2 - Repent of Your Sins Towards God

you you you the very first step of entering the kingdom has always been repent the tragedy is so many people are becoming Christians today without repenting that God is having to tell Christians to repent in this country he shouldn't need to be telling Christians to repent the church should be telling the world to repent instead if you're hearing from God you know that he's telling the church Christians in Britain to repent and catch up on what they should have done years ago so that's the first step but what does it mean to repent most people I'm afraid think it's a matter of feelings of Tears are feeling sorry for what you've done but that may not be repentance it may be simply regret a lot of people have feelings of regret about how they lived I'd be surprised if there was anyone here who didn't regret some of the decisions they'd made in life and feelings of regret are about what you've done to yourself what you've done with your own life and your own decisions then there are other people who have deep feelings of what we call remorse and remorse is what you feel about what you've done to others I remember meeting a man suffering from venereal disease as the result of his way of life and he had passed on this venereal disease to his daughter and he was filled with remorse when he saw what he'd done to someone else and he had deep feelings of remorse about it but that's not repentance repentance has this unique feature that repentance is what you feel you have done to God now that's quite different from regret and remorse suddenly you realize it's God I have heard most like the prodigal son realized it wasn't just his father he'd heard he said father I've sinned against you and against heaven and as soon as that heaven dimension comes in and you realize it's God you heard most and you realize it's God's laws you broke it's God's love you refused it's God's anger you've provoked it's God's judgment you deserve it's God's mercy you need as soon as this God dimension enters in it becomes what Paul calls the godly sorrow that leads to repentance regret and remorse do not necessarily lead to repentance Cain regretted bitterly what he'd done to Abel but he never repented of it never put it right never confessed it he just regretted the punishment he was now experiencing well that's a sort of simple in introduction I now want to tell you that repentance involves three things so we're looking now at repentance and in the New Testament repentance passes through three stages very simply thought word and deed therefore repentance takes time and the trouble is when you're trying to lead someone to Christ in five minutes at the end of a meeting while the bus is waiting for them you can't take them through repentance properly and so we just make them say a sinner's prayer Lord Jesus I'm sorry for all my sin I invite you into my life amen that is not repentance in fact I doubt if you can repent in general you probably know the general confession that's used in Anglican churches every Sunday I have left undone the things that I ought to have done and I have done those things I not to have done and there is no health in us always starts miserable sinners doesn't it which produces North a lot of miserable congregations we should be happy Saints not miserable sinners but a general confession when I hear it in my wife and I are often in Anglican churches now one in our village I look at the congregation when they're confessing their sins and I wonder are you thinking of anything you've done or anything you've not done or are you just signing a blank cheque you say I'm going to show you that repentance is always repentance of particular sins you can't repent of general sins you can only repent of this and this and this and that involves these three steps it involves first of all changing your mind about particular things and thinking God's way about them and when you do this you come to two conclusions first God is a much better person than I thought he was and second I'm a much worse person than I thought I was usually it's the other way on when an unbeliever thinks about God he thinks God is unfair and he's fair that he's better than God have you noticed that the number of people who say why does God do this why does God allow that why should God they're saying I know better than God and if I were running the universe I could do it better than he's doing it that's what they're saying and they're really setting themselves as a better person than God is they're saying he's making mistakes which I wouldn't he's treating people in a way I wouldn't I'm there for a better person here's when repent your thoughts take a somersault and when you catch a glimpse of his holiness and his purity you begin to realize how much II you are and you have a much lower view of yourself in fact the higher your view of God the lower your view of yourself repentance is a change of mind the Greek word Metanoia means to have second thoughts meta change or after nor mind to think again about the way you've been living it begins when you change your mind when you think God's way and then you realize not only that your bad deeds are pretty horrible amazingly you begin to see that your good deeds are just as offensive to God it comes as a shock to many people when they realize in their mind that the best things they've ever done are not good enough for God and that our righteousness has to be repented of as well as our sin that our good deeds as well as our bad deeds need to be put away now what a revolution that is most people think repentance covers the bad things you've done that in the Bible it covers the good things you've done as well let me give you two texts from the Bible which are a bit blunt for a Christian congregation but the Bible is a blunt book it's unfortunately been tidied up in English for polite congregations but in the Hebrew and Greek it's a very earthy book Isaiah said this and this is when the ladies will understand Isaiah said our righteousness to God is like a menstrual cloth a disposable napkin that's how you feel about your righteousness once you think God's way here's one for the men Paul says in Philippians three when I consider the commandments I kept not those I broke and he kept nine out of ten of the Ten Commandments he said when I consider the ones I kept I count them done he says I feel like a little boy who's emptied his bowels into a potty and is holding it up and saying look what I've done and he uses a very down-to-earth Greek word for human excreta for which there's a well-known anglo-saxon equivalent that's the Bible in other words you realize that your righteousness is as far short of God's standard as your bad deeds and you leave the lot behind you and you say nothing in my hand I bring simply to your cross I cling that's to come to the truth about yourself I love that story about it an old preacher in the slave plantations in the deep south of America and he was preaching on the prodigal son he said he he took off his jacket and he threw it away and he took off his shirt and he threw that away and he took off his vest and he threw that away and then brothers he just came to himself that is fallen a bit flat you're not quite with me to come to yourself means finally to strip away all the covering and get to the real truth of your condition and the interesting thing is the closer you get to God the worse you feel the more you understand how good he is the more you realize how bad you are and realizing that thinking that way is the first major step but that's not the end of repentance the second step is the word of repentance and that means first to confess sins Protestants in reaction to in reaction to the Catholic practice of confession have a neglected confession if you've gone to John the Baptist and asked for baptism he would have said then before you go into the water make a public confession of your sins and they insisted on that you look up how many times in the New Testament it says confess your sin to one another do you know it's I've found its therapeutic if I'm selling an Enquirer to get them to name the sins they want forgiven that does two good things for them it first of all helps them to be accountable for specific things somebody comes to me and says I'd like to be a Christian oh you'd like your sins forgiven yes you'd like to be saved from your sins yes then you tell me what sins you want to be saved from I find that's when repentance begins and somehow naming it gets it out into the light my heart always leaps when somebody says to me in those situations I've never told anyone this before I thought there's a release coming in a moment it's coming into the light it's getting out even just saying it somehow does something about it and it's specific then Lord it's this and it's this and it's this there is no confession of general sin in the New Testament there are only confession of sins plural a list it also helps confession to make a person responsible when you confess sins you can't make excuses you can't say well it wasn't my fault because confession is to say it was my fault I chose that way let me say something that could be misunderstood there's an awful lot of inner healing around now and I find Christians would rather have inner healing than forgiveness because forgiveness demands repentance and it's so easy to blame someone else for my hang-ups and to say well it was my parents and what they did to me it was what happened to me as a child it's and to say I need healing I don't need forgiveness I need healing but listen we are not the result of what's been done to us we are the result of what we've done about what's been done to us it's the choices of reaction that we made that has made us what we are if I'm bitter it's because I've chosen to resent what was done to me rather than forgive it and in fact I really believe that more people are in need of repentance than in a healing though there's still a place for that where the Holy Spirit can go back and sort out a problem from early years but the basic need of mankind is not for any healing but for repentance that makes it possible for God to forgive of saying I am what I am now because I chose at crucial points of my life a way that lead leads to this character we are all the result of our choice and to treat someone as responsible for what they've done is to treat them with the dignity of a human being they are not a Pavlovian dog you're saying to someone you are a human being you have the will to choose you have chosen I've heard men in court in the doc plead well I got into bad company your honor never have I heard a man say I chose that company just I got into bad company but we choose our friends we choose the company we keep we choose the ambitions we have we chose we choose and confession is saying I made the wrong choice and I'm responsible that's the beginning of lifting a person to the dignity of a responsible human being and to get them to spell it out in words is very important if we confess our sins not our sin if we confess our sins which means name them one by one just as you do your blessings then he is faithful and just to forgive each one our sins and his blood goes on keeping us clean beautiful promise as well as confession that's one part of the words of forgiveness it is also important in certain sins to get a person to renounce that thing to say in words before God I'm finished with it I will not go back to it to renounce you know in early baptism they were always asked to renounce the world the flesh and the devil and say publicly I have nothing more to do with those false masters to renounce now comes the hard part of repentance which is deeds and here's a part of repentance that many people don't realize this is what takes time repentance begins with thought it then comes out in words but it must then come out in deeds I give you two texts John the Baptist if somebody came and said I want to be baptized said this produce fruit worthy of repentance then I'll baptize you they said well what you mean well he said if you have too many clothes go and give them away if you're fiddling your finance go and get the book straight if you're bullying someone because of your power stop doing it and then here's one for today be content with your wages where are the preachers in Britain preaching that today preaching it to the teachers preaching it to the nurses where are the preachers preaching that we're not preaching it because we're not preaching repentance but boy there's a practical repentance be content with your wages how many people are baptized in your church do you ask them are you content with your wages we laugh nervously because we know carefully well we're just getting them to repeat a general confession in the sinner's prayer we're not pinning it down to reality now Paul said this I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision but what was the heavenly vision he was not disobedient to I wonder if you know if you read the verse it says this I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision but I preached repentance to the Gentiles that they should turn or convert to God and prove their repentance by their deeds and Paul's ministry was a Ministry of getting people to prove their repentance by their deeds I believe we should stop baptizing people on profession of faith and baptize them on proof of repentance not just let that sink in Zacchaeus when Jesus came to have lunch with Zacchaeus the little man up the tree in more ways than one Jesus came to his house and Zacchaeus overland said Jesus I've been deferring people but from now on I'm going to be straight and I'm going to keep my books honest he didn't say that he said I'm going to go to everyone I've defrauded and pay them back with interest fourfold and Jesus said today salvation has come to this house repentance is putting the past right you can't put all sins right but there are some the Lord will show you can be put right I preached in Canberra in the houses of parliament to members of both houses in Australia and after the time together which was pretty hot boy they know how to heckle a speaker there and it was hot but after a time one of their prom most prominent politicians as he left the room whispered to me I'm going home to rewrite my income tax returns my heart left there were no tears but there was repentance he had thought God's way he'd put it into words and he was going home to rewrite his income tax that's where the rubber hits the road as they say that's repentance deeds of repentance doing something about it putting the past right bringing it to a proper conclusion cutting the umbilical cord that ties you to Satan's Kingdom tying it off so that you're free of it it may involve a negative thing like destroying something in fact last time I was in I was in Ashford I had to advise someone to go home and burn his Freemasons apron which you did and we need sometimes to do that in Ephesus they burned thousands of pounds worth of occult books you read acts 19 this is all part of the deeds of repentance and this has been so neglected in our preaching that no wonder the Lord is having to tell Christians to go back and repent and put things right but when they do there's a tremendous relief I was preaching in Aberdeen for three nights in the central theatre there and after the second night a girl came up to me she was very upset she was blotchy faced she was crying she was shaking and she said almost a person you're frustrating me she said I want to be a Christian I've tried to be a Christian I've gone forward at every evangelistic meeting in Aberdeen for 18 months including the Luis Palau Crusade and she said nothing has changed nothing has happened I've signed cards I've been counseled I've been to classes nothing has happened I'm beginning to doubt if there's anything in it but I still want to be a Christian what do you do with a girl like that I looked her in the eye I said who are you living with she said I live with a young men I said are you married to him no you're living as if you were married yes why aren't you married well he doesn't believe in it he says it's just a legal bit of paper as long as we love each other that's all that matters I said well you've got a very difficult decision to make I wish I could make it for you but I can't you've got to make it you've got to decide which men you want live with that young man oh Jesus and then she really got angry she said no one else told me I had to do that I said but you've told me you're getting nowhere with any of the others I said Jesus won't join in an arrangement like that you got to decide now if this was a preacher story I would tell you that she fell on her knees confessed and was gloriously saved but I'm afraid it's not a preacher story is the truth so better tell you the truth she ran out of that theater sobbing her heart out and I have thought of that girl again and again and again I know how Jesus felt about the rich young ruler who wouldn't give up his money do you know what the problem was everybody would counsel that girl had told to believe in Jesus they hadn't started by saying repent see and so she was stuck and so often that's the problem we've started at step number two Jesus and John the Baptist and Peter on the day of Pentecost all started with the word repent now at the very practical level to help someone to repent you need to help them to do three things the first thing we need to help them to do is to be serious because repenting is a serious business it can't be taken lightly I'm nearly going to repeat the words the marriage service now or not to be undertaken lightly or lightheartedly or whatever the words are I can't remember them I knew I said them well now how do we help someone to be serious I very much doubt if they will be serious unless something of fear is in the relationship the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and we need to help people into the right kind of fear to be serious and I think you can best do that by pointing out where their present way of life will lead them and the word I've found most helpful in helping people to realize that is the word perish I've said do you realize what it is to perish now that word in English means exactly the same as it does in the Greek if you have a perished hot-water bottle what do you have is it still a hot-water bottle hands up those who say it is still a hot-water bottle hands up those who say it isn't a hot-water bottle hands up those who don't like putting hands up No well is it still a hot-water bottle or isn't it looks like one doesn't it it can't hold water but is it still a hot-water bottle listen when they have water Butler's perished or a tire it can't be used for the purpose for which it was made it still looks like one may feel like one but it can't be used as one a perished human being still looks like a human being feels like a human being that can't be used as a human being what do you do with something that's perished you throw it away or you burn it in the incinerator hell is God's incinerator for perished people they don't cease to be people they are just no more use to him I think that's the most terrible destiny that a human being could ever have to become utterly useless unemployment redundancy is enough to destroy your self-respect but to know that you've ceased to be of any further use to God or to anyone else that's what perished means and God so loved us that he didn't want us Parrish that's what hell is it's a place where you're no use to yourself to others or to God and you spend the rest of your existence with people who are no use to you or to themselves or to God I can think of nothing more terrible than that but that's the end product of living without God the fear of becoming utterly redundant in God's universe that's the fear of the Lord Jesus you know said something about nuclear disarmament did you know that he said don't fear those who can kill your body rather fear Him who can destroy body and soul in hell perished people the second thing we need to do for people to help them to repent is to help them to be specific to confess sins plural to name them to get down to the nitty-gritty if you say to someone you want to be saved from your sins oh yes well which sins do you want to be saved from all of them well which one shall we start with it's too easy for people to say oh yes I'm a sinner everybody is nobody everybody sinned I'm a sinner in what way have you sinned them we need to help people to be specific so how can we do that there are three ways the first way is a guided conversation in which you steer them now you must keep their confidence they must feel that you will keep their confidence but just to steer them then what is your by setting sin what's the one you'd most like to be free off because Jesus wants to set you free from it what's the one that you most hate yourself for a guided conversation can become specific the second way is to give them a detailed list and a friend of mine actually has prepared such a list of all kinds of things that people get involved in and before he counsels someone he gives them a sheet of paper and says go through that this list have you been involved in any of these occult things or in any of these perverted habits or and they go through and they're ticklin and then he's able to counsel them it's a very practical way of doing it the New Testament contains about 30 lists and between them they cover 120 sins which God counts in and sometimes it's helpful to have a detailed list and get them to go through it and tick off a third way and this is a way that's available to the counselor who's moving in the Holy Spirit is an immediate revelation sometimes I have asked the Holy Spirit to show the person I'm counseling what the root problem is what the taproot is at other times I've asked him to show me what the root problem is and then surprised the counselor by asking them about it but the Holy Spirit wants to reveal the tap roots let me give you an illustration I've found that behind every homosexual men that I've counseled is a sad history of a father and mother who exchanged roles and the mother became the dominant authority figure and the father the comfort figure that is why so much homosexuality is being produced why the roles are being confused and it's the children and grandchildren who suffer from confusion and I was counseling a dear boy public school boy a lovely boy lovely Christian but he was just crippled with this temptation which he gave way too regularly and I really felt from and I said when did this begin all we said at boarding school now borås boarding schools have a lot to answer for believe me but I said no the Holy Spirit is telling me it began long before that and he said no I can't remember it beginning before boarding school I said but the Holy Spirit tells me it's before that so tell me about your parents sad case of a wife had been through three husbands a dominant woman who just changed partners when she wanted to he was the product of the third husband and the wife had taken the authority role in the home she had dominated the result was that when he wanted comfort he climbed into bed with his father not his mother and did not realize that the father was not getting comfort from the mother and was getting it from the son the whole thing emerged and it was necessary for the Holy Spirit to reveal this so that we could really get down to the root problem of it see now these are the three ways to get down to specifics a guided conversation a detailed list and an immediate revelation and finally and this must be in one minute to be sensible and that's necessary in two ways first to be sensible as far as the emotions of repentance are concerned sometimes people have an exaggerated sense of guilt over the wrong thing their feelings have deceived them it's possible for example for men to feel more guilty about masturbation which is not mentioned in the Bible than murder so we need to help them to be sensible in emotions and not let their feelings get things out of proportion psychological guilt is not moral guilt and it's moral guilt that Jesus cures not what we feel guilty about but what we are guilty of and the other way in which we need to be sensible is in the actions of repentance you can't go back and put everything right so we need to help them to be sensible about what they do one friend of mine went to the police and confess to a crime it committed take to court he was given the lightest possible sentence of two months went into prison preached Jesus in prison the prisoners called him the bishop so when he came out he confessed to another crime and got back into another prison and preached the gospel there and he proudly told me I'm the only evangelist in Britain entirely financed by Her Majesty the Queen now that was within the realm of common sense he could have gone overboard on it we need to help people to be sensible about what can be put right and what can't but in this way we have helped them to repent in the next talk we'll talk about how to help people to believe

Channel: Scent of Water

Views: 117,178

Rating: 4.7320724 out of 5

Keywords: Holy, Spirit, Gospel, Lord, Salvation, Truth, Salvation (Christianity), Faith, Baptised, Born Again, Jesus, Christ, Saviour, David Pawson, Discipleship, New Christian, Holy Spirit (Deity)

Id: jixZuusJMnE

Length: 34min 32sec (2072 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 07 2013