Real Repentance Means Real Change Dr. Steve Walker

Transcription

1 Series: The Heart of Healthy Relationships August 16, 2015 Real Repentance Means Real Change Dr. Steve Walker You know, it was sweet worship today. The reality is that every Sunday, there are some who come to worship and their hearts are heavy. Their hearts are broken. There are fears and anxieties in life. We come together and we declare what we declared today about God. Sometimes there are people around us for whom it is just hard to sing that day. It's hard to worship, not because they don't believe God, but because their hearts are so heavy. So we do it together, and as we lift up the name of Jesus and we declare the goodness of God, we lift each other's spirits. We lift each other's faith, and that's one of the beauties about corporate worship. We need each other, sometimes, just to do that, and so praise God. Also, I'm so excited. The kids are with us this month. It's sad but true; in so many churches in the modern day, we have specialized children's programs and they can go their whole childhood without ever coming into big church with Mom and Dad. We want to just try to buck that a little bit and have them come in on Sundays for the month of August to worship with you. Let me speak to the moms and dads right now, just for a second. Bring your kids to church with you on Sundays in August, but expect them to worship. I mean that. They worship when they're together. Expect them to worship in here. If they have to stand up on the chair so they can see, let them do that and worship. I know we give them some things to just kind of keep them occupied, but do you know what? I'd rather you just have them worship and just let them do that. Let them watch you and do it with you. Okay? Let me encourage you in that. Finally, it just dawned on me a few minutes ago that one of our heroes of our church I mean that with all of my heart. One of our heroes He's our missionary in Japan. We have just started doing work in that country for the gospel, and Tim Burns is here. His wife and children are still back home. Tim, I know you're in this service. Can you just wave your hand at me? Where are you? Okay, Tim, right there. Tim Burns is our missionary to Japan. I love this guy. When we went last year, he really treated us right and showed us what we're doing there. Tim has some friends with him, some university students he brought with him from Japan. They're here for several weeks, getting to know our culture, and hanging out with us. I think you guys head back tomorrow. Canyon Hills Community Church 1

2 I'm going to ask you to do something just quick. I just want you to just stand up and then sit down. Can you all do that, just so we can see you? I'm going to ask all of you guys to stand up, and let's welcome them and send them off with our love. Okay? We've been loving on them for a couple of weeks, and now they're heading back home. If you weren't here last week, just in case, I announced that we're going to be starting our study of 2 Peter on Sunday mornings right after Labor Day, but until we get to Labor Day, I wanted to deal with the subject of just trying to figure out how to have healthy relationships and friendships together. The truth is our lives are filled with all kinds of relationships. We have husbands, wives, children, grandchildren, friends, neighbors, coworkers, business partners, Facebook friends, and Twitter followers, and we're all touched by relationships. None of us are on an island. From time to time, the truth is we need God's help navigating the challenges relationships can bring into our lives. It's sad but it's true that many relationships in our lives (marriages, family bonds, friendships) can sometimes be the source of our deepest pain. Broken and hurting relationships can be a source of great grief in our lives, but the hope is that God has filled his Word with promises. He has filled his Word with instructions to help us build relationships with each other that can actually last. Last week, we started this little break and series and we looked at God's four rules for communication found in Ephesians, chapter 4. Based on the response that has come in from that message, that topic alone, I can tell it was much-needed and it was very practical, because, I think if we're all honest, the fact is that to some degree, we're all broken and we're all a little bit dysfunctional. Can we just admit that? Are we safe to do that? Every one of us kind of doesn't have it all together yet. We're still working on stuff. We're still growing. We're still growing up. We're still changing. The truth is even we in this room who love Jesus are all a little bit broken. We're all a little bit dysfunctional. That makes it, sometimes, really hard to love our brothers and sisters in Christ, to love each other, and sometimes even to love the people we love the most. So how do we do it? How do we maintain friendships that will bring us joy, bring God glory, and last? How can we have friendships and relationships that are good and meaningful while we're still in the process of sanctification, while we're still changing into the likeness of Jesus? I'll tell you what. For today, one of the ways is that we understand what we're supposed to do when we blow it with each other. One of the things we have to learn better, church, is to know what it really means to repent and what it means to ask for forgiveness. Can I just confess for the church at large, including ours, we Christians aren't that good at this? You'd think we would be, but I think we struggle with it even more. Canyon Hills Community Church 2

3 We have such high expectations of each other. "Come on! You're a Christian. I can't believe you said that. I can't believe you acted like that. I can't believe you did that." We're really hard on each other, and we get hurt really easily. We get offended very quickly, and then we're really slow to forgive each other. That is the sad and unfortunate truth with lots of Christians. I have some really deep convictions about this, deep concerns for me and you, that we get this part of being a believer. We just have to do it. The reason is there is divine power in repentance to heal broken relationships. I want to deal with repentance in three ways. First, I want to define it so we understand what it is. We're all on the same page. There's a little bit of confusion as to what repentance actually is. Secondly, I want to talk about the place of repentance in the live of an unbeliever. Where does that connect to someone who's not yet a child of God? Thirdly, I want to deal with the place of repentance in the live of believers, in many of our lives. Where does it come in? What does it look like? What does it sound like when we really repent, not only with God first, but with each other? That's where we're going to head. Let me pray, and then we're going to jump all the way into the deep end here, and we'll see how far we get. God in heaven, I just praise you that you are a good God. You are faithful. God, we sang about that today. You are faithful. You are patient and gentle with us. We pray, God, now, in the power of your Holy Spirit and the amazement of your presence among us right now, we ask that you will teach us your ways today. God, I pray that where we're messed up or confused, you will correct us. I pray, God, where we're rebellious or belligerent, you will rebuke us. I pray, God, where we are broken and hurting, you will use your Word to comfort us. God, we need you today to speak into our hearts. We ask you to do that. We welcome you to do that. In the name of Jesus, amen. 1. What is repentance? Let's just get going really quick. This word is used in the New Testament at least 36 times. One of the more common words used for repentance is the word metanoia. Some of you are familiar with that word. Meta means change, and noia means mind, so when we repent we are changing our minds about or toward our sin. There's another word in the New Testament that is very similar. It's also used for the word repentance, and it means to turn to or to change direction. The focus here is on a changed life, from a life lived for myself to a life lived for God. The combination of those two uses of the word repentance kind of forms what I'm going to give you definition that I feel is the best I could come up with just understanding the deeper meaning of repentance. Here's the definition. Repentance is an unconditional turn from sinful conduct and thinking to a complete surrender to the will and the ways of God. Stare at that for a minute. In other words, repentance is not only outward conformity to righteous behavior. It's not just changing the way we're behaving, but it's also changing the way we're thinking. It's a wholehearted decision to please and worship God. Canyon Hills Community Church 3

4 So there you have it. It is a changing of my mind about my sin. It is no longer acceptable. It is wrong, and I am going to turn to God and I am going to surrender to his will and his ways. Are you with me? We're going to come back to that a couple of times, just to drive that home a little harder, but I believe that is a clear understanding of repentance. Now with that understanding, what does it have to do with an unbeliever? How does it apply? 2. Repentance is an absolute must for the unbeliever. The Bible teaches that the greatest need of every human being in the universe is to be found righteous in the sight of God. That is the greatest need of every person. The question is, how do we get righteous in the sight of God? How do we secure the verdict of being righteous in God's sight? Well, I think it might be easier to at least start out with what we know to be true on how not to think we can become righteous in God's sight, because no matter how hard we try, we can never make ourselves righteous enough to satisfy God's perfect holiness. Let me say that again. No matter how hard we try to be good, to get our act together, and to stop doing dumb things No matter how good we get at that, we will never be good enough to satisfy the standard of God's perfect holiness. Even if the most perfect person in the world were to try to approach God, they would fall miserably short of God's glory and they would instantaneously die in the presence of a holy God. Let me ask you to do something, just in your mind for a minute. I want you to think of the most perfect person you know, the best person, the goodest person Is goodest a word? That's what my doctorate did for me. It gave me a great vocabulary. Whoever is the best, nicest, kindest, most forgiving, most generous Who is that person to you? Think of that person. See their face. Who in your lifetime is just the godliest person? I mean, if God were to look down and look for the best person, he would pick the person you're thinking of right now. Let me tell you something. If you took that person, whether you know them personally or if they're someone you admire from a distance If we took that person and opened the door to the throne room of God and let them walk into the presence of God, they would instantaneously drop dead. The sheer magnitude of the condemnation of their guilt and their sin in the presence of a pure and holy God would cause them to die on the spot. No one can look at God and live. That's how powerfully righteous God is. That's what I think Isaiah meant when he wrote, in Isaiah 64, "All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away." If anyone thinks they might just be good enough to die and stand before a holy God, Isaiah says, "Don't make that mistake. Your sins, like the wind, will whisk you out of the presence of God. You will be gone in a second." That's a pretty hopeless situation. The only hope is for God to intervene. So how does this whole idea of the absolute must of repentance take place in an unbeliever's life? Here's the good news. Canyon Hills Community Church 4

5 A. God grants repentance. Repentance requires a divine invasion of our heart, because we love to sin too much. We just do. Our hearts' slavery to sin is too strong, and the Bible tells us Satan blinds the minds of unbelievers. His biggest act of deception is to get us to believe we're not all that bad. His biggest act of lying is to convince you and me, when we were unbelievers, or if you're still an unbeliever, to look around the world and look for some really mean, nasty, evil people, compare ourselves to them, and say, "Well, God must be okay with me, because look at that." That's his trick. We won't repent on our own. Paul, writing to the Ephesian Christians, reminded them of something. He reminded them of this point. He said, "As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient." He says, "Listen. Don't forget the time when you were dead in your sins, when you were following anything and everyone in the world who just seemed interesting and fun. You, in essence, were following Satan and his rule. His ideas were ruling your mind. Satan's spirit was at work in your lives before you repented." That's what he's reminding them of in Ephesians 2. Speaking of the ministry of preaching the gospel to unbelievers who were all dead in their sins, Paul says to Timothy, "Timothy, keep preaching about Jesus. God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a divine knowledge of the truth." There's that divine invasion of God. He says, "Timothy, keep preaching about Jesus, because God might grant them repentance, leading them to the truth and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the Devil, after being captured by him to do his will." Those are descriptors of where we are before we repent and come to Jesus, but the good news is God grants repentance. There's a section in the book of Acts where Peter was explaining to his fellow apostles what happened when he preached the gospel to the unbelieving Gentiles for the first time. Peter comes back and says, "You're not going to believe this. These Gentiles, these religious dogs I told them about Jesus and they repented!" Here's the reaction, in Acts, chapter 11. "When they [the Jewish apostles] heard these things they fell silent. And they glorified God, saying, 'Then to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance that leads to life.'" They were blown away! It's like, "This has to be a miracle. Gentiles would never believe in Jesus, the Jewish Messiah." They acknowledged there had to be a divine invasion of God in the sinful, unbelieving heart for that to ever happen. I know many of us in this room can probably remember or recall when that happened to us. For some of you, it was a little bit of a process. For others, it was maybe all at once. I remember going to a Catholic church my whole childhood and upbringing. I get to college, and I'm so confused about Jesus and God. I'm lost. I'm just like a cork on the ocean; wherever the waves Canyon Hills Community Church 5

6 blew, that's where I went. Just by coincidence, two guys walk up to me one day on campus and say, "Hey, can we tell you about Jesus?" "Yeah, that'd be fine." I believed in Jesus. I didn't have any idea why he died on the cross and what that meant to me. They told me, and in that moment, on that college campus, my heart and my mind opened up. I can't explain it. I wasn't looking I didn't get out of bed that day saying, "I hope someone tells me about Jesus today! I'm just curious." I went to school just like I always did. Lost, confused, and pursuing any whim and wish I could. There they were, two goofy-looking college kids, Campus Crusade for Christ, telling me about Jesus, and my heart opened up, God invaded, and I repented. Some of you have a story. How grateful we are that God grants repentance! It's a wonderful gift of his sovereign grace that grants the unbeliever, through the proclamation of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus, to repent. Listen, you guys. It's through the cross that the Holy Spirit shows us the pure, uncompromising holiness of God. It's also through the cross that the Holy Spirit shows us the pure evil of our sin. Both things simultaneously, at the cross Without the cross and without God's Spirit, we would happily continue in our sin. Wouldn't we? We would, but because of his kindness in Jesus, God revealed our sin and his love and gave us a chance to repent. It's absolutely a must for unbelievers to repent, but you need to take it a step farther. B. God commands everyone to repent. "The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent." All unbelievers I think the ignorance God overlooked, in this verse, is referring to before the cross. God was announcing from Genesis 3 all the way up to Matthew that he was going to send a Savior to save us from ourselves, from our sin, and he did it through all the prophets. There was confusion, and the Jewish people were mixed up, and you know their history. God overlooked their ignorance. He kept going. Yet at the cross, now that he has died and risen from the dead, there is no more excuse. God commands all unbelievers everywhere to repent. It's really important, church, for you to know that people don't go to hell because they're really bad, not at all. People go to hell because they reject the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus, and they refuse to repent. That's why people go to hell. That's the unforgiveable sin. The unforgiveable sin is when someone looks at what Jesus did on the cross and says, "No, thanks. It might be good for you. That's fine. It's not what I'm looking for." That is the unforgiveable sin. Repentance is not an option. When we refuse, we seal our condemnation. There's no plan B. There's no other way. To reject Jesus the Son means we reject God the Father, and when we reject God the Father because we ignore the Son, in the judgment, God will pronounce his verdict of unrighteous and it's too late. God commands, and God grants, which leads us to what most of us know: C. We are only forgiven and saved through repentance. Now that's not new news to a lot of you, but I want to make sure you understand it better. When we say we are forgiven and saved only Canyon Hills Community Church 6

7 through repentance, we're not saying repentance is some mystical religious ritual we do, that we say some perfect words the perfect way, or we push some buttons, and now God's obligated to punch our heaven card and we're in. That is not what we mean by saying we can only be saved through repentance. Acts, chapter 3, makes that clear. "But what God foretold by the mouth of all the prophets, that his Christ would suffer, he thus fulfilled. Repent therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus " Now stare at those words for a minute. At the beginning, in verse 18, we see the necessary shed blood and death of Jesus. In verse 18, it says God used the prophets to tell the world, "I'm sending you the Messiah. I'm sending you the Savior. He has to suffer." It was fulfilled at the cross. Then at the end of the passage, we see the resurrection, reign, and return of Jesus. He says he did this so we would have times of refreshing and we would have the presence of the Lord, and that he would send Jesus to come get us. He's saying, "He's alive! He sent him, he died, and now he's alive and he's coming back again." Right in the middle of those two verses in this passage is our repentance. Wrapped all the way around our repentance is our faith and trust in the death and resurrection of Jesus. I want you to look at it this way. When we repent of our sin and trust Jesus to save us, an amazing exchange takes place. All of our sin and all of our rebellion is imputed or credited to Jesus. Everything we've ever done and said that is sinful, when we repent and put our faith in him, is put on him. He died for it. He died because of it. At the same exact time that happens, the perfect life that Jesus lived is credited to us. Right there at the moment of faith, and by God's amazing and pure grace, he declares us to be righteous. When we repent and trust in his death and resurrection, God takes our sins and allows his Son to pay for them and takes his righteousness and declares us to be righteous. Not because of anything we've done, but because of what Jesus has done. When we repent, we are relying on Jesus to stand as our substitute before God and we're trusting in his perfectly righteous life and his penalty-paying death for us on the cross. All of this begins with God's miraculous invasion, granting us repentance, allowing us and inviting us to be forgiven and saved. Wow. D. True repentance will always produce change. This is crucial, because there is such a thing as a counterfeit repentance. A counterfeit repentance is a repentance that doesn't end up changing our lives. Too many people, sadly and frighteningly, are sitting in churches all over, claiming to be Christian but continuing to live in sin. Not only to live in sin, but to live in sin without remorse and without change. You guys, in the Bible it's absolutely unheard of for anyone to profess that they're a Christian without showing any evidence of a changed life. So we have, like I said, sadly and fearfully, Canyon Hills Community Church 7

8 people sitting in churches, falsely claiming to be believers, living together out of wedlock, claiming that to be commitment. We have people who say they're Christians, partying and getting drunk all the time, saying, "Hey, it's just a little fun. It's just some harmless fun." We have people claiming to have repented and made decisions to be Christians, who don't ever serve God. They could be in church months or years and never volunteer, never do anything for his kingdom. The claim is they're too busy. We have people sitting in churches who just never tithe. Once in a while, they just give God a tip if they have some change in their pocket, but they never tithe. The claim is, "I can't afford it." We have people sitting in churches who claim they have repented, that they're Christians, who don't pursue God. They don't long for God and his Word. They don't grieve their sin. They rarely, if ever, turn to God's Word for answers, for direction, or for matters of holiness. We have people who claim to be believers, who say they've repented, but basically they kind of just continue to live for themselves. There's no real change. They might attend church regularly or irregularly, but really, they live for the weekend. They live for their hobbies. They live for their house. They live for their career, or they're really living for the next vacation they're planning. I want you to be clear. This is what Jesus says about this, as we talk about true repentance producing change in our lives. He says, in Luke 3 "Bear fruits in keeping with repentance. And do not begin to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our father.' For I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham. Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire." Now look at that. Jesus is talking to people. He's telling people, "Repent, for the kingdom of God is near," and these people are looking back at Jesus and they're saying, "Hey, don't get too serious about the repentance. We're related to Abraham, the father of the Jewish faith." Jesus looks at them and says, "Hey, don't impress yourself too much. Your judgment is not based on something you did in the past. When you stand before God, he's going to judge the fruit of your life." There are some people who just say, "You know what? I did that a long time ago. I took care of that. God and I are good. He knows my heart," but nothing in their life changes. Jesus says it's kind of like a tree that just doesn't bear fruit, every year. He says, "You know what? You chop that tree down." That's all imagery for saying there's an axe of God's judgment that's coming, that will see the fruitlessness of a life claiming to be a Christian. They will be judged as unbelievers. True repentance always produces real change. Now when I say that, I want you to be sure. Sometimes that change isn't all at once. Sometimes it's not immediate. Sometimes it's not that quick, but we do see the fruit of change. The Bible says Christians ought to be marked by the same kind of love, compassion, and goodness we see in Jesus. Canyon Hills Community Church 8

9 That's why we love 1 John, chapter 2, verse 6, where John says, " whoever says he abides in him..." Whoever says he is a follower of Jesus " ought to walk in the same way in which he walked." There ought to be something about my life that at least is starting to resemble Jesus. It may not be all really super-quick or a lot at once, but it's changing. I'm changing, and we ought to be able to see that. E. The time to repent is now. There's no doubt God is patient. He wants you to repent. His heart is clear in Isaiah, chapter 30, when he says, "Therefore the Lord waits to be gracious to you, and therefore he exalts himself to show mercy to you." God is so patient. He commands it, he intervenes, he invades, and he's calling you, inviting you to repent and to let him change you. Yet God's patience is limited. Look what Paul wrote to some people who just kept hearing the gospel and hearing the gospel, but were never getting around to repenting and coming to Jesus. They were just like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've heard it, I've heard it, I've heard it. I'm thinking about it. I'm thinking about it." They're putting it off and putting it off. Here's what he said in Romans 2. " do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? But because of your hard and [unrepentant] heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God's righteous judgment will be revealed." Whew. It's clear that the person continually refusing to bow the knee to Jesus, hour after hour, day after day, year after year Paul says that person is just storing up God's wrath for themselves. Think of God's patience and mercy like a gigantic dam, and it's holding back the rising waters of his coming judgment. One day, in fierce anger, God is going to break that dam. He's going to burst it and it will be too late to repent. His judgment will arrive, and no repentance is possible after we die, and no repentance is possible if Jesus returns to get those who have repented and we still haven't. The time to repent is now. Today is the day of salvation, Jesus says. Overall, for the unbeliever, God invites sinners to repent so he can give them himself. It's absolutely a must for the unbeliever, but it doesn't stop there. Repentance is an ongoing attitude for those of us who have repented, who are living in Christ. I think the problem is that a lot of we Christians truly did repent, but we kind of compartmentalized it. We parked it somewhere in our past. That's what we did to come to Jesus. Now, somehow, we have to just get our act together and keep going. That's a mistake, because repentance is an amazing gift for us as well. The Bible teaches that together with ongoing faith, ongoing repentance should be normative for the Christian. 3. Ongoing repentance is an absolute must for the believer as well. What does it mean? What does it look like as we apply it to us, between us, between the people you love in relationship with Christ? Canyon Hills Community Church 9

10 A. God's love and mercy are unconditionally available. Ongoing repentance is God's gift to the believer as well, promising that he will not abandon us as we're going through, changing into the likeness of Jesus. We are going to blow it. We would be liars, the Bible says, to claim to be without sin, but the gift of repentance, for the believer, means God will not abandon us in that process. We don't have to relate to God through a veil of shame anymore. The gift of repentance means we don't have to put on masks. We don't have to pretend with each other, and we don't have to pretend with God. That's a beautiful thing, church. The gift of ongoing repentance that we have means we don't have to fake like we never blow it. We don't have to do that anymore. We don't have to live like that. We don't have to be phony. I want us to look at the most powerful example of repentance found anywhere in the Bible. It's in Psalm 51. I told you we would go there. Get your Bible close by. Just look at this quickly with me. David, the king of Israel, God's anointed, described as the man after God's own heart, the one whose kingdom would never end From David's lineage, God would bring Jesus, his own Son. David blows it. When he blows it, man, he blows it big time. He commits adultery, and then he has the husband of the woman with whom he committed adultery murdered. There was no minor league sin about that. It was huge. He thinks he might have gotten away with it until God spoke to his friend, Nathan, the prophet. Listen. It is really hard to have friends who are prophets. If someone comes up to you and says, "I'm a prophet," just say, "Hey, more power to you," and then run. That was Nathan. Nathan was David's good buddy, but God spoke to Nathan and he brought to light David's sin. In that process of brutal remorse, David records his repentance for us in Psalm 51. Look what he says in verse 1. "Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions." Notice there, now, David calls out to God's mercy two times. Mercy is the theme of God's story. Mercy is the thread that runs all the way through the Bible. It's the reason Jesus came to die on the cross. Mercy is what all of our desperate hearts need. It's the healer of our broken relationships. Think about it. If God only offered us justice, we would never run to him, because we're guilty. We would just never go. We know what would be facing us. Yet it's the knowledge of his mercy that makes us honestly face ourselves and gladly run back to him. His mercy He says, "Have mercy on me, O God according to your abundant mercy blot out my [sin]." Don't you get the sense that David knew? David believed the basis of his relationship with God wasn't in how little he sinned. David understood that the basis of his relationship with God was based on how much God loved him. You get the sense that when David is repenting here, he believes God is there with his arm around him. He doesn't believe God is disgusted or embarrassed, because God is merciful. Canyon Hills Community Church 10

11 We say this around here all the time. For the believer saved by grace, there is nothing we can do to make God love us more, and for the believer saved by grace, there is nothing we can do to make him love us less. David understood that. That's the gift of repentance for the believer. God has placed us in Christ and has given us the DNA of his Son's own righteousness. Nothing we will do will ever alter that, so for the believer, ongoing repentance is God's invitation for unconditional love and mercy. Let's take it a little farther. Do you know what else ongoing repentance means for the believer? B. God will cleanse our hearts. We need that. How many of us here today might need to hear that? Our hearts, before we repented and came to Christ by faith, were stained and soaked in sin, and at conversion, our hearts were washed clean. Paul described it this way in 1 Corinthians 6. "And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God." " you were washed " That means when we came to Christ and repented and received him by faith, our sins were cleaned out. All the garbage, junk, sin, mistakes, attitudes, stupid decisions, and hurtful things we ever said, did, or thought God took them all and just rinsed them right out of our hearts. That's what he says here. Then he sanctified us. That means he took us and he set us apart now, for him, and now he's going to change us and make us and transform us into the image of his Son. Then he justified us. That means he declared us righteous. All of that happened instantaneously at the moment we repented and put our faith in him. That's good news, isn't it? Paul said, in Titus, chapter 3, " he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit " Again, how grateful we are! Yet the truth is we still sin. After we repent and come to Christ, we're still in process, and until we go to heaven, our hearts continually need ongoing cleansing. Guess what! Ongoing repentance is the only cleansing agent available to God's people. Look what David wrote in Psalm 51. Look at verse 2. He prays, "Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin!" Look at his repentance in verse 7. "Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow." Look at verse 10. "Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me." Do you know what repentance means for you and me as children of God? God will cleanse us again. God will clean up our hearts. The apostle John wrote it this way in the New Testament. He said, "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." There's the cleansing. That's what we have. That's our gift: ongoing repentance. He will clean up our hearts. C. We must own our sin and call it evil. Now let's start to get even more real and personal here. Even if repentance doesn't mean an immediate end to our sinning, it does mean we no longer live Canyon Hills Community Church 11

12 at peace with our sin. We declare a war against it. We don't justify it and we don't defend it. Again, we turn to David in Psalm 51, verse 3. "For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight " Look at how he describes his sin. There's an immediate application of ongoing repentance between us and God, as well as when we have sinned against another person. How desperate we are in the church today, you guys! How desperate we are for God's people, for true believers to express this kind of repentance with each other when we've sinned against one another. To own our sin, to call it evil, to say, "I lied to you. I gossiped about you. I stole from you " To be able to say, "I manipulated you and the facts " To be able to own our sin and call it evil "I screamed at you. I bullied you. I didn't keep my promises. I judged you wrong. I used you. What I did was inappropriate. I jumped to the wrong conclusions." See, that's way, way different than saying, "Oops. Sorry about that. I didn't mean to." We own it and we call it what it is. We name our sin and we say it's evil. When we go through repentance with each other, sadly, that part is usually missing. "Hey, you seemed a little mad. Sorry. We'll talk later." Send. "Ah, I repented. Sweet! I'm off the hook." D. We grieve our sin and the pain it causes others. We grieve our sin and the pain of the offended. That's the real sign that we're growing up. That's the real sign we're becoming more like Jesus. It's the real sign of sanctification when we feel the pain our sin causes God or others. Again, David just gives us permission Look at verse 4 again. "Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment." I like that. Do you know what David is saying there? "God, you are right to feel the way you do about my sin." He is saying there in the judgment, "You are right to call me guilty." He realizes what he has done. He realizes the pain of his sin, and he's not trying to bargain with God. He's not trying to just minimize it a little bit. He is saying, "Listen, God. You are absolutely right. What I did was deplorable, and you are perfectly justified in pronouncing me dead guilty." It means we take responsibility for the hurt and devastation we've caused. When we repent with each other, we must remember to not only admit we've done it, but to recognize the pain we have caused in other people's lives, the broken hearts, the embarrassment, humiliation, or fear we caused someone to feel. Maybe it was a loss of hope we took away from someone. Maybe we financially brought destruction or pain to them because of our choices. To be able to recognize that and admit that and take responsibility for it is what I see David doing and what I think we must do better at. It's one thing to say, "I did it." It's one thing to say, "It was bad." It's one thing to say, "I feel rotten." It's a whole other level to say, "I need to take care of it. I need to recognize the hurt and devastation I caused. Canyon Hills Community Church 12

13 E. We ask God and people to forgive us. A common misunderstanding is that we mistake feeling bad for repentance. It's a start, but for most of us, most of what we try to pass off as repentance is really just a little self-therapy. Admitting that I feel bad about what I have done has everything to do with me and nothing to do with the person I've sinned against. "I do feel bad. I feel rotten. I shouldn't have done that." Okay, that's good, but what about what you've done to the person? Real repentance means I own my sin and I ask you to forgive me for what I've done. Going to someone and saying, "I feel really bad " "So what? That's fine, but you still crushed me. You still destroyed me," or whatever it is. That's the point in which we say, "Will you please forgive me?" We don't demand it. We don't assume it, but we ask for it. I can't tell you how many conflict resolutions I've been a part of where the person said, "I said I was sorry! I told them I felt terrible!" "Yeah?" "Well, what else am I supposed to do?" "How about asking them to forgive you? What do you think about that?" We have to teach our kids that, too. Don't we? "Sorry. I know I just punched you in the face, but sorry." I did that with my kids. "Tell her you're sorry!" "Sorry." You look at the other kid. "Don't you feel better?" "No! My face still hurts!" We act like kids sometimes. Look at David in verse 9. He says to God, "Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities." He says, "Turn away from me. God, please forgive me. Don't see my sin anymore. Get rid of it. Please tell me you're going to forgive me of it." F. We genuinely change and make right what we've broken. This is where the rubber meets the road. I think a great example of this can be found in the real repentance of a man in the New Testament named Zaccheus. Zaccheus spent his whole life ripping people off. He meets Jesus and has a crisis of faith. In Luke 19, his repentance is described for all to see for all of history. At some point in his encounter with Jesus, he stands up, interrupts, and says, "Jesus, half of everything I have is going to the poor." Translation: "Everything I have, I stole from someone else, and so I'm giving it back. I'm giving it away." Then he said, "With the other half, if I've defrauded anyone, I'm going to repay them four times the amount I stole from them." Okay. That's fixing what your sin broke. That's part of repentance. That's the beautiful healing part, the divine healing power of repentance in relationships. Real repentance includes fixing the trust I've destroyed between us. It means if I've brought financial harm to you because of my choices, then I'm going to do whatever it takes to restore Canyon Hills Community Church 13

14 what I have destroyed in your finances. If it means I hurt your reputation because I gossiped about you or told all kinds of junk about you to other people, it means every last minute of my life, I'm going to go to those people and set them straight and tell them I sinned. It could mean a whole lot of other things, too. The truth be known That part of repentance takes time, especially if there has been damage and deep, hurtful things like betrayal or abuse. It takes a long time, but if we are truly repenting, you and I are willing to take as long as it takes to fix what our sin has broken. That is the place of real repentance in a believer's life, and it's through that repentance that we could actually see healing and lasting relationships, because we are going to mess up. Now some of you are sitting here right now and you've never repented. You're not a believer. Maybe you've come to church a little bit. Maybe it was a long time ago. Maybe you're here for the first time. Praise God you're here, because it is God's gift to you. He has invaded your mind today and your heart and reminded you of how much he loves you through Christ dying for you. He has also reminded you how pure and holy he is, and you have no hope without him. He is inviting you. He is commanding you today to repent and come to him by faith, trusting in his mercy, in his love. For others of you, there may be a relationship that's strained, either recently or a long time ago, and something about repentance today brought to your mind that it may be time for you to go fix something. It may be a relationship you settled and fixed a while ago, and you're realizing, "Wow. I did not take ownership for the pain I caused." You may need to call them, if they're not close by, or go to them and say, "Hey, I know this is water under the bridge, but listen. I just realize right now, maybe more than ever, how much hurt I caused you. I didn't make that clear when I asked you to forgive me, and I just want you to know I am so sorry." It may be that you have a relationship right now that you need to go to. I'm going to challenge you. Take responsibility for you. They may have sinned against you too. They may have sinned more against you, but you take responsibility for you and you start the process of that divine healing in broken relationships. You go to them and you say, "Listen. I need to own my sin. What I said, what I did, and how I responded was evil." No excuses. No justification. No minimization. Just call it what it is. Confess what it is, the damage it did, and ask them if they would be willing to forgive you. That's your part. Is it quiet in here? I pray that that's because maybe we're learning something. Let's pray. Father in heaven, in all of our imperfection, hurt, and mess-ups we sit in your presence right now, confident that your love and mercy is in full supply. Would you give us courage, God, to do the right thing? Give us courage. God, I pray for those who have never repented and come to Jesus. Canyon Hills Community Church 14

15 I pray that today you will have brought them face to face with your love and their sin. I pray you have invaded their hearts and helped them to see, God, the desperate need and the beautiful gift you make available to them in Jesus. May today be the day of their salvation. I pray in Christ's name, amen. Listen. If you are an unbeliever, either by a lack of fruit in your life or you've just never stepped over that line and said, "All right, I don't understand it all. All I know is God did this for me in Christ, and he's telling me to repent. I want to start there," we have some people up here who are trained and excited. They know exactly what that feels like, and they can help you take that next step. I hope you'll come talk to them before you leave. God bless you. Have a great rest of your day, and we'll see you next week. Canyon Hills Community Church 15