All right, brothers and sisters, let's go ahead and get started. Those of you that are here for chapter four, we're walking through John Cahoon's short little book, Repentance, and I'm just kind of giving you a very detailed book report. So some of you might be reading this book, and I would encourage you, if you have the opportunity to read it, because I'm not able to cover everything and all of the gems that he says. But this week's chapter is entitled True versus False Repentance. And I've taken the liberty of shortening some of the titles to the sections or modernizing them just a little bit to try to make the emphasis clear for us. But one question thus far that might come up, that I'm sure has come up, is what is the difference between true repentance and what might look like repentance. Is there such a thing as false repentance? In one sense, no, because repentance is the kind that we're talking about, gospel repentance. But on the other hand, the scripture does speak about things like worldly sorrow, what might look like a kind of repentance on the outside, the exterior, but on the inside not be true repentance. So I want to walk you through what Cajun says. I don't want to belabor this too much over this eight weeks, but remember the order. Grace comes to us by God in Christ. He changes our hearts and gives us the gift of repentance. From our perspective, when we get saved, for instance, we hear the gospel, Maybe you heard the gospel, you prayed a prayer, you even said, I repent of my sins. But we know the scripture teaches that repentance comes after regeneration. This is one of the big debates. We're Calvinists, we're reformed. We understand that you repent after the Lord changes your heart, not you repent and then God changes your heart, right? Well, Zechariah 1210 has been a key verse for this study and for Cajun. And the reminder there is that first we need to talk about where it comes from. Now let's talk about what it is and what it isn't true and false repentance. As is the case in many Puritan and after Puritan writings, so this would have been 17, early 1800s, so not really Puritan but kind of coming in their mold, there are many, many points. Sometimes you might listen to one of the preachers here and you might think, oh, wow, there's more than three points. It's nothing compared to the Puritans and post-Reformed writers. But there are many, but I want to try to highlight these for you this evening. The first that Cajun points to from the text of scripture is that false repentance flows from viewing the law as a covenant of works. Now, only because the sermon we had this morning mentioned the law and said that it was a covenant of works for life in the land do I want to make sure that you have clarity. This is not talking about this morning's sermon. The Mosaic Covenant, as we heard this morning, did involve things to do, kind of like a covenant of works, for life in the land. Hopefully it was clear to you that their doing didn't save them. But what is being spoken of here is when we treat God's law. When we treat God's commands, any commands, but specifically the Ten Commandments, as a covenant of works. Think Garden of Eden. That probationary period that Adam and Eve were in. Obey. and live and enter into glory, disobey and die. That's what is meant here. So when you view, when I view the law as a covenant of works, a means whereby we have the standing before God that we need, you will not get true repentance out of that. Cajun says this on page 85, and what is this but a secret hope? that the redemption of Jesus Christ will impart such merit to his tears, reformations, and works as will make them effectual to atone for his sins and to purchase the favor of God. What is being said here is that the sinner hopes that Jesus will kind of bless his work. In this case, the work of tears and reforming oneself and works and will make them effectual to atone for his sins and thereby give him the favor of God. He cannot trust that God will show mercy to him until, by his penitence and reformation, he recommend himself to his favor. Now, if you've been here all four weeks, you're probably thinking, all right, I think I've heard that before. In fact, every week, something like that is said. Spoiler alert, all eight chapters will come back to this same theme, among others. We cannot truly repent of sin, if our view is something I do, a law or a work, will commend me to God, and then I may experience his favor. We have to consistently and constantly look to Christ. So false repentance flows. It comes from viewing, keeping the law as a covenant of works, staying in God's favor. Or, perhaps worse, Getting saved by keeping the law. Kahun goes on to say, Godly sorrow for sin and turning from the love and practice of sin to the love and practice of holiness flow, as was stated above, from reliance on the righteousness of Jesus Christ for all title to pardon and sanctification and from trusting in him for pardoning mercy and sanctifying grace. Hence, it is called evangelical repentance or gospel repentance. 1 Corinthians 1, verse 30 says that Jesus has become our wisdom, righteousness, and sanctification. We look to Christ for all the blessings of salvation, for all the, if you'll let me say it this way, stages of salvation, justification, sanctification, and glorification. God hasn't invited you to a process where he gets you in the door and then has a series of meetings and interviews with you to determine whether you get to flow through the final door. But many Christians think that. Justification is my ticket to come to the interviews. Sanctification is like doing really well on the interviews, hoping to get the job in the end. That's just not the gospel. The gospel is that Christ is my justification, He is my sanctification, and He is my glorification. So when we think about repentance, if we're looking at our works, or our lack of works, I could say it this way, the juices of repentance will not flow properly from that. The best place for you to look when you see your sin is to Christ. And by His Spirit's quickening ray, not in justification, but in continual work, that will actually melt your heart toward repentance in ways that trying to do something to curry favor with God will not. Secondly, Cahoon says this, false repentance focuses on punishment. True repentance focuses on mourning for sin and a desire to be free from it. You want to know if you have a true repentance, not salvificly, although that is possible. Listen, if you believe that the entirety of your repentance for sin should be only to avoid punishment, it's possible that you don't fully understand the work of Christ. But what is being spoken of here largely, I believe, is in the Christian life. We can slip into moments where we focus on the consequences of our sin, and that's where our mourning for sin comes from, and not focusing on mourning for sin because it's sin and displeases the Lord. So let me ask you this. When you see sin in your life, what bothers you the most? And you may say, well, I'm not really ever worried about punishment, pastor. I mean, I know that the Lord has taken away my hell and my condemnation. I'm not worried about punishment. But maybe by punishment, you might be worried about the effects. I cannot believe that I did that in front of five other people at church. What will they think about me? Now, that's not punishment, but it's kind of a very temporal consequence, isn't it? Versus, I can't believe I said that. That displeased the Lord. And oh, by the way, I wanna go to those people and say, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to. to question God's glory in that way, or whatever the case may be, right? So, yes, punishment has many, many forms, but think consequences here. So again, just to make sure we're tracking, false repentance flows from viewing the law as a covenant of works, and false repentance focuses on the consequences. True repentance focuses on mourning for sin and a desire to be free from it. Third, false repentance is focused on big sins, whereas in true repentance, even secret sins are mourned. Now, just for the sake of demonstrating what I mean, let me read to you the way that Cajun says it, which I think is perfectly fine, but I've taken the liberty of trying to consolidate it a little bit. Here's what Cajun says. In false penitence, the sinner is chiefly affected with his gross and open sins, whereas in true repentance, the believer is more deeply affected with the secret and darling sins which he formerly delighted to commit. It's actually a wonderful way of saying. If we boil it down into perhaps more modern English, we're not just concerned with the glaring open bad stuff. We also have a mourning for even the secret sins, and I will add now what Cajun says, the darling sins, the sins which we love, that we cling to. Fourthly, true repentance flows from the pardon of sin in justification. And this is why Cahoon, but I've tried to labor at this, just constantly giving you his words, but this is why Cahoon is laboring to make sure that we understand the order properly. True repentance flows from the pardon of sin and justification. He says this, because he himself is accepted as righteous, his repentance is accepted as sincere. Friend, if I were to sit down with you or you to sit down with me and we were to talk about any number of sins in your life or my life, never would we say in your own strength that your repentance is perfect. But if that's where you're resting, your own ability to repent really, really, really, really well, you actually will potentially involve yourself in a kind of hardening toward sin. The living God accepts your repentance in and through Christ. It's one of the gifts that He gives you. Notice the way that the Old Testament speaks about this, just in a couple of places. I'll read these verses. Isaiah 44 and verse 22. Isaiah 44 in verse 22, there we read these words. Remember these, O Jacob and Israel, for you are my servant. I have formed you, you are my servant. O Israel, you will not be forgotten by me. I have blotted out, like a thick cloud, your transgressions, and like a cloud, your sins. Indicative. Return to me, for I have redeemed you. Now, if we were to break all of that down, we have indicative, statement of what God has done, a very short imperative, do this, and then a reminder on the other end, this is what God has done. Is everybody tracking with that? I have blotted out like a thick cloud your transgressions and like a cloud your sins. Return to me, for I have redeemed you. Not return to me in this instance so that you can be able to be redeemed. But the call to returning to the Lord as one of his people is based in the fact that he has already worked on your behalf. Or how about Jeremiah chapter three, verse twenty two, there we read these words, return you backsliding children. And I will heal your backsliding. Indeed, we do come to you. For you are the Lord, our God. I don't want to make too much of Jeremiah 3 or Isaiah 44, nor take them out of context, but just sit with Jeremiah 3, 22 for a second. How often do we repent to the Lord so that we can feel again like he is our God? But notice the movement in Jeremiah 3, 22. Return from your backslidings, I will heal you. Indeed, we come to you. Why? because you are the Lord our God. Again, who God is and his work on our behalf is the ground for our coming to the Lord in repentance. Number five, false repentance comes from despondency, but true repentance from encouraging hope. If you're walking through this series and you have the question, how do I know if what I'm experiencing is true repentance or a false, or as he says, counterfeit repentance? It looks like it, but it's not really true repentance, evangelical repentance. One way is to look and ask yourself, is there despondency here? Or is there encouraging hope? Now, you might be thinking, how did Cajun word that? How did you modernize that preacher? Well, here's what he says. False penitence come commonly issues from discouragement and despondency. But true repentance from encouraging hope. Listen to what he says on page 96. The sincere penitent. Person who is repenting. The sincere penitent should indeed be jealous and distrustful of himself. But he must not distrust the compassionate Savior, nor despond if he would maintain the exercise of evangelical repentance or of any other spiritual grace. Notice the clear distinction there. We can look at ourselves and be discouraged. But if in the entire project we are simply discouraged, we're not looking where we need to look, which is, as he says, the compassionate Savior. So if all you see in your hatred of sin is, woe is me, there is no hope, you're not looking up. You're not looking at Christ. Now that doesn't mean you're not a true believer. It could very well be that in this battle with this particular darling sin, you fall into it, you repent of it, you stop it for a while, you fall into it again, and you get in this cycle where there is this deep discouragement. It's not wrong, as he says, to distrust yourself. But you cannot, if you're going to repent and find victory over that sin, you cannot distrust the compassionate Savior. and be despondent of His mercy and grace, if you are going to have gospel repentance. I guess number five could be summarized in this way. When you see sin in your life, where are you looking? I mean, if you're a true believer, you're going to be discouraged when you see sin. Discouraged in the sense that you don't like what you see. discouraged in the fact that you wish that it wasn't there, and in some cases, time and time and time again. But evangelical repentance, true gospel repentance, will look to the compassionate Savior and have hope because of who He is. False repentance will, and this wasn't in any way meant to be connected to the sermon earlier, but it will keep us pridefully focusing on ourselves. You know, let me say it this way. Sometimes in the Christian life, with particular sins with which we wrestle, we find ourselves saying, why can't I just? Well, I have an answer for that. You have an answer for that. You're a sinner. You love sin. But God has changed you, and so that love is now a wrestling, Romans 7. But if in those moments you focus too much on the pronoun I, you will not look at Christ. And that's where hope comes from. Until you no longer have breath in your lungs, you have every ability to go to Christ at any time and plead with him to strengthen your repentance and sorrow for sin. Okay, number six. Counterfeit repentance springs from enmity to God and His holy law, but true repentance from love to both. Cajun says this, he, and I put in here for us the he that he's referring to, he, the truly repentant one, loves God and His holy law. And therefore, he does not desire that the law should be bent to his corruptions. but that his heart and life should be fully subjected to the law as a rule of his duty. I love the way that he says that. The true penitent, the true repentant one does not want God's law to be bent towards his corruptions, but that his heart and life should be bent to the law as a rule of duty. And don't lose sight of this. The law is a rule of our duty. Not a covenant of works. And I know sometimes some of you, perhaps with a little smile, think, Pastor Ryan's talking about covenant stuff again. Here he goes. We'll just watch him as he goes off on his covenant ramblings. But this is actually important, at least this piece. I think it's all important, but this piece is crucial. If you don't understand what the covenant of works is, you may inadvertently turn your obedience into a lifetime of earning favor with God. Your opportunity to earn favor with God was crushed when your great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather failed on your behalf. From the Garden of Eden forward after the fall, unless God completely saves us, we will not be saved. So the covenant of works is, I will be able to earn favor, I will be able to earn standing. After that, the only hope that you have is that God sends a substitute your way to take your penalty and to give you a righteous record. And you do have that, Christian. And what that means then is that now the Ten Commandments are a law that serve as a rule of how to live. It is never a rule for strengthening your justification. I'm going to sound like an antinomian for just a second. Everybody knows what an antinomian is. Anti-law. A person who thinks that now because we're saved, because grace, should we sin that grace may abound? An antinomian would also be someone who denies that God's law continues. The Christian who is truly justified who then murders someone or commits adultery several times is not less justified than they were prior to those sins. Now, I don't suggest to you that you murder. I don't suggest to you that you commit adultery. But I use those worst of the worst sins for a moment to point out that we don't strengthen our justification. And so the law becomes for us a way of glorifying God. And false repentance springs from an enmity to God and His law. But true repentance comes when we actually begin to love God and we love His law. A great book by Sinclair Ferguson, Yes, the Whole Christ, but the one that follows after that, Devoted to God, talks about how Christians will love God's law because it's God's law. But we love God's law because we love God. And so we want to honor God's law as true believers. Cahoon continues with two more, number seven, So these are eight ten point sermons back in the 1700s. False repentance involves partial or outward change. But true repentance is a change of heart and turning from sin. This is the one that we all know was coming at some point in this book. For this book to be biblical, this statement actually would need to be said in one way or another. False repentance involves only partial turning from sin or just outward change. But true repentance is a change of the heart and a turning from sin. Now, perhaps you're thinking to yourself, well, there are sins that I'm still wrestling with. So maybe I have false repentance, which means maybe I'm not a believer. It's actually. Important. For us to make the crucial distinction. Between outward. And inward. You are going to wrestle. I am going to wrestle with sin until Christ returns. That should not fuel a complacency for wrestling with sin. But it ought for us to understand that we are not perfectionists. We're not a part of the theological movement that says that full and complete sanctification is possible in this life. So you will always be wrestling with sin. The question is, is the wrestling outward? only? Or is there a heart level wrestling that happens within? And thus, because your heart is involved in the equation, you are now actually beginning from the heart to not sin in certain instances in that way where you used to find yourself regularly sinning in that way. Now, you could look at number seven and you could say to yourself, Well, then there's no hope for me because I've been wrestling with this particular sin on and off for, and you fill in the blank. And I would just look at you and say, okay, is that wrestling something that has impacted your heart or only your behavior? If it's impacted your heart, is there a trajectory towards hating that sin more and committing that sin less. If so, you didn't do that in your heart. The Holy Spirit did. So at the risk of sounding like I just don't want to call sinners to repentance. Preacher, you just got to tell them unless they completely stop sinning, they're not going to be saved. I can't tell someone that. Because if I look at a sinner and I say, if you don't completely stop sinning, you won't be saved. None of us will be saved. What I can do is I can say, if you are only changing outward things. And you don't have a change of heart towards this particular sin. And a hatred of it. And in your wrestling with it now, it's not just your outer behavior, but it's actually your heart. You ought to question whether there's actually gospel change in your heart. But if you find yourself in your core wrestling with this sin to your heart's level, then you ought to actually praise the Lord and plead with him that he would give you the gift of repentance increasingly in this area. Number eight, false repentance is temporary, but true repentance is the continued exercise of the sincere believer. See, seven and eight go together, don't they? Well, that was then, I've repented of it, and I don't have to touch it again. But actually, if you're going to have heart level change, there are going to be in your lives, in your life, just this regular pattern, this continued exercise of repentance. And so these two actually go together. Now, he gives some final words of application. I'll just give you three quotes. Page 108. If you would advance in the exercise of godly sorrow. At the risk of sounding repetitive, I'm literally just typing what he says. If you would advance in the exercise of godly sorrow, trust firmly in Jesus Christ for pardoning mercy and sanctifying grace. and see that your grief on any worldly account always terminates in sorrow for sin. Now, when I say to you as a believer, if you want to advance in godly sorrow, here's what you need to do. Most, if not all, are going to be sitting on the edge of their seats going, yes, please tell me, what do I need to do? And you might hear the next phrase and you might think to yourself, really? If I want to advance in the exercise of godly sorrow for sin, I should trust in Christ for pardoning mercy and sanctifying grace? Yes. Yes, that's exactly what you should do. Every moment you should be looking to Christ. Oh Lord, I see this sin in my life, but look at the beauty of your gospel work on my behalf. I plead with you that you may sanctify me through and through. That you would grant me the ability to hate this sin more than I currently hate it. That you would give me the ability by your Spirit to leave off from sinning in this way. To put off and put on. But he goes on to say this on the next page. The true penitent hates sin more in himself than in any other. It's a strong statement, isn't it? Absolutely true. But it's a strong statement. But we tend to do what? Regularly have hatred for the sins in others. much faster than we see them in ourselves. But why would this be the case? A truly repentant person, a true penitent, is going to hate sin most in himself. Why? Because it is now inconsistent with the master who saved him. Does that make sense? That's where the hatred comes from. There's this war within me. There's this wrestling within me. That's why sometimes when new believers come to Christ, I will tell them something like, you're going to experience, likely, if your journey is like many people, you're gonna experience over the next few weeks a joy which you haven't known before. There's gonna be a high of sorts for you, but then you're gonna start to see a war. And I wanna just tell you in advance, new believer, That war does not mean that the joy is gone, nor does it mean that the Savior is gone. It means that his spirit is now changing you from within. And therefore, over time, you will start to hate sin in yourself more than anyone else. One more point of application, he says, if he begin to suspect that his repentance is legal and counterfeit, Let him without delay trust cordially in Jesus Christ for grace to exercise evangelical repentance. Now, we've read this one time, but as we close, I just want to make sure that everyone is tracking with the fact that Cahoon is not out of step. What I'm teaching you from this book is not out of step with what we actually confess. if you were to go to chapter 15. In fact, you can. It's in our Confession of Faith. Little numbers at the bottom in the hymnal, page 678. There's an entire chapter of repentance. What does our confession say? I'm glad we're talking about what Cajun says. Preacher seems to be jazzed about John Cajun. But what does our confession say? Well, it says this. Saving repentance is an evangelical grace. Sounds familiar. Whereby a person being by the Holy Spirit made sensible of the manifold evils of his sin does by faith in Christ. Wait a minute. Repentance is a gift of grace which is brought about in us by the Holy Spirit and it is accomplished by faith in Christ. It's almost as if Cajun was reading our confession and he kind of was because he was a Westminster confession of faith guy, which is almost identical here. Does, by faith in Christ, humble himself for it with godly sorrow, detestation of it and self-abhorrency, praying for pardon and strength of grace. with a purpose and endeavor by supplies of the Spirit to walk before God and to all well-pleasing in all things." This is what our confession says. Repentance is a gift of God's grace, and we grow in it by faith in Christ. The next. sentence speaks to the fact that as repentance is to be continued through the whole course of our lives, upon the account of the body of death and the motions thereof, so it is every man's duty to repent of his particular known sins particularly. But then paragraph 5 of chapter 15 of our confession. Such is the provision which God has made through Christ in the covenant of grace, for the preservation of believers unto salvation, That although there is no sin so small, but it deserves damnation. Yet there is no sin so great that it shall bring damnation on them that repent. Which makes the constant pre-repentance necessary. So what Kahuna is teaching here is rather in step with our confession of faith. In fact, to view it any other way would actually mean that we will experience a hindrance in gospel repentance. If we think Jesus saves me, now I'm going to go work up repentance. We will not work up repentance. But if we think Jesus has saved me, the whole Christ has given me a whole salvation, now I'm going to go live in that. Part of the blessing of his covenant work is the gift of repentance. So I'm going to live that out, and when I see a lack of it, I'm going to ask him for more. He is the giver of the gift. Lord, give me this gift. And in so doing, we are literally training ourselves to do what? Look to Christ. And when we look to Christ and consider his worthiness and meditate on him, guess what that does in our minds? It puts sin increasingly into perspective. And what do we want to do less? Sin. because we see more and more and more the precious Savior. The difference between false and true repentance. Let's take just a second. Any questions that you've got before we pray and before our teenagers and kiddos come our way? Anybody? Yeah. Yep. true repentance flows from the pardon of sin and justification. Yeah? Yes. But you might say that they are... siblings, so to speak. I mean, technically, when we say confession, like if confess sin to God, would be say to God what our sin is. And agree with God. Repentance, technically, could be defined as a turning from sin and a turning to God. So they're so related that while we can distinguish them, I think they almost always go together. Now, it is possible maybe in, where are we? One of these, where you could confess sin and acknowledge this is sin, but not really experience a true turning from it. so to speak, but they always go together. In fact, when the scripture tells us to confess our sins, for he is faithful and just, to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness, there is a sense in which we're called regularly to go to God as father, to confess our sins, which implies in that verse we're turning from them, acknowledging them to the Lord, and being cleansed in our relationship with the Lord. So great question, very much intertwined, but yeah, there are some distinctions we could make between confession and repentance. Good, maybe time for one more if anyone has a question. Maybe an application for evangelism. We are right to call people to repentance for sin, the scriptures do. but we want to make sure that when we're presenting the gospel, when we're evangelizing, our evangelism is not going to the world and telling them to repent. In evangelism, we should go to the world and give them the law, then give them the gospel, because the gospel and only the gospel is the fuel for repentance, and then call them as a response to the law and the gospel to repent. If I stand on the street corner Or I'm in a relationship. So let's say it's street evangelism or relational evangelism. And all I ever do is tell someone to repent, but I never actually preach Christ to them. I'm not proclaiming the gospel. I'm not evangelizing. I'm telling them to do something. But remember, the gospel is what Christ has done. So we should call people to repentance. We don't need to be afraid of that word repent. We just want to make sure that as much as it depends on us, we actually give them the law so that they see where they stand before God. Then we give them the gospel. This is what Christ has done. And then we call them to repentance, right? Because if we don't, we're looking at a sinner saying, here's what you should do. And quite frankly, they're living their lives under a covenant of works anyway, assuming that it's always about what I do. So true repentance comes from Which one was it? The one that our brother asked me to put up there. Comes from the pardon of sin and justification. So repent, because Christ has done everything to save you. Come to him. Okay, for the sake of time, let me close us in prayer. Living God, I thank you for the doctrine of repentance. We do pray that you would help us to see what a glorious gift it is, and in the pursuit of it, that we would not take our eyes off of Christ, but that our gaze would be fixed towards Him, the compassionate Savior, because that is the fuel for repentance. And He is the one who pours out gifts upon His people, one of which is the blessing of repentance. And so we pray. that you would cause us to never take our eyes off of him, even in our deepest battles with sin. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen.