Turn again to Mark's Gospel. The chronology of this opening chapter of Mark's Gospel is very interesting. The Lord Jesus publicly appeared at the River Jordan to be baptized of John. Immediately after his baptism, he was driven, the Bible says, of the spirit into the wilderness, and only then he could launch out into his public ministry. And verse 14 tells us it was immediately after the imprisonment of John the Baptist that Jesus came into Galilee preaching the gospel of the kingdom. John had only a short ministry, John the Baptist. It's amazing, some people think it was only a few months. It's not the length that counts, it's what you do with it that counts. And only his lowest ministry only lasted for a few months, and it came to an end and he was martyred for Christ, God raised up another messenger. Not another prophet, but his son, the final prophet, who would take further the ministry of John that he had proclaimed and would see mighty blessing upon. John had been the forerunner and John's message was just very simple. He preached for people to repent. Jesus came immediately after John was martyred and what did Jesus start to preach? Repent. And we read When he ascended up into heaven, what did he say to his disciples to preach? In Luke's gospel, chapter 24, verse 47, he said that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations. What did he tell the church to preach? Repent. So the forerunner preached repentance. Jesus came, the one who was herald, and he preached repentance. And then, as the Lord Jesus ascended and was taken to heaven, what was the commission that he gave to his church? He didn't give them any different message. He said, you preach repentance well. And here we are, some 2,000 plus years on from that Ascension moment, and there's vital instruction for us to learn on this, for me anyway, the first Sabbath back in Antelope in 2023 to preach. And that's why I wanted to preach this message again. And it has to be preached again because it's such an important message. It's the message of repentance. And that should strike the note for 2023. What is the message that we've been given to preach? Just like the prophets, just like the last of the prophets, really, the last of the Old Testament prophets, which was John the Baptist, just like the prophet, our great prophet, priest and king, the Lord Jesus Christ, repentance. We have no other message to preach. the message of repentance. Someone has said this is the alpha of the spiritual alphabet, and it is. It's the beginning of our spiritual understanding. If you don't understand repentance, everything else is blind to you. So until you come to understand repentance, you'll never know the rest of the alphabet of salvation. So we're going to look at repentance this evening, and we're going to apply with the Lord's help, the lessons from it to all who are gathered in. So first of all, let's consider together the causes of repentance. What makes men and women repent? That's a vital subject. What causes you and I to repent? If you can reflect back in your own spiritual experience, what was it that caused you to repent and to seek the Lord? Well, there's some things that need to be said. True repentance is of gospel origin. It's of gospel origin. As the Reformed forefathers said, repentance was not born at Sinai, it was rather born at Zion. It's a duty required of all men, evangelical repentance, but it's not brought forth as a mere matter of duty. It's interesting as we read about the law of God in the Old and in the New Testament, the law in and of itself does not make provision for repentance. There is no room for error in the law of God, because the law of God says, this do and you shall live, and if you don't do, you're going to die. So the law pronounces its curse upon all who break its precepts, and it offers no way of escape So repentance is of gospel origin. And the gospel uses the law as a means of conviction and a reason for the soul to repent. If repentance is to be obtained, it'll be found where? It'll be found at the foot of Calvary and not at the bottom of Mount Sinai. How we thank God afresh tonight at the start of this new year for a message of mercy the message of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. In Romans 3, verse 19, 20, Paul took this thought up, and this is what he said. Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. That's a staggering claim. When we open the book of God, the law of God, in Exodus chapter 20, and all the manifestations of it, What does God say? All of the world becomes guilty before God. And of all of the world is guilty before God, that includes every soul in on alone meeting tonight. Every individual in the light of God's holy and precious law is guilty. We're law breakers. We're covenant breakers, just like our forefathers. We've broken God's covenant. We have broken his law. In verse 20, he went on to say, by the deeds of the law shall no flesh be justified in his sight. We thought this morning, those opening verses in Philippians 3, no amount of striving, of legalism, of keeping the law will get you into heaven. No amount of it, because by the deeds of the law, no flesh shall be justified in the sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin. Oh, that God would just teach us something tonight about the gospel origin of repentance. It's not found at the bottom of Mount Sinai. It's found through the gospel of grace at Calvary. We also learn that it is a matter of gracious origin. We often say, by grace are you saved. By grace are you saved. What does that mean then? You have the effort, the ability in and of yourself to repent? No, it doesn't. It's all of grace. Repentance cannot be produced in your heart or my heart apart from the amazing grace of God. 250 years ago, John Newton wrote that hymn, Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. And that covers repentance. It includes repentance. Unless grace renews the heart, the sinner cannot repent. John Newton's a classic example. We'll come to him later on in the year, but he's a classic example. He had wounds that prayed for him, but he didn't repent. He went deeper and deeper into sin, but he didn't repent. It wasn't until God dealt with him and he feared to meet an angry God that he came to a deeper understanding of the wonderful grace of God. Of course, if men and women are ever to be in a penitent state, it has to come from grace. There's a lot of imitation out there today, and there's a lot of imitation repentance. There's a lot of people who say they've repented, but it's imitation. It's false. It's not true biblical repentance. Self can produce remorse. I think of Judas. He's the classic example. Judas repented, but he repented, the Bible says, of himself. It was just remorse. It wasn't true repentance. Even imitation repentance can generate a feeling of resolve. That's why at the start of the year, after all of the excess of Christmas period, so many people resolved to do X, Y, and Z in order to improve their physical well-being, to cut down on weight. All of that there, we knew all about it. We've had years of it, but it's just resolve. It's not repentance. We weren't really sorry, were we, that we put on all of that weight and all of that there? No, we weren't. It's just... resolve. It can even lead to a partial reform. Sometimes people say, well, I'm gonna change. So I'll give you an example. Maybe it's a bad example, but I'll just throw it out there. Instead of, because I've come across this in the past, instead of smoking maybe 50 a day, I'll smoke 40 a day. Or 30 a day. or 20 a day. It's not the same as repentance. Unaided, the human soul can never repent. That's a leveler, isn't it? This is the work of the Spirit of God and regeneration. You know, we can never fully comprehend the mystery of the work of God, the Holy Spirit, and regeneration. Jesus said, that concerning Jesus it is said, him hath God exalted with his right hand to be a prince and a savior. We all say hallelujah to that in Acts 5 31 and it says also to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. Only Jesus can give repentance. Let me ask you, let me ask you tonight, have you ever received the repentance that he has given? Nature, as Thomas Watson said, can make eyes weep, but it can never make the heart bleed. Nature can bid you mend your ways, but it cannot renew your heart, and it's not until the heart is renewed that the life will be changed. This is the amazing, wonderful grace of God. The causes of repentance. Those clauses of repentance, brethren and sisters, as I see it, they all start on this side. They don't start on that side. They all start with the divine. They don't start with the human. And if you think that your salvation starts with your resolve, with your reformation of heart and life, you're deluded, you're deceived. It all has to start from God because salvation is all of God. Secondly, Consider with me then the characteristics of true repentance. So if that's something of the imitation, what is the true characteristics of repentance? The old divines of Abbas' generation were very excellent at analyzing and dissecting what were the constituent parts of all of these great aspects of salvation. And so they were able to discern, as I think our generation could never do, what are the three characteristics of repentance. Well, I'll put A, illumination. Illumination. Man by nature does not repent because he doesn't see himself as God sees him. Man by nature doesn't see himself as guilty. You stop any man, woman in the street of Annalong up in Kilkeel and you ask them, well how do you see yourself before God? They'll give you a whole host of reasons but they'll never, never tell you really what they are before Almighty God because they can't even know themselves. The Bible talks about acts of omission of the law, and there are so many individuals, they don't see any wrong in what they're doing. They just don't do what the law tells them to do, and they don't see any wrong in it. Then there are acts of commission of the law. They break the law, but they excuse what they're doing. They don't see the enormity of their guilt before Almighty God. There's a whole chapter in our confession on repentance in chapter 15, and I'm not gonna go into it tonight, but I would encourage you to read it at home, maybe even this evening for your own devotions. What does it talk about sin? Now, this is how it speaks about sin. It speaks about the filthiness of sin. It's even stronger. It speaks about the odiousness of sin. It speaks about the danger of sin. Sorry. And when God illuminates the soul, he enables that soul to see how odious they are before Almighty God. And that can never happen until you're made to see what you are before Almighty God. And when you see what you are before Almighty God, then the precious becomes vile. That which before was so dear, You'll see to what it is. It really is vile. It is odious. It is dangerous. And that which is lovely is now seen in a new light. If illumination is first, I think, next to illumination comes humiliation. Humiliation. Once the sinner sees himself or herself as they really are, then they totally change. There's so many examples of this in the Word of God. I think of Job. Job was actually a very self-righteous man. If you read through the book of Job, There was long dialogues that he engaged in with his comforters and with his friends. A lot of it was trying to justify himself and trying to argue his way out, why God, why God, why God? But after some 40 chapters of all of that dialogue, this is what Job said, I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, Job 42, five and six, but now mine eye seeth thee. So after all of that time, Job saw God as he was, as his creator, as his maker, as his Lord, as his sustainer. And what did Job say, therefore? Wherefore, I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes. It's not just you and I saying what we are. It's you and I saying the holiness of God who God is. And if we all this evening, every individual in this gathering could see what we are and who God is, there would be no question about it, there'd be no more talking, there'd be no more dialogue, there'd be no more excusing, we would just repent in dust and ashes. The follow on of that is detestation. The soul must go a step further than mere sorrow. It must come to hate the sin that once it loved. You know, there's no repentance where a man can talk lightly of sin or speak in a worthy fashion of the life that they once led. Through infirmity, A sinner may slide into, but through grace, the Bible tells us that's the only way he's ever gonna rise out of it. What's the unrepentant sinner like? Well, turn with me just quickly. Turn with me over to 2 Peter. This is easy reference to remember. 2 Peter 2, verse 22. So it's 2 Peter 2 and verse 22. 2 Peter 2 and 22, but it has happened unto them according to the true proverb. The dog has turned to his own vomit again. What a picture. And the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire. I was brought up in a small farm and we had sows on that farm. And they loved to get out, of course, from the pigry in which they were kept. and there was a congestion of gates just at the top of the yard where those sides were, and they wallowed. They wallowed in one of those areas around the gate. They had it absolutely churned up into a quagmire of stuff. And they come out of the house, and where did they go first and foremost? They went to that quagmire at the top of the little yard that we had, and they just rolled in it. They wallowed in it. And that's the picture that's here in 2 Peter 2 in verse 22. The sinner, what's the sinner doing? The unrepentant sinner, well he's just rolling in it. Just rolling in it. And if you're here tonight unrepentant, what does God say about you? If you've never repented of your sin, you're just like the sow, wallowing in the mire, in the muck. Wallowing in it and you think it's just great. What a picture. If only you could see yourself, you're here in all your Sunday best, and it's lovely to see you, but in your heart, why does God see you? Just like that sigh, wallowing in the mire. Do you not detest that? Is that not something you would flee from? Is that not something you would cry unto God to change in your life? True repentance also has apprehension. I love the way the Shorter Catechism puts it. It speaks of the repentant soul, not only having a true sense of his or her own sin, but also an apprehension of the mercy of God in Christ. As gospel preachers, we have been called to proclaim not just sin, not just the odiousness of sin, the danger of sin, the repugnant nature of sin. We've been called to preach the mercy of God to sinners in the mire. God offers a way of escape for sinners in the mire to be raised up and to be cleansed and to be made clean. And that sinner in the mire of sin can be raised up and made clean through apprehending the mercy that God extends to them in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. There's cleansing. We were singing of that cleansing in that lovely hymn earlier on in the service tonight. There's cleansing from every sin in the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. The sinner in the mire tonight coming in can leave clean, spotlessly clean, washed in the precious blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. Oh, what grace, what grace and mercy. And when the sinner apprehends the mercy of God and the Lord Jesus Christ, there's a change. Now the sinner sees what they have to do. They have to apprehend that mercy that God affords to them. Remember at the close, Well, Peter's great sermon on the day of Pentecost, we read that when they heard him preach, they were pricked in their heart. I would to God that you were pricked in your heart, touched in your heart, moved in your heart. And they said unto Peter and to the rest of the apostles, men and brethren, what should we do? What did Peter say? Repent. That's what he said simply, repent. And be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins. and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost, repent. You know, we don't have any new message. We're just preaching what John preached, what Jesus preached, what the apostles preached. It's the message of repentance. And that characteristic brings us to the transformation of the sinner's heart. The truly penitent individual is changed, is changed inwardly. That which was wallowing in the mire is now made clean through simple faith in the blood of the Lamb. Made clean in the blood of the Lamb, but not just changed inwardly, changed outwardly. Outwardly, now the life is lived to the glory of God. The chief end of that life is to glorify God and to enjoy Him delivered, to live that life according to the revealed will of God as it is in the word of God. New creatures. gloriously transformed by a gracious God. That's what true repentance is. And I want to ask you tonight, is such evidence in your life, do you have the evidence of the penitent sinner? For without the evidence, it's all a sham. It's all false. Let's think for a moment in closing about the companions of true repentance. What goes with it? We saw what caused it. We've seen something, a little bit of the true characteristics of it, but what are the accompaniments of it? What are the companions of those who truly repented? Well, the first companion is faith because Jesus put them here closely together. Repent ye and believe the gospel. Repentance and belief. The old Puritans, they used to meet in conference. And in those conferences, they asked all these profound questions, and one of the questions that you will consider in Bible college and you will read in theology time and time again is, which comes first in the soul, faith or repentance? And if I was to go around the meeting tonight, I'll guarantee you I'll get a cross-reference of opinion, a cross-section of opinion. What comes first? Some said, that a man could not truly repent until he'd believed in God and had some sense of a saviour's love. Others said a man could not have faith until he had repented because you have to repent of belief. So there's one older brother, and you should always listen to the older brother. He's not always right, but he has something that the younger brother doesn't have. He has heard all these questions debated before. And this is what he said, I don't think you can ever settle the question. It would be something like asking whether when an infant is born, the circulation of the blood or the beating of the pulse can be first observed. Which comes first? The pulse or the circulation of the blood? He said, it seems to me that faith and repentance are simultaneous. They come at one and the same moment. and there's no true repentance without true faith, and yet there was never true faith without true repentance. I don't know whether that brother is right. We'll know one day, absolutely, whether he's right, but I think when I read it, he makes an awful lot of sense. Faith and repentance are born together. They've been compared to Siamese twins. They're born together, and they can't live asunder. You can't have repentance without faith. You can't have faith without repentance. So God does the work of grace in the life of the individual, giving them faith and repentance simultaneously. Now tell me, have you faith in the Lord Jesus Christ? Because if you have, you have repentance. Have you repentance? Because if you have, you have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Because the two do go together. Another companion of repentance is confession. Confession keeps back no secrets. Repentance sighs over sin. We sang those words in Psalm 25, my sins and faults of youth, nothing hidden, going right back. Confession tells it all. Here we have the penitent soul before the throne of God, seeking God's mercy and God's forgiveness. Another companion of repentance is holiness of life. Holiness of life. As we thought this morning, the pursuit of holiness is the quest of every true child of God. holiness of life being made more and more conformed onto the image of God's own dear son. Did you ever meet a man or woman who has holiness of life and have no repentance? It's an impossibility. And yet also with repentance comes peace. The peace of God that passeth all understanding. The penitent sinner knows that they have a peace that nobody else has. You can never have that peace if it's just some sort of a sham profession, something that you made when you were young, something even that you've said at some meeting or done at some meeting. That'll not give you peace. Only true faith and repentance in Christ can. Repentance, I think, it takes different forms. and the persons in which it takes place. I think that's an important point to make. Different people have different experiences. I was thinking of some of the testimonies from the scriptures of truth. You can read about Manasseh. He filled all of Jerusalem with blood. He was guilty of genocide. of crimes against humanity that the like even of the bloodiest kings of Judah and Israel had never perpetrated before, Manasseh. But he repented and he found peace with God. But then I think on the other hand, in the New Testament of that young boy, Timothy, and he repented, and he received and rested upon Christ alone for salvation. Is Manasseh's experience the same as Timothy's? And yet today we have a whole host of people, and I think sometimes we have to be very, very careful. We're not to judge our experience by what other people tell us about their experience. Your experience is your experience. The repentance of a child like Timothy cannot be the repentance of an adult like Vanessa. That's an impossibility. And sometimes when people come along to testify, I think that is a grave, grave mistake that is made. We're nearly measuring the repentance of everybody in the meeting by the person that's telling their story from the pulpit. God deals with us individually. And we're not to judge our experience by somebody else's experience. Boys and girls, you have your own experience. It can't be that of an adult. It can't be that of an adult, and sometimes we, I see it all the time nowadays with people up giving these testaments, they've been saved from all types of things, and then some young person brought up in a Christian home, brought up in Sunday school, children's meeting, youth fellowship, they're sitting thinking, I don't know anything about that, am I really saved at all? Well thank God they were saved from all of that sin. Thank God they were saved from indulging in all of that sin. And their experience of repentance is just as genuine as the man who was plucked as a fire from the burning out of all of those public sins and scandals. We need to be careful. True repentance does not consist of what men make of it. True repentance consists of what God says of it. That makes all the difference. God says you have to repent and believe. And that's as simple as it is. We're not gonna complicate it anymore. Have you repented? Have you believed? Have you received the Lord Jesus Christ? Have you turned away from your sin? Have you called upon him for mercy and grace and pardon? That's all that's needed. And that's more than enough. If it's more than enough with Christ, it's more than enough that God requires. to take you home to have a...