I want to take some time over these next few minutes to present to you a message simply titled, The Lord Will Give You Understanding, The Grace of Gospel Repentance. the grace of gospel repentance. We will consider 2 Timothy chapter 2 verse 24 through verse 26, the word of the Lord. God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil after being captured by him to do Gospel repentance is the work of God wherein He changes the mind of an elect sinner, causing him to turn away from dead works and toward Christ alone as the only source of righteousness. before God. It is only through God's gift of gospel repentance that believers are led into what the text says is a knowledge of the truth. The Lord gives us understanding in the gift of repentance. It's an essential element of our salvation in Christ. For without repentance, a sinner cannot experience the blotting out of his sin. Peter preached very powerfully in the sermon recorded in Acts. Chapter 3, Peter said these famous words, repent and turn back that your sins may be blotted out. So God must grant repentance before we can even look to Christ for all righteousness. After all, unless we turn from our dead works, we will not turn to Christ. One will either take stock of his works, of his own righteousness, of that which commends him and his crazy mind to God, or you will look and cling. rest solely in Christ. There's no middling ground here. There's no one foot in righteousness, one foot in works. There's no such thing as having a fence straddling strategy when it comes to gospel repentance. One is either convinced of the Spirit that he is nothing and that Christ is everything, or one has yet to encounter the gospel in saving efficacy. Believers are exhorted, and I say this to to nip in the bud. The accusations of antinomianism or lawlessness. Believers are exhorted to flee youthful passions and to pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace. Shun the wrong and do the right. The first accusation leveled against sovereign grace preachers who are consistent in their presentation of an all God gospel is that we don't tell our people that Christian living is important. Ah, you must be one of those lawless ones, one of those antinomians. Your people can just go run amok, and they'll run to your church every Sunday and be told yet again that they're just a-okay with Jesus, even though they've gone out a-whoring for the devil all week long. Well, beloved, let me just say it like this, and I've said it to my own congregation. You must ask yourself when confronted by one of these so-called law keepers, one of these so-called lord shippers, which one of you is actually taking the law seriously? Now they will come down on you with a voice of thunder. They will rain down on you with all of their so-called works and they will look righteous to the eye. They will dress the part. They will act the part. But beloved, which one of you in that conversation is really taking God's law seriously? Because God still demands absolute perfection. His standard is holiness. His standard is absolute perfection, and for someone to come at you with the accusation that you don't live as holy as they do, they must be saying that they have attained a holiness that pleases Almighty God, and that such holiness is demonstrated in their conduct, in their way of interacting with one another, in their dealings with the world around them, with their own family, with their inner life. Every thought is held captive to Christ. Every word that mutters out of their mouth brings grace to the hearer. And they dare take that hog swill as an offering of garbage to the Lord of glory and say, look at what I've done. I'm not like that grace preacher down the street. He thinks it all came from Christ, but I know better than he does. I know that it doesn't come from Christ. It comes from repentance. And here we are at repentance. So what is repentance? So we know we're to flee the youthful passions, and we know that we are to fight this fight of faith. And yes, if you're a Christian who tells lies all the time, stop it. Let him who stole, let him steal no longer. Don't do that. But don't look to your doings and your not doings for righteousness. because righteousness doesn't dwell there. The righteousness that we possess either comes completely from Christ's perfect work, or we are as yet undone, unsaved. And my friends, this is how you take the law of God seriously. You need not think that you can do anything to please God in saving efficacy. You don't have that ability. I don't have that ability. We are sinners. And the gulf between that which is holy and that which is unholy is infinite. It goes beyond anything that we could ever ask, think, or comprehend. As a matter of fact, it took God Himself to bridge that gap. But you're helping Him because You go to church on Sunday nights as well as Sunday mornings. You're helping him because you wear the nice tie to church and you cut your hippie hair. You see how foolish even our so-called best efforts at churchianity sound in the presence of such grandeur? Our God didn't send Christ to start a work in your life. He didn't send Christ to give us that go-get-'em booster shot in the arm so that we might please Him through our law-keeping. He sent Christ as the end of the law for righteousness to them that believe. And to take Him seriously means to take Him seriously. You can't please God in your strength. You need Christ. And you must rest on Christ. And the moment you take your eyes off of Calvary's hill and you turn it to some sort of a checklist of deeds that you're supposed to be able to do and to look at to see that maybe you're a Christian or not. You take your eyes off Christ and you put your eyes squarely on self. And again, the folks out there who would argue against me would say, you don't preach repentance. So I ask you again, what is repentance? Negatively, here's what it's not. I grew up in the holiness Pentecostal sect of what I call colloquially churchianity. I don't even like to give aberrant groups the honor of wearing Christ's name when they do not preach His truth. But I grew up in the churchianity sect of Pentecostalism, and here's the deal. Repentance in that circle to this very day means this, ceasing from sin. Oh, that's awful. They must be weirdos to preach such a thing. Well, how is their message any different than John MacArthur's? What does he preach but the same garbage? Oh, it's dressed up. It's been whitewashed through a seminary and put in a nice big fat pulpit in a respectably large church. And we've got educational accolades flowing like a kitetail after his name, but it's the same trash. For I'm looking at a sea of people who have yet to repent of sin. Who among you would stand in this little meeting hall and say, I have ceased from sin, I've turned my back, I've changed my mind and no longer commit sin? Ah, not a one. The Scripture doesn't call us and doesn't condition salvation on repentance of sin. Show it to me in Scripture. Open your Bibles and show me, show me repent of sin. If any man says he has no sin, the scripture's got a nice little word for him, a nice little descriptive term for him. And that word, beloved, is liar. Liar. Repent of sin. repent of sin. How many people to this day lack any assurance of faith because they bought into the lordship lie that repentance means repentance of sin? And how do the lordship folks answer? What is their reply when someone with just a little bit of sense reads the scripture and says to them, It doesn't say repent of sin. No man can repent of sin. How is it that Christians keep fighting with sin all the time if we can just repent of it and go a different direction and change our minds concerning sin and say, you know what? Sin's a bad idea. I'm gonna go this way now. The answer is this, are you ready? The same folks that accused us of not taking the law of God seriously now say, no, it simply means that you will struggle with sin and it's the struggle that typifies the repentant heart and desire. So now these folks that accuse us of being weak concerning the law of God are now saying that God takes failure as evidence that you're saved. He looks at your heart. He knows you still sin, but you super duper pinky promise swear that you wouldn't sin if you could. And that's how you know you're a Christian. It's foolish and it's kind of humorous, but it is a sick and quick poison for Christian assurance. I'm telling you, the name brand Reformed preachers of American churchianity do nothing but rob God's people of the assurance that is afforded them entirely in the finished work of Christ when they start telling you, take inventory, Start staring and gazing right there at your navel, and you look inside and find all the reasons why you know you're a Christian. And repent of sin, and don't worry, God knows you're never gonna really be able to do it, but just hope that you're hoping enough that you could repent, that you'll have some sort of evidence of salvation. And by the way, these things may or may not give you proof that you're truly saved. I went to John MacArthur's church website at Grace to You, and there is an actual checklist of what you need to be able to do in order to be saved, or to know that you're saved, with the caveat that doing these things may or may not mean that you are saved. Beloved, tell me again who's not taking the law of God seriously? Tell me again who's not taking the holiness of God seriously? We preach a gospel of satisfaction, complete and total propitiation. God's wrath is satisfied. And if I can't tell you anything else today, let me tell you this. He whom the Son hath set free is free indeed. You leave this place believing the gospel, then you leave this place knowing without a shadow of a doubt that the Lord of glory has gone your way. That He has taken your sins and He has cast them as far as the east is from the west. And there is no force in heaven or in hell below that can take you from His hand. And let me tell you something. He's no liar, beloved. He tells the truth on Himself and He speaks the truth to us. What is the Spirit of God's name in New Testament Scripture but the Spirit of truth? He's no liar. Oh, it can't be that easy. No, I didn't say it was easy. It took God Himself to ransom His people. There's nothing easy about this. Oh, that's easy believism. Really easy for the Lord of glory to take upon himself the sins of his people by imputation and to clothe each and every one of them in his righteousness, to credit them as holy and to go Calvary's way for each and every one of his people and to know that ye are complete in him. Yeah, but that was easy. What's the scripture tell us in Isaiah? Come and buy. wine and milk without price. It ought to crumble your hearts into a million itty-bitty pieces. I'm not telling you that emotionalism proves anything, but this grabs the heartstrings of a child of God. It ought to thrill your soul. So gospel repentance is a change of mind concerning Christ. Hallelujah! You've repented! Well, where's your checklist, preacher? 2 Timothy 2, verse 25, God may perhaps grant them repentance. Who is the source of said repentance? God. Who delivers said repentance? God. Said repentance is a gift from God? According to the text, it is. And what does this repentance do? What does this evangelical gift of repentance bring to the table? knowledge of the truth, and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free." You see, beloved, it's an integral part of the entire picture of salvation. Without gospel repentance, there could be no salvation. And if repentance is constantly this thing that's left up in the air, then your salvation itself is left up in the air. There's no salvation apart from full and complete gospel repentance. And yet we have much of the famous world of preachers telling us that repentance is this half-won, half-lost self-battling, self-naval-gazing, you know, monster from the lagoon that we've got to battle with until the day we die, constantly uncertain of anything. And the scripture just simply says, hey, Timothy, don't be a jerk to them people you're preaching to over there. God might just save them, and then you're going to be spending a lot more time with them, because He might grant them the same repentance He granted you. And they might be led to a knowledge of the truth. And there you go. It's almost like out of the mouth of babes, the simplicity of the gospel comes in and just washes away all that religious garbage. So following Peter's powerful sermon on the day of Pentecost, if I can take your attention back there to Acts, Men pricked at their heart ask what they must do in response to the gospel. And so Acts 2, 38 and 39, the scripture says, then Peter said to them, 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. For the promise is unto you and to your children and to all that are far off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call. So Peter expressed the necessity of repentance concerning Christ, and those in attendance, remember now, he accused them of this, he said those in attendance had murdered the Lord of Glory. Yet as Peter boldly proclaimed to them earlier in the text, So what was Peter telling them to repent of? He was telling them that a change of mind was needed concerning Christ. And this change can only be granted by God. And how do we know that? The Scripture says, So he was telling them, you guys have the wrong idea concerning Christ. You brag about the fact that you were there when you watched him die on the cross. You murderers, you have to have your minds changed concerning Jesus Christ. And you must believe in his work. And this is wrought. by the hand of our sovereign God, even as many as the Lord our God shall call." So repentance is a change of mind, yes, but it's a change of mind that only God can grant. And this change of mind occurs primarily in the preaching of the gospel. And we see that plainly in the text of Scripture throughout the New Testament. Secondly, gospel repentance is a turning away from dead works. So again, if we're changing our minds, We must be turning from one thought to another. We must be turning from one ground of righteousness to another. To repent, to change direction, to change course, to change our minds, it must mean that we used to think that A was the answer, and now we know that Z is the answer. And what causes two men to differ on this question? The grace of God in Christ. The writer of Hebrews exalts Christ as he who purifies our conscience, quote, from dead works to serve the living God. This, beloved, is a beautiful description of evangelical repentance. Hebrews 9, 11 through 14, the Word of the Lord. But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent, not made with hands, that is, not of this creation, He entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves, but by means of His own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. For if the blood of goats and bulls and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer sanctify for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ who through the eternal spirit offer himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God. Do you see the transition that occurs when repentance, that wonderful gift of gospel repentance is applied? The Lord has purchased this full and free. It's his work. It's not ours. It's something wrought. It's something wrought in the mind of a Christian when we look to all the things that we used to think commended us to God. And through the preaching of the gospel, we know now what manner of man we are. And we look to God. And as we look to God in Christ, we say, Lord of mercy. Why do we say that? We have been granted repentance. It is through gospel repentance that the floodgates of Christ's righteousness are opened unto poor and needy sinners. It is by God's power that we turn away from all the works we previously placed our trust, casting them down, burning them out as one would set fire to a brush pile. Then looking only to Christ as our righteousness, knowing that through his blood we're secure forever, we serve the living God. We turn from dead works toward the living God in Christ. This is gospel repentance. And it is a complete and settled work in the lives of each and every person who believes the true and saving gospel. Praise the Lord. Gospel repentance is a turning away from dead works toward faith in the living God. Gospel repentance exhorts us to humility and gentleness. Do not rejoice that the demons are subject unto you. And what do I mean by this statement? I mean, we have been given this beautiful gospel, a gospel that speaks loudly of Christ while it pounds our sinful, wretched souls into the dust where they belong. Christ is everything. We are nothing. Yet through Christ, we can do all things. It's all about Christ. And yet I fear that there are times when we come across as pompous or arrogant. or unloving, swift to drop the axe on the forehead of someone else. The Scripture calls us all to a position of humility because what are we but the poor and needy sinners Christ came to save? We'd be in the same ditch that anybody else is in right now apart from the grace of God. And we see Paul's exhortation pointing this out He exhorted Timothy to be kind and gentle with everyone. He even encouraged Timothy to patiently endure unkind and even evil treatment in the course of his ministry. You ever been called something mean on social media or ever been scoffed at in your face? It's not easy to take that kind of abuse at times and everything in us wants to rise up and say, well I have the true gospel and you're just a nobody, you heretic. But is that what God has called us to? No, it isn't. Of course, Timothy was free to teach and preach the gospel to these evildoers. There's not one passage of Scripture that tells you to pull any punches when it comes to telling people the truth. You think you're going to love them to Jesus by being cool like them. What does that even mean? That's how you get youth pastors who start these goofy cults that grow like cancerous tumors off the sides of church buildings all over the country. Pastor X and his rap team are going to launch their light show laser extravaganza tonight! Sunday, Sunday, Sunday! And the funny thing is, I'm being tame. They call themselves things like ripped up for Jesus, you know, pulse, you know, what is that? And they're all on fire, every one of them. There has to be some sort of a fire bug mentality because they're always on fire. Ignition, youth ministries, you know, whatever it is. I'm digressing a little bit, but that's okay. Proves the point though. Fire, you know, you can just think all these guys planning these things for like, we've got to be cool and relevant. We need to be on fire. You never hear any youth, there's no youth minister on the planet called peaceful streams. They're always on fire, burn up, ate up, I don't know. And so the scripture doesn't call us into this endless sea of contextualization. Now that seminary speak for, hey guys, I'm cool like you. Look, I can make Jesus make sense to your world right where you are. Pass me that needle in that pipe. What? And you see that, this constant move toward not preaching the truth, but trying to make everybody think you're their buddy. and you see that taught in seminaries and other places and it's just ridiculous. Then you have this whole sea of like 60 year old pastors wearing skinny jeans and scoop neck V-neck t-shirts trying to be cool and you know, let's dim all the lights and let off the fog machines and try to really make them think that our show is a good show for a dollar bill. You know, the scripture doesn't call us to sacrifice truth. but it does call us not to be arrogant jerks when we're dealing with our neighbor. That's okay. Look, you're allowed to tell them you are wrong, but you're not allowed to assume that you're somehow better than they are. Don't do that, be gentle. And you don't have to dress like them, you don't have to try to turn the Bible into this pretzel amorphous monster that it's not in order to please them or appease them, or if we just have a softball team, maybe we'll grow the church. That's not what the scripture calls us to, but it does call us to be gentle. What's the text of the scripture tell us? It says, as a servant of the Lord, and the servant of the Lord, verse 24, must not strive But be gentle unto all men. Next time you interact with someone who doesn't know the gospel, ask yourself, am I speaking the truth and am I being gentle? 95% of the time, we're all gonna say amen to that first part. And the other part depends on what they just called us. And that, as the scripture says, ought not be so. We have a gospel that gives all power and all praise to the Lord. He does all the work. He gives us all the grace. We have this free and sovereign grace that abounds. Grace doth much more abound. We have no reason to be arrogant, prideful, snarky, mean. Let brotherly love continue. Let's love one another lavishly. Let's tend to the needs of our brothers and sisters. And let's be kind and gentle to those outside. You wanna know why? Because your big arch rival down the street in your neighborhood, God might just grant the same repentance to them. And then guess who's coming to dinner? That's what it says. It says, listen, it says, if God, per adventure, will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth. In other words, this isn't your rodeo. You don't get to decide who's on the ticket. The Lord could save them, and they're gonna be sitting next to you at the next gospel assembly. Be nice. Be nice. And I think, and I believe it's attested to in scripture, that gospel repentance gives us reason and exhorts us to humility and gentleness. Doesn't mean you check your sense of humor at the door. I'd be toast if I had to give up my sense of humor. Doesn't mean you can't be truthful and bold in your presentation of the gospel with friends and family. You better tell them the truth. But at the same time, the moment you think that the truth of the gospel somehow makes you a better cut of person than your neighbor, what are you truly trusting in at that point? It says more about you than it does the gospel. And the Scripture's clear, be gentle, be meek, mind the text. They're going to be coming to dinner if the Lord saves them. You want to be nice to folks. All right, so there should be an encouragement to all of us as we endeavor to share the gospel with friends and family. The work of changing minds concerning Christ and His gospel is not ours to perform. This is something that I have to tell myself every single day. I really wish there was a certain series of words that I could string together in some logical fashion that would force everyone who hears them to simply be saved. But I understand because of Scripture that salvation is of the Lord. And all of the things I say, the Lord could choose to use any of those words. He uses means. The Lord does use means. That's why we don't just sit here and stare at each other in silence during church. He uses means. But it's the Lord's task to save His people, as many as the Lord our God shall call. And so we must be mindful of that in our interactions with folks, including those who don't subscribe to the gospel, even those who might be enemies of the gospel. There's nothing stopping you from withstanding an enemy of the gospel to their face. But you still don't have license to just be mean and wicked and spiteful. Speak the truth. Stand up for the Lord and the truth of the Scripture, but don't be mean and spiteful. These things ought not be. So let's be thankful for God's gift of gospel repentance. It's the Lord who changes our mind concerning Christ. And in gospel repentance, our minds change as to what constitutes righteousness. We turn our back on all of the junk we used to think commended us to God, and He changes our mind. And now we look to Christ and say, I've heard this thing a hundred times, but this last time I heard the gospel preached, He showed me what manner of man I was. He showed me that I'm in wretched need. I'm terribly lost and undone. Jesus is my only portion. Let me show you real quick as we close. I've got about six minutes and I want to stick to this. I want to show you just a really quick picture of gospel repentance working in real time. Two things are on showcase here. One, the sovereignty of God in the saving of one man and the ruination of another. Okay? And gospel repentance and how it works. And I turn your attention to Luke's gospel. Just real quick. Chapter 23, verse 33, the tale of two thieves. Gospel repentance in a practical setting. Of course, this is the pinnacle moment of Christ's work on the cross. He's literally being taken now to be crucified, and we see here in verse 33, we pick up there, chapter 23, verse 33, And when they were come to the place which is called Calvary, where they crucified him, and the malefactors, one on the right hand and one on the left, then said, Jesus, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. And they parted his raiments and cast lots. And the people stood beholding. And the rulers also with them derided him, saying, He saved others, let him save himself. If he be Christ, the chosen of God, And the soldiers also mocked him, coming to him and offering him vinegar and saying, if thou be the king of the Jews, save thyselves. And the superscription also written over him in letters of Greek and Latin and Hebrew, this is the king of the Jews. And one of the malefactors which were hanged railed on him saying, if thou be Christ, save thyself and us. But the other, answering, rebuked him, saying, Dost thou not fear God, seeing thou art in the same condemnation? And we indeed justly, for we receive the due reward of our deeds, but this man hath done nothing amiss. And he said unto Jesus, Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom. And Jesus said to him, Verily I say unto thee today, shalt thou be with me in paradise. I read that passage of scripture in awe of the mercy of my God and the dread sovereignty of his power. For there was no force in the universe preventing my Lord from saving both of those thieves. Had he determined it in his infinite counsel, No force in heaven, earth, hell, any other alternative reality, no force could have dissuaded the Lord from doing and pursuing and fulfilling His will. But the Lord saved a thief while justly condemning another. And what do we see in this passage but true gospel repentance on full display? One man selfishly crying out to the Lord, thanking himself worthy of salvation. saying to the Lord, save us, man, if you've got all this power. Then you see another man pricked at the heart, castigating the other thief, saying, shut up. We deserve what we're getting, but this man has done nothing wrong. And he turns to the Lord of glory, and he just simply says, remember me when you go into your kingdom. Remember me. He knew there was nothing in him that merited or warranted anything, any blessing, any state of felicity from the Lord of glory. He knew that. How do I know he knew? Because he rebuked the other thief for his presumption. He said, man, you just shut up. You and me both deserve everything we're getting, but he doesn't deserve any of this. Lord, will you remember me? And I tell you, You've got to put all this in context. We're talking about the power of repentance as the gift of God. Listen, there was nothing about Jesus at that moment that would have said to anybody, hey, I'm a guy in charge here. He was beaten down. And I don't mean to play on your emotions, but I think sometimes we are very theoretical about the cross of Christ, and we don't like to talk about the nuts and bolts of it, but I'm just going to go there for a minute or two. Listen to me. Our Lord was beaten down worse than some neighbor's dog, okay? He was beaten down. The Bible talks about how his visage was marred. This man looked barely human if everything that transpired transpired the way the text says, and I have no reason to deny that the Romans were cruel to people they were getting ready to kill. There was no holds barred. Beaten. shredded up by a cat of nine tails, you know, lugging a big old beam down the way, had to have help to carry it. He was thirsty. The text testifies to that. They mocked him, shoving vinegar up in his face and all this other stuff. The cross itself is a terrible way to die and the Romans were good at killing people on crosses. There was nothing about Jesus that screamed, look at me for salvation. Look how powerful I am to save. I'm mighty in battle. And yet, it's the Lord of glory, mighty in battle. It's the Lord of glory, the light of the world. And what caused this sinner to look at Him and say, there's my only way of escape. There's my way. I don't deserve it, but He, He's the Savior. What would have caused this man to cry out to another dying man, but the power of God at work in gospel repentance. Hallelujah forevermore. The Lord of glory in that moment, looking all shattered. as a man, turned to Him, and I love this part, I relish in this part, I glory in the cross of Christ at this part, because our Lord battered down to within an inch of His life, literally, turned and looked at that man with all the authority of heaven, and said to him, thou shalt be with me in paradise. beaten, marred, cast out like some outcast, some leper, some unclean thing, and yet God was there. God, the Son in full regal power. And in that moment, gospel repentance was slathered on that old sinner three, four, five coats worth. He turned to Jesus and He said, if you don't save me nobody can. And isn't that exactly what the Lord has done for each of us who believe the gospel? Hallelujah. Thank the Lord for gospel repentance. Thank the Lord for a salvation that doesn't require my inventory. Thank the Lord for a salvation that doesn't require my feeble efforts, but thank the Lord for a salvation that's full and free in the finished work of Jesus Christ, the Lord. Hallelujah. Praise his name forevermore. Let's be thankful for God's gift of gospel repentance. He alone has opened our eyes to our darkness, our sin, our shame. He alone has changed our minds concerning who Jesus is, what Jesus has accomplished, causing each of us to look to Christ alone for righteousness sake. It is the Lord alone that has, in the words of Paul, given us understanding. And it is through eyes made new by gospel repentance that we endeavor, out of love, to be kind and gentle toward one another. As we ever sorrowful for our sin, trust Christ alone to go our way unto the brightness and glory of his coming.