It's great to see you all. Let's pray. Our Father, you have given us life, and I thank you, Lord, for all the years you have given me thus far. What a gracious thing that is. I deserve not a one of them, Lord. So thank you for life that you have given all of us, and we pray that you will Redeem our lives as You have. And one day, You will redeem us completely. And Lord, we look forward to that day. Father, as we study Your Gospel once again this evening, and the power of Your Word, and the power of Your Son as He builds His church, may You motivate us and encourage us to live for the unseen and to labor for your kingdom, and to honor you by trusting in you and not being ashamed of your gospel or your son. We pray for Debbie Carson once again, Lord, that you would bring some solution to this long-term problem. Lord, that she has been facing. Lord, I pray that you will stir us up to reach out and go and spend time with our brothers and sisters that are restricted in some serious ways, Lord. May we bring that cup of water and know that we've done it to you if we've done it to one of your sheep. We pray in Jesus' name, amen. Okay, we're going through the New Testament, and we've been studying the founding of the church at Jerusalem. And some of you haven't been with us that long, and what we're going to do tonight is we're going to finish our historical emphasis part of our study, and we're going to switch over to do a little theology, And if I could get this up on the screen, you could see that. Some of you that are new for us, if you notice in these outlines, this here says HT. And in our study, what that means is history of the text. In other words, how do we get our Bibles? And so sometimes we have an emphasis on the history of the text itself, which are things like, well, who wrote it? Who's the author? Who was the audience? When was it written? Those kind of subjects are all part of the history of the text. When did it become part of the canon? And all of those questions about the history of the text And then in a book like Acts and the Gospels, actually, we spend most of our time on the H.E., the history of events. This has a historical emphasis. All these H.E. subjects, we kind of want to relive it. We want to enter into the time and the culture when that part of the Word of God was written. And so we'll have a historical emphasis on that. And we kind of don't leave any stones unturned about what figures and all the cultural things mean. So we do history, H-E, historical events or history of events. But also as we go through here, There are key theological points at times. or issues in a portion of scripture. And so we could just call that theological points to consider. And so we're going to do that tonight and maybe next week. Because in these first eight chapters of Acts, there are some theological things for us to stop and think about that are presented to us in these eight chapters. And I've selected a few. And so what we'll be looking at is the preaching of repentance in the book of Acts. We need to single that out and look at that. And then civil disobedience examples. We have that in the first eight chapters of the book of Acts, don't we? We have examples of civil disobedience. So that's a subject we could look at. There's things we can learn from the early apostolic preaching of Christ in Jerusalem, and I want to say a few things about that that we could learn. There's things that we can also learn today, for today, from some examples of that whole situation in Acts chapter 6 with the widows. and the feeding of them. And finally, I saved the most interesting one for the last. I call it Luke's Theology of the Word. Luke's Theology of the Word of God is really significant how he refers to the Word of God and how he describes the Word of God throughout the book of Acts. And we'll stop and we're going to take a look at that. So that's what we're doing. And we are If I can get to that, yeah, we are right here, see, at the end of this early part, with Stephen's martyrdom last week, and we got one little historical thing to do, and then we'll switch. So if you go to page 286, Saul's persecution begins there in Acts 8, verse 1, and we'll just introduce that, and then we'll switch to the theology things. OK, so picking up here, we know Saul was consenting, agreeing to Stephen's martyrdom in Acts chapter 1. Now, Saul was consenting to his death. At that time, a great persecution arose against the church, which was at Jerusalem. And they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles. And devout men carried Stephen to his burial and made great lamentation over him. As for Saul, he made havoc of the church, entering every house and dragging off men and women, committing them to prison." We're not going to do verse 3 today. We'll use that. We'll begin our next chapter at that point. But there's a few things we want to say about verses 1 and 2 here tonight. So the infant church in Jerusalem is barely two years old at this point. That's the first thing you want to grasp. They're barely two years old. Maybe they might not quite be two years old. They're not three years old. We know they're not three years old. So this still is an infant church, and it's had absolutely explosive growth. There's tens of thousands of people, and all 12 apostles are still ministering there. And Stephen and Philip are ministering there, and I'm sure many others. And she's only like two years old and now faces a major persecution. And I think it's almost, a given that when people first profess faith in Christ, it won't be long before their faith is tested. I tell everybody that I baptize that. I tell them that morning when we sit down and talk, I tell them all that. Your faith will be tested. It's going to be tested. And we see that right here on a large scale with this Jerusalem church. They're professing to follow Christ. And just as Christ said, persecution for the word is going to arise. If they've hated me, they'll hate you. All of those things are not theoretical to the church at Jerusalem. any longer than Jesus had taught to the apostles. They expect it. And that's the whole attitude. The whole attitude of the first two or three centuries is Christians just expect it to suffer. And our experience is very unusual. because we have suffered so little. But in those early decades and those early centuries, they just pretty much assumed that they were going to suffer in various ways. The first two experiences of persecution only affected the apostles. We saw that in Acts 4 and Acts 5. They were the only ones that bore the brunt of the hostility. But that has now changed, and the church at large is being persecuted. Now, Luke mentions, well, Saul, let me say something about Saul. You see, Saul consented to Stephen's stoning and execution. So Saul believed that Stephen deserved to die. That was his conviction. That was a religious conviction. Correct? That was a religious conviction. Saul religiously believed that Stephen should die and that, of course, the law of Moses condemned Stephen in Saul's mind of blasphemy. And so he feels justified in Stephen being executed. And Jesus said, of course, the time is coming that whoever kills you will think he does God's service. And so, here we are. We have the first example of that. Luke mentions one other thing here. He mentions Stephen's burial in verse 2. And devout men carried Stephen to his burial and made great lamentation over him. The great lamentation associated with Stephen's burial would have to have been public, public enough to signal a disagreement with the council's verdict. We're in Jerusalem. There's great public lamentation over Stephen's death. And that has to signal disagreement with the verdict of the council. Now, if on that day, the translation here, I'm not sure why New King James said, at that time, but you'll notice our newer translations always say, and Saul approved of his execution, and there arose on that day, which we assume is the execution of Stephen. There arose on that day a great persecution against all in Jerusalem, against the church in Jerusalem. And the other translations say they all go with on that day. So if this persecution begins on the same day or the next day of Stephen's execution, then they're right in the middle of this persecution, and they publicly do this memorial, or whatever we want to call it, for Stephen. All I'm saying is, for those that participated in all of this, it was a confession of their faith to publicly participate in Stephen's burial. So I think that's pretty cool. that they publicly participated in this on the very day or the next day when this persecution is launched against them. So, having said that, we're ready to switch over to thinking about our theology concerns. Any thoughts or questions on the beginning of the persecution there. Anybody? Okay. Okay, so our first matter singled out here is the preaching of repentance in the book of Acts. There's a strong continuity of calling people to repentance, beginning with John the Baptist, going all the way through Jesus' ministry, and all the way through the book of Acts. And I want us to quickly just look at the continuity regarding this matter of the preaching of repentance. So we have here Matthew chapter three, verses one through two, right before Jesus' public ministry. In those days, John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea and saying, repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. And you can read the rest of John, and you know that the calling of Israel to repentance was a major ministry of John the Baptist. And the reason he was calling them to repentance is they were not ready for the appearance of the kingdom of God. As the prophet Malachi said, the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple, but who can endure the day of his coming? You're not ready. Most of you aren't ready. And the only thing that will get you ready is repentance. And so that figured heavily in John's ministry. Moving forward here quickly to Jesus, Matthew 4.17. This is how Matthew describes the beginning of Jesus's ministry. And he's quoting Isaiah here. The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and upon those who sat in the region of the shadow of death, light has shined. Light has dawned. From that time, Jesus began to preach and say, repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. So Jesus just picks up where John the Baptist left off. And of course, Luke 5.32, a verse we all love, a verse we sinners all love. Thank you, Lord, that you've come for people like me. I have not come to call the righteous, but what? But sinners to repentance. So it's right there. It's an invitation, like I emphasize when I preach repentance. This is an invitation. I've come to call sinners to repentance there. And then, I'm not hitting all of us, but Luke 13 1, they were present at that season, some who told Jesus that the Galileans, whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And Jesus answered and said to them, do you suppose that these Galileans were worse sinners than all other Galileans because they suffered this fate? What do you think he thought? What do you think they were thinking? Yeah, Jesus knew what they were thinking. Jesus knew that they were thinking, boy, those guys must have really been evil to die like that. They must have been big sinners. They're self-righteous, and Jesus knows that. So that's why he says that. You can't help but explain this passage. Do you suppose these Galileans were worse sinners than all other Galileans because they suffered such things? And Jesus knows that is how they were thinking. And what does he tell them? I tell you, no, they weren't worse sinners. than all the rest. I tell you, you know what, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish." So there's, you know, he's preaching the repentance again. They need a radical change of attitude. He's exposed their self-righteousness, and unless they repent, of their self-righteousness, they're going to perish. Repentance begins with this radical change of attitude about yourself, and these people need to repent. So it figures heavily in Jesus' ministry, of course. And then the Great Commission, then he said to them, thus it is written, and thus it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise again from the dead the third day. and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name to all the nations." Repentance for the remission of sins is probably a preferred translation, but either way, we now have the proclamation of repentance as the means of obtaining the forgiveness of sins to be preached And notice, in Jesus' name, to what? All nations. So this is not a Jewish doctrine that's only applicable to Jews that need to repent. Let me just say that. I don't think anybody here is infected with that attitude. But one of the reasons so little repentance has been heard in the pulpits in the 20th century is many, many people have infected with this hyper-dispensationalism attitude that repentance is a Jewish doctrine and it's only for Jews who are called repentance. Us Gentiles is just believe. The gospel to the Gentiles is just believe. But to Israel, it's repent. So one text like this refutes that. But that's one of the reasons repentance vacated so many pulpits in the last century, was that thinking. And that thinking is just dangerous. Anyway, so here Jesus' great commission and repentance for the remission of sins in his name to all the nations, and beginning at Jerusalem. So then, of course, when we move forward to the Book of Acts, Peter is doing just exactly what the commission's told him to do. In Matthew, the commission said, make disciples, what? And baptize them. In Luke, the commission says, go and preach repentance for the forgiveness of sin. So what is Peter telling them to do? Repent and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. He's just following the orders. Call them to repentance, make disciples, and baptize them. So that's exactly what he does here in Acts chapter 2. He tells them, repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for what? The remission of sins. He's preaching repentance for the remission of sins. And those who repent, just like John the Baptist, which ones did John the Baptist baptize? Did he baptize everybody? No. Which ones did he baptize? Those who repented. And those who repented, John the Baptist baptized. Those that showed some evidence of repentance, he baptized. And he didn't baptize the other. And so Peter's doing exactly the same thing here. Repent and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins. So the apostles pick right up, they're lockstep with the Great Commission commandments there, and it runs all the way through the book of Acts, Acts chapter 3, verse 19. He's coming to the end of his message there. Repent therefore and be converted that your sins may be blotted out. Same thing, repentance for the remission of sins. Here he doesn't mention baptism, but he calls them to repent and to turn, be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, so that times of refreshment may come from the presence of the Lord. So, let's see, I won't hit all the Acts verses, but obviously Paul got the memo, and he's preaching to Gentiles now at Athens, Truly these times of ignorance God overlooked, but now commands all men everywhere to repent." Now that fits. What did Jesus say? Go preach what? Repentance what? To all the nations. So Paul just fits, right? Go preach repentance to all the nations, and that's what Paul is doing. Paul's in the middle of doing that in his Gentile mission, and so God is now commanding that all men everywhere repent, because he has appointed a day on which he will judge the world. That sounds like John the Baptist, actually, right? Except John was talking about the first coming, And now we're talking about what? The second coming. But the position is very similar. The Lord's coming back and you need to be ready. And the way to be ready is to repent. And if you don't, you're not gonna be ready when he comes back on the day which he has fixed. So you just see the thread, you see the commonality. What I'm trying to impress you with is this is not some, you know, off-the-interstate-on-some-dirt-road subject about the gospel. It's connected all the way through, from John to Baptist Jesus and the apostolic message. And it should be our message as well, is the point we're making on this on this particular subject. Let's see, I have just a few others. This was so significant because this is Paul with the elders at Ephesus when he's gonna see them no more. And he's telling the elders that I will see, you'll see my face no more, but I have kept back nothing, nothing that was helpful. Paul's approach was not reductionism. It was not saying, how simple can I make the gospel? How much can I reduce it? That wasn't his approach. It was the opposite of that. And he says, how I kept back nothing that was helpful, but proclaimed it to you and, maybe I should back up. No, okay, this is good. How I kept back nothing that was helpful, but proclaimed it to you and taught you publicly and from house to house. And this was for two years. And look what he singles out and mentions, testifying to Jews and also to Greeks, repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. He specifically makes a point to say that I called both Jews and Greeks to repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. and I kept back nothing that was profitable to you." So obviously, this is high on the list of why he can say, I am clear from the blood of all men, because I've not held these things back. I have proclaimed them to you. And he goes to this subject about repentance and faith. pretense toward God, and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. This is Paul now, prisoner Paul, before King Agrippa, and Paul is talking about Paul's own conversion experience and Paul's ministry and his calling to preach to the Gentiles. Therefore, King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision. but declared first to those in Damascus and in Jerusalem and throughout all the region of Judea and then to the Gentiles, what? That they should repent and turn to God and do works befitting repentance. That's John the Baptist again. We're back to John the Baptist message. So you see that consistency on this matter of preaching, teaching, encouraging people to repent. And we have to learn to do that, and to do it right. Because there's a wrong way to preach repentance, and there's a right way to preach it. But obviously, it is right up there on what the calling, what we're supposed to be doing. So I wanted to show you that continuity. I'm going to talk about repentance a little more here, but do you have any thought or question at this point? I'm slipping into the preaching mode. Crank that gain up on the handheld mic a little bit. Go ahead, Nicole. OK. You just made a quick remark. I just was looking for a definition. You just said hyperdispensationalism is to just believe, whereas you said that's wrong. It should be to repent. What is hyperdispensationalism? OK. Original dispensationalism picked two hills that they were going to die on. One was that Israel and the church are always separate. And so much so that there's actually two sets of promises. There's a promise for ethnic believing Jews, and there's a different set of promises for the Gentile church. The New Testament sometimes is talking only to Jews, not Gentiles. In the hyper-dispensationalist, the early versions of it, only Paul's letters were applicable to the church. And the Sermon on the Mount was for the Jews during the millennium. So the Sermon on the Mount isn't for Gentile believers in hyper-dispensationalism. The Sermon on the Mount is only for ethnic Jews. And books like Hebrews and James have nothing to do with the church. Nothing to do with the church. Because the church are Gentiles, and God always keeps Israel and the Gentiles separate. And Lewis Barry Schaeffer's systematic theology pushes this out into eternity. And in eternity, who lives in heaven? I think the Jews live on earth. in a new earth, and the Gentiles are in heaven, and they're out into eternity. They're separated out into eternity. So they keep Jews and Gentiles separate regarding the promises. And coming along with that then was this idea that it's Israel that has to repent, not Gentiles. There's your very short summary of it. Now, fortunately, Many of the worst aspects of that have been dropped, even by dispensationalists today. There's many dispensationalists today that would agree with everything I'm saying here tonight about preaching repentance. They would agree with that. But those early forms of dispensationalism that were so popular from 1900 to the 1950s or 60s They went head over heel into this, and so that helps a little bit. There's a lot of books written on this. The direction of the New Testament is the opposite of keeping them separate. The direction of the New Testament is to make one new man out of Jews and Gentiles. and they all share in the promises of Abraham. Even the Gentiles share in the promises of Abraham from the Abrahamic covenant, because in you, Abraham, all the nations of the earth will be blessed. And that coming together of Jew and Gentile sharing one set of promises begins to happen in the New Testament when Christ comes. And so we all have the same set of promises. So when you read your Old Testament and you see these wonderful eschatological promises made to Israel after Christ comes, those are your promises. Even though it doesn't say nations or Gentiles. Those passages that only refer to Israel about those future promises that Messiah brings Even though it says Israel, you are grafted into those promises. You are a joint heir with the Jewish believing people. So there's just one set of promises. And so what dispensationalists tended to do was read the Old Testament, and unless Gentiles were explicitly mentioned in the promise, then the promise wasn't for them. And so, yeah, there's places where Isaiah and stuff mentions the Gentiles, but there's places where only a new Israel is mentioned. Well, those promises are for us also. So you can read my paper, study my paper on the website. I have one student in here. She's really working on it. So does that help a little? Read my paper on the website. Now, a lot of people don't think it has to do with this, because the title of the paper says, The Unsearchable Riches of Christ Among the Gentiles. You get it? All those unsearchable riches of promises made to Israel Those are the unsearchable riches. That's not my, that's Paul's language. And what Paul is doing is he's going around taking the unsearchable riches of the Jews' Messiah and he's saying, come and eat Gentiles, these are for you too. That's why that title is on that paper. And for me, writing that paper was not to grind on the bones of eschatology. That's not what's important to me. It's this matter of the promises. So I'll say this, and then I'll get off of that. But let me show you how serious this matter is now that Nicole brought it up. I'm going to go to an Old Testament. Psalm, this is the sinner's psalm. This is one of my favorite psalms. This has kept me afloat in dark times. Psalm 130. This will illustrate it. Now you have seen this illustration because I know you're at least to page 4 or 5. I made it to 12, but only because you were going to pick on me. Well, you're a third of the way there, because I think there's only 36 pages. Okay, but this, I'll illustrate the thing about the promises. This is Psalm 130. Out of the depths I have cried to you, O Lord. Lord, hear my voice. Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications. What are the depths? Well, here it is, verse 3. If you, Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? Those are the depths. He has a realization of his sinfulness. And he goes, Lord, if you keep track of those, who can stand? But there is forgiveness with you that you may be feared. I wait for the Lord. My soul waits. And in His Word, I do hope. My soul waits for the Lord more than those who watch for the morning. Yes, more than those who watch for the morning. O Israel, hope in the Lord, for with the Lord there is mercy, and with him is abundant redemption, and here comes the promise. And he shall redeem Israel from all his iniquities. Is that a promise for me? Could it be? Could it be? No, if you're a hardcore dispensationalist. Why? Because it's to Israel. You're not part of Israel. You're not an ethnic descendant of Abraham. This promise isn't for the church. That's the issue. And I am here to tell you that promise is for you in Christ. You are, according to Galatians 3.29, a child of Abraham. and an heir, a joint heir, with believing ethnic Jews, streaming out from the Abrahamic covenant. So yeah, I get a little agitated because, and I'm not being hypothetical, I have reasoned at times with dispensationalists, and I have presented this example. And I've had them tell me that that's not for believing Gentiles. That's for Israel. It's the saddest thing. I had one individual going to probably a fairly good church. And he said, oh, they don't emphasize dispensationalism very much here. We don't do that. And I just said to the brother, I said, well, I'm not saying these people aren't our brothers and sisters, okay? I'm not saying that, I'm saying, but I don't think you asked them a close enough question. And I said, go and show them Psalm 130 and ask them this question and see what they say. And unfortunately, they said, no, this is to Israel, it's not to the church. That's the issue. A lot of other things came along with that. The issue about repentance and stuff. So, does that give you a concrete example? Now, fortunately, many of God's children, in spite of being under a dispensational influence, read their Old Testament and they believe those promises apply to them. So that's great. But, To cast doubt whether these promises belong to the people of God is just a terrible thing. It's another way, this is a serious charge, but it's another way that scripture is taken away. Scripture is taken away. So the matter is serious. So I can't say anything other than that. Marla? Nicole has it back there. OK, I have another way of cutting these things. Is that on? Yeah, it's good. OK. So we know that this applies to Israel and God's people, and God's people is the church today. Can we divide these things up between the personal and the corporate? Can we assume that the things that apply to the church apply to the individual? Or are there times when God speaks to the nations or to the generations, and that is to a group and not to individuals collectively? Because I always want to take these things and not make it about me, but know, okay, this is for me personally. But sometimes I read, you know, God is redeeming generations, or he's redeeming nations, and that seems to be about the collective group. And we talk about a personal savior sometimes, so I'm wondering if our thinking on that is flawed or unbiblical, because we are an individual society and we think about individuals. Well, yeah, we tend to de-emphasize the corporate and focus on the individual. And when you're saying God is making a promise to some corporate entity, And the corporate entity that he's making his promises to are the members of the New Covenant. So let's get concrete here. So the members of the New Covenant, God is making a promise to all of them. But it is applicable to each one of them individually. But they are not to forget that they are this corporate community. And the community that counts is the New Covenant community. in Christ's blood. And if you have a biblical definition of Israel, and we're getting way off now, but it's in the paper where we get in Romans 9, not all Israel is Israel, correct? And the adjective there is not spiritual Israel. I don't like that expression at all. Not all Israel is covenant Israel. Not all Israel is in the new covenant. So the real definition of Israel is the people of God by covenant. Covenant supersedes ethnic descendancy. Because you could be Jewish and not part of Israel. meaning covenant membership. So you need to read the next 20 pages. But you see, you can be Jewish and not part of the Israel that Paul is talking about in Romans 9. And you can be Gentile and be part of Israel. And that even worked in the Old Testament through proselyte. A Gentile who was circumcised is a full-fledged Israelite. And you even see that in the promises of the inheritance. A circumcised Gentile in the Mosaic Covenant is going to inherit as if he's a native-born Jew. There's no distinction. And so it's actually foreshadowed in the Mosaic Covenant. of how Gentiles are incorporated into Israel and they inherit the land like any other Jew. See, all the promises of the Mosaic Covenant and the promises of the land apply to the Gentile who enters the covenant by confessing Yahweh and receiving the sign of circumcision. So, I've probably gone on too far here. Just read the paper. But it is important who is being promised, who's being addressed. It's important to pay attention to that. But work out the New Covenant membership, and a lot of things will come into place. All right, it's Nicole's fault. I mentioned that term. So repentance on the pages of the Old Testament, which leads to salvation, always involves a change of attitude towards God, leading to a genuine sorrow for disrespecting and sinning against him. We're not gonna do a whole study of repentance here, but in the Old Testament, that's how the term is used. It's a change of attitude toward God, with some genuine sorrow for disrespecting and sinning against God. this inward change leads to conversion or a reorientation of the life. And if this inward change is real, then there will be fruits in accordance with repentance. And that's where some people preach repentance wrong. They just preach it, turn from your sin, turn from your sin, turn from your sin. And they don't put the emphasis on, no, turn from your unbelief in the good and gracious God. Turn from your disrespecting the God who invites you to come and be saved. See? Now, that will lead you to turn from your sin. But that's very different from sounding in the sinner's ear nothing other than turn or burn. And so there are those that preach repentance wrongly. And I've jumped ahead on my own notes here, but let's see. I should follow the notes here. OK. In the pages of the Old Testament, there's a Hebrew term there that often is translated with the Greek term that means repentance in the Septuagint. And so, next paragraph there, now, in the New Testament, the focus centers around the Son of God, whom the Father has sent into the world as the light and savior of the world. Israel is called to turn from their unbelief regarding Jesus. He is indeed the Messiah who had to suffer and die to redeem Israel from her sin and from her sin and coming judgment. The Jewish people were sinners too, not just the Gentiles. Jesus came to call both Jews and Gentiles to repentance. But what I'm saying here, the New Testament now, where in the old it's your attitude about God or Yahweh, in the new the emphasis now is your attitude about the Son of God. Okay? Now it's about the Son of God. See? Your repentance is to bow the knee to the Son of God and to trust Him. See, and to turn from your unbelief about the Son of God. And that's the focus of repentance now that the Son has come. The Father has come. The Father has sent his Son. So Gentiles, all the rest of us, are the people who sit in darkness, a figure for living without the truth, worshiping false gods, violating God's commandments, and not honoring God as God. nor being thankful. Matthew 4.17, we go back here, you see, here's a description of us. The land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, by the way of the sea beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles. That's where the Gentiles live. The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light. Okay. And upon those who sat in the region of the shadow of death, light has shone. Shone, what is this talking about? What's the great light that they're seeing? Jesus, right. They're seeing the Son of God who is revealing the true God to them. There's a bunch of Gentile worshipers, they're worshiping all these false gods. And now the Son of God comes. He is the true God incarnated. And these Gentiles who sat and lived in darkness and the shadow of death, upon them this great light has dawned. And it's turned from your idols and turned to the Son of God. He reveals the true God. The Father sent him and to see me is to see the Father, Jesus says. And so that's the context of repentance here. Repentance here, meaning I'm going to turn from my idols, and I'm going to believe in Jesus, who reveals the true God, which happens to be Israel's God, as the true God. And from that time, Jesus began to preach and say what? Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. they're going to turn from all this darkness into light. So you see, faith and repentance are, you know, they're just glued together. But preaching repentance is not just standing up and telling people, you need to turn or burn. And you guys, most of you have been here long enough to hear how I preach repentance, if I may use myself as an example. And that's how it ought to be preached. And so, okay, so, all right. So we Gentiles were to acknowledge that we are among the sinners who need to be delivered from our sin and its consequences. We must change from unbelief to trusting in Christ personally as our savior, calling upon him. And Jesus gave wonderful examples of repentance in his teaching and encounters with people. You know, even though the word repent isn't used, but Jesus called the Samaritan woman to repentance, didn't he? Absolutely. He offered her the gift of eternal life in the water, and he called her to repentance. Go call your husband and all that. Wonderful examples of how Jesus, Zacchaeus, Zacchaeus, the chief tax collector. Jesus called, there's a great example of repentance. Zacchaeus, I must eat in your house today. And then, of course, we have the parables, the Pharisee and the Publican. That's a wonderful example of repentance. And impenitent. The Pharisee is impenitent, he's self-righteous. Yeah, those Galileans were worse sinners. That's the Pharisee, right? Those Galileans were worse sinners. And yet the publican, he's the guy who's repenting. You know, God be merciful to me. He's having a Psalm 130 experience, right? He's having a Psalm 130 experience and he gets forgiven. So he's got repentance marked all over him. The word isn't used there, but he's calling on God for mercy because he is a sinner, and he's totally changed his attitude about himself. And then, of course, the prodigal son and the older son is just a perfect illustration of the father welcoming his repentant son. And it just illustrates repentance so thoroughly. So my suggestion to you is stop trying to come up with an extra biblical definition of this, which ends up with a lot of abstraction and complexity, and say, we must repent, and let me show you what that looks like, and use the Bible examples to show people what it looks like. And that will feed your own soul, by the way. Show people what it looks like by the examples. There's wonderful Old Testament examples of repentance, too. Know where those examples are and just show people what it looks like. Same about faith. Just show them what saving faith looks like by using the Bible for its examples. And even the kids will understand it. The adolescents will understand it. The teenagers will understand it. So I don't want to be, I don't know, I don't want to overemphasize. So when evangelizing people, it seems best, oh, that's what I just said. Okay, skip that paragraph. Repentance is also clearly the Lord saying that the door is open to come back and be reconciled to God. I've said that often, and Isaiah 55, 6 through 7 is a wonderful place. And even when the Lord calls in Ezekiel, turn ye, turn ye, why will you die? He's calling them to repentance, and he's saying, turn and come back. Okay, you've worshipped all those idols, but I still want to marry you. You know, you've been unfaithful, you've committed adultery all over the place. And what is Yahweh saying? Turn and come back. Isn't that amazing? That's in the Old Testament, you see. That's how to preach repentance. And there's places in the Old Testament where the prophet even gives the people the words. It says, take these words with you. And out of the prophet, oh, that's like, ah, there's justification for praying the sinner's prayer. I just thought of that. That where the prophet says, take these words and go to God. There you go. I've never thought of that. Someone can say, there you go, it's okay to pray the sinner's prayer. Well, it's okay to pray Jeremiah's prayer. I gotta look that passage up. You see what I'm saying? Some of you see what I'm saying? Jeremiah says, here's the sinner's prayer, and he gives it to Israel. Oh boy, well, it's my birthday, right? Does that cut me some slack? All right, so, okay, clearly the Lord's saying, the door is open, come back and I will receive you. In the Prodigal Son parable, Jesus illustrates it, all that. Come back and you're gonna be received in open arms. Okay, so, let's see. Much American cultural Christianity does not preach repentance. This is a serious mistake. Also, there are some movements that accuse us who do preach repentance as requiring a form of works in order to be saved. That's contemporary. There's groups out there right now, and sadly, they've opted a wonderful phrase, free grace. They call themselves the free grace movement, not meaning the sovereignty of God movement, meaning people like us don't preach free grace because we call, we require repentance. And they accuse us of requiring someone to do a work, that they are the ones who are preaching free grace, but we are not. It's a serious accusation against us. And so let me just say this about that. although the manner in which some preach repentance may be susceptible to the charge, confusing the fruits of repentance with repentance itself. And so, I'm not saying that there are those that maybe are susceptible to the charge that you are adding something to the gospel by how they preach repentance. And we don't want to preach repentance that way. And that also gets into this Lordship controversy issue. And that's why we stepped aside and did four evenings on the Lordship controversy. There's a right way to preach the Lordship of Christ and there's a wrong way to preach it. And so we have to be careful. We've got to stick close to Scripture So, because some can preach repentance, you know, just turn or burn, and unless you turn from your sin, you will never be saved. And so what happens is, if the gospel and faith isn't being made clear, it causes people to try to turn from their sin before they believe in Christ. And that is works. That is dangerous, okay? So we now have to know, we have to preach repentance right. We have to do that correctly. And it is dangerous. And some of the Puritans fell into this preparationism. And so, no, calling people to repentance is not calling them to change their life first in order to be saved. No. So that's why you've got to use the prodigal son illustration. The father wasn't saying, clean up your life and then you can come back home. Come home as you are. Come home as you are. See the difference? So it's these experiential matters that are really, really important. and getting our experiential theology correct is important. Okay, so where are we here now? Wow, we need to stop. We'll stop. Yeah, we'll finish repentance next week, and we took a big side road off on, Dispensationalism. Read my paper, even though it's hard. Well, I mean it's pretty much published there online. I kind of wanted maybe to teach that whole series again. Honestly, the paper is condensed. It was 22 lessons. The paper is based on 22 lessons. I've almost There's a lot of new people here since the last time we did that. I've thought about doing that series on covenant theology and those issues and doing that again. Okay. Should we pray or should I turn it over to... Okay, so I'm just supposed to submit now. Hopefully, this is red. It's not very happy. Oh, the battery's dead again? I don't know if these are good. They were sitting in that little tray. You know what? I know that one is good, but that's only one. Let's see what happens. You almost need a pair of pliers to take that. I'm going to mute this microphone. All right. OK, I'm on mine. You may have to move the camera there. So Pastor Dan's been with us. You started interim preaching here around 99, 2000? 98, so 26 years. And so you can easily do the math. Timothy and the Gospels talk about honoring those elders that serve well. And if he's anything like me, as you get older, you care about your birthday less and less. But we have an opportunity on his birthday to show him honor. So I'd like you all to join with me and sing happy birthday. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday, dear Desjardins. Happy birthday to you. Let's see what you can do. I don't know if I've ever blown out candles. I think I have. I think I have. But why? There's not 70. But there's more than seven. So I'm sorry, it's a male analytical mind. Pastor, believe me, I asked that same question earlier. Well, I would not imagine. So I think I'm going to blow this way. I think I have a better. I think it's a good chance. A better. Oh, I didn't get it. Do I have to finish him? You do. Keep it moving. Subsequent wishes don't count. I got those. All right, three more. Oh boy, this is harder than I thought. We love you. Let's all bow in prayer as we honor our pastor. Dear Heavenly Father, Lord God, we come before you tonight and we thank you so much for the good gifts that you give us. Lord, if it isn't enough that you save us and you bring us from death into life and you raise us up and you give us an inheritance with your son and you give us your word and your promises lord and you teach us how to live lord you and you give us a community you give us your body that we can grow with that we can age with lord and that can teach us how to bear under trial and to be patient lord and to grow in grace and grow in sanctification and to become more like our savior to become more christlike and we thank you for that example in pastor dan we thank you for all the years the deep waters that he's been through and we pray that you would allow him to continue to preach your gospel and to bring many souls into your kingdom through your word and through his ministry. We pray this in Jesus name, Amen.