Procrastination

If you have your Bibles with you today, I want you to turn with me, if you would, to Acts chapter 24. We're going to be looking at verses 24 and 25. I promise you we will be back on the life of David next week, but the Lord has been dealing with my heart about this subject, and I wanted to preach this today, so bear with me. Acts chapter 24 starting at verse 24. After some days, Felix came with his wife Drusilla, who was Jewish, and he sent for Paul and heard him speak about faith in Christ Jesus. And as he reasoned about righteousness and self-control and the coming judgment, Felix was alarmed, frightened, and said, Go away for the present.

When I get an opportunity, I will summon you. Bow with me as we go to our Lord in prayer. Heavenly Father, there are many in our congregation right now that are suffering with the COVID disease. We pray for Jeff and Annette Brown, their sons Tony and Robert. We pray for Dale and Christine Powell. We pray for Barry Bailey and his son Zachary. We pray for Gail, that she'd be with her as she is ministering to her family. Heavenly Father, we especially pray for Kim Eaford and her family today as they have experienced the home-going of Martin. We ask Heavenly Father that you give to that family peace that passes all understanding.

Let them know that Martin is with you and will be with you forever. Heavenly Father, I pray that you would have mercy on our world and lift this COVID off of us. Heavenly Father, you inspired the Apostle Paul to say these words, that all Scripture is given by inspiration of God. It is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, and instruction in righteousness. Your word is always true and it's always relevant, but the passage that we are dealing with today is super relevant. Our culture is hearing the truth, ignoring and mocking the truth, and taking scriptural injunctions to repent and putting them on the back burner of their lives.

There's no sense of urgency. There's no fear of death. There's no fear of the judgment of God. As we look at Felix today, help us to see and understand the spiritual lunacy of procrastination in the area of repentance.

Open our eyes to see it ourselves and open our mouths that we might share the truths with others. Lord Jesus, you are the one who said, unless we repent, we shall all likewise perish. May we live like we believe that. And may we believe it because you said that it's true. For now it's in the holy and wonderful and precious name of Jesus that we pray, amen.

You may be seated. I have a question for you today. The answer to that question is found in God's holy Word. If God has called us to repent, if God has called us to repent, then is it dangerous for us to procrastinate?

Does it matter if we quench the Holy Spirit of God's conviction in our lives? Here in Acts chapter 24, the apostle Paul has been taken into custody by the Roman authorities, the Roman procurator Felix has come to Paul and is ready to hear him out and listen to what he has to say. And we need to remember that the procurator Felix is a weasel.

He stole another man's wife in order to move up the political ladder. And now he's decided to hear Paul's case. And Paul looks at this as an opportunity to preach the gospel.

And what does he do? He just rares back and lets loose. Acts chapter 25 says that he reasoned with them about righteousness, self-control and the judgment to come. Felix was not expecting that. Felix was expecting Paul to plead for mercy and ask to be let out of prison.

And then he might extort him and get some money out of him. That's not what Paul did. Paul preached the gospel and he called Felix to repent and to believe. Scripture says that when that happened, Felix was alarmed. Some translations say it better than that.

Felix was frightened. And he said to Paul, just go away and then I will call you back at a convenient time. People, do you see that?

Do you see what's going on there? That's procrastination. That is delaying repentance.

And let me tell you, it's dangerous. He died not long after this and he died without Christ. It is terribly unwise to believe that you can come to repentance whenever and wherever you decide. That's not the truth.

You can't. And we need to understand that because millions across our world today are doing that very thing. Before I went in the ministry, I worked at Associated Grocers Mutual and had the privilege of starting a Bible study there. They let me do that during the lunch hour. And people would bring their lunch and we'd sit together in a big room and we had this Bible study.

People would eat their lunch first. There was one guy I will never forget. Instead of bringing a bag of lunch each day, he brought a large jar of marshmallow cream.

I mean the kind that you make chocolate fudge out of. And he brought this big jar and a spoon and he'd sit there and he'd eat the whole jar while we were having the Bible study. By the end of the study, he had such a sugar high that he's talking so loud and so fast you could hardly understand what he had to say.

But I was watching this guy and it seemed to me after a couple of days that he might be under conviction. And so I asked him, I said, are you ready to repent and to trust Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior? And he said, no, I'm not ready for that.

About a couple weeks later, he was still coming to the Bible study and I asked him again, are you ready to repent? And he said, no, but he said, I've made a decision. And I said, what is that? He said, I'm going to get saved December the 15th. And I said, what? He said, yeah, I'm going to get saved December 15th.

And that was six weeks ahead. I said, what are you talking about? He said, well, I've got some wild oats to sow and I've got some sin that I think I might need to enjoy. And then when I get that done, then I'll get saved. I'll get saved on December the 15th. I said, are you nuts? I said, you don't even know that you'll be here December the 15th. Solomon said in Psalm 27 verse 1, boast not thyself of tomorrow, for thou knowest not what a day will bring forth. And I said, besides that, if the Spirit of God is working on your heart now, you don't know that he'll be working on your heart then.

It is too dangerous for you to do this. He would not listen. December 15th came. He came in, sat down. He said, well, I did it. I said, you did what? He said, I got down on my knees this morning. I asked Jesus to forgive me and save me. I said, did he? He said, yeah.

And he stayed on for about two more weeks and then he just got up. He walked out of the Bible study, never came back and wouldn't talk to any of us about why he was leaving and went right back to his sinful lifestyle. Folks, most people who delay repentance won't say it exactly like that, but they have the very same mindset. I repent someday, but it will be on my schedule. It will be on my terms.

It will be when I'm good and ready. That is deception. I want you to know it is utter deception because repentance is not something that we work up in the flesh. Repentance is a gift from God. And folks, it's so important that when the Holy Spirit of God is tugging on us and showing us our sin and commanding us to repent, that we bow to that tug and we follow the Lord and we genuinely repent. Today I want to look at four dangers of delay in repentance.

Number one is the hardening of the heart. And the Scripture that I'm going to use there is Jeremiah 7, verse 25 through 26. I will read that in a moment, but I wanted to share with you first what I think is probably the best biblical illustration of a hardened heart that we have in the Scripture. And that is the Pharaoh of Egypt during the time of Moses.

You can read his story in Exodus chapter 4 through Exodus chapter 14. And in that story you will see 15 different times that the Scripture says that the Pharaoh's heart was hardened. And sometimes it says the Pharaoh hardened his own heart. Sometimes it says that the Lord hardened his heart, so which was it? It was both.

It was both. What does it mean that the Lord hardened his heart? Does it mean that the Lord reached down into his heart and forced him to sin and caused him to do evil?

Absolutely not. It means that when he rejected the conviction of the Holy Spirit that God removed his hand of restraining grace off of him and let him just do what his wicked heart wanted to do. I call that passive hardening. Jeremiah chapter 7, verse 25 through 26 says this, From the day that your fathers came out of the land of Egypt to this day, I have persistently sent all my servants the prophets to them day after day, yet they did not listen to me or incline their ear but stiffen their neck. They did worse than their fathers. Jeremiah 19, verse 15, Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, Behold, I am bringing upon this city and upon all its towns all the disaster that I pronounced against it, because they have stiffened their neck, refusing to hear my words. And then in the New Testament, the writer of Hebrews uses Israel as an example of what not to do with your heart. And in Hebrews 3, verse 7 through 11, he says this, Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says, today if you hear his voice, do not harden your heart as in the rebellion on the day of testing in the wilderness, where your fathers put me to the test and saw my works for forty years. Therefore, I was provoked with that generation and said, They always go astray in their heart. They have not known my ways. As I swore in my wrath, they shall not enter my rest. It is possible to delay repentance so long that your conscience becomes seared.

And when the Spirit of God begins to try to speak to your conscience, that conscience is so seared and so hardened that you feel nothing going on down in your soul. I had a friend of mine whose father was an atheist. His father lived out in California. He lived here. And his father got cancer.

He found out it was a very fast-spreading cancer. And so he said, I'm going to California to try to witness to my dad. He was in the hospital.

They weren't giving him long to live. So he went to California, and he sat down beside the bed with his dad, and for two hours he witnessed to him. He shared his testimony with his dad. He went through a gospel presentation, going verse by verse with his dad.

He told him about the glories of heaven and the horrors of hell. He reminded his dad, he said, Dad, you've got children, you've got grandchildren, that if you die, they will never get to speak to you ever, ever again. His father said, I know you don't understand. He said, but I'm an atheist.

I have lived as an atheist, and I will die as an atheist. And he said, just to be honest with you, he had no emotion about this at all. He said, I just don't care. He said, I just want to die and end it all. And his son said to him, Dad, you can't end it all, for you're just going to move from the temporary to the eternal. This man died not long after that.

He died lost. And my friend said, I think I better understand what Jesus was talking about when he taught about the unforgivable sin, blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. You can reject Christ over and over and over again and get so calloused that you come to the point where you don't care about God, you don't care about the things of God, and you don't even care about your eternal state. I believe that the vast majority of people in this congregation are true believers and are going to heaven when they die. But I think there's some of you that are here right now, some of you here right now that don't know the Lord and you think you do. You believe with all your heart that you're saved, but there's never been any genuine repentance. There's never been a true turning to the Lord in faith. Brothers and sisters, if the Spirit of God is drawing you to Christ, convicting you of sin, then by all means, quit putting it off and come to know Jesus as your Lord and as your Savior. Danger number two. Godly seasons of mercy might pass.

They may pass. The man at my Bible study was under a mistaken impression that he can repent on his own schedule. I want you to know that's untrue. We are dependent on God's seasons of mercy. A person is not going to repent until God does that work in his heart, that drawing work. That's why the drawing of God just can't be ignored.

And the more they are ignored, the greater your judgment is going to be. In Ecclesiastes 3, King Solomon shared a very, very important concept on the subject of providence. And he said this, There is an appointed time for everything under heaven, a time to be born, a time to die, a time to plant, a time to harvest, a time to build up, a time to tear down, a time to laugh, and a time to cry. He could have easily added these words, a time to repent and a time for judgment. Isaiah said it this way, Seek the Lord while he may be found.

Call upon him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts. Let him return to the Lord that he may have compassion on him and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. Isaiah 49 8, Thus saith the Lord, In a favorable time I have answered you.

In a day of salvation I have helped you. And then it was by hard experience that King David learned the lesson of true repentance. David had wallowed in unforgiven sin for nine months, and finally God so dealt with his heart, David couldn't stand it any longer. And he repented, genuinely repented, turned from his sin, turned to the Lord, and God did such a mighty work in his life.

David wrote these words in Psalm 32 verse 6, Therefore let everyone who is godly pray to thee in a time when thou mayest be found. In all of life there's a time to act and there's a time when it's too late. Folks, that's true with a farmer. The farmer tries to plant his tomatoes in October and it's too late. That's true with a cattleman. A cattleman doesn't collect and harvest the hay up for his cows during the spring and summer and fall. And he waits and winter comes.

And when winter comes there's about six inches of snow on the ground. He sends the cows out but it's too late. Well, there's a repairman who works on machinery and he knows that if he gets the machinery in time before there's too much deterioration, he can do something but the time can come where it's just too late. A doctor has the same thing. A doctor may treat a person that has cancer and if he treats it in time he may be able to operate and get rid of it. But if he waits too late and the cancer is spread all over his body, it's too late. The Apostle Paul was very aware of this issue of time.

For it was Paul who said, Now is the time of decision, today is the day of salvation. Felix was as corrupt a politician as you could ever find. He was an extortioner. He would extort money out of people.

He did it so often that Nero finally had to call him in on the carpet and Nero said to him, If this doesn't stop, then I'm going to have to take you out of office. He was married to Herod Agrippa's daughter. She had been married three times before that. She wasn't even 20 years old yet. He married her, stealing her away from another man.

Charles Spurgeon said she was a voluptuous woman and she was used to being lusted after. So what subject does Paul talk about to these two? He preaches on righteousness, the need to be perfectly sinless before a holy God, which none of us can do. He talks about self-control, about being very careful with your desires and your appetites, and then he moves on to soon certain coming judgment. Felix was afraid. Felix knew that his life was filled with sin. He knew that he'd never given repentance a second thought before, and now Paul is sharing with him that he needs to repent and that he needs to come to the Lord, and if he doesn't do that, it's going to be too late. Paul is calling Felix to repent now. He's letting him know that delaying repentance is deadly. God's seasons of mercy come and go as God sees fit. They can't be anticipated in an ordinary fashion. We cannot wait for a more auspicious time or shun the still, small voice of God as he speaks to our hearts.

That's true for individuals. I think it's also true for churches. Burt Parsons is the pastor of St. Andrew's PCA Church down in Samford, Florida. It's a church that R.C.

Sproul founded, pastored for a number of years. Now, Burt Parsons is the pastor there, and that church is a beacon of light to that area of our world today, great church. Somebody asked Burt Parsons, said, What kind of church is St. Andrew's? He said, It's an ordinary church. Now, by that, he didn't mean that it was a boring church. He meant that it was a church that functioned by the ordinary means of grace.

What is that? That means this is the primary goal in your church. The preaching of the Word, prayer, and the administration of the sacraments, which are the Lord's Supper and baptism. He said, That's how the church needs to function. He said, We are not about activities.

We are not about programs. We are about the ordinary means of grace. He said, Our church is a PCA church, but we've got Baptists coming. He said, We've got Bible church people coming. He said, We've got Dutch Reformed people coming. He said, We've got Presbyterians coming. He said, You asked them, Why are you coming to this church? And their answer is this, Because here we get Bible.

Man, when he said that, I wanted to just jump up and absolutely shout. He went on to explain how so many churches today are letting the culture dictate what they do. The culture is pushing the church to step away from the gospel and to preach social justice. Folks, the Bible doesn't teach social justice.

The Bible teaches biblical justice. And that is so, so important. We are not to be obsessed with race, ethnicity, or social status. We are to be obsessed with Christ, who builds character into the heart. Does that mean that racism and prejudice are not important?

Yes, they're important. They're sinful. But you can't beat them outside of Jesus Christ, the power of the Holy Spirit, and genuine repentance. Churches think they can disobey the word and become woke, and God's going to honor that.

Let me tell you something. God is not going to honor that. What does God honor? In the present time, God honors the ordinary means of grace. In the past, from the time of the book of Acts until today, God has honored the ordinary means of grace. And I want you to know that in the future, from now until the time that Jesus Christ returns, God is going to honor the ordinary means of grace.

People listen to me. It is Bible, Bible, Bible. And if we get away from that, I promise you we will fail. May it always be said of Grace Church Harrisburg, we are ordinary.

We preach the Word, we pray, we administer the sacraments, the Lord's Supper baptism, and we sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. God's seasons of mercy come and go. That's true for individuals.

It is also true for churches. We cannot procrastinate. We cannot delay repentance. All right, danger number three, circumstances may place you beyond hope. None of you are beyond hope right now, but that can quickly change. Once again, Proverbs 27 verse 1 says, Boast not thyself of tomorrow, for thou knowest not what a day shall bring forth. Now, we don't know what our future holds.

You may live years and years from now, but you may have something to happen in your life that changes everything about you until the day that you die. I have known so many people that have been living a normal life, doing what they want to do, all of a sudden they have a stroke, and that stroke affects their mind in such a way they are never the same again. I've known people that have been in car accidents, and in that car accident they've had a head injury.

It has affected their thinking, and they were never the same again. I was in a Bible conference this week up in Gastonia going back and forth each day. Tuesday morning, left early and was headed down Highway 49 and got down to about where the Hardee's is, and the traffic light was out, and it was just kind of blinking yellow back and forth. There was a guy that was right in front of me that just kind of looked around and pulled out into the intersection, and what he did, this guy came flying.

I mean, he had to be doing 80 miles an hour, came flying through that intersection, hit that guy, I mean, totaled both cars, and I don't know if anybody was hurt or not, but if I had been one second earlier, that would have been me. Folks, we just don't know. I think of Rosemary Spittel. She used to be a member here at our church. She was in Charlotte. She walked into a parking lot, and a robber came up to her, hit her on the head, and did mental damage that she had to live with until the day she died.

Folks, the truth of the matter is, we just don't know. Do you remember the story of Nebuchadnezzar and how he took the warnings of God lightly? In Daniel chapter 4, it goes like this, Therefore, O king, may my advice be pleasing to you. Break away now from your sins by doing righteousness, and from your iniquities by showing mercy to the poor, in case there may be a prolonging of your prosperity. But twelve months later, the king was walking on the roof of his palace, reflecting, Is this not Babylon the Great, which I myself have built as a royal residence, by the might of my power, and for the glory of my majesty? While the word was in the king's mouth, a voice came from heaven, saying, King Nebuchadnezzar, to you it is declared sovereignty has been removed from you, and you will be driven away from mankind. Your dwelling place will be with the beasts of the fields. You will be given grass to eat like cattle, and seven periods of time, years, will pass over you, until you recognize that the Most High is ruler over the realm of mankind, and bestows it on whomever he wishes. Immediately he became a madman and lived like a beast, his hair growing like the eagle's feathers, and his nails like birds' claws. In that situation, God strangely and very graciously and wonderfully called Nebuchadnezzar to himself, gave him another opportunity. This time Nebuchadnezzar repented, and it was glorious. Ecclesiastes 9-12 says, Moreover man does not know his time, like fish caught in a treasure net, and birds trapped in a snare, so the sons of men are ensnared in an evil time when it suddenly falls on them.

And I think about Paul. He's telling the people in Thessalonica, in 1 Thessalonians 5 verses 3-4, warning them about what to do and how to get ready for the second coming of Jesus. He says, Folks, the warning here is a warning to all of us to not be presumptuous. We don't know what a day will bring forth.

My danger number four was this, sudden and premature death may occur. It was said of Abraham that he lived 175 years and breathed his last, and then was gathered to his people. Now can we count on a similar end?

Do we know it's going to work that way for us? I know a pastor who's in the faith word movement, and he goes to Psalm 90 where it says that an average life for a believer will be 70 years. It's a general principle. He made it a promise from God. And he tells people that if you're a Christian and you don't live to age 70, then you just don't have enough faith. That's what's wrong with you. You just don't have the faith that you should. Folks, that's a problem.

I said that's very interesting. I told him Jesus died when he was 33. I said, what was wrong with Jesus? Did he not have enough faith? And he said, oh, no, no, no. He said Jesus chose to die.

That's different. I said, well, how about Stonewall Jackson? My friend Harry Reader said that Stonewall Jackson is the most disciplined Christian that he'd ever studied in his life.

He died at age 39 when he was shot, a few days later died of pneumonia. I said, what about David Brainerd, the great missionary to the American Indians who died of tuberculosis when he was 29? I said, what about Robert Murray McShane who died of his sickness when he was 29?

Great, great theologian. So what about Charles Spurgeon and Jonathan Edwards? John Calvin, who all died in their mid-50s. I said, what about them? Are they just spiritual lightweights? And he said, oh, no, they're not spiritual lightweights. They just didn't understand faith.

I said, are you kidding me? This man had a mom who was in her mid-50s, and she found out she had cancer. It was a fast-spreading cancer. They told her at the hospital she didn't have long to live.

He came, he sat down beside his mother and said, Mother, this is a terrible testimony. He said, if you die before you're 70, then all that proves is that you didn't have the faith that you should have. If you had faith, then you'd live at least till you're 70 years old.

That woman died three weeks later, and the last three weeks of her life were absolute hell because she was so guilt-ridden because she felt like she didn't have the faith to defeat that cancer. Is there some stipulated number of years that God has promised us? No. Can you presume that you're going to live to a ripe old age?

No. Now, many have, and praise God for that, but many godly, godly people have died suddenly, have died a sudden death, have died when they were young. Folks, we can't presume that we're going to have a long life.

We may die today, and we need to be ready and prepared. Remember King Belshazzar? King Belshazzar was king of Babylon, and he was a very wicked man. He threw a party, a huge party, and he invited all the political big shots and the political muckety-mucks and brought them all in and said, we're going to have this party, it's going to be great, and brought in the wine, the liquor, and then he brought in the golden vessels, the drinking vessels, that they had stolen from the temple of Jehovah, and they did that just to mock Israel's God.

And as they're doing that, all of a sudden, out of the blue, appears a hand, out of nowhere, and writes a message up on the wall, mini, mini, techo, you farcen. The Scripture says that his joints went loose, that he just began to shake and tremble. He didn't know what in the world that was all about.

Saying, does anybody know what this is? Nobody knew, so they called Daniel. Daniel came in and says, God will give us the message, and God did give them the message through Daniel. And what did he say?

He said, what's being written here is this. You have been weighed in the balances, and you have been found wanting, and this day, Belshazzar, you will die, and the Medes and the Persians will take Babylon today. That night, that evening, during that party, the Medes and the Persians went through an aqueduct, came into the city, took the city of Babylon, completely took over from the Babylonians, and Belshazzar was killed.

I think about Ananias and Sapphira. Ananias and Sapphira got up one morning thinking everything was great, everything was running smooth until they met Peter. Peter rebuked them that day for their hypocrisy and for lying to the Holy Spirit.

Both of them fell over dead, just like that, on that one day. And the Scripture says that the whole church, fear came upon the whole church and all those who heard that. Proverbs 29 one says, a man who hardens his heart after much reproof will suddenly be broken, and that without remedy.

R.C. Sproul said the following about Felix's delayed repentance. He said, here was Paul speaking to his captor about the last judgment and about righteousness.

What would happen if the apostle Paul came and talked to you about righteousness, self-control, and the last judgment? We like to make plans. We plan what we're going to do tomorrow, next week and next month. We have plans for our children and grandchildren. We think about what our lives will be like 10 or 20 years from now. Where will you be and what will you be doing 100 years from now? I hope the consideration of that provokes in your soul nothing but absolute joy, the idea of being in heaven with your Savior and departed loved ones, your brothers and sisters in Christ.

Statistically, some of you reading this book will 100 years from now be in hell because you will fail on the day of judgment. I can think of nothing more terrifying than that. What happened to Felix? He became terrified. The last thing you wanted to think about was facing God as the last judgment. However, he did not ask Paul about the remedy, the gospel. He told Paul to stop talking. He did not want to hear another word, but it nagged at him. The text says he kept coming back for further considerate conversations with the apostle.

Truly, Paul never changed his tune. But we can put calluses on our consciences. We can do everything in our power to suppress and repress the Word of God, but we cannot destroy it. We can flee from it. We can silence those who deliver it.

But as Shakespeare's Hamlet understood, conscience doth make cowards of us all. Felix had much to be afraid of, but what a tragedy. Felix had the world's greatest theologian and evangelist explaining to him the things of Christ, and yet he said, go away.

I don't want to hear anymore. Delayed repentance. Felix died not long after this. For over 2,000 years, he has been in hell. And I want you to know that every single day he thinks about Paul's conversation with him. He remembers Paul not begging to get out of prison, not begging for him to have mercy on Paul, but Paul just preaches to him the gospel. He talks to him about the need for righteousness, that his perfect sinlessness before God that none of us, none of us could ever attain. And then he goes to Jesus, and he talks about Jesus and how Jesus did live perfectly without sin, how he lived absolutely without sin, and he did that in order that he might go to the cross and be our substitute and take our sin for us so that he could take our sin and give us his righteousness. Folks, Paul said, if you reject that payment, if you reject that payment, you will suffer forever in an eternal hell. Felix trembled, and Felix shook over that. The conviction was painful.

But he said, wait a minute. My pleasure, my sin, my stuff is too important. I can't give that up. And today's in hell, and we'll be there forever. Folks, the worst thing about hell will be memory. If you're here today and you don't know Christ, and you die without Christ, you'll remember this sermon. And every day, Felix, remember Paul's gospel.

People, I close with this. Do not delay repentance. Come to Jesus. Now is the time to come to Jesus. Jesus said, he who comes to me, I will know why it's cast out.

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we often quote Psalm 119, 105. It says, Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path.

These verses in Acts 24 ought to be a mighty spotlight. They remind us that repentance is a command, not a suggestion. We know that repentance is a gift. It's a work of the Holy Spirit, not a work of the flesh. So we throw ourselves on your mercy and plead with you to give us a humble, broken, repentant heart. And as this passage warns us, may we refuse to delay repentance, may we respond correctly to conviction, and may you use our repentance to produce spiritual fruit in ourselves and others. We love you, Lord. Thank you for loving us, for it's in the holy and precious name of Jesus that we pray. Amen.