London Baptist Confession Ch 14,15

Well, if you don't have your copy of the confession, I'll tell you. We're in chapters 14 and 15, and if you do and want to follow along, you can turn there. I'm skipping 13, but we will cover it next time. So here's the reason why. 14 and 15 deal with faith, and then repentance and faith connected.

And then chapter 13 deals with sanctification, good works, but that is actually also what 16 deals with. So I'm going to connect 13 and 16 and do 14 and 15 tonight. Jesus said pretty clearly repent and believe the Gospel. And it would probably behoove us to know what he meant. What does the word repent mean?

What does faith mean? When the Bible has the story of the jailer and he asks, what must I do to be saved? I think we're all supposed to be able to answer that. If somebody ever asked us as believers that. If anybody ever asked you that, what must I do to be saved?

You should be ready to say that. I was thinking of, Tony, that there was a very interesting conversation with that directly in there. And I said, it sounds like you're asking this. Let me read to you somebody else that asked that. And then we looked at that passage together.

So to be able to talk to somebody about what it means to have faith, what faith is, how it works, where we get it, do we get it, or is it something that's in us? Well, you're going to see that in tonight's two chapters together, that faith and repentance and faith. I'm saying repentance and faith as one thing, because that's conversion. The stuff is called faith. But then you connect repentance and faith together and you get the bigger picture of what the Christian life looks like, how to become a Christian and then how to live as a Christian.

So there's a lot writing on this. It's very consequential to get the answers to these questions right, because everything rises and falls on whether you're exercising biblical faith or not. Not long ago, someone told me that they might be struggling with doing something in their own strength. I've said that many times before myself that I realize I'm getting tired and that might mean I'm not moving in faith, but I'm moving in my own strength. It's a very real possibility.

When you read the Isaiah passage of those who wait on the Lord will mount up with wings like eagles, well, that sounds like somebody that has energy and somebody that is doing the right things. And you'll see that in the subject of faith in particular, our confession says it so beautifully and pointedly. I love even the parts in our confession about when people fall into sin, like being backslidden, being, you know, it's really beautiful and quite comprehensive for 1689. I mean the doctrine and the application of the doctrine is intriguing that they were that advanced in the human condition and what, how difficult it is to be a Christian and struggle with sin as a Christian as well as before you're saved. It's really meaningful.

I think it's worth devotional look energy like if you on your own get discouraged to read through these sections of the confession because they're really clear and poignant and they get right to the heart of the matter. But then there's also some real encouragement in them, especially chapter 15 when we get there. So let's pray and we'll look at it together. Father, these are. Faith is the foundational thing that we hold to.

It's the idea of belief, of trust. It's something so formative, so important, so part and parcel to our faith that we need to know it. Even saying our faith, the religion, what we believe, we need to understand what this is. And it's very possible, Father, that we can pollute it or dilute it or get confused and we might think we know what it means. And this confession, this section, chapter 14, 15 really do help us see what it means biblically.

So help us leave here with that knowledge. More faith, more joy, more confidence in you. And we'll thank you for that. In Jesus name, amen. Well, chapter 14 is of saving faith.

And the first thing you need to know is that the source of faith is a person. Now we're talking about saving faith. And I've already struggled. I've reviewed this sermon, this message multiple times. And I was trying to debate or figure out internally what is the best way to make sure that throughout our time tonight as we go through this, that we see the difference between saving faith and sanctification faith.

If there is a difference, but for sure seeing the difference between real faith and fake or false faith or no faith. Because the same faith that saves somebody, that is used in the salvation of sinners, that same faith is the same stuff that is also living the life of the Christian's sanctification. They're not separate. The danger comes when you blend the saving and the sanctification like Roman Catholicism does, and say the sanctification is part of the justification. That's where the danger comes when you mix those two, thinking that you can Work to earn or keep your salvation.

But the faith side of it, on the other side, on the thing that we're exercising and the thing we're going to look at now, when we talk about saving faith, when we say saving faith, we also mean that is the genuine faith that leads to sanctification, leads to growth, leads to holiness. So it's hard to talk about sometimes. Think about trying to explain it, maybe to kids, and it'll help you to try to work it out in your head. How do I explain that you exercise faith one time in the Lord Jesus Christ for salvation, but the same thing that's made of the DNA, the stuff of that faith is the same thing that I trust the Lord for my walk and my Christian life, but I'm not earning my Christian life, neither of those are earning the thing. So I'll just read what the confession says to get us rolling.

But the first part of this, and I'm grateful our confession says this, is that the first element or the first part or the source of our faith is a person. And that person is the Holy Spirit. The person is not you. So the first paragraph here says the grace of faith, whereby the elect are enabled to believe to the saving of their souls, is the work of the Spirit of Christ in our hearts. Now that granted, is a Calvinistic position.

The idea that the Holy Spirit does the work in the heart first, does everybody in here understand that? That it's first, it's before we are saved. We're not saved. Then the Holy Spirit works in our heart. No, to exercise faith in Jesus, to be saved, the Holy Spirit has to do something first.

And that is what the confession is saying. There you see it, that in Ezekiel, the promise. I'm not going to read the text. All proof texts are in the confession, if you have them. But Ezekiel 36 says that he, the Lord says, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you.

I will take the heart of stone out of your, out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. That's the idea of the promise of the Gospel, that one day God would put a new heart in us. So the heart transplant happens from God, not from us. That's important. That might seem obvious to you, especially if you've been at our church or a church like ours for a lot of time, but you need to know that that is not as common as you think.

The common evangelical thought is that you decide to be born again, not that you're born again and your heart is changed to be to exercise faith. So it's very important to see that. So the Spirit is from God. Paul says in First Corinthians 2, so the person is the Spirit, but then the instrument or the tool is the Word. That's what it goes on to say and is ordinarily wrought by the ministry of the Word, by which also, and by the administration of baptism and the Lord's Supper, prayer and other means appointed of God, it is increased and strengthened.

So our faith is given to us by the Holy Spirit. But then the tool that the Spirit uses is the Word of God to essentially, I don't know, initialize us, to start us into the walk of faith. So Pastor Heinrich's not here, but he was said a thousand times over the years, the Holy Spirit with the Holy Word making holy people in that order, by the way, that's the order. That's not just those three working. Those are in that logical order.

So it's important that it's very, very clear from Scripture that faith comes by what. You know what faith comes by hearing. So the Word of God is the tool or the instrument that God uses to give us faith. It's very clear. Faith comes by hearing.

Did you notice that it doesn't say hearing comes by faith. It doesn't say the Word of God comes after. No, the Word of God is what gives us faith, though the Bible says that the Scripture is able to make wise the simple. So the Scripture is actually the tool that God uses. So let me just say this.

I have lots of notes here, and they're corrective in tone. I prepared this years ago, so this isn't for you today. But I am going to say the small version of it, the defanged version of it, that doesn't have the strength. But I am going to say it, which is, are you clear that the thing that changes hearts and brings people to understanding the Christian faith and the thing that makes change happen in people's lives is first a work of the Holy Spirit and then secondly, the tool that God uses to do that is the Word. So this is a very basic thing of our faith.

But I'm asking you, is it a very basic thing of you, or do you think that maybe eloquence or trying to appeal to the desires of people is what will make them listen to the faith or music is what will make them appeal to think of our faith. What do you think needs to happen? So if I were to say this is what you should do to help people become Christian, is your answer anything other than pray? That the Holy Spirit would change hearts and be faithful with the Word? Or do you think, no, what we need to do is have this kind of music at our church, this kind of environment, this kind of political climate at our church, this kind of.

Maybe we need a guy to tell jokes, a pastor who's really funny and tells jokes and tells relatable stories. I always tell that story because I love my dad a lot. And this is something that. A conversation we had when he asked me, son, when you preach, do you preach real life? And I said, I don't know what you mean, dad.

Tell me what you mean. He says, you know, like, life stuff. Stuff going on, people's lives. And I said, well, I'm not sure what you mean, but what I try to do is I preach the Word. I try to preach what God says in His Word and tell the people what God says.

And he says, because if you preach, like normal life stuff and you can tell stories and you do that, then the church will grow. I think the church will grow. And I said, yeah, dad, but we want it to grow with Christians, not just with people who want to tell stories or hear stories. We want people who want the Word. And he was fine with it.

That was a good conversation. It wasn't a fight. But I am asking you, what do you do with the reality if you believe what the confession says, that faith comes by hearing and hearing the Word of God? Is it possible? We think, well, maybe if we try this or try that or speak in this tone or speak in that way, or maybe if I.

If I give money to a thing or whatever. Do you understand that the power is in the Word? When's the last time you just shared the Word of God with somebody? Didn't talk about, well, let me tell you these things about family. Let me tell you these things about our country.

Let me tell you these things about what have you just said? Can I just share the Bible with you? The Word of God. This is what God says, and I believe it to be true. Yeah.

So our confession says that's where faith comes from. Now, out of that, we have in my notes here the acts of saving faith. So the first thing that faith does, and I'm going to continue in paragraph two, this faith that God gives by the instrumentation of the Word. By this faith a Christian believeth to be true. Whatsoever is revealed in the Word of God for the authority of God himself and also apprehendeth an Excellency therein above all other writings and all things in the world as it bears forth the glory of God, his attributes, the excellency of Christ in his nature, and the offices and the power and the fullness of the Holy Spirit in his workings and operations, and so is enabled to cast his soul upon the truth thus believed.

That's saying a lot. To say something very simple. When God changes your heart by faith, that faith that you now have trusts the word of God. It accepts the word of God. It accepts God's word as the authority and nothing else.

It accepts that God's word is telling us the truth about the Father, about the Son, about the Spirit, that if I am now having that truth from the word of God and I put my confidence in that truth, then that is when I'm safe, that is when I'm okay. So the true faith has total acceptance and confidence in the word of God. It doesn't doubt God. If the world says, well, this is what we believe about creation and the Bible says something different, I default to the Bible. If the world says, well, we don't really believe that Jesus walked where he said he does because there's no archaeological evidence.

The book of Acts tells me. The book of John tells me. The book of Luke tells me I believe the book of Luke. I believe the book of John before I believe history books are archaeologists. And you will find, by the way, if you do any sort of study in those kind of things, history or geography or even geology for that matter, or any other science, you're going to find out that the Bible is consistent with reality, that they keep trying to undermine it and they keep failing.

Just heard this week I sent it to my family that they're having this whole new revelation that they figured out of the closer connections between Neanderthals and Homo sapiens with where 20 years ago there were zero connections, different species. Now the way they fix that, let's just change the meaning of species to fix that. So because these two that we had separate before are obviously related. Well, yeah, because there was only one kind of human, there was never a half evolved human. So anyway, you will find out over and over again.

When science gets its stuff right, it agrees with scripture. So we trust the Word above everything. That's the point. We don't trust all the other voices. The Bible is not one voice among many.

The Bible is God's word and we trust it. Faith does. It also responds accordingly to everything in Scripture. So it trusts it, it hears it, it accepts it, and then the way the confession says it also acteth differently upon that which each particular passage thereof containeth. Yielding obedience to the commands, trembling at the threatenings, and embracing the promises of God for this life and that which is to come.

So saving faith doesn't just believe God's word, it responds to God's word. It reacts to. Well, it acts. That's the idea, is that there's an action related to it, and that is to put confidence. Have you ever heard we say this sometimes, like if there's questionable preaching or teaching, you say, take the meat and spit out the bones.

Have you heard that before? So like in other words, a preacher, if he's preaching, this is a saying. It's been around for years, but we don't say it a lot. But the idea is, if you go to a church and you're not sure if the preacher is good, but at least he's orthodox, you know, he's not a false teacher like we talked about this morning. The least you can do is take the meat that he gives, but then spit out the bones, right?

So you can get nourished with the good things he does say. I've always appreciated that. But I will tell you, the Bible doesn't have any bones in it. Men do, we do, but the Bible doesn't. The Bible is all meat.

That means there are no parts of it that are optional. Christians with this faith that God gives us accept it completely, all the way. When God talks about His Word, he talks about it. It's gone out of his mouth in righteousness, and we listen to him when he speaks. So everything that the Bible says to the Christian who has been given the faith that the Holy Spirit gives through the Word, they accept.

And then the last part here, in the last part of the paragraph, is that saving faith, the real stuff, rests in that and all of that because it points to Christ. But the principal acts of saving faith have immediate relation to Christ accepting, receiving and resting upon him alone for justification, sanctification, and eternal life by virtue of the covenant of grace. That covenant of grace is mentioned multiple times. We've talked about that before. I'm not covenantal to hold the one covenant of grace manifested, but the language of the, of the confession has it in it because it comes from the Reformed world in Westminster.

But we do believe in a covenant of grace, the covenant, the new covenant. Right. So the language, even though it's maybe not what we would use, it still works. I just bring that up to you here because it's mentioned and it will be mentioned again. The covenant of grace.

So faith accepts, faith responds, and then that response ultimately amplifies and points to Christ. That's what the confession is saying that all true saving faith has an end goal of exalting Christ, making him central, making him the main character, which is again different than modern thinking. Modern thinking is I'm the main character, right? My faith, me, my happiness, my heaven, my world. But the biblical faith that God gives us the Holy Spirit through the Holy Word, gives us faith to point to the Holy Son.

That's the point, is he's the point. Then I can talk about the distinctiveness in paragraph three where it's different. Okay. There are two kinds of faith, real and fake. Okay?

And the confession is telling us that faith that saves is the real kind, even though there can be manifestly temporary, not real kinds. I'll read to you what the confession says. This faith, okay? That's the real one. Okay?

When the confession says this faith here in paragraph three, it means this faith, the real faith that the Holy Spirit gives us through the Word, that we accept, that we respond to, that points to Christ. So that's the outline so far. That faith, although it be different in different degrees and may be weak or strong. That's important because you might think, well, I'm super weak or I'm super low, or I'm super inadequate and I can't do anything. But you have faith.

Mustard seed faith, real faith, but it's small. It says, though it be weak or strong, yet it is in the least degree of it different in the kind and nature of it, as is all other saving grace from faith and common grace of temporary believers. So what the confession is saying is if you have the real faith, the kind that God gives through the Holy Spirit, and opening your eyes to the Word, if you have real faith, even if it's tiny, it's still real. It's made of real faith, the real stuff. So you can have a weak faith that is a real faith, and you can have a strong faith that is fake.

There's a lot of people who are very, very certainly wrong. I mean, they are certain, but they're wrong. You can have faith in the wrong things. You can have a big, strong, unshakable faith in the wrong thing. And so the confession is making a difference between the common grace kind of faith of what's going on in the world and the confidence out there, and temporary believers.

Have you ever heard such a thing? Meaning people who look like believers but aren't. It doesn't mean real, true changed believers. So only real faith is real. I know that sounds obvious, but the Bible says Abraham believed God and it was accounted to him for righteousness.

What did he believe? He believed what God said. He took God at his word. He put his confidence in what? In the word of God.

That's what we're saying all along. When Jesus says, I never knew you to the people who claimed to have faith, who claimed to be doing many works and claim to be the superheroes of the faith of his day, when Jesus says, not his day, but in the future, when he says, many will come to me, what does he say to those who say or think they have faith but don't have faith? Does he say, I knew you once, but then I didn't know you? Or did he say, I never knew you? So there are people that are manifesting or showing or displaying some kind of faith that might not be real.

It might look real, it might have all the elements of real faith, but it's not the real stuff. And so there's very clearly possible for people to be living as Christians in disguise. When that's when John says, they went out from us, but they were not of us. But the real thing, the real thing never, ever lets somebody go out. No person with real faith ever abandons the faith completely.

So there it is possible to be weak and strong, and it also has evidence. He goes on to say the confession, goes on to say, sorry. And therefore, though it may be many times, Listen, I love this language. This is the part I was telling you before. I love that this is in our confession.

Maybe I could say it this way first. I love that what I'm about to read is in any confession, but I really love that it's in the 1689 confession. What I mean by that is, instead of all of this only being academic or doctrinal, only theological, it's personal. And if you've ever struggled and if you've ever been weak and if you've ever been beat up and chastened and life has ever gotten you down and your faith is in trouble, this part of the confession bolsters and strengthens it. So I love that part of it, so I'll read it.

And therefore, though it may be many times assailed and weakened, right, you're going to get beat up by the waves, okay? Yet it gets the victory growing up in many to the attainment of full assurance through Christ, who is both the author and finisher of our faith. I don't know. That makes me happy. I'm glad that's in there.

I'm glad that's in there because some of these things can be academic, right? We're talking about doctrine and theology. But man, when you're alone in the dark and you're struggling, and you're struggling, leaning on the Lord, struggling, being obedient, struggling, putting one foot in front of the other, I'm happy that the language is there, that, yes, you're going to get thumped. This world is going to let you have it. You're going to go through some stuff.

But even though you go through some stuff, the world can huff and puff, but it can't blow the house down, right? Someone will say, you have faith and I have works. Show me your faith without your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. There's only two kind, two kinds of faith, real and fake, okay? And the real stuff saves you, even if it's small, even if you're struggling, even if you're down, as long as you have the real faith.

I always ask people in private. I've told you this before a bunch. But it's something that always. It's always meaningful. And it's always a question I would like an answer to when I'm talking to folks.

So it isn't just, I do it for them. I also want to know where to where stand when I'm talking with folks. And I will ask, when no one's looking, when no one else is around, when no one's depending on you, when there's no one to impress, you're just by yourself, all things being what they are right now, if no one's looking. Do you want to make God happy? If you could, if you were in the spot, if you could be stronger, if you could be better moving forward in your walk, would you?

Do you love the idea of God getting glory? Because I haven't yet met the person who is actually saved that says no to that question. People always say, I want to. There's a lot of tears when I ask that question. Like, I want to please the Lord, but I'm broken, man.

That's why I love this section. Because if you have the real thing, God will. He's not done with you. All right. That leads us to the second chapter, which is on Repentance unto Life and Salvation.

I talk about it when I do discipleship. And you can know this. It's not directly tied to this because they're separate, but I like to tie repentance and faith together. And we actually. Technically, when I was in school, I don't know about other seminaries, but in my school, my professors emphasized the idea that the word conversion, the right understanding of the word conversion is repentance and faith together.

Right. So repentance by itself is not conversion and faith by itself is not conversion. You. In order for somebody to truly have been converted, both things have to be present, repentance and faith. So I hold to that and I think when I talk about repentance, I kind of have that echoing in my mind here, even to this next section.

Now here's something interesting. History note. Haven't talked about the history of the confession. This section, chapter 15, is almost completely. It's the most different from the Westminster Confession of Faith.

So almost all of the London Baptist Confession, 1689 and the Westminster Confession of Faith, they're parallel to where the. To the point where there's just sometimes direct copy just with no words changed at all. So the Baptist Confession of Faith is the Westminster Confession of Faith, edited as Baptists. That's what it is. The authors, the Westminster divines, put together the confession.

The Baptists borrowed it. And that's. That's smart, by the way, if you borrow something that's good. But the Baptist changed it in a couple of places. They changed it pretty quite a bit like on the part with covenants and those kind of things.

And now here, this is not. Almost none of this is the same in the Westminster Confession. And it comes from what's called the Savoy Declaration that happened with John Owen and Thomas Goodwin and the Congregationalists. And then it's also. And that's 1658 is the date of that one.

And then the first London Confession of 1646. So this one's ours is 1689. But this section, chapter 15, is comprised of those two things. I'm not sure why they chose to go with the distinctions they did. I didn't look too much into it.

Sorry. Let's talk about repentance. What is repentance? Well, the word. You often hear people say this is important to watch out for this if you want to look for one little nugget as to how much confidence you should have in preachers.

You will hear preachers all the time, especially on the radio. They're going to say this repentance is only or merely the changing of your mind. So if you hear preachers emphasizing the merely part, in other words, the simplest and most basic understanding of repentance is changing your mind, turning from one thing to another. That is partially right. But the second you plop that into Christian theology, you are talking about taking up a cross and dying to self.

You're not just talking about, hey, I used to eat chocolate, but now I eat vanilla. It's not a simple basic changing of mind. It's literally a night and day turning from sin and death and hell and wrath and evil to righteousness, glory, heaven, worship. Right? So it's okay to see the word as merely a changing of the mind, as a word study, but it's not okay to see theologically that repentance is just a changing of the mind.

I say that to you because sometimes when it's being preached like that, when it's being presented as merely a changing of the mind, the idea is they're trying to lower the barrier to entry into the faith. They're trying to simplify and make coming to the faith easier and make it sound more palatable, make it sound more acceptable. So that if I just tell you all repentance is as a mere change of the mind, then that doesn't sound like a big deal, does it? But if I say to you, you have to die to yourself and take up your cross and follow Jesus Christ, that doesn't sound as appealing. And so repentance is all of that.

So make sure when we talk about repentance, we're talking about the biblical picture, not just the dictionary definition of the word, but the dictionary definition of the word is metanoe, literally the changing of the mind. That is the. The word itself. Is that what it means? So the word itself, by itself, apart from a biblical context, is merely a changing of the mind.

Put that word in the biblical context, it becomes the change that we know of as conversion. So repentance, There are two notable occasions. The first one is conversion of the sinner. Now follow me here, because in a second I'm going to talk about, if you are a Christian, what repentance does for you or should do for you. So I want to make sure we're clear that we don't get the idea that there's only one repentance in the life of a believer or an unbeliever.

There's not only one moment of repentance. Okay, so I'll read it to you. First, the conversion of the sinner, paragraph 1 of chapter 15, such as such of the elect as are converted in riper years. It sounds like those Baptists might have held to an age of accountability. Riper years.

How old do you have to be to get saved? There are people that believe in an age of accountability, that you have to reach a certain age before you can believe in the Lord. But we don't hold to that. We believe that babies. And as long as they understand it.

I talk about John the Baptist doing his cartwheel when Jesus was in Mary's tummy, you know. So I do believe children can understand the gospel and exercise faith. I believe that. That there's not a particular age of accountability. But apart from the riper years, having sometime lived in the state of nature and therein served diverse lusts and pleasures, God in their effectual calling giveth them repentance unto life.

Like we said about regeneration, that God opens our eyes first. The Spirit works first. The same is true of repentance. Before you can repent, you have to be given repentance. That's why Paul says correcting those who are in opposition.

If God perhaps grant them repentance. Alexander talked about that in his Philippian sermon, that it is something God does for you that God grants repentance. We also have other passages about all the Father giving and those things. So the first use of repentance, conversion, repentance from dead works, repentance from sin to faith, then the second use of it is the restoration of people in sin that are Christian. A backslider.

Okay? And it goes on to say, whereas there is none that doth good and sinneth not, the best of men may, through the power and deceitfulness of their corruptions dwelling in them with the prevalency of temptation, fall into great sins and provocations. God hath in his covenant of grace, in the covenant of grace, mercifully provided that believers so sinning and falling be renewed through repentance and salvation. So in other words, if you thought that you could be saved and then fall to the point of being lost again, the confession says no. So even our Baptist heritage has what we call eternal security or the perseverance of the saints in it that you cannot fall so far as to fall away.

Think of the heroes of the faith. If you could lose your salvation, what about David and Uriah and Bathsheba? What about Samson? What about Noah and the end of his life? What about Peter and his denial?

What about Thomas? And on and on and on. If you were to go stop into those guys lives at the worst moment, would you be talking to a Christian or a believer or not? You'd be talking to a fallen believer, not an unbeliever. And God will and did in those cases restore those men.

So God allows repentance. He encourages it. He brings people to himself. He takes people like Thomas and Peter and restores them. There's a passage from Revelation Remember therefore, from where you have fallen.

Repent and do the first works, or else I will come to you quickly and remove your lampstand from its place unless you repent. That sounds like you can lose your salvation, but we know that's not what it means. He's talking about the idea of repentance so that you can still retain the blessing that you had when you started your walk of faith. That's a lot of passages like that, right? Believe.

Unless you believed in vain, that kind of language, none of that means that you can lose your salvation. It's all meaning. Do you have the real thing or not? Did you did the thing we thought was faith? Was that faith?

Or are you just pretending like so many do? So the point there is repentance is ongoing. And I want to emphasize that the Christian's life is a life of repentance. It's just important for us to know that the repentance is not for salvation. It is for restoration.

It is for fellowship. When we get out in the cold, repentance is to get us back where it's warm with the Lord. It's important to see that repentance is ongoing. You can read even more what it says in paragraph three. It's almost like an overview.

This saving repentance is an evangelical grace whereby a person being led by the Holy Spirit or the Holy Ghost, made sensible of the manifold. I love this language. Made sensible. That means you didn't know he had to be. In other words, you were dumb.

A person being by the Holy Ghost made sensible of the manifold evils of his sin, doth by faith in Christ humble himself for it with godly sorrow, detestation of it and self abhorrence, praying for pardon and and strength with a purpose and endeavor by supplies of the Spirit to walk before God unto all well pleasing in all things. So yeah, that's just sort of a summary that that's what it looks like to exercise repentance as a believer, that you turn your attention to the Lord and you pray. The call to worship this Morning had Psalm 51 in it. And you do learn when you read the repentance Psalms like 51 and 32, that repentance hurts. It hurts.

Sometimes it feels surgical, sometimes it feels like chastening. But it's good for us. It's a good kind of chastening when we have to repent and then do to be forgiven. Well, some more characteristics of repentance. The first thing is that I already said it, but in my notes I have that it's continuous and it's particular.

And here's what I mean by that. I'll read it first from the confession, paragraph 4, chapter 15. As repentance is to be continued through the whole course of our lives upon the account of the body of death and the motions thereof, so it is every man's duty to repent of his particular known sins. Particularly, you say, what are they talking about, those crazy Baptists. If I say, let's say I sinned against you, let's say I said something terrible to you, offensive to you, like, what's your problem, idiot?

And then I say I want to come and I want to say I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I could have done better. Is that sufficient? Or do I need to say the thing I did and acknowledge the hurt from the thing I did? We might not realize that if I am just a person that says, I make mistakes, Lord, forgive me for my mistakes in general, that I might be dodging the accountability for the mistakes in particular. Like, I don't want to say I have a short temper.

I don't want to say I have a lust problem. I don't want to say that I wasn't obedient, Lord, I could have done what you wanted and I didn't. Right? The idea being is we need to be ready. We need to be ready to tell the Lord what we actually did.

And I would also tell you, if you're confessing to one another, do the same thing. Name the sin. Name it. This is the sin I committed. And this is the sin I'm asking your forgiveness for.

That's why I think it's important that when we confess, confession literally means that word, like in First John 1:9. Everybody knows it's well if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. That confession there, the Greek word normally in the New Testament for confession is homologeo, homo, which means of the same kind. And logeo means to speak. And so the idea is I will say of my sin the same thing God says of my sin.

That's what confession literally means. It means God calls my sin, whatever it is, my sin of coveting that sin. I coveted that I showed discontentment before the Lord that I didn't have everything he wanted me to have. And I said, God is robbing me. And so I was discontent and complaining and grumbling about what I didn't have.

So when I go to tell the Lord I'm sorry, I need to say, I agree with you about the thing I did wrong. Your word says I shouldn't have coveted. Your word says I should have been content instead of discontent. That is what I did wrong. That is what I'm confessing.

I'm agreeing with you that I did that. That's what confession is. It's not just saying, oh, please forgive me, or I'm in general a bad guy or a girl, I'm struggle, or it definitely doesn't justify itself. So real true confession and repentance is true of particular sins, particularly. The idea is I'm going to name my sin, I'm going to call it what it is before the Lord.

The reason that's valuable. It's not just because God says to do it. That is valuable enough because God says to do do it. But you need to know that God does it because it's good for us. It's good for me.

If I say, lord, I did that thing that you disapproved of and I'm asking for forgiveness now I can claim the promise that I will get forgiveness. So that thing that I named before the Lord is now where it belongs, on the cross, and I can move free from it. But if I'm just generally not a good guy and I ask for general forgiveness, I repent sort of lightly, like I need to do a little better next time, then I'm never really unloading my burdens. I'm hiding them, I'm masking them, trying to make them seem less important than they are. But when you really confess, you go before the Lord, say these things.

I could have done that so much better. I did the thing your word says. This right here, this morning, I can't tell you, but somebody did. A confession like that, they did to me. It wasn't about me.

They were confessing to me that they did something wrong out in the world, you know, and he didn't have to tell me that. He didn't have to share that with me, but he did. And he was candid about it. And. And then he actually said that I remembered what we taught, what you talked about when it came to forgiveness.

And I went right to the Lord. I was so ashamed of myself. But then the Lord just took care of me. Yeah, that's what I'm talking about, you know, the thing you did wrong. And you took that to the Lord and he took it from you.

That's the best way to do it, not try to minimize the sin. And when you do exercise that repentance, paragraph five says, such is the provision which God hath made through Christ in the covenant of grace for the preservation of believers unto salvation. That all the. I love this language is the best language of the night to me. Although there is no sin so small, but it deserves damnation.

So it is. The truth of our confession says that the biblical truth is that there is no sin that's so small that you shouldn't be condemned for it. The tiniest sin deserves the wrath of God. That's what the confession is saying. Now we think of big sins like murder and all those things.

No, no, no. The confession is saying the smallest sin brings the wrath of God. I always remind people, what was the first sin? It's a piece of fruit. Don't eat it.

And they did. That wasn't murder or espionage or any other thing. So there's no sin so small, but it deserves damnation. Right? Now listen to the continuation.

Yet there is no sin so great that it shall bring damnation on them who truly repent, which makes the constant preaching of repentance necessary. There's no sin so small that it can't or shouldn't or doesn't condemn you. But there's also no sin so big for a believer that repentance isn't available. For that, you can go before the Lord. You cannot out sin God's grace.

That is powerful. And that was said in 1689. And they didn't even have the Internet yet. They didn't have television or pornography or drugs or opium, opiates. They didn't have any of that yet.

And they're still talking about it. There's no sin so small you don't deserve condemnation. You deserve condemnation for all sin. But there's no sin so big that God can't get you and save you and rescue you. That's awesome.

I love that. This is in the confession. Godly sorrow produces repentance. When somebody is genuinely sorrowful for their sin and they go to the Lord, it produces repentance and they can be forgiven. And that goes for unbelievers and believers, though I always used to say, I don't say it because it's not actually theologically accurate, but I would say that if you're not a believer and you pray, God can't hear you.

I used to say that, like people would say, I pray all the time. And now I ask, are you a Christian? And the answer is no. And I said, then he can't hear you. Your prayers are stopping at the ceiling, right?

Because only people that go to the Lord in Jesus name are heard by God, right? Those are the people he hears. So I don't say that as obnoxiously like that as I used to. I'll still work it in every once in a while. But I do love the idea that believers at any time, like the Lord's ears, are open to believers.

So for unbelievers, yeah, they're probably not praying, right? Believers maybe, maybe struggling. But here's the language that God definitely understands from both repentance. God understands repentance language from both unbeliever and believers. Maybe I could ask you, when was the last time you thoroughly repented of something?

If repentance is typical of the Christian life, if ongoing repentance is supposed to be something that sort of identifies us as believers, people who are regularly throwing ourselves at the mercy of the Lord, people who recognize that we still carry around the sin nature, we still battle indwelling sin. How? How? I don't know, healthy is your repentance lifestyle? That's a good question to ask ourselves.

I really do think that that. Because if we go long periods of time without repenting, that might mean we're going long periods of time without confessing. That might mean we're going long periods of time of actually exercising faith in the Lord instead of just assuming we're right with Him. I really do think it's worth some time in the mirror of the Word and let the Word show you. Like James says, the mirror shows you what you need to see.

But we're not supposed to walk away from it and ignore it. I think that can happen. So how do you respond when God points out sin in your life or people point out sin in your life? I don't know anybody that likes it. I don't know anybody that if you walk up and say, hey, this part of your life needs some help.

I notice you're struggling in faithfulness in this area. Oh, your language in this area. Oh, you're giving in this area. Oh, I noticed you haven't done much in the way of prayer and you know, Bible study. I'm seeing in your life patterns that show that you're not very faithful.

Maybe you need to repent. Do you welcome that kind of talk? Is that happy to hear even from the Lord? If the Lord is telling you to do something from His Word, like, oh, that hurts. Because I really do think I've said this before and I really mean it.

And I'd like to think I practice it. I trust I do. So I don't want to say More than I'm. I don't want to go farther than I'm capable of saying, but I'd like to. To be telling you the whole truth.

When I say I'm quick to apologize, I'm quick to apologize because I know what comes on the other side of apologies. That doesn't mean I enjoy being told I have to apologize. I'm not telling you that I'm not happy to be told I'm in sin. I'm not happy when the Word confronts me. Last week's sermon, the passage confronted me a little bit.

I have to drive home thinking about that. And it hurts me, you know, when the Bible hits me between the eyes. But I am asking you, how are you with apologizing? How are you with confession, with repentance? Are you.

Is it something you're good at? Because even if you don't like that front end of it, fall in love with the back end of it. Fall in love with restoration. Fall in love with the Lord taking your burdens. Fall in love with getting right with him.

So even if you don't like that process, you know, it's like working out or eating healthy, you know, on the other side of it, there's something good around the corner. So have that confidence that if you exercise faith and you do the things that God says, there's good coming. There's promises related to it. Let's pray. Father, thank you for faith.

It is something you give us. Now. I would ask that we would exercise it. And then also the last part, that we would, if need be, repent. If there are things in our lives that need to be adjusted, and there may be even outright sins, either that we're harboring or leaning toward, and our faithfulness is in question, would you please help us repent?

And then when we do, restore us, restore the joy of our salvation, and we'll thank you for it. In Jesus name, amen.