Inspecting Our Repentance

Sermon Transcript

We certainly live in a culture where feelings are king. They’re of quintessential importance to people. If you have a feeling it’s significant. If you have a deep feeling it is defining for you. And, you know, we as Christians need to understand what God has to say about our feelings, which is plenty, but particularly when it comes to bad feelings, God has some very important things to say to us in Second Corinthians Chapter 7. In particular that you can have a bad feeling about a bad thing, about a bad thing you’ve done and it can be profound, it can be significant, and it can be defining. But you can also have bad feelings about bad things you’ve done and it can be something that the Bible says is actually deadly. It makes a distinction in Second Corinthians Chapter 7 that there is worldly grief and godly grief and Christians unfortunately don’t make the distinction as well as we ought to. And we need to because it’s essential to the Christian life. Now, when you talk about the feelings of sorrow and you relate it to the word repentance, you may be tempted to think about the beginning of your Christian life, but all of your Christian life is going to involve repentance, because the Bible’s very clear that we all stumble as Christians in many ways and to every response to stumbling we need to repent. And with our failings and our stumblings we are going to feel bad. But we have to make sure we distinguish between worldly grief and godly grief. So let’s take a look at this text because it can be the difference between you doing really well in your sanctification and you just stalling out. So we want to make sure we understand these words properly.

Second Corinthians Chapter 7 verses 5 through 12 we’ll try to tackle today and it is super important and thankfully God gives us a text that’s going to help us make a very important distinction and make it crystal clear. Now, if you were given the assignment in Bible school or Compass Bible Institute, for instance, to make an outline of Second Corinthians, you’re going to find a very interesting thing has happened between Second Corinthians Chapter 2 verse 13 and Second Corinthians Chapter 7 verse 5. And that is that everything in between those two verses has been parenthetical in a sense. Of course, it’s all very important and Paul stresses some very important doctrinal issues, but he’s left off the issue of coming to Macedonia in Second Corinthians Chapter 2 verse 13. And now he picks up that theme in verse 5 here of Second Corinthians 7. Let me read it for you with a little bit of commentary. He says in verse 5, “For even when we came into Macedonia, our bodies had no rest, but we were afflicted at every turn — fighting without,” on the outside, “and fear within.” And the whole book began with his admission of the kinds of suffering and the difficulty that he was encountering in his own life.

“But God,” verse 6, “who comforts the downcast, comforted us by the coming of Titus.” Now, if you’ve been around my teaching, I love to quote this passage. It’s such an important passage about the way that God uses people to lift you up when you are downcast, and certainly that’s a big part of what’s being said here but it’s not the full story. Verse 7 gives us the full story. And that is, “not only by his coming, but also by the comfort with which he was comforted by you.” In other words, it was all about what Titus told Paul about how the Corinthians had responded to what Paul had said to them. “He told us,” bottom of verse 7, “of your longing, your mourning, your zeal for me, so that I rejoiced still more.” So in his discouragement he was very encouraged to find Titus because he couldn’t find Titus according to Second Corinthians Chapter 2 verse 12 when he comes into Troas, so he makes it to Macedonia across the sea there so that he can find him and find out what’s going on with the Corinthians. Paul has had a painful visit. He sent a letter. It’s caused trouble, at least in their relationship. And now he wants to know how are they doing? And so when he finds out that they had responded properly with longing, mourning, zeal for him, he says, “I rejoiced still more. For even though I made you grieve by my letter,” verse 8, “I don’t regret it — though I did regret it.” Of course, he’s not a masochist. He doesn’t want them just to feel bad for the sake of feeling bad. He said “though I did regret it, for I see that my letter grieved you, but only for a while. As it is, I rejoice, not because you were grieved, but because you were grieved into repenting.” That’s the key.

Some of us tend to think that feeling bad about our sin is repenting. And of course it’s not. There’s so much more to it than that, but it’s certainly a necessary component of it. “For you felt a godly grief,” it says in the bottom of verse 9, “so that you suffered no loss through us.” In other words, this is a good thing for you, not a setback, it’s a positive. Verse 10, “For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret.” Now we can think about our initial repentance, right? We talked about it in Second Corinthians Chapter 5 verse 15 about us, “no longer living for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.” We can think, well, that’s the beginning of our Christian life and you use the word salvation in relation to that. And I get it. Our sins are canceled. There’s “no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” And that’s terrific. And that’s true. That’s the capital “S” kind of salvation, so to speak. But we encounter this kind of freedom, this kind of life, this kind of saving with a small “s” every time we repent in the midst of our sin. It’s not like we start the Christian life over, but it certainly fixes things that need to be fixed in our everyday relationship and walk with Christ. And so he says it “leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief,” here’s the contrast, it “produces death.” And unfortunately, many of us once we feel bad about sin we think that’s it. And it doesn’t do what it’s supposed to do. And unfortunately, it causes more problems than it solves.

Verse 11, “For see what earnestness this godly grief is produced in you … what eagerness,” he says, “to clear yourselves, what indignation, what fear, what longing, what zeal, what punishment!” I mean, you responded in a massive way to this kind of grief that led to real repentance. We’ll look at that in more detail. “At every point you have proved yourself to be innocent in the matter. So,” verse 12, “although I wrote to you, it was not for the sake of the one who did the wrong, nor for the sake of the one who suffered the wrong, but in order that your earnestness for us might be revealed to you in the sight of God.” Now, if you read verse 12, it may be problematic if you really take every word seriously, which of course you should. It’s like David when he’s confessing his sin in Psalm 51 he says, “Against you, and you only, have I sinned.” Now, if you’re Uriah’s mother you’re thinking well that’s not true. You’ve sinned against me, too. You killed my son to cover up your adultery with Bathsheba and this is a bad thing. You’ve sinned against a lot of people here. And yet this is a hyperbolas statement to say this is the ultimate concern. And David says I have sinned against God. Well, here Paul says, I wrote you about sin in the church, not for the sake of the one who did wrong. Well, of course he did it for the sake of the one who did wrong. He wanted the one who did wrong to be repentant. And he said, not for the sake of the one who suffered wrong. Do you think Paul didn’t care about the one who suffered wrong in whatever the situation was that he was writing about? Of course he did.

But ultimately it’s overshadowed. This is an argument from lesser to greater. There’s such a great concern he has for this, “that your earnestness for us might be revealed to you in the sight of God.” Now look up at verse 7, the bottom of verse 7, “he told us of your longing, your mourning, and your zeal for me, so that I rejoiced still more.” You read those two verses 7 and 12 together and you think, man, he’s an egomaniac, right? All he cares about is what they think of him. Please remember that the Apostle Paul is not you, he’s not me, he’s not speaking personally. I know this from Galatians Chapter 1, Paul really doesn’t care what you think about him. Would you agree with that? Right? I don’t care what you think about me. If I cared about the opinion of man, I wouldn’t be a servant of Christ. So Paul doesn’t really care what people think about him. But in this case, he says, I want your earnestness, your devotion to me to be seen. Why? Because he’s the Apostle Paul, right? And he’s writing a letter and when he writes letters to these people he’s not writing opinions, he’s not writing his preferences. Right? He’s a stand-in for the authority of Jesus Christ himself. He’s an apostle. We’re not apostles. Your pastors are not apostles. We’re not apostles here, right? All we have is the result of the apostles’ work. Ephesians 2:20. The foundation of the church is the work of the apostles and the prophets. And so when he says this, you can stand in, in your own mind, this, that he says what I really cared about is your earnestness for the truth. Right? For the truth, it’s coming through the apostle. Right? The New Testament truth. It “might be revealed to you in the sight of God.” What matters is that you accept the truth. That’s what Paul cares about.

Now, I know it’s put in first person, what they think about Paul. But the earnestness and devotion to Paul, the alignment with Paul, is really the concern about their alignment with the truth. And that really gets to the nub of what real repentance is about which is your alignment with the truth. And Paul gets excited in the first few verses here, 5 through 7. And let’s start there by making an observation about how he’s saying, I was really torn up inside wondering whether or not you were going to be in line with what I told you. I was really concerned, but when I found out that you were, he says in verse 7, you’re longing for me, you’re mourning over your sin, your zeal for me and what I was saying, I rejoice still more. Is that an egomaniac talking? That’s not an egomaniac talking. I’m so glad that what you did in response to what I said was your alignment with me because I’m telling you the truth, and that brought me great joy.

Now, here’s the thing about repentance and you can see this in the passage. The word “grief” is involved in this, and grief is never something if I’m speaking to a 21st-century American Western culture, no one’s going to be excited about a sermon that’s going to encourage you to feel bad. But this passage is about feeling bad. A godly grief, not a worldly grief but a godly grief. It doesn’t mean the grief is not grief, it is grief. But the whole point of this is that Paul is saying I rejoice that you had this grief because it led to repentance that led to a good result. He calls it salvation. For us we put that in a small “s.” We fix the problem in our lives. We aligned our lives, our behavior, our actions to the truth. Now, what’s important in that is that we know that the end result is always something that is good. The apostle rejoices. Why? Because he represents the truth. And when the truth is given, of course God rejoices. The good thing about going through the difficult pain, the emotional pain, the real pain of facing sin and dealing with it in your life this week is that God wants it to result in joy, joy all the way around. But let’s just start with that principle and write it down. If you’re taking notes, and I wish that you would, put this down. Verses 5 through 7. The essence of this is we need to “Remember Repentance Leads to Joy.” It leads to joy. Now the Apostle Paul is rejoicing still more because he’s saying you did the right thing. That makes me happy as an apostle. And of course, he’s representing Christ. He’s representing the Triune God here, giving them truth and they’re aligning with the truth and it makes him happy. And of course, it makes God happy.

Now, none of this really is pleasant for us to talk about repentance and the grief that goes with repentance. The part and parcel reality of feeling bad about sin. Now it’s more than that but it includes that. That’s never going to be an exciting thing but you need to always keep in mind what’s the light at the end of the tunnel. And that is something great at the other side of you humbling yourself before God and seeing sin for what it is. Really, by the way, that phrase “light at the end of the tunnel” couldn’t be more appropriately encapsulated with one of the longest highway tunnels in the state of California, the Wawona Tunnel. Does anyone remember that as you go into Yosemite? Have you ever driven through that long tunnel? It’s a two-lane highway. It’s dark, it’s dank, and it goes for a long way. And when you enter that tunnel it’s not long after you enter you can see, if it’s daytime, the light at the end of the tunnel, and it just hangs there. You can go on YouTube and watch somebody drive through it if you’ve never driven through it yourself or you can’t remember it, you’re going through this tunnel and of course as you go into it, you’re like, you’re going into it like a mouse into a hole. You’re going into the side of this mountain. It’s just, you know, you just drive into this and this dark, dank tunnel as you go through, there’s this light at the end of the tunnel and you get closer and closer and closer and closer and finally it breaks through. Have you driven through the Wawona Tunnel? What do you see on the other side? El Capitan, you see Half Dome in the distance, you see the great waterfalls coming down. And it’s the most dramatic scene. It’s the things that your, you know, your Apple TV uses as a screensaver. Right? You see this after this long, dark tunnel and you come out and BAM! And the National Park Service built this big parking area where you can just pull off because you’re just overwhelmed by this breathtaking scene of how beautiful it is.

Well, if you don’t go through that tunnel you don’t get to see that view. You have to go through the tunnel to get that view. And that’s how you need to view repentance that way and the pain that comes with it. Yes, God wants you to feel bad about your sin, but that bad feeling, that grief as we’re going to talk about in detail, really is going to lead us to something that we can’t lose sight of, and that’s joy. Let’s start with the joy of God. Most of us remember Luke Chapter 15 because it records the longest parable and the most involved parable of Jesus that he tells. We often call it the parable of the Prodigal Son. Do you remember that? And that whole passage, by the way, you need to remember starts because the Pharisees in verse 2 of Luke Chapter 15 are grumbling that Jesus is talking to the tax collectors and sinners, right? And the Pharisees don’t like it. They’re grumbling about that. But what is he talking to them about? Well, the end of Luke Chapter 14 talks about the fact that he has a message of repentance to give and unfortunately there are not a lot of people listening to it. So he says, “he who has ears to hear, let him hear.” Well, in Luke Chapter 15 verse 1 there are some people who come to hear, it’s the same Greek word “Akoúō.” They come and they want to hear him. Well, they happen to be sinners and tax collectors. And in Luke Chapter 14 verse 2 the Pharisees don’t like that. And so Jesus tells three successive parables. Do you remember what they are? The lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son, or what we call the prodigal son. And all in increasing intensity. Well, it ends each one of these with the whole point of a celebration. Of course you remember the prodigal son it ends with killing the fattened calf and putting a ring and a robe on the son. And there’s this big celebration. But the older brother, he’s grumpy, he doesn’t want to celebrate.

And the whole point goes back to the two intervening verses that say this about a repentant person. It doesn’t matter who it is. It could be a Pharisee, a scribe, it could be a tax collector, a prostitute, a sinner. It doesn’t matter who it is, notoriously a sinful person. It says, “there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.” I just want you to think about that for a second. And I know we think about that often in terms of the initial repentance that enters us into the Christian life. But please know that that’s a principle that God rejoices in and is illustrated for us here by the representative of Christ, the apostle saying I’m rejoicing because you have aligned with the truth. When a sinner repents, when you repent on Tuesday afternoon or Thursday morning or Saturday night, and you repent before God, and it’s going to require that grief, that dark tunnel of pain and introspection, and it’s not going to be pleasant. When you come through the other side of that, I just want to remind you heaven is rejoicing. It talks about rejoicing in the presence of the angels. I mean, God really rejoices when you are ready to say I’ve done wrong, I need to do the right thing, and that ain’t going to happen without some bad feelings. And I know feelings are king. And in our day everybody wants to avoid bad feelings. But this bad feeling is necessary for the kind of joy that heaven is going to break out into when you and I repent of our sin.

Not only is God rejoicing but of course here just spelled out in the bottom of verse 7 his leaders rejoice. And I should say it’s important for us to catch that. Hebrews Chapter 13 verse 7 talks about the leaders that we have and it talks about us being the kind of congregants that allow our leaders to do their jobs with joy. And I know this about leaders, and now all you have to do is think about yourself, maybe even as a parent, as this is metaphorically presented in Third John verse 4, that little one chapter book, John says, “I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth.” See, when I see people I love and care for walking in the truth, metaphorically he’s not referring to his biological children but his spiritual children, like Paul called Timothy his son, or Titus his true son in the faith. These people who he cares about, when they do the right thing, the leaders rejoice.

Let me just say this about your repentance. When your life aligns with the truth when it hasn’t been, when you weren’t doing what you should do and you encounter the truth of God’s Word, whether through a sermon, whether through reading the Bible this week, and you align your life with that truth as painful as that is, because it’s always going to require grief, you just need to know there are people who know you and they’re going to rejoice. They may not throw a party or get a cake or get balloons, but I’ll tell you what you’re going to make your small group leaders very happy. You’re going to make your pastors happy. You’re going to make the person who took you through the Partners manual. You’re going to make them happy as your life continues to repent of sin and align itself with the truth. You make people happy. There’s no greater joy than people who care about other Christians and seeing their lives align with the truth.

Turn to this passage with me. I want to save this one for last in this first point and that is you’re going to be joyful. Go to Psalm 32 real quick. Psalm 32. This is another psalm that probably is reflective of David’s repentance maybe over Bathsheba and Nathan’s confrontation. That was a painful scene, of course. But look at this breaking out into happiness. And I should contrast this though it’s not the canonical order of the text, let me start in verses 3 and 4. David is writing this psalm about forgiveness and repentance, and he says this in verse 3, “When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as the heat of summer.” Okay. The reality of you not repenting of whatever it is you’re not repenting of right now, you’re holding on to some sin and you’re not dealing with it honestly, I mean, the Bible says right here you’re going to have a problem. You’re not going to feel the way you’re going to feel if you repent. Look at verses 1 and 2. It starts with a word that should be very positive in your Christian vocabulary. It’s the word “blessed,” right? “Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.” Now, if all you’re thinking about is some transactional justification and I know I’m a child of God and I’m forgiven and therefore I don’t have to worry about how I messed up last Wednesday, then you’ve missed the point entirely of what it means to walk in the light, as he is in the light. “If we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses you from all sin.” You experientially know what it’s like when you’re willing to deal with the individual sins that you commit.

This is how God says you’re going to have this blessed experience and that’s a good word. The joy that comes from knowing, listen, there’s nothing between me and God. Psalm 31 verse 2, “Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit.” Now there’s the transitional phrase that gets us to where we started because we started in Psalms verse 3. When we keep silent about our sin we are deceiving ourselves, right? We’re playing this deceptive game. Everything’s okay, everything’s okay, everything’s okay, everything’s okay. It’s NOT okay. And when the conviction of God’s Word comes through a sermon, through a Christian book, through your study of God’s Word, your Daily Bible Reading, whatever it is, when we deal with the difficult, grieving pain of what it means to lead ourselves into repentance as God’s truth takes us there, at the other side of that here’s the breathtaking view of what it means to feel like now we’re in fellowship again with the Lord. We don’t get saved all over again. That’s not what we’re talking about. But we are talking about the reality of you going through the other side of this difficult tunnel of pain and contrition and self-reflection and coming out the other side saying this is good. How “blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.” “Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit.” This is good. God’s hanging out a carrot here if you will, saying to you it would be good for you to deal with this sin. It would be really good. Not only is it going to make heaven happy, you’re going to make people who know you and care about you happy. And you know what? You’re going to end up being happy. There’s joy for you on the other side of repentance. And I mean that not just the beginning of the Christian life. I mean in every stumbling that you have as a Christian.

Back to our passage, Second Corinthians Chapter 7 verse 8. Let’s get into this really difficult word here, “grieve.” I know it’s not a pleasant word. But it says this in verse 8, “For even if I made you grieve with my letter.” Now remember his letter is God’s truth. So it’s like me saying, if this sermon made you grieve, or if your reading of the Bible yesterday made you grieve, or if some Christian book you’re reading addressed some biblical principle that made you grieve. “I don’t regret it — though I did regret it for I see that the letter grieved you, though only for a while. As it is,” verse 9, “I rejoice, not because you were grieved,” I don’t like the fact that you were grieved, “but because you were grieved into repenting. For you felt a godly grief, so that you suffered no loss.” It’s not a bad thing to grieve in that regard, it’s a good thing. This word grief, by the way, before we write this point down, I just want you to know what a serious word this is in Matthew Chapter 17 verses 22 and 23, the word is used as Jesus tells his disciples, you know, I’m going to go to Jerusalem, I’m going to be betrayed by the chief priests and the scribes and they’re going to turn me over to be crucified. And that’s a terrible thing to hear. The one you’re pinning your hopes on, the leader of your team is all of a sudden telling you, I’m about to be murdered, unjustly murdered. How would you feel? It says the disciples were distressed. That’s the English translation, the same word. They were grieved. They were distressed. How would you feel if someone you love told you I’m going to be murdered next week? And if they were prophetic and they knew it was going to happen, it would hurt. That’s the kind of word we’re dealing with here. The truth of God in leading you to repentance is going to make you feel that sense of distress.

Or how about Matthew Chapter 19 verse 22? The same word is used and employed when Jesus comes to the rich young ruler and he says, hey, you know what? You have an idol problem. Your idol problem is you’re a materialistic, greedy person, a covetous person. You need to get rid of all of that. I’m going to call you out right now on this and the Son of God is going to tell you to sell everything you have and give it to the poor and come follow me. And it says he was grieved. He was sorrowful I think is the translation in the English Standard Version in Matthew 19:22. He was sorrowful. It’s the same word. How would you feel if you were a money-loving person and you were just asked by God to get rid of all of your money? That would be painful. That’s the pain that we’re talking about here. The same word to “grieve.”

Or First Thessalonians Chapter 4 verse 13. Have you been to a funeral lately of someone you loved? First Thessalonians 4:13 talks about grief. We all experience grief when a loved one dies. And when someone we love dies we’re supposed to have a grief that’s not like the rest of the world that has no hope. But it’s still grief. And it talks about that grief being the feeling that we have when we’re coming into a repentant situation about some sin in our lives. And so in this passage we recognize it’s like the death of something in our lives. You think, wow, I’m not going to feel that way about me stopping to sin. Of course, that’s how your flesh feels when God calls you out on something and says we’re done with this. You go through the pain of loss. You go through the distress of separating from that sin. It’s hard.

But there’s one verse I need you to look at. Put your eyeballs on it and I want you to write it down. Please don’t leave the auditorium without writing this down. Jeremiah Chapter 8 verse 6. Jeremiah 8:6. And I’ll be a little personal here. This is a verse that I think of often when I think of what does it mean for me to repent. Here’s what it means and a great phrase. What does the grief of repentance look like? Here it is. Let me give you some context here. Looking at Jeremiah Chapter 8 verse 5, these people are turning away. They’re talking about the nation continually going back to their sin. “They hold fast to deceit.” Right? We already saw in Psalm 32 that’s what it’s like to avoid our sin and pretend like it’s not happening. It’s deceiving ourselves. And “they refuse to,” now here’s the Hebrew word “Suv.” Suv is the Hebrew word that translates into the Septuagint metanoia. “Metanoia” is the word “repentance.” Here’s the word for repentance, right? They refuse to repent. “They refuse to return.” They’re not going to turn around. “I’ve paid attention and listened,” verse 6, “but they have not spoken rightly; no man,” here’s a parallel word, “relents of his evil,” nobody’s turning from their evil, “saying…” Now what would it be if you do turn, if you do repent? What does it mean? What’s God listening for? Here’s what he’s listening for, are you ready? Here’s a great phrase from the Bible, and you need to imprint it on your mind. This is what we’re looking for. “What have I done?”

I think real painful, that poignant sense of repentance, is the kind of repentance when someone sincerely comes with a broken, contrite heart before God and says, “What have I done?” What have I done? You can’t read the encounter of Nathan and David without that sense that he’s just broken. What have I done? What have I done? Surely everyone in the room knows some point in their lives where they feel that sense of what have I done? That’s the phrase. That’s what comes from a heart that is really convicted, has the distress, the sorrow, the grief that God’s Spirit is working to bring us to genuine repentance. It’s not, man, I feel bad because I really messed up my spiritual batting average. A lot of people feel bad because of their ego when they sin, but that’s not saying to God what have I done? What have I done? That’s what God’s asking for. That’s what he’s listening for. “I have paid attention and listened, but they have not spoken rightly.” What’s the right thing to say? It’s to say the sincere sentence what have I done? What have I done?

In Acts Chapter 2 Peter is preaching about Christ. He enlists that most often quoted Old Testament text in Psalm 110 about “the Lord said to my Lord,” which is repeated all the time in the New Testament. It’s a great text not only about the deity of Christ, but also about his role. Anyway, he’s talking about all of that in Acts Chapter 2 in his sermon, he quotes it in verse 34. And then he says in verse 36, “let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him,” this one, this Christ, “both Lord,” the boss, “and Christ,” the Messiah, “this Jesus whom you have crucified.” Okay. Now I want you to think for a second, you’re standing there in the crowd 40 days after all this went down and you’re thinking to yourself, wow, I’ve just been accused of crucifying the Messiah, the Son of Man, the Lord, the Daniel Chapter 7 all-authoritative one to whom all dominion and power belongs. And I was just told that I was there chanting in the crowd and saying, yeah, he needs to be crucified. How does that feel? Well, here’s the next line. “When they heard this they were cut to the heart.” Do you want to know that feeling? It’s the feeling of what have I done? What have we done? What have I done?

And at the beginning of the Christian life surely I hope some of you have said that’s exactly what I said. I thought to myself I can’t believe I’ve rejected Christ for all these years. I can’t believe that I haven’t humbled myself before God and seen the truth and God has opened up that sense of grief in your heart. Well, that’s the grief that leads to repentance, and it cuts you down to the inside of who you are. It’s not just this mental thing. Yeah, I shouldn’t do this anymore. Yeah, I messed up. Yeah, I should fix this. And, yeah, I would feel bad if I don’t have such a good batting average as a Christian. You can feel bad and never repent. Real repentance is what have I done? It’s a cutting to the heart. And what does that? It’s a letter from the Apostle Paul. It’s a letter from Peter. It’s a letter from Isaiah. It’s a letter from Luke. We have God’s Word given to us by the apostles and prophets and it convicts us. Sometimes it’s preached, sometimes it’s spoken, sometimes it’s a lesson that you go to and a discussion you have in a small group, but it convicts us. It cuts us to the heart and it makes us feel bad. That grief is required. We can’t do it without that pain. You cannot fix the problem of sin without that pain.

I was seven years old when I broke my arm. I had already broken bones so I knew what that was all about. But this was a little worse. I was on the rings at Bixby Elementary School in Long Beach and they had rings back then. I don’t know if they probably don’t have those anymore. Too dangerous, but they put sand underneath the rings and you go from one ring to the next. Does anybody remember those? While I was on the rings and I had learned that the sand pit under the rings was not quite as wide as it should have been because I was swinging pretty violently, apparently, and I swung my body and my sweaty hands slipped off the rings and I went down on my arm and I snapped my two bones in my forearm. Okay. The coachee, do you remember the coach? I don’t know, it’s what we called her, the coachee you old timers. She’s out there, you know, part-time job trying to make sure the kids don’t kill each other on the playground. Well, she runs over to me because I’m on the ground in pain and I roll up on my rear end and I have my arm here with both these bones broken, so my hands are kind of dangling off the end of my arm. I remember her saying it’s probably just sprained. (audience laughing) I was only seven but I understood that this was not a sprain.

So of course I get casted up and go about my business as a second grader and that means trying to do everything I shouldn’t do. But I go about this healing process in a wrong way. That’s where I go in for my checkup. My mom takes me to the doctor. Maybe you’ve heard this story before, but I sit down as he throws up the X-ray trying to figure out how my bones are repairing, and he gets that kind of concerned look on his face which I didn’t take seriously at the time. And he says, oh, we have a problem here. And so he takes that cast off. Do you remember when the casts were those white cast and he took that saw and he made this cast into two parts, he put his hand both on each side. He looks at the X-ray. He looks at my hand, says, okay, I’m going to have to reset it. That sounds like such a benign word. Reset. And he counted like he was going to count to three. But he deceived me. He said one, two and then snapped my arm in half. Now I’d already broken my arm and I can’t believe my mother sat there and let this happen to me. And I knew the pain of a broken arm and I thought to myself why in the world is he going to purposely break my arm? He’s supposed to heal me. He’s supposed to fix me. This is the doctor. Do no harm. You’re doing harm, doctor. Of course he wasn’t. He knew that if my bones continued to grow the way they were that it wouldn’t, I don’t know, it wouldn’t be as beautifully straight as it is today. And of course, it’s as though I’ve never broken my arm, I’ve had no problems with my arm ever since. So hats off to my Long Beach doctor way back in the day who reset my arm and he did it for a good reason. Had he said no, I’m not going to let that happen. I’m not going to cause any pain to this poor little boy.

Which is how we often treat ourselves. Because, you know, in our day, if you have pain, a lot of people rush to your side and say, oh, you shouldn’t have pain. You may be dealing with bad feelings in your life and everyone’s trying to tell you, well just take this or go see this therapist or, you know, just do this and you’ll feel better. You know before we start to feel better in our pain we’s better figure out what our pain is all about. Maybe it’s God pressing in on us. Maybe the fever “heat of summer” and his “hand being heavy upon us,” it’s because he’s trying to lead us to repentance. We have people in our day so quick to call anyone who makes you feel bad toxic, right? You need to avoid those people, they’re toxic. You know this church has been called toxic many times because they’ll come into church and they’ll hear the Word taught like they do in many Bible-teaching churches and they don’t like what they hear because it makes them feel bad. And because it feels bad, well I have to go find a church that doesn’t make me feel bad. That’s like going to a doctor who never makes you feel bad with news or with maybe a corrective resetting of your life. That’s an absurd way to think about God’s Word and God’s truth. It’s “living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword,” and if it’s wielded properly and explained properly, guess what? It’s going to sting. I think most of you who have been here more than once understand that. That you know the reality of what the truth of God’s Word does to bring us into that joy takes us through the tunnel. Sometimes that’s painful. But we can’t get to the vistas, the breathtaking views of what it means to walk in fellowship with Christ, without the necessary pain.

We need not be so quick to call painful situations bad that need to be fixed or people even those we think are toxic who simply are pointing out our sin. Maybe you grew up with the self-esteem movement. Thankfully I didn’t, but some of you younger people did. And you think it’s all about always feeling good about yourself. If that is your baseline perspective and objective in life, I don’t know how you’re going to live the Christian life. You cannot expect that in the Christian life you who stumble in many ways, like we all do, aren’t going to have to have your precious self-esteem sometimes kicked in the shins to put it mildly. I know we live in a recreation, entertainment culture. People think, yeah, you just need another night out. You need a vacation. You need to buy, you know, some kind of hobby here, get involved in something, make you feel better. Diversion. Maybe what we need is not a diversion, maybe we need to shut the blinds, open up our Bible, put it on the kitchen table, and spend some time dealing with whatever it is that we know we’re feeling bad about because God wants to bring us into repentance.

All of this to say, and I should have given this a long time ago, if I didn’t. We need to remember, number two, to “Accept the Pain that Repentance Demands,” because it does demand pain. It demands us saying what have we done? It brings us into that sorrowful, distressing, grieving sense that I’ve done wrong and this needs to be fixed. This bone needs to be reset. I need to go through the difficulty of what I’m experiencing here and face it. I need to accept it. I need to lean into it. One passage on this before I leave this point. I won’t protract it or belabor it but go to James Chapter 4 verse 8. It’d be great to go to church and just hear the first sentence of verse 8. “Draw near to God, and he’ll draw near to you.” That sounds great. Doesn’t that sound great? I want to go to a church, I want to hear sermons, I want to read Bible passages that basically just tell me, draw near to God and he’ll draw near to me. That’s all I want to hear. And usually it’s with the caveat that, you know, he just loves you just the way you are. You do understand that he wants us because he does love us to not be the way we are. He wants to change us. He wants to transform us. He wants to get our sins repented of and move us into a greater level of sanctification.

So that’s why the rest of James Chapter 4 verse 8 continues on. Here are the commands of the text. I mean, a pile of imperative verbs here. “Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.” The concept of double-minded and even cleansing your hands, it’s like Peter when he was told by Jesus, I need to wash your feet. And Peter goes, no. And Jesus says, no, you may not have any part with me if I don’t wash your feet and we’re not going to be in fellowship if I don’t wash your feet. And Peter says wash my whole body, and Jesus goes I don’t need to wash your whole body, right? You’re clean because of the word I’ve spoken to you but you need to wash your feet. It’s the same thing here. You need to wash your hands. We’re talking to Christians in this context. Take a look at the whole book. Take a look at the beginning of James Chapter 4. We’re talking about people who are praying and going to church. And the problem is they have dirty hands and they need to be cleansed. Well, how do I do that? Well, first of all, I have to accept the pain and the grief and the distress that’s going to be involved in repentance. Verse 9, “Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom.” And there are a lot of things we often do to pursue more laughter and pursue more joy when God wants to bring us joy but only after the tunnel of real contrition and repentance. That’s humility. “Humble yourselves before the Lord.” And you know what? You will get to the other side of this tunnel. You’ll get to the breathtaking views of good fellowship with each other and with Christ. “He’ll exalt you.” This passage, I think it’s often avoided or misunderstood. But there needs to be an acceptance of the pain that God wants to bring that leads us to say in particular about sins in our lives that have a grip on us, what have I done? Accept the pain that repentance demands.

Second Corinthians Chapter 7 verses 11 and 12 back in our passage, the last two verses of this section. I know I’ve chosen to cover a lot today but take a look at this text and see how this repentance is described. An earnestness, that’s a great word. A devotion. A kind of an excitement to be like where I should be. And “earnestness this godly grief has produced in you.” Yeah, you grieved and you said what have I done? And it hurts. But man, you’re so eager to clear yourself. You want to make it right. “What indignation,” you’re not happy about this happening, you’re upset, “what fear,” you don’t want to keep going in this, you don’t want to lose anything, “what longing, what zeal,” you want what’s right, “what punishment!” even. I’ll fix whatever needs to be fixed. I’ll make no provision for the flesh. I’ll do whatever has to be done. “At every point you have proved yourself innocent in the matter.” Now, were they innocent in the matter? There wouldn’t be a letter, a stern letter, if they were innocent in the matter. No, but they proved themselves to be innocent in the matter in the fact that they repented as they ought to. Real repentance leads to this, that God says you’re done. I just love that, “if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.” The point is it’s as though they didn’t happen. The reality of this is relationally you get this thing fixed with God. You prove yourself innocent in the matter.

“So although I wrote you, it wasn’t for the sake of the one who did the wrong,” although that’s important, “nor for the sake of the one who suffered the wrong,” well, of course he cares about that, “but in order that your earnestness for us,” for the authors of Scripture, for the truth bearers, “might be revealed to you in the sight of God.” I want you to see that you’re aligned the way you ought to be. Number three, you need to “Look for the Effects Repentance Produces.” And this is a great list of them right here, the effects that it produces. Now once you jot that down, please quickly just go to Psalm 97, a great text that reminds us that what God wants to do is to bring all the effects that real repentance promises to bring, and the first one is where we started. It’s joy, and you will be the first to experience that joy. Here’s how it’s put and God promises to give it. Look at Psalm 97 verse 10. Let’s start with the evil in us. It says, “O you who love the Lord, hate evil.” Hate it. Hate evil. Right? And then when you find it in yourself you’re going to say what have I done? You’re going to hate evil in yourself. “He preserves the lives of the saints.” Praise God for that. “He delivers them from the hand of the wicked,” of course. Now look at this next verse. This is the key. This is the heart of it. “Light is sown for the righteous, and joy for the upright in heart.” Now you have to supply the verb in the second line there. Light is sown for the righteous, and joy is sown for the upright in heart. God injects joy.

In our repentance this is the first sign of it. And then guess what we get to do. Psalm 97 verse 12, “Rejoice in the Lord, O you righteous, and give thanks to his holy name!” When you get serious about the sin in your own life, when you learn to hate the evil in your own life, the indignation, as Paul puts it in Second Corinthians 7, God sows joy in your heart. That’s the first effect right there. Before anything else, before there’s any pattern of righteousness, the first thing you get is the relief, right? How blessed is the man whose sins are forgiven. There’s that sense of being right again with God. That happens immediately when real repentance takes place and you’re not just making some kind of rationalization or saying, yeah, I feel bad, I stumbled here. God injects joy.

Then, of course, there are all the specifics. It’s all over the New Testament. Acts 26:20, Luke Chapter 3 verse 8. You always have these statements about what repentance does. I’ll read Luke 3:8, “Bear fruits in keeping with repentance,” right? If you’ve really repented the first effect is you’re going to feel the joy that God gives, that relief that God gives. But then we get off our knees, we clear our tears away, and we start doing the things that we weren’t doing, right? We start avoiding the things that we didn’t previously avoid. We start doing what is right. Now the crowds wanted to know what was going on when John the Baptist said that. The crowds asked what they were supposed to do. And he goes on and now talks to people who were a lot like us. Looking out for number one. They were materialistic, they were greedy and he says no, you have to be generous. Tax collectors asked what are we supposed to do? Hey, don’t collect more than you’re authorized to do. To the soldiers don’t extort money. It’s interesting how all of these are related to finances, because finances are probably the most obvious way in which we prove our selfishness. Sin is just an extension of that. But all I’m telling you is when it comes to what God is expecting is real, tangible, obvious, measurable changes, and those will come when we see that repentance that leads us to say what have I done? That we get the immediate relief that God has fixed the fellowship between us, because it’s always going to be strained when there’s unconfessed sin. But then there’s going to be real changes, patterns of changes.

One of the favorite psalms of many Christians in Psalm 30 talks about, “Weeping may tarry for the night,” that remains for the night, “but joy comes in the morning.” The passage in the context is really about God who’s giving his disapproval to his people regarding their sin. “His anger is but for a moment, and his favor is for a lifetime.” That’s the line that precedes that great text in Psalm 30 about weeping lasts for the night. But why is that connected to God’s disapproval? Well, because he disapproves of our sin and he does cause us by his Spirit and his grace through the teaching of the Word or whatever it might be, something we encounter that reminds us of the truth of God’s Word, and we repent of that, we sense the disapproval of God. It’s the whole Hebrews Chapter 12 disciplinary parent that we have. God is a disciplinarian. He wants us to have the peaceful fruit of righteousness. That’s where we started the message. And the point is that we know that what he’s trying to get us to is the joy that comes in the morning. It’s as though we hadn’t sinned. It’s forgiven. It’s done. It’s behind us.

One of the fears that I have is that so many people today are afraid to even have this kind of relationship that our grandparents used to just accept as the norm. Yeah, we all stumble in many ways, but we repent, we confess. And the reason today a lot of people say I don’t like that whole pattern because if I have to do this again next week, next month or next year, it doesn’t seem like it’s a good deal. Well, I understand that. You’re afraid of failure. You’re afraid of commitment because you’re afraid of failure. And that seems to be our generation. And we don’t commit and we cannot let that happen in our day. You can’t in your Christian life say I’m not going to fully, wholeheartedly repent because I’m afraid I can’t keep this up. Now, of course, God wants to meet us where we’re at in our weakness. But you just need to say to God today if you’ve called me to repent of my sin, then I’m going to repent of my sin. If you’ve called me to say, hey, what have I done? And I’m going to resolve to do right, then we just need to do that. And joy will come in the morning. Is there going to be another tearful night? There might be. Don’t worry about that. Right now you worry about repenting and you give yourself that godly resolve that all of us have to have. I hope after almost every sermon there’s a godly resolve to say I’m “going to walk in the light as he is in the light.”

Here’s how Paul put it when he was talking about the Lord’s Supper to the Corinthians, he said, judge yourself so that you wouldn’t have to be judged. But if God’s hand is heavy upon you, you can get that fixed today, right? You just need to judge your own heart right now. Get to the place of saying before God, what have I done? And don’t worry about the future. Just don’t worry today. God’s going to meet you here today giving you the ability to repent and to say to God I want to do right. But let’s put into practice what we’ve just talked about here. Know that the end result is joy. Know that it’s going to cause some pain in your heart right now. But the first effect we’re looking for before your prayer is over is the joy and the relief of God’s sowing joy into your heart because your heart now is upright. It’s good, it’s clean, it’s honest before God. It is focused on the faithfulness of God and that’s what we need to remember no matter how many times we stumble. “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive our sins.” He’s always going to keep his promise.

The failings of his people are myriad, “but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.” You just need to remember that. Stop making this about your track record and make this about the fact that you’re going to trust that God is faithful to what he says. And sadly, as Christians, as evangelical, Bible-believing Christians, our theology is so unique, it’s hard for us to grasp because most people want to earn their forgiveness. They want to do some kind of penance to make it up to God. We treat God like he’s some human that we have to do something to kind of settle up. That’s not how it works with God. The settling up took place on the cross 2,000 years ago. The forgiveness has already been paid for. All God’s looking for on our end after saying two times in First John Chapter 1 none of us are without sin. We all sin. If we say we don’t sin we’re lying. Okay, but here’s the thing, “if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Please don’t doubt that. Some of you, unfortunately, put the focus so much on yourselves that you don’t trust him. He has made the promise to forgive you. Trust him. Believe it. And the proof of that is the joy and the thanksgiving, which is where the next verse goes in Psalm 30. We need to give thanks that he’s actually done what he promised he would do. There’s no penance. There’s no payback. There’s no purgatory. There’s no, you know, steps to climb on your knees. There’s no number of prayers that you have to pray. This is about you accepting the finished work of Christ on your behalf. Please don’t lose sight of that.

And you can say if you really want to avoid any of this conviction, well, I’m a Christian, you know, all my sins are paid for past, present and future. I understand that. But just like in a relationship and we dealt with this a couple of weeks ago, you can be adopted in a family and it can be secure, but you’re not going to have a great relationship unless you have a good relationship. That means admitting when you’re wrong. Having the ability to say to God I’ve messed up and that’s what this is all about. And it doesn’t take years. It doesn’t take months. It doesn’t take days. It doesn’t take hours. It just takes you saying honestly to God, what have I done? And the joy of forgiveness, the peace of being in fellowship with God that rushes right in and replaces the feeling of guilt. When guilt does its job and grief accomplishes its goal of repentance, then we’re done with it. Till next time we’re done with it. So don’t wallow in the grief. That’s Satan’s territory. That’s not God’s territory. We get done with the grief just today. We walk out of this room without any of the guilt and the grief. It’s done.

God, we want to be so aligned with your truth that begins with the fact that you’ve paid for the penalty of our sin by having your Son take it upon himself that the one “who knew no sin,” became sin for us, “so that in him we might become your righteousness.” We don’t deserve it. We can’t earn it. But we accept it by faith today that you’ve accomplished that in the great transaction that’s described in that great passage in Second Corinthians 5. So God give us the hope that we should have, no matter how bad it’s been last week, last month or yesterday. Let us walk out of this room with the sense of joy and forgiveness and relief that we all should have as penitent people, repentant people practicing repentance day after day and week after week, that we trust you. We declare our trust in you.

In Jesus’ name. Amen.