Sometimes God will orchestrate circumstances in our lives to uncover buried guilt or hidden sins, giving us a second chance to repent. But is remorse the same thing as repentance? Today on Truth for Life, Alastair Begg explores the Bible's definition of genuine repentance and explains why it's vital for our salvation. Having read the second half of chapter 42, it ought to be clear to all of us that this story is building, that the pressure in it is building up. that the famine, which had happened as God said it would, has turned the thoughts of Jacob towards Egypt, because only in Egypt was there food to be found at this time.
And he has dispatched his sons, ten of them at least, to make the journey into Egypt. Taking with them money, etc., so that they would secure the provisions necessary for the starving households that they had left behind. And last time, as we looked in the opening half of chapter 42, we had described for us this quite amazing scene. Whereby Joseph, as it says in verse 6, the governor of the land, selling the grain to the people. in some encounter Which was probably unique insofar as we can't imagine that Joseph was involved in giving out all the grain to the multitudes of people who came.
But it was providential that he would be present on this particular occasion. And when he looks out on the crowd in the midst of all of those unnamed and unknown faces, he suddenly picks out his ten brothers. And suddenly, 20 years of his life presumably flashes back before him. And he's back instantaneously in his mind's eye to that cruel scene whereby these same fellows had taken him. because they were so despitefully jealous of him, and had sold him, after a spell in the pit which almost led to his death, had sold him to these Ishmaelite travellers, who had of course in turn sold him in to the custody of Potiphar's household.
Now if you try and get underneath the story, if you try and enter into the event, thinking as you do of what it would be like for you to be in the circumstances of Joseph, who after all was simply an ordinary man of like passions as we, how do you think you would have reacted on that occasion in looking out and seeing the fellows who had been responsible for the last 20 years of your life over which you had had no control at all? Would it be that 20 years of hatred? would spew out from him. That 20 years of harboring hurt feelings Of having said to himself night after night, if it hadn't been for my brothers, if it hadn't been for that coat, if it hadn't been for this or for that, then I would never have been in this dreadful predicament. And even at my best days, I'm still a long way from home.
If that had been inside of Joseph, then clearly that would have come out. But it's going to become obvious. that God had been working in Joseph's heart, as we've seen. fashioning all the events of his life for him in such a way that Joseph recognized that the good days and the bad days, the difficult days and the delightful days, as in each of our lives, were all under the sovereign providential care of a God who loved him with an everlasting love. And so he recognizes them.
while they do not recognize him. The time has not come for his disclosure. Yeah. had struggled with it, as you see there. His distress in seeing them is enough to make him weep as verse 24 says, and he has to turn away from them and get a hold of himself and then turn back to them again.
And you can imagine all of the emotion that is coursing inside of the guy. In fact, when it says that he spoke harshly to them. Pretending to be a stranger, he spoke harshly to them. My initial reading of that was that it was a sort of an attempt to disguise his voice from them in case if he spoke in his normal voice they would recognize him. It's hardly highly unlikely because his voice at the age of 40 would be distinctly different from what it was at the age of 17.
And the more I thought about it, I've concluded this, that the reason he spoke harshly to them was in order to prevent himself from breaking down.
Okay. You know what I mean? Do you know those experiences in life where you're afraid to even talk? Because you know, if you speak, just like try and speak in your normal voice, you'll burst into tears. At some great moment of success, at a triumph or at a failure, in the face of bereavement, or in seeing someone that you haven't seen for a long time, and you can't trust yourself just to speak naturally.
And so you adopt an accent to cover for it. or you speak with a sort of feigned humor. And the people wonder why you would, and the reason all the time is because you can't trust yourself just to speak as you would. for fear that you burst into tears and you give the game away. I think there's something of that.
We'll have to wait to heaven to find out. But I think there's something of that in Joseph here. He spoke harshly to them because if he didn't sort of get himself up for it and be brusque with them, I don't think he could find it in himself just to be able to look them in the eyes and treat them with his normal voice and in a normal way. He has to decide on a course of action, and so he does. He contrives a way to get his brother Benjamin down here.
He longs to see his brother Benjamin. And so he puts his brothers under this most severe pressure, imprisoning them all and then taking them out after three days and putting one back in, namely Simeon, whom he binds and puts in. Judah he lets out. Judah was the only one that spoke in his defense on that day when he was cast off into Egypt. And in the process of all of this, He is struck by the fact that his brothers themselves.
are moved and distressed by these events as they unfold. And the fact is, as he recognizes, That the cruelty that they had shown to Joseph 20 years previously is still heavy on their consciences. E would never have known this, you see. He could have surmised a number of things, but as he listens to them speak, they don't know that he knows, but he knows. And as they talk to one another, they say in verse 21, we saw how distressed he was.
When he pleaded with us for his life, But we wouldn't listen. And they are particularly struck by their unwillingness to respond to his cries for mercy. Nothing reveals the hardness of our hearts more. than to turn deaf ears to genuine cries For help. And their brother had cried out of absolute necessity, get me out of here, don't leave me here, don't send me there, don't send me away, can't I stay, don't do this to me.
And 20 years on, although they had tried to do many things in the interim to press it from their minds, to cover it over with all the events of their lives, 20 years on they reckon clearly that the reason for their distress lies in the fact that they treated their brother as they did. And as verse 22 says, they are going to have to give an account for his blood.
Now, what brought this on?
Well, God used these circumstances to stir their consciences. He puts them on the receiving end of injustice. places them on the receiving end of ill treatment. They're being accused as spies. They're not spies.
And no matter how much they protest their innocence, still Joseph comes back at them and says, Oh yes, you are. You only came here to see about the borders of the country, to provide an opportunity to infiltrate and to do certain things. And all the time they're saying, Oh, no, no, no, we're not spies. And in that experience, suddenly it dawns on them, they're saying to themselves. This is something as to how Joseph must have felt.
When he was on the receiving end, of our injustice. and of our ill treatment. In the same way that God will bring things into our lives. To remind us of things that we have done to others in the past for which we have never repented and which we have never cleaned up and which we have never settled. And the experience that we now face brings to us again the awfulness of what we did then in order that we might genuinely.
Acknowledge our sorrow for that guilt. And so, as the story unfolds, their consciences are stirred. Not simply by the accusations of Joseph, but further by these undeserved expressions of grace. And we'll come to that where in verse 25 there. not only have the grain, but they have these provisions and they have the money in the sack.
One man finds it and another finds it. And hence their question in verse 28, which is not an unusual question, what is this that God has done to us? Their hearts sank, and they turned to each other trembling and said, What is this that God has done to us? You see, If you've had a really bad case of the flu, that it only takes A marginal banging of a bedroom door for you to go, oh, goodness gracious. And if you have lived with twenty years.
of unrepentant sin. Unless your conscience has become completely seared. Then it will only take the slightest of things. to transport you right back. to the point of departure.
And that you see is what was happening. providentially in the lives of these individuals. God was ordering all of these events because in His purpose, all of this family restored, all of the twelve sons intact, were going to take up residence in Egypt so that out of Egypt, And out of the experience of liberation by Moses, there may be the people of God moving forward and on to the promised land. And God was working in all of these events. the unfolding of his plan.
Now, as I was studying this week and thinking along these lines and Thinking if there wasn't possibly a way that I could advance this story by multiple chapters in one fell swoop. I made it even difficult for myself, more difficult for myself, to move ahead. by asking the question that appeared to me. For as I look at these fellows, and their expressions of distress. And as I recognize that these brothers were stirred.
by the recollection of what they had done to Joseph. The question is this. Was what we experience here simply a momentary twinge of remorse? Or do we have here an example of genuine biblical? Repentance.
In other words, are the brothers just having a bad day? And they're having one of these flashbacks that makes them feel not so good for a moment, but it will be over. And after they have reflected on the fact that they really shouldn't have done that, they'll be back to business as usual. And indeed, when it comes to dealing with Benjamin, if they have to leave him behind, they'll leave him too. Indeed, they'll do whatever it takes in order to fulfill their own selfish agenda.
That must have been the question that was uppermost in Joseph's mind. In listening to his brothers speak as he did, he must have been saying to himself: now, are they really genuinely repentant? Or are they simply expressing a momentary Sorrow Because back to their minds comes the recollection of the offense that they had caused.
So what do we have here? A momentary expression of regret. or an expression of genuine biblical repentance.
Well, then that leads me in my thinking to ask the question: well, what is genuine biblical repentance? And if I'm asking the question, I figure maybe you would be asking the question. And in fact, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that repentance is Christianese to many of you. It is the equivalent of one of these computer words to which I referred around Christmastime. It's the equivalent of megahertz or gigabytes or whatever those things are, which in computer stores are frankly double Dutch to many of us.
But people use them all the time, and as you hang around them, you start to use them too, whether you really know what they are, whether you know what they are or not. And you're frightened actually to put up your hand and say, excuse me, what is one of those Hertz things, the megahertz? Is that a special car rental system? Or what exactly is that? He said everybody would know that it wasn't that.
Don't you be too sure. And if I passed out blank sheets of paper right now and asked you to write down in 50 words or less the nature of genuine biblical repentance. I'm not sure. that there would be a lot of A's. And since I'm the teacher, that hasn't made me feel good.
So, in order that I might prepare you for the test, I have to provide you with information so that you can answer the test.
So I want to purposefully pause. And ask the question along with you: what is the nature of genuine biblical repentance? Let me tell you what it isn't first of all. Biblical repentance is not merely a sense of being sorry because we were found out. Nor is it merely a sense of regret.
That leaves us Where it found us. You know, for example, the mother calls through into the kitchen and says to the child, Who's just learning to tell the time? What is the big hand on? And the little fella takes his hand away from the freshly made cookies. Feeling somehow or another that his mother can see through the walls and can believe that she would ask what is his hand on.
She's actually asking, What is the big hand on on the clock? But his conscience is such that it's touched. She comes through and she finds them all covered in the chocolate chips. She goes, I thought I told you not to touch those. And he does one of those, oh, I'm sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, I'm really, really, really, really, really sorry.
Now, is that an expression of genuine biblical repentance? We don't know yet. We don't know until she goes upstairs. Since she is upstairs, we find out. As soon as the vacuum cleaner turns on, and his hand goes right back in the jar for another one, you know that what he expressed was momentary sorrow at having been caught, but it was not a genuine desire to turn from something that had been identified as wrongful activity for him.
And when the Bible speaks about the nature of repentance, it describes it as a radical reversal, taking us back down of the road of our sinful wanderings and creating within us a completely different mindset. Repentance is a mind-altering experience. It is not simply a change of direction, it is not simply a change of heart, but it is a change of mind. The Westminster Divines put it so helpfully in the Confession of Faith, and I quote from it. when they said repentance unto life is a saving grace whereby a sinner, out of a true sense of his sin, and apprehension of the mercy of God in Christ Does with grief and hatred of his sin.
Turn from it to God. with full purpose of and endeavor after new obedience. Let me turn you to the New Testament and give a classic illustration of this radical reversal. Luke's Gospel in chapter 15. Luke 15, the story of the lost sheep.
the lost coins and the lost sun. We don't have time to work our way through it, nor should we. But I simply want you to notice The change in this boy between verse 12 and verse 19. In verse 12, he says to his father, give me my share of the estate. In 19, make me as one of your hired servants.
And why is this? Simply because he doesn't like the pigsty? Simply because his friends are gone and he has no money left for his riotous living? Simply because he regrets it all? No, but because he has come to an awareness of his condition.
The Bible says that he came to himself, and when he came to himself, he said, How many hired servants of my father have food enough and despair, and I perish with hunger? And then he traces the roots of his condition to that which he is about to confess. I will arise and I will go to my father and I will say unto him, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight and I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me as one of your hired Servants.
Now, if you turn forward again to 2 Corinthians 7. We can further advance our understanding of Genuine biblical repentance. 2 Corinthians 7. And verse 10. Godly sorrow.
brings repentance that leads to salvation. and leaves no regret But worldly sorrow brings death. In other words, the change of mindset. expressed in repentance is accompanied by a lifelong Moral and spiritual Turn around. Indeed, The verb that is used, or the word that is used most routinely in the Bible concerning this, is.
The word metanoil. which means simply to do an about turn. Or an about face, I think it is, that is said in the American military. In Britain, the sergeant major says about turn. I believe he says about face here.
Is that correct? In other words, turn your face around. You were going in this direction facing clearly there, and now you have turned around and you are going in this direction. It is a radical reversal. Once you were going one way and now you are going another.
And it is to be distinguished from a momentary flush of regret, a momentary experience of being found out. For example, in 1 Thessalonians in chapter 1, when Paul writes to encourage the Thessalonians, he says, you know, the news of the gospel is going out everywhere, and indeed your faith is being proclaimed in Macedonia and Achai. We really don't need to say anything about it, because the people there are reporting the kind of reception you gave us, and in verse 9b, they tell how you turned to God from idols. You turned to God from idols. There's a radical reversal.
It was not that you were going along in a certain direction. You had a bad day, somebody gave you an emotional surge, you decided to buy into the Christian thing, and then you continued in the exact same direction in which you'd always been going. That's not salvation. That's someone going in the wrong direction with an interest in Christian things.
So it is imperative that we understand the nature of biblical repentance, for without that repentance there is no salvation. You have the same thing, for example, in Colossians chapter 3, in a different metaphor. Paul uses there the picture of clothing. And he says, you put off all these things in Colossians 3. Since you have been crucified with Christ, you no longer are a part of these things.
Therefore, you put off the old self with all of its practices. And you put on the new self, which is being renewed in the knowledge and the image of its Creator. That's Colossians 3 and in verse 10. You're listening to Truth for Life with Alastair Begg. A message titled Remorse or Repentance.
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I'm Bob Lepine. Thanks for listening. Tomorrow we'll learn why repentance is not simply a one-time event that marks the beginning of our journey as Christians. It's something we do over and over again. The Bible teaching of Alastair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life.
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