[Sunday School] What is conversion? (WSC 86-87)

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:31

Before we begin. Heavenly Father, thank you for this morning and for bringing us together to consider the work of your spirit in our hearts to apply the finished work of Christ on the cross. Lord, help us this morning as we think about faith and repentance. Help us to think about the great gift that you have given us, the great calling to which you've called us. Lord, bless us, strengthen us, equip us, and encourage us this morning. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Alright, so last week we talked about the application of the benefits of redemption to us. We talked about effectual calling. And we did that by way of questions 30 and 31 of the catechism. Question 30 asks, how are we made partakers of redemption purchased for us by Christ? The answer is the Spirit applies to us, the redemption purchased by Christ by working faith in us and thereby uniting us to Christ in our effectual calling. We talked about effectual calling by looking at question 31. Effectual calling is the work of God's Spirit, whereby convincing us of our sin and misery, enlightening our minds in the knowledge of Christ, and renewing our wills, he persuades and enables us to embrace Jesus Christ freely offered to us in the gospel. This week we skip ahead a little bit to questions 86 and 87. And the reason for that is the little book that I handed out to y'all. And if you don't have one, I can get you one. The way he orders the lessons, he jumps Williamson, the way he jumps around a little bit to kind of keep a focus on the ordoseleutis or the order of salvation. So we're stepping from effectual calling to faith and repentance, and then we'll come back to the 30s later on. So, question for today, question 86. What is faith in Jesus Christ? Faith in Jesus Christ is a saving grace whereby we receive and rest on him alone for salvation as he is offered to us in the gospel. So the first thing it says faith in Jesus Christ is a saving grace. Faith is described as a saving grace. Is there any other kind of grace?

SPEAKER_03 2:45

Common. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:46

Common? And what is that?

SPEAKER_03 2:52

It's that the Lord causes the rain and the sun to rise on both the just and the unjust, and that both the righteous and the wicked, they we we eat, we live, we we die, we uh work, we enjoy the benefits of you know the planet. The planet of the world of creation.

SPEAKER_01 3:15

So yeah, buckies. It's a gift of God's common grace.

SPEAKER_05 3:24

They might be Christians, though, so maybe that's so well said because it's not only the gift to humanity of uh creativity, you know, making roads, the poor guys of the heap. Um anything the human beings made is because God has uh made them able to make it. Dorothy Sayers of the Mind of the Maker, really great little book. And that's true for the Hindus who make all those statues, you know, in India and everything. They are doing it with with it's even true of Satan. Satan is tempting us with the powers that God put in him. He's a created being. It is weird to think that, but even the angels as created beings would not even exist or be able to do what they do without God making them able to do that.

SPEAKER_01 4:21

Yeah, yeah. It's you know, the fact that, I mean, what does Satan want? To steal, to kill, to destroy, uh, the fact that he doesn't get what he's what he wants immediately and comprehensively is God's grace, right? It's his restraint. Pamela?

SPEAKER_04 4:39

Does common grace include when Romans talks about, Paul talks about in Romans um that the truth about God is explained to them, so that is that part of common grace? Where we know every man knows in his heart God because that truth is made plain to them in his own.

SPEAKER_01 5:03

It's a part of general revelation, right?

SPEAKER_04 5:06

Uh so that would not be considered part of common grace.

SPEAKER_01 5:09

Well, the extent to which we're able to perceive God as He was revealed in creation, I think there's probably an element of grace to that. I think we could say that. But the fact of the matter is for the fallen person, they suppress the truth in unrighteousness. And so it doesn't, if we want to speak about God's revelation to all, even in spite of our sin and rebellion as a kind of grace, I think we can. It's just still not on the side of Satan grace because we need the spirit to illuminate so that we read creation right away.

SPEAKER_05 5:43

Abolition of men. Yeah, Lewis's abolition of men, the the conscience that God put into humanity, that sense of right and wrong, and that sense of never even living up to your own standard. Yeah. So there that's common grace.

SPEAKER_01 6:00

Yeah. Yeah. The um so a good way to think of common grace is the undeserved benevolence of God. Uh uh Abraham Kuyper. He describes it as that act of God by which negatively he curbs the operations of Satan, death, and sin, and by which positively he creates an intermediate state for this cosmos, as well as for our human race, which is and continues to be deeply and radically sinful, but in which sin cannot work out its end. So God allows us to continue working in a broken world or living in a broken world, but he never takes his hand off of the wheel, right? And he allows us to live in ways and enjoy benefits that are not consistent with a broken world.

SPEAKER_05 6:49

So he shouts at the kids fighting in the back seat periodically.

SPEAKER_01 6:53

Yeah, right. John Murray says, common grace is every favor of whatever kind or degree falling short of salvation, which this undeserving and sin-cursed world enjoys at the hand of God. So Brennan alluded to Matthew 5.45. The Father makes his son to rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust. Luke 6, 35. A couple months ago we looked at this. Love your enemies and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the most high. For he is kind to the ungrateful and evil. So God's kindness to people who don't deserve it is God's common grace. Genesis 39, 5. From the time that he made Joseph overseer in his house and over all that he had, the Lord blessed the Egyptians' house for Joseph's sake. The blessing of the Lord was on all that he had in house and field. So common grace, biblically and experientially, it does a number of things. It restrains sin. Human beings are not as bad as we could be. It delays judgment. Jesus could have come back a long time ago. God could have entered into judgment on the human race fully and finally, the moment that they ate of the forbidden fruit. But he does, he allows this history of redemption to play out. Common grace preserves the theater of God's glory. Think about the Noaiic Covenant. How over and over again, when you read that in Genesis 6 through 9, especially 8 and 9, it talks about the covenant that God makes with all flesh. That when it rains, the rainbow covers the earth. And it's not just God's people, it's not just the elect or the saved who see the rainbow. We all see the rainbow. Everybody sees the rainbow. And it's a reminder of God's restraint, it's a reminder of God's preserving and governing and sustaining the earth until Jesus comes back again. So that's a blessing to everyone. Common grace gladdens the hearts of men and women. We experience glimmers of the true, the good, and the beautiful in the world. We enjoy things. We have all sorts of good blessings and benefits, irrespective of whether we're saints or sinners. So common grace does a lot of things for a lot of people. What does common grace not do? Never do, can't do? Save. Common grace does not, cannot save. Faith is not a deliverance of common grace. It's not a response to common grace. And that's, you know, in some, in more Arminian forms of theology or even in Roman Catholicism, the sort of the understanding is that you have something like common grace, but they generally refer to it as provenient grace. And what that does is it establishes a sort of baseline in the world. Armenians believe in total depravity. They believe that because of our sin, we cannot reach out to God on our own. But they also believe in provenient grace, which kind of overcomes that initial hurdle and gives us what we need in order to reach out to God. And then it's a matter of reaching out and making use of the grace that God has already given us. Whereas we've talked a number of times about grace in here, the grace of God is irresistible in salvation. Biblically speaking, if God wants you, God's going to get you. And faith is a gift of saving grace, not what we do with common grace. Does that make sense, that distinction I'm making? It's something God gives to us. It's not something that we procure for ourselves. Ephesians 2, 8 through 9. By grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your undoing. It is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. And both the grace and the faith are comprehended there as the gift of God coming from him. And the faith is, that faith is described in this shorter catechism question as a receiving and a resting on Christ. So receiving. Romans 3, verses 23 through 25. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. So faith is not the work that we do in order to procure our salvation. Faith is the instrument by which we lay hold of the salvation that's been procured by the finished work of Christ. Does that distinction make sense? See the difference I just made there? Faith isn't the grabbing on the ladder and pulling ourselves up out of the water. Faith is the you know the process of being grabbed by the hand that reaches down and takes hold of you.

SPEAKER_05 12:08

So I think mixed in there is human beings have the power of resisting God. So I was raised Arminian, and I'm not that anymore. But I'm not, I don't know where I am on that whole spectrum. But um we have the power of frustrating the Holy Spirit, of resisting God. Paul warns against doing that, and there would be no point in warning if it wasn't possible for us to do it. Um grieving the Holy Spirit.

SPEAKER_01 12:46

Yeah, we grieve the Holy Spirit, yeah. Yeah, yeah, and even within that, there's still you know the fact that God works all things according to the counsel of his will. A good illustration I I like to use, and I probably use it in here. If you hung out with me long enough, you've heard it a few times. But there's a philosopher and theologian by the name of Van Till, and he was riding, Cornelius Van Till, and he was riding on a train one day, and he saw a father holding his little girl in his arms, and this little girl was having a tantrum, and in her tantrum she slapped her father in the face. And he thought to himself, well, there's a perfect illustration of what we do in our rebellion. Uh the only reason that girl was in a position to slap her father in the face was because he was holding her. The only reason we are in a position to sin against God and to rebel against him is because he's upholding the universe by the word of his power. And he's upholding us even. So even the even our ability to resist is upheld and sustained by God. The saliva that formed in the mouth of the soldiers when they spat on Jesus as he was hanging on the cross, that could not be formed apart from the operation of God as the efficient cause who upholds the universe. Right? So, yes, we can resist God, yet in his economy, he never releases control of us. He never releases, his providence never stops. He doesn't, like I said before, take his hand off the wheel.

SPEAKER_05 14:26

I think, okay, sorry. I think that the judgment at the end is God finally letting go and saying to wicked people, okay, have it your way. Have it your way. That's I'm reading Jeremiah and Lamentations, which are so cheerful. But uh it's like God saying to the children of Israel, you didn't want to worship me, you wanted to worship these other gods, so go right ahead and see what that's like. Worshiping Molech and all of those other wicked, imaginary, hateful, horrible, you know, human manufactured deities. Yeah. And I think at the end, and maybe it's the presence of God that is the torture on those rebellious wills.

SPEAKER_01 15:20

Um that's C.S. Lewis channeling George McDonald at the end of the great divorce. It is at the end of the day. I mean, either you're gonna sit look at God and say, your will be done, or God's gonna look at you and say, Your will be done.

SPEAKER_05 15:35

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 15:36

And I think there's an element in so long as we don't, I mean, God is always in control, right? He doesn't he doesn't yield his sovereignty, but so long as we understand it within that framework, I think there is something to that. It's like God allows people to experience the outcome of their sin.

SPEAKER_05 15:54

Remember Gimli going through going in uh seeing Galadriel and telling his uh friend Legolus, I had never realized the terror of goodness before. I mean, there's another Lord of the Rings reference. Yeah, I know the terror of goodness because everyone in that was around that elf queen was felt exposed, felt their heart, yeah, felt what they were really were inside, exposed and judged.

SPEAKER_01 16:30

Well, to bring it around back around to faith, it is experiencing the goodness of God, not as a terror, but as an unmerited gift in favor. And hence the faith is, you know, in one sense, it is receiving. It's receiving the gift. Again, it's not making ourselves worthy of the gift in some way, it's just holding out our hands and taking it. So we receive it, we receive the benefits of Christ, we receive the truth of the gospel, we say yes and amen. I want that. The other component of that that the catechism talks about is rest. We see and we we receive and we rest in Christ alone for salvation. Philippians 3, 7 through 11. Paul says, Whatever gain I had, I count it as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith, that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may obtain the resurrection from the dead. Now, why do you think the Westminster Divines would look at a passage like that and describe salvation as resting in Christ?

SPEAKER_00 18:03

To blow up the whole earning that humans had naturally from birth of the need to earn, and the evil one uses that to increase the nomination size of the Roman Catholic Church, Orthodox Church. That is scratching an itch that I have naturally to earn. And so the Catholic Church speaks to that human inclination and the beauty of the Word of God and what you just read and what the divine just said is drop your bags, drop your bags. And when you drop those bags and you fall into Him, that's when true joy and contentment and peace, uh all those things, all the things. So it's the opposite of work.

SPEAKER_05 18:55

Well said. There is a whole resting thread all through the Old Testament. And it's related to habitation, the word dwelling, habitation. Naomi says to Ruth, I hope you find rest in the in the house of uh husband, you know, coming to, and then the Psalm 9091, the habitation of you know, the righteous or inhabiting God Himself, who is our rest, he is our rest. Yeah. It's a glorious picture.

SPEAKER_01 19:34

Yeah, it's no mistake how in the original creation, we uh, or the old creation, we work six days and we rest on the seventh, and the new creation in Christ, we rest on the first day, and then the six days of work follow from the rest we already have in Christ. Uh Hebrews 4 says that a Sabbath rest still awaits the people of God, and we have not yet entered into that rest, the same rest that God entered into on the seventh day, and yet we rest fully in Christ. So there's an already not yet kind of thing. Uh rest and work are opposed, yet there's a kind of work that follows from our rest. Like that's that's one of the weird paradoxes of Christianity. We can be fully at work and fully at rest. Because we're no longer working in order to curry God's favor. We are resting in the favor we have in Christ, and we are working from that as a response of gratitude. Brennan come back to you, James.

SPEAKER_03 20:34

That's the entire search of Solomon throughout Ecclesiastes. He starts with vanity again, all is vanity, searching for wisdom, searching for knowledge, searching for identity and significance, and then he gets to chapter 12. He says, All the end of the matter lies in found, fear of God and keep his commandments. This is the whole duty of him. Yeah, it doesn't bring about it's a work of uh of joy and uh love. But with the text of Philippians 3, when it talks about in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, what does Christ have to do with rest? Well, Matthew 11, come to me. All who are weary and happily, and I will give you rest. For my hope is easy, my burden is light.

SPEAKER_00 21:29

So James on the Yeah, and I think it's important that we don't confuse rest with lack of effort as computer writes. Because you find, you find that like you just said it, you find rest and effort. You wake up a little earlier, you read scripture, and what happens? You get rest from that, you get peace from that, right? And so it's very it's it's somewhat nuanced because others may be like, oh cool, I'm good. I'm just gonna put this Bible under my pillow, and I get that, you know. But Peter talks about that effort, growing in knowledge, and that brings rest. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:06

So grace is opposed to earning, grace is not opposed to effort, but it also challenges the way we think about effort because sometimes, especially talking about spiritual disciplines, wake up, have your quiet time, read the Bible, pray, all that. Uh, I get this from Richard Foster, who isn't always the most reliable source, but this is good. Uh, you know, we tend to think about spiritual disciplines as you come to a well. And the grace of God is at the bottom of the well. All the spiritual benefits and goodies are down there, and you need to drop your bucket. Drop your bucket and crank that sucker back up and drink. He describes it as more of uh this is now the air you breathe. Inhale. I like that because you know the well analogy sometimes, like I'm gonna get in the word, and I'm gonna wrestle with God, and he's gonna give me my blessing. Practically, it looks the same. Uh, but spiritually, it's saying, God has given me his word, and he has invited me to come into his presence and to sit with him. So I'm gonna go sit with God. And he's not gonna bless me because I've done the work, but the work is the place where he's promised to meet me and to bless me and to be with me. So I'll do the things, again, not as the means by which I manipulate God into doing what I want him to do, but as a response, as a response to his invitation. God's saying, come and sit with me. Okay, right, I'll come and sit with you. Yeah, Ron, I saw your hand.

SPEAKER_02 23:46

Uh is there's some uh I think I'm thinking of words uh like contentment, peace, um, be still and know I'm God. You know, there's yeah, the source of our ability to do that, to have those things, stems from what we have in Christ. So is there a relationship between the word of those types of words and what we're not talking about? I'm curious what your thoughts are.

SPEAKER_01 24:19

Yeah, totally. I mean that's that's just describing what it looks like to rest in Christ. And when we think about it in the context of faith, it's opposing it particularly to work. Um peace, joy, contend it, contentment, uh, happiness, healthiness, wholeness, all those sorts of things. Uh, you know, we we tend to think you've got to work your way to those things. How do I get healthy? I get in the gym and I work. How do I get uh prosperous? I go to work, I climb the ladder. How do I find rest? Uh you know, I work enough to save enough to go on vacation, so on and so forth. And these things aren't achievements, aren't our achievements so much as they're Christ's achievements on the cross, and faith, again, is that instrument by which we receive them. So they allow us to rest on Him alone, and in resting on Him alone, we enjoy all of those things that we comprehend under the umbrella of rest. Jeff.

SPEAKER_08 25:29

Our position, we're no longer enemies, battle with Christ.

SPEAKER_06 25:33

Right.

SPEAKER_08 25:34

In faith, we're adopted, and now we relate to God as we love the Father, and we address him that it breaks, and we're not battling when we're under His wrath anymore.

SPEAKER_00 25:53

Yeah. Why do you pick against the ghosts? That's interesting to me. Where Christ said that to Paul, you know, you know, that effort to push back the truth.

unknown 26:05

Right.

SPEAKER_05 26:06

And Hebrews says drive to enter that rest, which I think is so oxymor, it's oxymoron. I say, okay, whoever wrote Hebrews, what are you talking about? Strive to enter.

SPEAKER_01 26:16

Yeah, what does the striving look like in the context of Hebrews, though? Believe, right? Believe. Don't fall away. When all of these circumstances and all of these people try to get you to jettison your faith in Christ, strive. What was uh Israel's problem in the wilderness? They stopped believing, they stopped striving to enter that rest. And instead, no, we'll just stay. It's scary over there on the other side of the Jordan. We'll just stay over here where we're safe. Unbelief. Alright, faith receives and rests on Christ alone. Not Christ but some, not Christ plus something else, not Christ plus this particular uh self-help book, or this particular flavor of Christianity, or this you know, set of spiritual disciplines, but it receives and rests on Christ alone. Christ alone. Faith plus anything ruins everything. I don't like the guy who said that, but he was right about it.

SPEAKER_00 27:22

Say it.

SPEAKER_01 27:23

No. Yeah. Oh curious. Well, uh Google it. Yeah, you can Google a book title. It's Faith plus Nothing Equals Everything, or something like that, is his book title, and it gets permutated a couple different ways.

SPEAKER_00 27:39

You just scandalize all of us by reading that. Now we gotta go read it. Yeah, yeah, right.

SPEAKER_05 27:44

Is it a retical?

SPEAKER_00 27:46

Is that different?

SPEAKER_01 27:51

It can be. Anyway. Faith plus anything ruins everything, right? You know, you write if I had a whiteboard right now. Faith plus sign underscore equals nothing. Right? And why would I say that? What what would be the problem with adding something to our faith as a condition of our salvation? It was not enough. Christ is not enough. Grace is not sufficient for you. Grace is not sufficient for you, yeah. Uh Christ is not enough. We need Christ plus something else.

SPEAKER_05 28:26

And he you can't trust him to finish the job. Yeah. I mean, that's the whole point, I think, in Galatians. Yeah. We got it started, but but we gotta fix it on our own.

SPEAKER_01 28:37

Are you completing by the flesh what was begun in you by the spirit? Exactly. Yeah, exactly. And you know, the part of that conversation is like you want Jesus plus the law. Don't you know that if you break any of the law, you've broken all of the law? So if it's Jesus plus law, you're still you're still in trouble. You can't do this. Yeah, Christ alone. Jesus paid it all to him, I owe. Sinneth up the crimson stain, he washed it white as snow. He's the first, or he's the last Adam, he's the perfect Adam. He's the one who keeps the law perfectly in our place. He's the one who dies the death that we owe to God on account of our sin. The entirety, it's like we talked about union with Christ. The entirety of our salvation is comprehended in Christ. So if it's faith plus anything else, then whatever you're trying to satisfy or whatever you're trying to get hold of by way of the thing on the other side of the plus sign, it's not Jesus. It's something else. And you can fill a whole lot of things in that plane. Now, the next bit of the answer, we receive and rest upon him alone for salvation. Salvation is the principal benefit of our saving faith. 1 Peter 1, 3 through 9. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled and unfaded, kept in heaven for you, who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor of the revelation of Jesus Christ. Though you have not yet seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him, and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory. Obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls. So that's where faith in Christ gets us. That's the principal benefit, it's the salvation of our souls. And that's important to keep in mind because often the way we talk about faith or the way we think about faith, you'll often hear things like this. If you, you know, in a lot of churches, you'll hear sermons where faith is a means to some kind of end. Right? Have faith and you will accomplish your dreams. Have faith and you'll start your own business. You'll ditch your toxic friends, you'll live a better legacy, you'll become a better father, husband, mother, wife, you'll live with less fear, less anxiety, less stress. You'll slay the giants, whatever the giants in your life might be, and so on and so forth. And a lot of times that's presented to us as the benefit of saving faith. Why should you believe in Jesus? Because Jesus will get you fill in the blank. And it's not a lot of those things are not 100% wrong. Put your faith in Christ. Will he make you a better husband? Yes. Will he make you a better wife? Yes, a better mother, a better father, yes. Will he encourage you to live in ways that are marked by faith and not fear? Yes, those things are true, but Jesus is not a means to an end. The principal benefit of our faith is not the attaining of all the things that we want to attain in life. It's the attaining of Christ. And he makes us a means to his end of God's glory, just like we were created to be.

SPEAKER_05 32:25

Is it because they're confusing faith with positive thinking?

SPEAKER_01 32:29

In some cases, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 32:31

Any athlete has to visualize himself herself winning, making it in order to, I mean, positive thinking has a lot of power to it. And a natural person.

SPEAKER_01 32:44

Yeah, it does. And there are lots of flavors of Christianity and flavors of self-help that really co-opt faith and turn it into positive thinking. And you're right, because it has such force and such practical power, right? I mean, if you whatever language you use and whatever set of concepts you use to encourage people to do hard things that other people aren't willing to do, they're gonna get successful. That's how it works in God's world. If you can gin it up in yourself to do hard things that other people aren't willing to do, whether you're a salesman that means making 10 more calls than the other guy, or it means starting a business, or whatever it looks like, by and large, you're gonna succeed. Because that's just how it works in God's world.

SPEAKER_05 33:29

Yeah, it's like the the Alcoholics Anonymous.

SPEAKER_01 33:32

Right. Right, exactly. So when you when you slap faith on that and you see results, you go, well, you know, that's that's faithful living. And um, but the faith we're talking about, the faith that scripture talks about, is not some nebulous power by which you would accomplish all of your dreams in your life. It's not the power of positive thinking. It's a part, it's a it's a it's a it's the instrument by which we receive Jesus. Right? And let everything else find its way and find its place within it. Because maybe you don't. Maybe you don't succeed in business, or maybe you uh, you know, maybe your dreams don't materialize in the way that you thought that they should. Your faith in Christ relativizes all of that, and so that you can realize that my dreams were my dreams, and my dreams pale in comparison to God's agenda for my life, God's dream for me, if we want to talk like that. And what He gives is better than what I thought I should get. Right? You so you know, sometimes it's co-opted as the power of positive thinking, other times it's co-opted as you know as a means to growing a church, right? I could the kind of preaching and the kind of teaching that grows a church fast, and I'm not saying that every church that grows fast is doing this, but kind of the playbook for growing a church fast in a county like ours, where only 30% of the people go to church on Sunday morning, is you get up in the pulpit and each week you preach a motivational sermon with the language of Christianity sprinkled in. And you treat faith as the means by which you get to that desired end. And so it's a Jesus that takes me where I want to go, as opposed to a message that says I need to follow Jesus where he's going. And again, I don't want to say that every church in our area is doing that. I don't have access to grind with other evangelical churches and you know, to accuse people of doing everybody of doing this, but I've seen it. This is the playbook that works in 21st century sort of evangelical culture where it's like if you want to grow a big old church and do it really fast, preach those kinds of sermons and have a lights out kids ministry. We'll get a thousand people in a year if we do that. But again, it turns Jesus into a means to an end, it turns faith into a means to an end. And that's not the kind of faith that scripture is talking about. That's not the kind of faith that the shorter catechism is teaching us about.

SPEAKER_03 36:10

Yeah, they can't echo uh rock of ages, right? Nothing in my hands, I bring simply to the cross, I claim, naked, I come to the redress, yeah, uh, suffer and suffer and suffer. Yeah. But they they can't proclaim in in reality. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:33

Yeah, and yeah, I I don't want to I don't want what I just said to die the death of a thousand qualifications, but good godly people in those churches. Uh those churches are quite often run by good godly people, right? Who may who who think that's how it works, right? So I don't you know I don't want to be too much of a curmudgeon about it.

SPEAKER_00 36:56

But the Lord will the Lord will convict. Yeah. And John MacArthur was asking at conference, how did you grow your church through the thousands? He said, I preach the gospel. Yeah, right. And so if if if we remain faithful to that, let God do the rest? Yeah. Okay, there's three people here.

SPEAKER_01 37:16

If the gospel's being preached, this is where I want to be right. Alright, so we we've been talking about faith. The other side of this equation or the other side of this coin is repentance. And why would we, then that gets us to question 87, but why would we start with faith before we talk about repentance?

SPEAKER_03 37:35

Well, you've been we've been talking about the rest. I've been reading through Isaiah and Isaiah 30, and shout out to Mr. Ron in the back who really brought it to light. It says in Isaiah 33, 15, that in returning and rest you shall be saved. And this uh returning or this repenting of uh of our sin uh because we cannot be united with Christ and yet still dwell and live and you know be buddy-buddy with with sin. Yeah, uh, those two things are as juxtaposed as the east is to the west.

SPEAKER_01 38:26

Yeah. Yeah, the old the Hebrew word for return, shoop. Well, I'm sorry, the Hebrew word for repent is shoop, essentially. I mean, there's like every other thing, there's a bucket of words. But like the core word for it is shoop, which means to return. Basically turn around and go where you came from. Yeah, Pamela?

SPEAKER_04 38:45

Seeing that without faith, repentance isn't really repent with it. You might feel guilty for things you've done, you might feel well this was the bad thing to do. Yeah, you might even make some attempt at restoration, yeah, but it's not really going anywhere because there's nothing that nobody that you're being restored to.

SPEAKER_01 39:08

Exactly. Right. If repentance is a turning from, faith is a turning to. So you can't really repent. You can't really turn from your sin until you know to where you're turning. Otherwise, you know, you'll repent of one sin and you'll get you'll end up heading for another. You'll go from one ditch to the other as opposed to the middle of the road to where you need to go. Jeff, I saw your hand.

SPEAKER_08 39:33

Yeah, you can say that. That's what you were gonna say. Yeah, that's what I'm gonna say.

SPEAKER_01 39:39

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you need to know where you're turning. All right, so faith tells us where we're turning, and repentance tells us what we're turning from. Question 87 What is repentance unto life? 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 over his sin turn from it unto God with full purpose of and endeavor after true obedience or new obedience. So it's a saving grace, right? It's a saving grace. Why would we, and we talk about saving grace under uh under faith, but why would we describe repentance as a grace at all? We're turning, so why are we calling it a grace? Yeah. Granted the opportunity to repent, and we are you.

SPEAKER_07 40:47

It is by grace that we are supplying the faith that would cause us to repent.

SPEAKER_01 40:53

Let me read Acts 11, 17 through 18. If then God gave the same gift to them as he gave to us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could stand in God's way? When they heard these things, they fell silent. And this is Peter talking about bringing the gospel to the Gentiles. They fell silent. And they glorified God, saying, Then to the Gentiles also, God has granted repentance that leads to life. God has granted, God has given, God has gifted the repentance that leads to life. And they're making a broad sort of redemptive historical observation there, right? God has granted repentance to the Jews in Christ. That's, you know, that's that's the heart of the new covenant. But they're also saying that he's granted that to the Gentiles as well. And the bigger point that we're making is that he grants repentance at all. Repentance, just like faith, isn't the thing you do comprehended in the sense of like a work. I repent in order to be saved, as though God gives me a gold star for having repented. Repentance is just the other side of the coin that is conversion. Faith is turning to, repentance is turning from. You can't have one without the other.

SPEAKER_00 42:17

Pastor Kennedy isn't regeneration and then conversion, and conversion is faith and repentance. And yeah, it's it's that irresistible grace. And it's the natural, once you are drawn, the natural inclination of I want to repent, um, you're convicted. We were having dinner, sir and I were having dinner last night, and the woman said, Yeah, my my hairdresser, um, he's married to a man. You know, he's on homosexually married to a man, and uh, but he's a Christian. I went, Well, hmm. Where's that fruit? Where's that repentance, right? Where's the turning away? But it's that culture of, oh, he's a Christian. You know, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 43:08

How can one repent feel ultimately grieved free from sorrowful of their sin and don't know that sin itself? And how do we know that it's sin will play it to law our hearts? And that alone is a good is more than just a common grace. Yeah, and so the the way of how repentance is saving grace is because God has first made us you know illuminated in that only. Yeah. And that um only faith in his son can restore us. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 43:48

Yeah, there was uh there's a controversy, was it back in the 80s or something? Lordship salvation. There's this idea that you could have Jesus as your savior, but not as your Lord. That like you could pray the prayer, you could come down front, you can get your your fire insurance, as it were, and your life, you could just continue to live your life without any sort of change. You could be a carnal Christian. And then that those categories just don't exist, according to Scripture.

SPEAKER_03 44:18

MacArthur was guilty of that.

SPEAKER_01 44:21

I think he was the one who was pushing back hard on it from within the dispensational camp. Because it was a dispensational kind of thing. Um it's before my time. But yeah, again, it's that turning to, turning from dynamic, where if you turn to Jesus, you turn from your sin. You can't be heading toward Jesus and sin at the same time. Now, does that mean that if you have faith in Christ, you're automatically free of sin, you're not going to sin anymore? That's not what that means. What it means is that you're heading toward Jesus and you experience sin as a deviation from the course or the attempts of the evil one to knock you off course. So what do you do when you sin? You don't embrace it as your identity. You don't say, I'm just going to be that kind of Christian, whether it's a gay Christian or an angry Christian or a lazy Christian or so on and so forth, right? You say, I'm still heading toward Jesus. Jesus has forgiven me of all my sins, even the one I just committed again, even the one I'm going to commit again next week, I'm going to repent of that when it happens, and that's the process by which I keep on the course heading toward Jesus. So according to the catechism question, right, it's uh it presupposes sin, of course, right? Repentance unto life is a saving grace whereby a sinner, out of a true sense of his sin, an apprehension of it. There it the the catechism comprehends essentially a threefold response involved in repentance. And I'll kind of gloss over this because we're we're running out of time. There's an intellectual part of it, there's an emotional part of it, and there's a volitional part of it. Right? There's a true sense of our sin and the apprehension of the mercy of God in Christ. So in order to repent, it's like Brandon was saying, God regenerates us, he effectually calls us, he gives us a sense of what his law is and what it entails and who we are in light of it. And we come to see ourselves as we truly are, fallen and in desperate need of God's mercy. And apprehending God's mercy in Christ is our knowing that Jesus is there for us to turn to. Knowing that there is a way of salvation, there is someone for us to reach out to, there are redemptive benefits available for us in Christ. So we have a true sense of our sin and an apprehension of the mercy that deals with our sin. But then there's an emotional component of it because it's not just like we're sitting in our chair and we've got our accounting ledger open and we're listing out all our sins and we're listing out all Christ's benefits and we decide to go with Jesus because he's the better deal. It talks about a grief and hatred of our sin. One of the proof texts is Luke 18, the tax collector and the Pharisee, where they're in the temple, to the tax collector who stands far off. He's in some corner of the temple somewhere, not even lifting up his eyes to pray. He beats his breast and says, God be merciful to me, a sinner. Right? That's what it looks like to have a true uh grief and hatred of our sin. 2 Corinthians 7, 9 through 10. As it is, I rejoice, not because you were grieved, but because you were grieved into repentance. Paul talking to the church in Corinth of their response to their own grievous sin. For you felt a godly grief, so that you suffered no loss through us. For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death. So there's a godly grief over against a worldly grief. And the godly grief is the one where we grieve and hate our own sin. It's not that we got caught doing the wrong thing and we feel bad because we're experiencing the consequences of it. We've lost something or we've lost standing, our reputation takes a hit. No, it's because we recognize how our sin is an offense against a holy and righteous God and it hurts.

SPEAKER_00 48:30

Jimmy, I just want to mention a pitfall there because those who are legalistic like myself and struggle with that. There's also a pitfall with regard to did I cry enough? Did I did I beat my breast enough? Did I self-flagellate enough, right? So there's also performing. Yes, it then becomes a work, you know, am I truly sorrowful enough to get that forgiveness? So there's a there's another pitfall that you have to mention.

SPEAKER_01 48:59

And that's why that's why I'm that's why we continue to emphasize the instrumentality of faith. It's not a work, it's not a work. Like if I'm walking toward that door, while I'm walking toward that door, I'm not constantly second-guessing in my mind whether I've sufficiently turned away from the pulpit to make it toward the door. I'm just walking toward the door. You keep walking toward the door, you keep walking toward Jesus. And if you're keep if you keep walking toward Jesus, if you keep trusting Jesus, if you keep taking everything to Jesus, then questions about whether you've grieved enough, whether you've cried enough, whether you've hated your sin enough, they're kind of beside the point. Because here's the answer: you haven't. You haven't grieved enough over your sin. You haven't hated your sin enough. That's part of the definition of living in a fallen world as an unglorified Christian. There will come a day when you hate your sin enough and when you grieve over it enough. You'll be dead in glory in the presence of God. And then things will be clear to you and you'll be free of it. But now the answer to that question is no. I haven't done enough. That's why I keep running to Jesus. Alright, so we talked about the intellectual.

SPEAKER_05 50:15

That's why we die daily.

SPEAKER_01 50:17

We die daily, because we need to. Yeah. Well, it's why faith and repentance is a daily discipline of the Christian life. When Luther posted his 95 theses, he prefaced it by saying that the whole of a Christian's life is one of repentance. So all the time. So intellectual, emotional, volitional, and we'll end it here. So we have a sense of our sin and our need for mercy and the availability of mercy. We have a grief over our sin and a hatred of it that drives us from it. And then we do something with that. We don't just sit in our chair, well, we might, but we do something with it. Acts 2, 37 through 38, when on Pentecost, when all the people are gathered to hear Peter talk about what had happened with Jesus and what God was doing. Now, when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, brothers, what shall we do? And Peter said to them, Repent and be baptized, every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. So we don't just sit with the knowledge and the emotion of it. We actually do something. And that doing is the turning that is faith. Metanoia is the most common used word for repentance in the New Testament. And that's what it literally means. It means a turning or a changing of the mind, taking it away from our sin and our old way of life, and putting it on Christ, fleeing to Christ, running to Christ. And when the catechism talks about with full purpose of an endeavor after new obedience, it's talking about not works. It's not our being saved by doing enough works to cross some threshold. What it's talking about is the fact that in turning to Christ, we turn our wholeselves to Christ. In believing in Christ, we actually listen to him and do what he says. This is the kind of thing we talked about over the past couple weeks where we're looking at, you know, the parable of the soils and the sowing of the seed of God's word and us taking care how we hear and receiving, reflecting, being fruitful, all that kind of stuff. Again, it's not that our works come in after faith to save us in some way. It's always faith plus words. It's the fact that a true faith is a living faith, is a working faith. It's a cliche at this point, but we're saved by faith alone. But the kind of faith that saves is never alone. So that's the full purpose of an endeavor after new obedience.

SPEAKER_05 52:53

The glory of Jesus is so far above anything. I mean, think of the Apostle John, who probably either directly or indirectly wrote the gospel and all those gorgeous epistles. And when he sees Jesus, he's a puddle. He just collapses.

SPEAKER_00 53:31

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 53:34

So I'm gonna read one more passage and then I'll pray to close this out. Because it highlights this dynamic for us. Faith and repentance being a continual rhythm of the Christian life and constituting it's the path we walk, right? It's how we get from here to there, there being the final outcome of our salvation. This is from 2 Peter 1 through through 11. His divine power is granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them we may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire. For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins. Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election. For if you practice these qualities, you will never fall. For in this way there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Father, we thank you for preparing the way for us. We thank you that Jesus walked it flawlessly and cleanly, and that he opened up the path for us into your holy of holies and into our heavenly homeland. Lord, help us as we follow, as we engage in the difficult daily work of repenting and believing, again and again and again. Keep us in the power of your Holy Spirit. Grow us, Father, so that we are quicker to repent and to believe. And Lord, continue to shepherd us as you bring us faithfully to the end. When you bring to completion the good work that you have begun in us, we see the face of our Lord Jesus. We hear the beautiful words, Well done, good and faithful server, and we are finally known by you. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.