis and practical implications. He elaborates on how true repentance involves a heartfelt turn from sin to God, driven by a recognition of God’s holiness and one’s own sinfulness. The sermon aims to deepen understanding of repentance as not only a one-time act but a continual practice essential to spiritual growth and sanctification.

The following unedited transcript is provided by Beluga AI.

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We turn now to the gospel of Matthew and Luke.

Matthew 4:12-17 and then a portion from Luke 24. Matthew 4:12-17:

¹² Now when Jesus heard that John had been put in prison, He departed to Galilee. ¹³ And leaving Nazareth, He came and dwelt in Capernaum, which is by the sea, in the regions of Zebulun and Naphtali, ¹⁴ that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet, saying: ¹⁵ “The land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, By the way of the sea, beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles: ¹⁶ The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, And upon those who sat in the region and shadow of death Light has dawned.” ¹⁷ From that time Jesus began to preach and to say, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” (Matthew 4:12-17, NKJV)

And then Luke 24:44 to the end of the book.

⁴⁴ Then He said to them, “These are the words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms concerning Me.” ⁴⁵ And He opened their understanding, that they might comprehend the Scriptures. ⁴⁶ Then He said to them, “Thus it is written, and thus it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day, ⁴⁷ and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. ⁴⁸ And you are witnesses of these things. ⁴⁹ Behold, I send the Promise of My Father upon you; but tarry in the city of Jerusalem until you are endued with power from on high.” ⁵⁰ And He led them out as far as Bethany, and He lifted up His hands and blessed them. ⁵¹ Now it came to pass, while He blessed them, that He was parted from them and carried up into heaven. ⁵² And they worshiped Him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy, ⁵³ and were continually in the temple praising and blessing God. Amen. (Luke 24:44-53, NKJV)

Dear congregation, I would hope that we would all be agreed this morning that there is a tremendous need today for repentance. Repentance personally in our lives, for we so often take God for granted.

Repentance interpersonally, how often we need to repent in our families to each other, how often people get alienated when they don’t repent before each other, but also as a church and as churches throughout the world. What need there is for repentance. This week I received an email from a ministerial friend in Scotland, and he said, a month or so ago our presbytery voted by a huge majority to proceed with the installation of a minister who had given notice that he intended to live in the parsonage with his gay partner. A church, what need for repentance?

And internationally, what need for repentance? That same minister wrote me this: A five-year-old girl in England was reprimanded in school for talking to a classmate about Jesus. Her mom, who worked for the school, was fired, and the girl was told to keep quiet in the future. A foster parent in England was removed from the list of foster parents because the 16-year-old Muslim girl in her care became a Christian, and the courts decided to ban the girl from attending church for six months.

And a nurse in England was asked one of her patients if she would like to be prayed for. Who asked one of her patients if she’d like to be prayed for, was, as a result, suspended without pay. This is going on now in England. The United States isn’t far behind. We have tremendous need at every level to repent.

This morning we want to look at this subject, this important subject, this neglected subject of repentance. My text you can find in Matthew 4:17 and Luke 24:47.

¹⁷ From that time Jesus began to preach and to say, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” (Matthew 4:17, NKJV)

⁴⁷ and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. (Luke 24:47, NKJV)

And you recall we’re looking at a series of aspects of the work of the Holy Spirit in conjunction with Lord’s day 20. Question 53: What do we believe concerning the Holy Ghost? And the answer is that he is true and co-eternal God with the Father and the Son.

Second, that he has given me to make me, by a true faith, partaker of Christ and all his benefits, that he may comfort me and abide with me forever. And following this order of salvation in the work of the Spirit, we have looked at calling and regeneration. And now, this morning, we look at repentance.

So our theme is, how does repentance spirit work? Repentance function: we have four thoughts. First, its practical marks. Second, its persuasive motives, its opposing mountains, and its positive mates or companions. How does spirit work?

Repentance function, its practical marks: we’ll spend probably more than half of our time this morning on this first point, its persuasive motives, its opposing mountains, its positive mates. As soon as Jesus was inaugurated into ministry with baptism, he was led by the Holy Spirit into the desert to be tempted by Satan. How intense these sufferings were for 40 days we can never grasp. But as soon as Jesus came out of these temptations, we read that after 40 days he returned to Galilee, and he immediately began to preach. And what was his message, boys and girls? What did Jesus preach? Well, our text tells us this morning he began to preach, “repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

¹⁷ From that time Jesus began to preach and to say, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” (Matthew 4:17, NKJV)

Repentance was the first subject of his preaching. Interesting, isn’t it? Not himself, but repentance. And remarkably, Jesus ended his ministry much the same way, just before he left this earth. Luke 24:47 tells us that he said to his disciples, “you must preach repentance and remission of sin, beginning at Jerusalem.” So at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry and at the end of Jesus’ ministry, there was this recurring theme of repentance.

⁴⁷ and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. (Luke 24:47, NKJV)

So in our two texts this morning, Jesus is stressing for us that repentance is really the beginning and the end of all true religion. Repentance isn’t something you do once and it’s done away with. It’s a lifelong phenomena in the life of a child of God. As Martin Luther said in one of his 95 theses, God intended repentance to be lifelong for a believer. So it’s not just once that we come and say to God, “I’ve sinned against heaven and before thee,” but from the beginning to the end of the Christian life.

¹⁸ I will arise and go to my father, and will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you, (Luke 15:18, NKJV)

As long as you are on earth, dear believer, you will be sinning. And as long as you are sinning, you need to come for repentance again and again. The only time we don’t need to repent is when we’re not sinning anymore. And we won’t be sinning anymore until we get to glory. And so the message must come to us repeatedly. Repent, repent.

Now, Jesus in Luke 24 says, this isn’t only a model for me, but this is a model for my disciples and by extension, all those whom I will send out into the world, my ministers, to the end of the New Testament age, the kingdom of heaven, the New Testament age, the New Testament era is at hand. And therefore, send out the message, disciples send out the message, ministers, repent, repent in this New Testament age. So repentance is no secondary item. Our preaching must begin with it. Our preaching must end with it.

Our preaching must have it as an underlying theme. Now, there are many people today who say, well, if you preach repentance, you’re a legalist. They say, you just got to tell people to believe. That’s what’s important, faith, not repentance. Repentance isn’t so critical. But friends, repentance and faith are inseparable. We’ll hear about that later this morning. Repentance is also the gift of God. Just as faith is. Repentance is as essential as faith. They belong together. They’re assigned these twins. They function together. Repentance is of gospel parentage. Repentance is of grace.

Repentance is the work of the Holy Spirit. God uses the law as a means of conviction to break our stony hearts, to bring us to repentance for the first time and repeatedly. But it’s really the grace and the love of God that is foundational in the background that moves us to repentance. You see, our sin-loving nature, our corrupt nature will never repent. This is the gift of God. Romans 3 teaches us that we sin continually, and we will not hate sin, we will not leave sin.

We will not repent of sin apart from the grace of God. Now, it’s true, our nature in legalistic piety can imitate repentance. We can have a kind of remorse that is really nothing but a slavish fear of sin and of God and of punishment. But only the Holy Spirit can make us truly sorry for our sin, because by nature we are always justifying ourselves. No matter what sin we commit, no matter what we do, we’ve got a reason, we’ve got an excuse. True repentance, worked in the soul by the spirit, is an emptying grace.

It’s a self-condemning grace. But true repentance itself doesn’t wash away our sin, but it drives us to Jesus to have him wash away our sin. So we need to understand the role of repentance, why it’s important, what it does, and what it is. And we need to understand that it’s not sufficient of itself to save us. Our best repentance needs to be repented of. Our best repentance needs to be washed in the blood of Jesus. And yet, God always leads to salvation along the channel of repentance, doesn’t He?

It wasn’t the proud Pharisee who went home to his house justified; it was the penitent publican. So, what really is repentance? How does it function? How does it function practically? And how can we use it in our daily lives to draw closer to God and to live a more lively and vital relationship with God? These are important questions. Well, let me say first of all that I think there are five elements involved in true repentance. And I’ll give them to you one word at a time for memory.

But first, let’s look at, look just a little moment at the original language, the original Hebrew and the Original Greek in the Bible. What the words repentance mean there, and that will shed more light on these five words. There’s actually two words in the Hebrew Testament and two in the Greek New Testament that are translated repentance. First, in the Old Testament, there is a Hebrew word that means to pantomime and to sigh. The idea is that you groan and you grieve over sin.

It’s the word used of Job when he said, “Wherefore I abhor myself and repent. I grieve in dust and ashes.” The second Old Testament word means to return to God, to turn around and turn back to God. It focuses on forsaking sin and coming back to God. Classic usage of this is in 2 Chronicles 7:14,

¹⁴ If My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land. (2 Chronicles 7:14, NKJV)

In the New Testament, the first word and the main biblical word for repentance is metanoia. And that very important word means to change one’s mind radically, to return to God. Therefore, with a changed mind, unconditionally, to do an about face with the direction of my life, instead of living towards self, I’m turned around and I now live toward God. And I see things in the light of my relationship with God. I have a radical new conception, a new idea about myself, about Christ, about God, about the word, about spiritual things. Everything is new.

I made a new creation, metanoia. I’ve got a new view, and everything is godward. I live coram deo, as the reformers said, in the face of God. The second New Testament word means to have regret, sorrow, sorrow over sin. Paul said, “the sorrow of the godly worketh repentance” in 2 Corinthians 7. So repentance, then, if you take these words combined, repentance is a heartfelt sorrow that leads to a radical change of thinking, a radical change that revolutionizes my whole life. And I learned to have a different center, a different focus.

I learned to think like God. I want to think like God. I want to follow what God says. I want to lead a biblical life. I want to live according to the mind of God. So what then, are these five words? Well, to work these things, the Holy Spirit does a five-fold task. First word is illumination. Illumination. You see, by nature we are impenitent because we don’t know our sin. We don’t see it, realize it. Well, we know we sin sometimes, and our conscience speaks.

But when the Spirit comes to give repentance, it says, as it were, he puts an eye salve on our eye, and the scales fall, and we see sin in the light of God. We see sins long forgotten in our lives. They come up from the grave of forgetfulness where we have buried them, and we see their true anti-God character, and we become alarmed about it. Our eyes go open to the sinfulness, the dastardliness, the reality, and the insanity of sin.

You see, the natural man, boys and girls, is like a blindfolded person who walks in the midst of a snake pit with all kinds of venomous snakes around him. But he doesn’t sense his danger because he’s blindfolded. But when the Spirit comes, a converted man being illuminated by that spirit is someone from whom the blindfold has been removed. And he sees all the venomous snakes around him, and he becomes terrified. And he says, one thing I know: I was blind, but now I see. And he wants a way of escape from sin.

He wants to be delivered from the snake pit in which he dwells by nature. Illumination. Secondly, humiliation. Humiliation. Illumination inevitably results in humiliation. The eye no longer being blind, the heart can no longer be proud. That’s what Augustine said. Here’s his exact words. As long as the eye is blind, the heart will be proud. But when the eye is open, the sinner loses his pride and he will be humbled before God.

What happens to Job when he’s illuminated to see sin in the sight of this great God who reveals Himself at the end of the book? You remember Job in Job 38, 39, 40. What happens to him in chapter 42?

⁶ Therefore I abhor myself, And repent in dust and ashes.” (Job 42:6, NKJV)

He’s humbled. He’s humbled to the dust. When we see ourselves in the light of God’s holy law and righteousness, we’re humbled in the dust. We cry out, we smite on our breasts with a publican. God, be merciful to me, a sinner.

The third word is detestation. Detestation. When we are brought to repentance by the Holy Spirit, he not only illuminates our eyes to see sin and humbles us before God, but he moves us to hate sin, to detest it, to long to be rid of it. It grieves us to the point that we say, oh, I wish all sin in me were dead. The old puritan divines used to call it. It’s an old fashioned word, but it’s a beautiful word, compunction, like your heart is pummeled with this grief. Oh, I hate sin.

Sin. God hates sin, and I love God. And therefore, to sin against God is the most dastardly, the most burdensome thing in all the world. It’s like sinning against my spouse, whom I love. I don’t want to hurt her. I don’t want to offend her. So I don’t want to offend the God I love. So the Spirit works this, you see, this, not only this sorrow for sin, but this hatred of sin, this abhorring of all evil. And it’s this, you see, that moves me to break off sin, to forsake sin, to cast it away.

And by nature, I don’t do that; by nature, I’m like Herod. You know, Herod loved to hear John the Baptist preach. John the Baptist must have been a great preacher. And Herod thought it was interesting. But as soon as John confronted him with his specific sins, well, they cast him into prison, cost John his head.

But you see, when the Spirit penetrates the depths of our soul and convicts us of our specific sins, we don’t turn against him if it’s his saving work in us, but we bow under it, and we learn to hate sin and detest sin and abandon sin. We learn to experience what the Proverbs say:

¹³ He who covers his sins will not prosper, But whoever confesses and forsakes them will have mercy. (Proverbs 28:13, NKJV)

Here’s a real test in our lives: If we’re really walking day by day in repentance before God, are we really willing to abandon all sin?

Are we willing to cut off the right hand that offends? When we are backsliding, we don’t. When we are unconverted, we don’t. But only when we’re living lifelong repentance, we do. The fourth word is transformation. Transformation. You see, where there is true repentance and where sin is chopped off, there will be not just a negative chopping off, but there will also be a vital vivification, a quickening of life, a living to God, a longing to be in his presence. There will be a reformation of the whole conduct of my life.

I’ll get up in the morning. I want to live to God today. I want to live to his glory today. I’ve become a new man. I have a new king on the throne within me. New desires are kindled in my heart. Therefore, if any man be in Christ, says Paul, he is a new creation. Old things are passed away. Behold, all things are new.

¹⁷ Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new. (2 Corinthians 5:17, NKJV)

The fifth word is submission. Submission. When I truly repent, my life is not only transformed, but in that transformation, I learned to bow in submission. Submission from two perspectives.

Submission to God’s punishment for sin. That if God were to cast me away, I know that he is just and righteous, and I would be willing to declare, “I am worthy, Lord, of death and worthy of hell.” I say with Nehemiah, “Thou art just in all that thou hast brought upon us.” So, this is a kind of submission that loses all self-defense. How rare a gift this is, but how precious it is.

It’s the kind of submission of the thief on the cross when he said to his partner in crime, “This man hath done nothing amiss, but we receive the due reward of our deeds.”

⁴¹ And we indeed justly, for we receive the due reward of our deeds; but this Man has done nothing wrong.” (Luke 23:41, NKJV)

Justifying God, condemning myself, that’s the fruit of true repentance. By nature, we do just the opposite. Well, secretly we condemn God and we justify ourselves. But true submission also has a positive side to it. True submission also means to submit to God’s mercy for sinners, to submit to His gospel terms in true repentance. I come with hope to God.

I come beating on my breast like the publican. But I still come looking to him for mercy. It’s not hopeless. The publican didn’t smite his breast and say, I’m in despair. I’ve got nothing to pray. No, he said, God, be merciful to me, a sinner.

¹³ And the tax collector, standing afar off, would not so much as raise his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me a sinner!’ (Luke 18:13, NKJV)

He saw God as a God who was full of mercy. And in true repentance I flee with all my sin to the whole panorama of the mercy of God that is unveiled to me in the scripture. And I say, if mercy must cast me out, then mercy must do it.

But I will fall upon mercy. I repent of my sin, and I cast myself on mercy. O God, be merciful to me, a sinner. So you see, in true repentance, this gets at the heart of it. I abhor myself, and I repent, and I cast myself on mercy. And I leave my case with mercy, and I rely on mercy, and I hope in mercy, and I trust in mercy. Have you ever been there? Have you ever said, this is my only hope, mercy, Lord, mercy ere I perish.

But thou art a God of mercy, Lord, if thou wilt kick me away from thee, I’ll come back, I’ll plead on mercy. If I perish, I perish. But I’m going to perish at the feet of mercy. That’s repentance. An unworthy sinner clinging to mercy. How does that work itself out in my daily life? Well, all kinds of ways. When I don’t love God as I should and the Holy Spirit comes and shows me my sin, and he humbles me for it, and he makes me to confess it and to detest it.

How could I not love? God has been so lovable to me. He then transforms me by shedding abroad the love of God in my heart, and I move by it and I succumb to it, and I submit to it with my entire life. I say with a poet, take my life and let it be consecrated, Lord, to thee. Take my love, my God, I pour at thy feet as a treasure store. Take myself and I will be ever only all for thee. Ever only all for thee. That’s what repentance does.

It also is practical in my relationship with others, especially those over whom I have responsibility. Let’s take some real practical things here. When our children are quarreling with each other, mercilessly cutting down each other, perhaps we make them apologize to each other, don’t we, as parents? But we know we have to aim for something deeper. We have to aim for true repentance, not just a casual, I’m sorry, but we have to talk to them about how they have to learn to hate their sin and forsake their sin. We must aim to train their hearts.

We must ask God, even as we labor to that end, not just training the external behavior, but their hearts, that the Holy Spirit will use our training to bring them to these five elements of repentance themselves. Or perhaps it’s we who are having a quarrel with a brother or sister.

Oh, we must pray for the spirit’s grace, then to repent of every dimension of our own wrongdoing, to look not at our brother’s sin against us, our sin against our brother, and then openly confess it to him, to her, and break with it and hate it, confess it to God and to man. Or again, when I pledge to myself and to God that I will be a better steward of the family resources He’s given me, particularly in the areas of spiritual discipline and family worship, and I again find myself allowing things to lapse.

What must I do? I must repent. I must turn again to the word. I must consider my duties. I must confess my sin. I must abhor my inconstancy. I must ask for forgiveness and embrace God’s forgiveness. And then I must rise up again and start all over again. When the wicked falls, he doesn’t arise. But when the penitent believer, the righteous, fall, he arises seven times, always looking to the Holy Spirit for help, for strength, knowing I can’t do it myself. But he can do it in me, and he can move me to do it.

And so, no matter what situation you’re in in life, you see a pattern developing here, don’t you? In repentance. That pattern is so beautifully. Turn with me just a moment to Revelation 2. It’s so beautifully laid out for us in Revelation 2. You remember there where Jesus admonishes the church of Ephesus. Ephesus, verses four and five, because they have left their first love. Verse four. Nevertheless, I am somewhat against thee because thou hast left thy first love. And then here comes the pattern of repentance. Remember, there’s your illumination.

⁴ Nevertheless I have this against you, that you have left your first love. ⁵ Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent and do the first works, or else I will come to you quickly and remove your lampstand from its place—unless you repent. (Revelation 2:4-5, NKJV)

So if you want something really simple to remember, you can’t remember the five words I gave you, because they’re big words, boys and girls, you can remember these three words: Remember, repent, and redo. That’s what we need every day of our lives when it comes to sin. We need to remember from where we’ve fallen.

We need to repent, be truly sorry for it, and we need to redo it. And then the last part of verse five says, if you don’t redo it, I will remove you. So it’s either repent, remember, or redo. And if you don’t remember, you don’t repent, you will be removed. That’s how serious repentance is. Now you say, but this is really tough. It’s not easy to repent. It’s foreign to my nature. Indeed. That’s why we need encouragements and motivations to repent. That’s my second thought. How does the Bible encourage us and motivate us?

How does the Holy Spirit encourage and motivate us to repent? Well, I’m going to give you three or four negative motivations and two or three positive ones. The Bible is full of such motivations. First motivation, of course, is God’s basic command. God’s command. God says everywhere, repent, repent. God commands every man.

³⁰ Truly, these times of ignorance God overlooked, but now commands all men everywhere to repent, (Acts 17:30, NKJV)

³⁰ “Therefore I will judge you, O house of Israel, every one according to his ways,” says the Lord God. “Repent, and turn from all your transgressions, so that iniquity will not be your ruin. (Ezekiel 18:30, NKJV)

Now, God’s command ought to be all the motivation we need, because if we love him and he tells us to do it, that ought to be the end of the story. But God is so good, he piles up other motivations. On top of that, a second motivation, a negative one, again, is our sin. Our sin. Sin flies in the face of God to whom we owe everything. Sin demands our repentance. Especially unrepentant sin demands repentance. The heart of our problem is not just sin. The heart of our problem is unrepentant sin.

It’s unrepentant sin that will bring us hell and destruction. Our third motivation is death. Our death. Not only our sin, but our death. He appointed unto all men once to die. What would it be like for you to die with unrepentant sin, unreconciled to God? It would be a total disaster. Is there anything worse than to see someone die unrepentant?

It wasn’t very long ago in a certain city in America where I was at a conference, then a woman came to me with tears in her eyes, and she’s telling me about her dad who never turned to Christ. And he died. And she said, it was so hard. It was so hard, she said, because not only was he unrepentant toward God, he was unrepentant toward men. And he had divisions in the family. And the last moments they’d ask him, will you repent now and will you let your son see you? No.

The boy wanted to see his dad, but his dad refused to see him to the very end. What a tragedy. But if it’s a tragedy among men, what is it among God? There was a 19th century agnostic who was on his deathbed unrepentant, and his agnostic friends were around him, all unrepentant men. And one of them said, what can I do for you? The agnostic friend looked around at his circles of friends and he said, is there anyone here in this circle that’s willing to die for me and to go to hell for me?

No one said a word. Oh, my friend, you come to die, you won’t have the energy, you won’t have the mental clarity to repent. You need to repent now. you’re on your way to death. And when death stares you in the face and you have unrepentant sin, what will you do with it? What will your future be? How will you enter eternity with unresolved sin upon your conscience? Enjoy your lusts in your life? But know thou, young man, that for this, God will bring thee into judgment. That’s what the Bible says.

We must repent or we will perish forever. So the last negative motivation is judgment. Judgment. We will enter into judgment with God when Christ soon comes again and his throne is set for judgment, and the trumpet blows and the dead arise, and you and I stand before the judgment seat of Christ. How can we stand there as an impenitent sinner and answer one question of a thousand? It will be impossible. But there are also positive motivations. I think the most positive motivation for me in my personal life is the sufferings of the Lord Jesus.

I wish it was always successful. But when I think about sinning and think about wounding afresh my savior, of all that he has done for me, there is nothing like that to make me see the heinousness of sin and a deterrent from it.

When Christ suffered, as we commemorate in these weeks, and the earth quaked, when Christ suffered the rocks rent, when Christ suffered, the dead arose. When Christ suffered, even the sun was struck blind with the sight.

And how can we, dear believers, stand unmoved when our sins are the cause of all this bloody, agonizing soul body suffering of our savior? Shall we not be sorry for those sins that made this savior a man of sorrows? Shall we not grieve over this sin which drew the blood of Christ from his body?

If the Jews could say to Pilate, “If thou let this man go, thou art not Caesar’s friend,” cannot God say to us, “If you let your sins go unrepented of, you are not the friend of my son? How can we sin against such love?” But then, secondly, let another positive motivation be that we offend the entire triune God. When we don’t repent, it’s not just the Son; it’s the Father who gave His Son, the Father who gave His law.

When we sin, we trample underfoot the law of a heavenly, holy, tender, wise, giving father, who sets loving rules for us as his dear children. We’re walking contrary to him. That’s how Moses defines sin, really, a walking contrary to God. But we’re also grieving his spirit, that precious holy spirit who does all this wonderful work in our soul, who forms us and molds us and changes our life. And when we sin, we’re running roughshod over all that work. We’re despising him, we’re vexing him, we’re grieving him.

And he warns us,

³ And the Lord said, “My Spirit shall not strive with man forever, for he is indeed flesh; yet his days shall be one hundred and twenty years.” (Genesis 6:3, NKJV)

Isaiah 63:10 says,

¹⁰ But they rebelled and grieved His Holy Spirit; So He turned Himself against them as an enemy, And He fought against them. (Isaiah 63:10, NKJV)

I once had a man come to me who left his wife and went his own way and married another woman. And he came back to me later. He said, “I made the biggest mistake of my life.” He said, “It was just terrible. I should never have left my first wife.”

She was so good to me. I deeply, deeply regret it. But you see, every time we sin, it’s like we’re leaving the God of love and we’re wedding ourselves to Satan. Every sin is like a hypocritical slapping of the face of Jesus or a hypocritical kiss of Judas on the face of Jesus. We have no business sinning with a God who loves us so well. Let that motivate you, because you don’t want to injure the Father, the Spirit, as well as the Son.

And finally, let this motivate you that repentance, together with faith, is the channel through which God pours all his spiritual blessings and graces and removes obstacles and enemies into our souls and from our souls. What breaks your heart? What makes you fit and soft and pliant to pray? It’s repentance. What makes you hungry to hear the word of God, to receive the word with meekness? It’s repentance. What gives you sweet inward peace in your inner man. It’s when you repent and believe the gospel. What moves you to obedience?

It’s when you repent that you long to obey. Repentance, you see, enriches us with all the graces of the covenant of grace. Repentance influences our love. Repentance, who stirs our hearts to God. How foolish not to repent. And yet, with all these encouragements and motivations, why don’t we repent? What are the obstacles? What stands in the way? I once stood at the foot of a mountain range with a friend, and he said to me, “you see those seven mountain peaks side by side by side.”

Because of those seven mountain peaks, to get to the other side of the mountain is a very challenging task. It takes a long time. You got to drive way out of your way. Well, there are obstacles. There are seven mountain peaks that stand in the way of our repentance. The first mountain peak is thoughtlessness. Thoughtlessness. Read in Jeremiah 8:6,

⁶ I listened and heard, But they do not speak aright. No man repented of his wickedness, Saying, ‘What have I done?’ Everyone turned to his own course, As the horse rushes into the battle. (Jeremiah 8:6, NKJV)

You know, I think in my lifetime of ministry, I think I can count on one hand the people that have come to me and said, “you know what my biggest spiritual problem is? I’m thoughtless about my own soul.” I just go about my own business. Like a man who has his own horse and he rushes into battle, I rush into every day; I don’t think about it. I let it alone. I’m busy, busy, busy, busy, but thoughtless about my own soul. It’s my own fault. I’m on my way to hell.

You don’t meet people like that very often, do you? Isn’t it true that if you’re unsaved sitting here this morning, you’re being thoughtless? you’re letting one week slip into another and one month slip into another. One year slip into another? My friend, you’re traveling to eternity. Justly awake and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light. Think about your own soul. Repent and say, what have I done? What have I done?

¹⁴ Therefore He says: “Awake, you who sleep, Arise from the dead, And Christ will give you light.” (Ephesians 5:14, NKJV)

A second mountain peak, in biblical language, is the old-fashioned word slothfulness. You see it all over in the book of Proverbs, don’t you? Laziness. Spiritual laziness. Drowsiness. “Drowsiness shall clothe a man with rags.” Proverbs 23:21 says slothfulness. Proverbs 19:15, “Casteth into a deep sleep.” Are some of you like that this morning? Spiritually, it’s like you’re in a deep sleep. You’re in a deep fog, spiritually slothful.

¹⁵ Laziness casts one into a deep sleep, And an idle person will suffer hunger. (Proverbs 19:15, NKJV)

Outside of Bible reading at mealtime or at your private devotion time this week, you’ve probably never picked up the Bible once all week long, did you? You probably never read one good book all week long.

You probably never listened to one sermon all week long. You just go about your daily business, and you’re kind of asleep. you’re kind of in a fog, spiritually lazy. Are you going to keep going that way? Are you going to, are you just going to sleep your way into hell? Are you just going to go on drowsily, clothing yourself with rags, destroying your own soul?

¹⁴ Therefore He says: “Awake, you who sleep, Arise from the dead, And Christ will give you light.” (Ephesians 5:14, NKJV)

The third mountain peak I’m calling negativity. Negative views on true religion. Some of you subscribe to that. You won’t say it too openly, but really you don’t want to be in a relationship with God because you know your life will change. You know, you have to be God centered rather than self centered. You know, maybe some things will have to go in your life and, well, you’ve got a negative view of what true religion is. you’re afraid of what your families will say, what your friends will say.

You’re afraid you have to change things in your family, and, well, is religion going to be really that profitable for me? I don’t want to be too religious. And you have all these excuses, and you’re afraid, bottom line, to bear the reproach of Christ. But may I ask you, in love, is this not better to have others reproach you for repenting than to have God damn you for not repenting? Thomas Watson said, the reproaches of others are just like little chips off of the cross.

And can you not bear a few little chips when your Savior has borne the whole cross for you? Stop worrying so much about what people think of you and start worrying what God thinks about you, and repent.

Mountain peak number four is worldliness. Worldliness. The love, the cares of this world. That which fell among thorns. The preached word which fell among thorns. Luke 8:14 says,

¹⁴ Now the ones that fell among thorns are those who, when they have heard, go out and are choked with cares, riches, and pleasures of life, and bring no fruit to maturity. (Luke 8:14, NKJV)

One of the old Puritans said, the problem with worldly people is that they’d rather put money in the bank than tears in God’s bottle. Always concerned about the things of this earth rather than about the things of eternity. Please don’t be so foolish as to live more for this miserable, poor, perishing, vain, flimsy world than for the glorious creator who made you.

Mountain peak number five is presumption. Presumption. How many forms this takes. Deuteronomy 29:19 puts it this way,

¹⁹ and so it may not happen, when he hears the words of this curse, that he blesses himself in his heart, saying, ‘I shall have peace, even though I follow the dictates of my heart’— as though the drunkard could be included with the sober. (Deuteronomy 29:19, NKJV)

You know, there’s not only people out there that are deceiving themselves and thinking they have Christ when their lives don’t show it. And it’s not genuine. There’s people in here that have a different kind of presumption. Perhaps, but it’s presumption nonetheless. And the presumption goes something like this. I’ve been attending church for 75 years.

I come two, maybe three times every Sabbath. And I agree with the truth. I became a member. All my children are baptized. I tried to bring them up the best I could. I just hope for the best when it comes to eternity. But you don’t know Christ, and you don’t know repentance. External church membership, nominal church membership is not going to bring you to heaven. Without faith and repentance, it is impossible to please God. Repent.

Mountain peak number six is fatalism. This is the reverse of presumption. A few of you are saying this as well, in one way or another. Again, maybe not too openly. But you’re thinking it deep down. Fatalism. Fatalism in two different ways. One way is to say, well, if God’s going to elect me, he’s going to elect me, so I can’t change it anyway. So there’s no need for me to strive for repentance or ask for the grace of repentance or to repent. I’ll just wait to see what he will do.

Do you think you’ll be able to say, do you really think you’ll be able to say to the Lord on the day of judgment, “Lord, I’m going down into hell now because thou didst not elect me”? you’ll be going to hell because you refuse to repent. I say unto you, except ye repent, Luke 13:5 and Luke 13:3, ye shall all likewise perish.

³ I tell you, no; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish. (Luke 13:3, NKJV)

⁵ I tell you, no; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish.” (Luke 13:5, NKJV)

The Bible never says, except ye be elected, though the responsibility lies on us. Election is a friend of sinners, not a foe. Election is always sovereign, true, but it’s also always gracious.

No one ever deserves to be elect. It’s the grace of God. But reprobation, rejection is always just. No one will come in hell and say, I don’t deserve to be here. And it’s the refusal to repent that will bring you there. But the other fatalistic view is this, simply this: I’ve got too much sin for the Lord ever to forgive me. My history is against me. There’s no hope. Well, that’s exactly what Israel said in Jeremiah and again in Ezekiel. That was the excuse Israel used for not repenting.

We pine away, our sins be upon us. How shall we then live? And God said, “Verily I say unto you, as I live, I have no pleasure in your death, but that you should repent and live. Turn, ye. Turn ye, O Israel, for why will ye die?” The last mountain peak is postponement. Postponement. The Felix mountain peak, standing on the borders of eternity, hearing the call of the gospel, face before a choice. If the Lord be Lord, follow him. If Baal be Lord, follow. There’s Felix. His conscience is smitten.

He’s under some kind of legalistic shaking of conscience, maybe even a legalistic form of repentance. What will he do? Go thy way, Paul. Oh, tragic. It was really saying, go thy way, Lord, when I have a convenient season, a convenient season that never came. Josephus tells us he committed suicide in the mountains of Italy. This man perished. He had opportunity. You have opportunity, my friend, to repent and seek the Lord.

This morning in this house of prayer, don’t say, “Once more go thy way, Lord,” but lay your weapons down and say, “I repent, and dust and ashes have mercy. Oh God, be merciful to me, sinner.” Now let me close this sermon by giving you two positive mates or companions to repentance. Sometimes I think we think that repentance is only something negative. But repentance, you see, is never alone. Repentance always has two positive companions, two friends with it. The first friend is faith. Faith and repentance are like two sides of a coin.in the Bible, in the New Testament, there will be a summons to repent, sometimes a summons to believe, sometimes a summons to repent and believe, sometimes a summons to believe and repent. It works every way, but where one is mentioned, the other is implied. You see, Mark 1:15.

¹⁵ and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel.” (Mark 1:15, NKJV)

Interestingly, in Acts 17, we are told that God commands everyone, everywhere to repent.

³⁰ Truly, these times of ignorance God overlooked, but now commands all men everywhere to repent, (Acts 17:30, NKJV)

And then three verses later, the response to that message was, and some believed. You see, sometimes repentance stares us more in the face on the pages of scripture. Sometimes faith does, but really it’s like a coin. Sometimes you can lay it down and the heads are facing you. Of the heads of repentance, let’s say, sometimes you turn it over or the tail of they’re both there in spiritual life all the time. Sometimes repentance, rather, sometimes you turn it over and the head of faith is staring at you. So you say, well, that coin is all heads. No, it’s turn it over and you’ve got tails.

Turn it over and you’ve got heads that belong together. You can’t ever repent without believing. You believingly repent and you penitently believe. That’s what there’s nothing so sweet as repenting as a needy sinner before Jesus and receiving his gospel grace and knowing the joy of salvation. Oh, there’s a sweetness to repentance.

I once heard a paper delivered on John Calvin’s use of the word sweetness all throughout his writings. And after I heard that paper, I continued, of course, to read the Puritans. And I saw the word sweetness jump out of the page again and again and again at me. And so many of the references were to the sweetness of repentance, to the sweetness of becoming before God what we are, that he might become in us what he is. A God of full and free salvation.

And that we might have an open, transparent and vulnerable relationship with him. Repentance is sweet to us, joyous to us. But it’s also joyous and sweet to God. A broken heart and a contrite spirit. O God, thou wilt not despise the angels in heaven. Rejoice over sinners brought to repentance. Repentance isn’t a burdensome thing. It’s a joyous thing. Even though it costs us sorrow. There can be joy in the midst of sorrow. There’s a wonderful example in John Bunyan’s holy war. I don’t know if you remember this story, but it’s a beautiful story.

You know, there’s a siege of the city of Mansoul. And Bunyan tells us that when the townsmen of the city have been defeated, they seek pardon from King Emmanuel. And they say, who shall we send to King Emmanuel to intercede for us? And they finally settle. I’m sending a man named Mister Wet eyes. And Bunyan tells us his father is named repentance, Mister Repentance. And they send Mister Wet eyes to King Emmanuel to intercede for the people.

And Mister Wet Eyes comes before Prince Emmanuel, and he says, “We repent before you, and we plead for mercy. But also we tell you, King Emmanuel, that our very repentance is dirty. And we see dirt in our own tears and filthiness in the bottom of our own prayers.” And Bunyan says King Emmanuel was pleased with Mister White Eyes, with a confession of Mister White Eyes, and he pardoned the city. Oh, come to God, not because your repentance will save you, but He saves you in the way of repentance. You need evangelical repentance.

It’s the first sermon Jesus preached. It’s the last sermon Jesus preached. Oh, let it be your sermon this morning. Take it home with you. Except I repent, I shall likewise perish.

³ I tell you, no; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish. (Luke 13:3, NKJV)

⁵ I tell you, no; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish.” (Luke 13:5, NKJV)

But how? When I’m ungodly? When I’m unconverted? What shall I do when I can’t repent? I’ll just cast myself upon Jesus. Take refuge.

In Acts 5:30-31, the God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom the gospel is all about. And so again and again the scriptures bring these two together. These are best friends. But the other companion is joy. That may surprise you, but joy is the friend of repentance.

³⁰ The God of our fathers raised up Jesus whom you murdered by hanging on a tree. ³¹ Him God has exalted to His right hand to be Prince and Savior, to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. (Acts 5:30-31, NKJV)

The God who has created you, the God who has loaded you with mercies. The God who has warned you with afflictions. The God who invites you by the gospel. The God who offers you unconditional grace. This God says, “I have a son who is able and willing to give you repentance. Come like Mister Wet Eyes and bow yourself before him and say, ‘Be merciful to us sinners.’ Amen.”