Repentance According to Jesus #1

What does it mean to repent? That's very, very important. That's the million-dollar question.

That's the only question that matters for you and me. You've heard the word in your Christian walk, but have you ever fully grasped its meaning? If you want to know what repentance really means, there's no better authority than Jesus Christ himself. And on this edition of The Truth Pulpit, Pastor Don Green will refer to just that source as he begins a series titled, Unless You Repent. Hello, I'm Bill Wright. And Don, why is this topic so vital to believers?

Well, my friend Bill just asked an outstanding question. Why is the topic of repentance so important? And could it really be that important when you don't hear that much about it in Christian pulpits today? Well, Jesus said in Luke 24, Let there be repentance preached for the forgiveness of sin. We need to know what repentance is because it is a vital aspect of saving faith in Christ. You need to know what repentance is. You need to know what it's not. And we're going to show it to you in this upcoming series here on The Truth Pulpit. Thanks, Don.

It's clear we need to pay close attention. So friend, have your Bible ready as we join our teacher now in The Truth Pulpit. The book of Matthew is kind of the opening gospel. It is the opening gospel to the ministry of Jesus Christ. And after Matthew gives us a little bit of an introduction to the genealogy of Christ and the birth of Christ and the ministry of John the Baptist which prepared the way for Christ, he brings us into the teaching of Christ so that we could understand why he came. And if you look at Matthew chapter 4 verse 17, John the Baptist has declared that Christ is the one that they are to listen to, and Matthew gives us a summary statement of everything that Jesus' teaching ministry summarized and what it testified to and what it meant. He said in Matthew chapter 4 verse 17, From that time Jesus began to preach and say, Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. The kingdom of heaven was at hand in that day because Jesus is the king himself.

And when the king is present, his kingdom is at hand because the kingdom is fulfilled and represented in the one who holds the kingdom. And so here is Jesus embarking upon his public ministry, and the summary theme Matthew tells us of his preaching and teaching was that you need to repent because the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Now at that point, he doesn't go on and explain anymore. He just gives this summary statement, repent. Well, let's flash forward to the end of Jesus' life.

We're just setting context here. And Jesus says in Luke chapter 24, look at verse 44, These are my words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things which are written about me in the law of Moses and the prophets and the psalms must be fulfilled. He says there's 1,500 years of Old Testament prophecy about me that has been fulfilled in my life. All of the Old Testament was pointing to me, he says. And then in verse 45, he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures. Jesus goes on and says in verse 46, He said to them, thus it is written that the Christ would suffer and rise again from the dead the third day. Look at it now, look at it all of you at verse 47.

And that repentance for forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in his name to all the nations beginning from Jerusalem. Here's the problem that you have, beloved. You're all sinners, just like I am. You all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Your righteousness, your religious rituals, your efforts at self-improvement are nothing but filthy rags before a holy God.

You bring nothing to the table by way of merit that would compel God to bless you with his salvation. And the question is, how do we then have these sins taken away from our account? How do we enter into a realm where God does not hold our sins against us? Jesus makes it plain here and he tells his disciples that they must go out and preach repentance for the forgiveness of sins. That is the message that Jesus commended.

So here's what I want you to see as we kind of wrap up this little bit of context here. At the very opening of the New Testament of Jesus' ministry, the opening word Jesus says as recorded for us in Matthew is, repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. You go to the end of his life just before he ascends into heaven, and Jesus says repentance for the forgiveness of sins must be proclaimed to all of the nations. And so this singular theme of repentance functions as bookends to the ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ. It begins with repentance, it ends with repentance, everything in between is reinforcing that message of repentance. He is declaring simultaneously that we are unacceptable to a holy God in our own life and merit, and at the same time he is telling us the way that our sins can be forgiven, and it is driven through this door called repentance. Well, what does it mean to repent then?

That's very, very important. That's the million dollar question. That's the only question that matters for you and me. How can I know that when my appointed time to appear before the judgment seat of God will go well for me, for you? How could you enter into the spiritual realm, the spiritual reality of forgiveness where God would gladly grant to you an abundant entrance into his eternal kingdom and that you yourself would not be one of those cast away even though you've sat under the sound of the gospel?

How? We need to understand what Jesus taught about this. This is the most important question in the world. And what we're going to do today is we're going to answer four questions about repentance to help clarify your own response to the message of the gospel. These are four questions that I intend for you to ask yourself. This isn't about you thinking, oh, so-and-so over here needs to hear this message because he's a bad person and he's hurt my feelings. Let's drive all of that wicked thinking out of our minds.

God brings his Word to you for you to hear, for you to respond to, for you to examine yourself in light of it. And that's the way we're going to frame these questions here today. We're not playing games. We're not here to entertain anyone.

We don't care about any of that stage production that Hollywood does better than the church, but the church seems to want to mimic. No, we're here dealing with earnest spiritual realities that are the most important thing in your life. And so, as we ask these four questions, we'll be defining the doctrine of repentance for you according to Jesus as he himself presented it. Here's the first question that you need to ask yourself, and I encourage you to take notes so that you can review these things in your own heart later on. The first question about repentance is, do you recognize your sin? Do you recognize your sin?

And let me say something by way of, let me say something by way of brief illustration to kind of help maybe ease the way into this for us so that we can understand it. When I say, when we ask the question, do you recognize your sin, I'm not asking you whether you would superficially admit to men that you're a sinner. I'm asking whether in your heart you truly realize that you have sinned and broken God's law and you're guilty before him. Let's go back to Matthew now, Matthew chapter 5. What Jesus does in the context of the book of Matthew is, is that this summary statement of his teaching, repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand, is made toward the end of chapter 4. And then in Matthew 5, 6, and 7, he gives what is called the Sermon on the Mount. And in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is building on and he is explaining what repentance looks like. And one day soon, hopefully, we will go through the Sermon on the Mount together verse by verse. But for now, I just ask you to understand that Jesus says repent in Matthew 4.

There's no further explanation about what it means. And if that's so crucial for the forgiveness of our sins, there must be some explanation of what repentance looks like and what it means. Well, where you find that definition, that explanation of repentance, is found in Matthew 5, 6, and 7. Jesus gives an extended discourse on what he means by the concept and the term of repentance. And so, what Jesus does is he introduces a number of spiritual attitudes in the first few verses of Matthew 5 to explain what it means to repent from sin. Now, with that in mind, look at Matthew chapter 5 verse 1. When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on the mountain and after he sat down, his disciples came to him.

He opened his mouth and began to teach them, saying, and then he moves into his explanation. And he's explaining what repentance means. And he starts with this lead verse in Matthew chapter 5 verse 3.

Look at it with me if you would. He says, blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. He said, repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. How do I know that the kingdom of heaven belongs to me? Jesus says, blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

It belongs to them. They are in the kingdom of heaven, in other words, indicating that they somehow have repented. Well, what does this mean, to be poor in spirit?

Understand this, beloved. The kingdom of heaven is not about your material wealth. There's no intrinsic spiritual virtue to poverty. Jesus isn't talking about material wealth here. He's talking about your poverty of spirit. And he says, blessed are the poor in spirit to express the concept of spiritual poverty. He's saying, blessed are those who recognize that they are spiritually bankrupt. That they have nothing in their account to pay God in order to get salvation back in return. There is a total absence of spiritual pride. Instead, there is a recognition of spiritual poverty and bankruptcy that marks the one who is truly repentant.

Now, think with me for a moment here. When you evaluate yourself in light of God's holiness, when you see the sinlessness of Christ, and the glory of God, as it were, filling the temple, and Isaiah falls down and says, woe is me, I've seen the King of glory, and I'm a man of unclean lips. When you start to understand something about the glory and the holiness and the majesty and the greatness of God, that he is uncreated, infinite, and holy, and you are created, fallen, and finite, you start to realize there's nothing about me that would commend myself to him. God doesn't need me to complete himself.

He is already perfect in his being, and nothing that I could bring could add anything to him. And when we see ourselves in light of his holy law, which touches not only on our external behavior, but our motivations and our attitudes, we realize that we fall short of his glory. And beloved, I say this sympathetically. Everything I'm saying here today is from a spirit of sympathy for your souls, for your spiritual well-being.

I care about nothing today other than the fact that you would enter into the eternal kingdom of God abundantly and fully and safely. This is all for you and for your protection and for your help here today, but I must speak to you plainly so that you understand these spiritual realities. Your goodness does not fit you for God. Your religious rituals do not fit you for God.

Being in this building does not contribute any spiritual merit to your account and would force God to reward you with his salvation. Your thoughts, your words, and your deeds all fall short of the glory of God, and there is nothing that you can do to fix that situation. You do not have the spiritual capacity to put yourself together. You're like Humpty Dumpty falling off the wall and shattered, and whatever is left of spirituality can't pull themselves together to be presented whole to a majestic God. We're all in that condition. We are all lost. Our sin has broken us beyond human repair.

You are bankrupt before a holy God. The question is, do you recognize that? Do you acknowledge that from your heart? Have you been brought to a point where you are broken by the law of God and realize that you fall short of the glorious and holy demands of what his law and character require from you? Do you recognize your sin?

One of the ways that you can measure that is whether you find yourself objecting and pushing back to these declarations. If you push back and say, no, I don't believe that, you're making it too bad, you haven't recognized your sin, because what Jesus describes here is somebody who is poor in spirit. In other words, repentance precludes a sense of pride and self-reliance. The person who is repentant gladly, unconditionally, clearly states, I have nothing to recommend myself to God in my own. I am a beggar at the table of mercy.

I don't have a birthright, a title to this. Mercy from God. You see, repentance starts with knowing your own spiritual poverty. Look at Matthew 5-3 again.

I want you to see this. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Notice that he's talking about a poor in spirit that recognizes a lack of righteousness in the presence of God, because he goes on in verse 6 and says, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.

You're hungry because you're unsatisfied. You're thirsty because you don't have what it takes to satisfy that urge that Jesus uses the human desires of hunger and thirst to express a spiritual reality. We hunger after righteousness because we don't have it.

We thirst after holiness because we know we lack it. And so, recognizing our lack makes us poor in spirit in that we come to God not as those boastful in our own righteousness, but humble seekers of mercy, because we realize that we have no claim on him in our own right. Repentance starts with recognizing your sin and knowing your own spiritual poverty. Jesus said in Luke chapter 5 verses 31 and 32, I did not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance. Someone who thinks that they are righteous in their heart is saying, I don't need Jesus, because Jesus came to seek and save sinners. And so, before we are in a spiritual position to receive him, we have to acknowledge that we fall short and we need him. We have to have the Word of God completely wash and cleanse our mind of everything we've been conditioned to think.

That's how serious this is. We come to God not self-reliant but looking for something outside of ourselves. And we understand that and we freely acknowledge it. But beloved, repentance involves more than that mental understanding of recognition of sin. Do you recognize your sin? I hope so. I pray to God so. But Jesus goes further and probes our hearts further as we consider these things.

Point number two here. The next question that you need to ask yourself is, do you mourn over your sin? Do you mourn over your sin? And this question needs to be asked too, because we've all heard those who boast in their sin and say, Yes, I know that I'm a sinner, but I don't care.

I'm going to go to hell and have a drinking party with my buddies down there. And so they would, in one sense, they would say that they're a sinner, but they love their sin, they rejoice in it, they glory in it rather than being broken and mourning over it. And so we've got to go further than simply having that mental understanding of our sin, but to have that turn our heart in a way that Jesus describes in Matthew 5 verse 4.

Look at it with me. Matthew 5 verse 4. Jesus says, Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. He's describing here an emotional grief over sin. The mourning that he describes here has the idea of inner agony. Oh, I have sinned against a holy God in my thoughts and my words and my actions.

That's the sense. We need to understand here that Jesus is speaking about a spiritual mourning, not an earthly sorrow over the loss of a loved one or the loss of some kind of earthly benefit that we had. Listen, beloved, it's so important for you to understand this, that Jesus isn't talking about those who grieve at a funeral indiscriminately. That's not what he's talking about here at all.

It couldn't possibly be that. Because he said in verse 3, Blessed are those who are poor in spirit. In verse 6, it's those who are hungering and thirsting after righteousness. This is a spiritual mourning in the context of his overall teaching about repentance that he's addressing here. He's talking about a poverty of spirit.

Think about it with me. This is a promise that those who mourn will be comforted. Well, look, there are millions of people who are grieving today over the loss of a loved one and they're not experiencing any comfort whatsoever. It's not that somebody has an earthly sorrow, they're automatically comforted.

That's not it. That has nothing to do with what Jesus is talking about here. He's addressing those who would be his disciples and pursue him, having made a preliminary statement, repent for the kingdom of heaven as at hand. What keeps us out of the kingdom of heaven? Our sin.

What do we do in response to our sin? We recognize it and we mourn over it. You see, there's a sense in which sin troubles you. And in an ideal sense, in an ideal realm, if we saw it fully, we would weep buckets of tears over our guilt and our rebellion against God. But we don't have to go there with it. The question is not so much an intensity of an emotional reaction, but whether it bothers you.

Let's just go at that superficial level. Does it bother you that you sin against God? Does it trouble your heart?

Do you wish you were not like that? Do you long for something different even though sin clings to you? In other words, beloved, truly repentant people are not flippant about sin. Sin is not a joking matter to them. My life is a violation of the holiness of God and that's not okay. There's a sense of mourning over it.

Because this is about you standing alone in the presence of a holy God. You as one with sin on your account. And the question is, what's your response to that? Do you own it?

Do you recognize it? Do you unconditionally affirm that? And then does it bother you so much that you have a sense of pain over your sin? See, a truly repentant person understands that sense of spiritual pain. Well, if you don't know what pain is like, you don't know what mourning is like, and you aren't yet truly repentant as Jesus defines it. Pain! Ouch!

I don't like to remember what I used to be like. Whether there are tears or not, it hurts. Do you know something of that pain? It's one thing to say, yes, I'm a sinner. It's another thing to say, I'm a sinner and it pains me.

It hurts. And let's get really detailed and specific, shall we? Particularly in this American culture in which we live, and the way that some sectors of Christianity have morphed into little more than a political entity.

This is extremely crucial for you to understand. When we talk about repentance, repentance is not measured by your opposition to the sins of society like abortion and homosexuality. That has nothing to do with it, unless you're a homosexual or you are unrepentant over abortions in your past. The fact that you are opposed to the sins that society commits says nothing really about whether you are repentant. You see, Jesus calls you to be repentant, not over the sins that other people do. Jesus calls you to repent over your sin. And while you may not have partaken in the sins of society, you may not be a drunk or a homosexual or an abortion provider or someone who has raised the hand against one in your own womb or a man who pushed in that direction. Yes, those things are sinful, but if that doesn't mark you, then it's not the point for you here today.

The fact that you're opposed to that says nothing about how you regard your own sin. The question for you is, does it pain you that you are an angry, irritable spouse? Does it pain you that you harbor sinful lusts and you feed your lusts? Does that pain you?

Do you want to turn away from even that? You see, Jesus is calling you to grieve over your sin, not someone else's. Today on The Truth Pulpit, Pastor Don Green has begun showing us what true repentance means.

In part one of his message, Repentance According to Jesus, we must recognize our sin and then mourn over it. Well, Don has two more major points to deliver on our next broadcast, so be sure to join us then. Meanwhile, we invite you to visit our website, thetruthpulpit.com. There you can download podcasts or find out how to receive CD copies of Don's radio messages for your personal study library. And if you want to go even more in depth, you'll also find the link Follow Don's Pulpit. That'll take you to Don's full-length weekly sermons, not subject to the time editing we need for radio broadcasts. And if you're in the Cincinnati area, check out the service times for Truth Community Church also on our website and plan a visit. We'd love to welcome you. Again, come to thetruthpulpit.com for all the info. I'm Bill Wright and we'll see you next time on The Truth Pulpit.