Okay, so we're looking at the second part and concluding chapter 15 of the Baptist Confession of Faith. And last week, as you'll notice on page 1 of your notes, as we said last week, there's 5 paragraphs in the chapter and then we have the brief outline of the 5 paragraphs. In paragraphs 1 to 2 we have those who receive repentance, the recipients of repentance. Then in paragraph 3, We have the nature of repentance, in other words what repentance is. And then what we're going to look at tonight is paragraphs 4 and 5, the continuance of repentance and the provision of repentance. So if you turn over there in your notes, and I won't be saying that anymore, so you'll have to follow as you see, as you hear me go along. Paragraph 4, the continuance. The sentence 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. Now what I've done is slightly different than what I've done before. before, I've put a number of questions and answers based upon the paragraph. Initially, to be honest with you, the reason for that was that I only had two paragraphs left and I thought if I only just thought of the paragraph, there might be 10 minutes to be finished. But the more I read the paragraph, the more they opened up to me during the week. So the first question we have on page 2 is when does the Christian repent according to paragraph 4? That's referring back to the themes of the book. And the answer is simply all his or her life as it says, as repentance, is to be continued through the whole course of our lives. Therefore, event for the Christian. It's not something we do at some point in our lives and then we sort of get on to other things. Repentance is an ongoing experience for the believer. That's why paragraph brings this idea of the continuance, or the ongoing nature of repentance. Therefore, as I often say to people, if somebody comes to me and says, well, I'm not sure I'm saved, I'm not sure I'm right with God, well then what you do is you get right back to the basics, come before God, confess your sins, confess Christ as Saviour and as Lord, and you never get away from that. Our daily experience should be those things. In other words, we don't confess Christ as Lord on the 6th of May 1985 as I did initially and then never do it again and repent initially. It's an ongoing, an ongoing, not an ongoing, an ongoing experience for the believer. Note, Why is repentance to be continued throughout the whole course of our lives? Good question, isn't it? Simple answer. Because of the continual sin in our lives. The reason we have to continually repent is because we're continually sinning. It's quite basic, it's quite obvious. In the book that I'm reading at the moment, I'm continuing to read it and reading over on private prayer. That's one of the points Thomas Brooks makes. He says the reason we need private prayer and so much of private prayer is because we have so much of private sin. And the reason we need ongoing repentance is because we have ongoing sin. So therefore repentance never ends till the grave. Because sin will never end till the grave. As paragraph 4 says, upon the account of the body of death. The body of death will only leave us at the moment we enter the grave. Then we'll leave the body of death and the body of death. will lead us. Note this paragraph, this proves those who hold to what is called holiness perfection. The Wesley's back in the early days of the Methodist religion, John and Charles Wesley had this idea that you could achieve to a level of holiness in the Christian life that was, you could literally avoid sin. You could, it was possible to live such a holy life that you would go through a day without sinning. And it was called the Holiness Perfection Movement. And this paragraph rejects that idea by implication. Because the body of death and the old man will always be with us till the day that we die. Paul the Apostle did not believe in this holiness perfection. Turn with me to Romans chapter 7. It's a well known passage. You probably know exactly what I'm going to read. Romans chapter 7. And for the sake of time we'll read from verse 14. From verse 14 of Romans chapter 7. And Paul says, For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin. For that which I do, I allow not. For what I would, that do I not. For what I hate, that I do. Now there's a big debate over this passage. Is Paul talking in the past? Or is he talking about his present experience? Well I think, and I would certainly assert, that he's talking about his present experience. And the great apostle Paul says, that the things I want to do, They are the things I don't do. And the things I don't want to do, they are the things that I do. And this whole passage is about that. It says in verse 18, For I know that in me that is in my flesh dwelleth no good thing. For to will is present with me, but how to perform that which is good I find not. Now one of the reasons why I believe this is talking in the present tense, in other words not before he was a Christian, but while he was a Christian, is that it's only as a Christian we can say what verse 80 and says. It's only when we're a believer can we say, I know that in me dwells no good thing. The unconverted man won't say that. He won't say that. The unconverted man thinks that he is inherently good. He might do some bad things, but at the end of the day, he's actually okay. He's not that bad. But Paul as a believer comes to the conclusion, I know that in me dwelleth no good thing. Then down to verse Verse 22, another reason to believe he's talking about himself as a believer. For I delight in the law of God after the inward man, but I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me unto captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am. Not that I was, O wretched man that I am as a believer. Who shall deliver me from the body of this death? And that's where the confession of faith borrows the phraseology, the body of death. I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord, so then with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin. For the believer there is this ongoing battle. between what we would do in our mind, what we desire to do in our mind, and what the sinful flesh would still constrain us to do. The unbeliever doesn't have that battle. The unbeliever just does what he wants. Dan has, I think, a very humorous saying, and he's not here, but, you know, we said this a few times recently, he said, When you get saved, it takes the fun out of sinning. That's true, isn't it? When you get saved, it takes the fun out of sinning. Because there's always in your mind, the stark reality, this is wrong. The unbeliever can sin and be comfortable in his or her sin because there isn't this warfare, there isn't this battle going on in the mind. But for Paul, this battle brings him to the point of saying, oh wretched man that I am. Who shall deliver me? He knows he can't deliver himself. He's looking outside of himself for deliverance. To the Lord Jesus Christ. Back to page 3, how important is it for us to continue in repentance according to paragraph 4? Answer, it is regarded as a duty. So it is every man's duty to repent. In other words, it's not something we do as we grow in grace. It's something we do because God commands us. God commands every man everywhere to repent. And that includes believers. We are commanded to repent. So it is our duty to repent. And as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 16, you have it there in your notes. What know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you? not your own. We don't belong to ourselves anymore. You are bought with a price, therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's. And this is the bottom line for the believer. Once we were redeemed, we became the possession of another. God bought us and we became slaves of righteousness. God took us And we became, instead of being slaves to sin and to self and to Satan. Now we become slaves of righteousness and of God. And He is our Master. And it's our duty to repent. And we shouldn't think, oh well, how good I am to repent. How wonderful that I'm repenting. It makes me so good. No, when we've done all. We are still unprofitable servants as the word of God reminds us. Any good we do is only a response to His goodness to us. I think that's a very sobering biblical truth. And we should never in our minds think that God accepts me a little bit more the more I repent. No. Our repentance is a response. In fact, I would go further than that. Even when we do repent, it's only in the strength of God. It's only in the grace of God. And that's one of the teachings that we emphasized last week. That repentance itself is a gift of God. Something that He gives us rather than something primarily that we do. We don't do repentance. God grants us repentance. Enables us by the Spirit of Grace and the Spirit of Faith to repent and turn away from our sins. Bonus, page 3. Who sins? are we to repent of? So it is every man's duty to repent of his particular known sins. Particularly, as the Lord Jesus said, Notice what it doesn't say. The Lord Jesus doesn't say you are not to point out the faults in other people. He says first deal with your own sins. you will be able to see clearly. Then shalt thou see clearly the cast. So we are actually exhorted by the Lord Jesus to go to our brother. But there is something to happen first. We must go in the knowledge that I have dealt and have had dealings with God. And then I can go in confidence and I will be enabled then to look my brother or my sister in the face with confidence. Not with hypocrisy, but with confidence as a result of me having dealings with God. I will be able to go and look them with a pure spirit into the face. Not saying that we're perfect, but that we have dealt with our sin before God. Then we can go and have dealings with our brother or with our sister. Note finally on paragraph 4 it says, we are to repent of our own sins particularly, but not only. It doesn't say we are to repent of our own sins only. Okay? We should also repent of the sins of our family, of our church, of our community, of our nation, of our world. Now, when somebody starts to miss the meetings, or when somebody in our family is away from the Lord, do we confess that sin corporately? Do we say, Lord, we as a family are sinning? We have committed sin, we are turning away. We as a church If some of the church, if some of the body, you see you can't dissect the body, you can't say, you know, well 10 of us are attending the meetings regularly and 5 are not, but it's ok. No it's not. According to the scriptures, there's the corpus, there's the body reality. And we confess, not just personal sins, but the sins of our family, the sins of our church, the sins of our community, the sins of our nation, the sins of our world. We are responsible when Adam sinned. We all became responsible. We all became guilty. We have a great example of this in Nehemiah chapter 1. Turn back to the book of Nehemiah. Just in case you think I may be wrong in my exegesis here. Just after Chronicles. Samuel, Chronicles. And then you have Ezra, Nehemiah. Do you have a Bible Alice? Alright. Nehemiah chapter 1. And for the sake of time we won't read from verse 1. But Nehemiah hears that the work had stopped. That the walls of Jerusalem were broken down. The gates were burned with fire. And in verse 4 it came to pass, when I heard these words, that I sat down, and wept, and mourned certain days, and fasted, and prayed before the Lord God of heaven, and said, I beseech thee, O Lord God of heaven, the great and terrible God, that keepeth covenant and mercy for them that love him, and observe his commandments. Let thine ear now be attentive, and thine eyes open, that thou mayest hear the prayer of thy servant. which I pray before thee now, day and night, for the children of Israel thy servant, and confess the sins of the children of Israel, which not they, but which we have sinned. Nehemiah includes himself. Both I and my father's house have sinned. We have dealt very corruptly against thee and have not kept the commandments nor the statutes nor the judgments which thou commandest thy servant Moses. Nehemiah puts himself right in there and says we have sinned. We have dealt corruptly. We have forsaken your laws and we need Not only to personally confess but also to confess for our families and our church and our community and our nation and our world. And the proof takes over on page 5 from Luke chapter 19 and verse 8. Maybe Alex you can read that for us. Luke chapter 19 and verse 8. Maybe you can stand up so those who can hear on this Luke chapter 19 and verse 8. You can stand up and read it if you want. Thanks. And Zechariah stood and said unto the Lord, Behold Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor, and if I have taken anything from any man by false accusation, I restore him for promise. Thanks Alex. Now I've noticed in this four specific elements repentance that are revealed in this verse. Four parts or elements of repentance that are revealed in this verse. And the first one is probably, I don't know if it's a great title, but I've entitled it Isolation. Zacchaeus in his repentance first of all stands, sets himself out from the rest of the people. And in that act of standing, he presents himself before the Lord as the sinner. He isolates himself before God, before the Lord Jesus Christ. And there is a need in repentance to do that. I'm going now from the corporate repentance back to the individual. To me as an individual, I need to come before God and say, Lord, I am the sinner. If there was no other sinner in the world, it's as if there was no other sinner in the world. Lord, the sinner is me. I am he. I am the one who has broken your law. I am the one who has forsaken your commandments. I am the one who has rejected you. I have personally broken your commandments. Zacchaeus did not say as many do, Ah well, we're all sinners. We're all sinners. You know the sort of glib, sort of, off the cuff sort of remark, especially in this country, people say, ah sure, you know, no one's perfect. That's actually a justification, isn't it? That's them saying, ah sure, we're all the same, and sure, it's never really going to be any different. Zacchaeus doesn't say that. Zacchaeus sets himself out in the crowd and acknowledges himself. Secondly, there was confession. And said unto the Lord, Behold Lord. Primarily I use the word confession here, because he confesses the Lord Jesus. He confesses Jesus as Lord. As Paul writes in Romans 10, that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart of man believeth unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. Thirdly, conversion. Not just isolation, not just conversion, but also conversion. Behold Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor. Notice what it doesn't say here. He doesn't say, Lord, at some time in the future, I will give to the poor. He says, I, present tense, give to the poor. I have decided already, this does no longer belong to me. Because you have given me everything. I have received the greatest gift. Now I am going to give. As the Lord Jesus, in another place said, freely. You have received, freely give. Isn't that what it's all about? Freely, you have received, freely give. I was walking into work yesterday afternoon and one of the men that I know since I was a teenager, known from the boxing club, the same boxing club that Alex goes to and we train together and he opened his wallet and he showed me prayers that, he says, Catholic prayers. But he just, he says, I've never shared this with anybody before. It's very private. And I was just really overwhelmed with the fact that he was very, very sort of, you know, and I won't say names for the sake of the recording, a very sort of hard man. but opened himself very much to me and shared with me some personal details. A change will come into the heart of Zacchaeus and that's what repentance is all about. That's why God has to give it. Because those who are corrupted by sin and those who are dead in sin cannot repent. We can't repent. It's impossible for the leper to change his spots. It's impossible for those of us who are used to doing wickedness to do righteousness. And if I have taken anything from any man by false accusation, I rest again. Not I will, but I, present tense, restore him fourfold. Restoration is something that's been lost in modern justice. But it's key to biblical justice. Restoring. That's why if someone doesn't get saved, they can never go to heaven. Because they can never restore what they have lost. They can never mend the sin issue. That's why people need to be brought into Christ. I want to say to you tonight, those who are in the room, get a hold of this. That unless you get saved, unless you get saved, you are going to hell. Think about that. Unless Christ converts your soul. And I say this to all of us, none of us are exempt from this because I'm not assuming any of us are saying this point. Unless Christ converts us, we'd go to hell. Four elements of conversion. Isolation, Confession, Conversion, Restoration. And proof text, second proof text, Timothy 1 verses 13 to 15. Maybe Jessica would you stand up and read those verses for us please? Or your voice, okay. Okay. Nathan do you want to read it for us? Thanks very much. Yeah please. First Timothy 1 verses 13 and 15. Paul says, because I did it ignorantly in unbelief. And the question is begged, surely all unbelievers do what they do ignorantly. Calvin on this I think is helpful. He says, but it may be thought that what he now says is to no purpose. For unbelief, which is always blind, can never be unaccompanied by ignorance. I reply, among unbelievers some are so blind that they are deceived by a false imagination of the truth, and in others while they are blinded, yet malice prevails. Paul was not altogether free from a wicked disposition, but he was hurried along by the thoughtless zeal, so as to think that what he did was right. Thus he was an adversary of Christ not from deliberate intention, but through mistake and ignorance. The Pharisees who through a bad conscience slandered Christ were not entirely free instigated by ambition and base hatred of sound doctrine and even by furious rebellion against God so that maliciously and intentionally and not in ignorance they set themselves in opposition to Christ. for the sake of time we will go on to paragraph 5 and finally we have the provision of repentance. Such is the provision which God has made through Christ in the covenant of grace for the preservation of believers into salvation that although there is no sin so small but it deserves damnation. First of all who is is the provision which God has made. It's important to reassert that, isn't it? That God has made this provision of repentance. And we quoted these verses last week, just verse 25. In meekness instructing those that oppose themselves, if God perhaps or peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth. Second question, how has God made this provision? He's made it through Christ. in the covenant of grace. Without Christ we would have nothing. God could not have given us repentance. He could not have given us grace and faith and salvation without Christ. Everything that God has given us is through Christ in the covenant of grace. I'm at the moment going through Calvin on the necessity of reforming the church. And one of the points, it's a treatise that Calvin wrote when the Diet of Spires in 1543 or 44 was on and it was Calvin's treatise or writing to show why the church needed to be changed. Why the church needed to be reformed. And one of the points he makes when it comes to all the different mediators that people use and that people apply to in the Catholic Church. They might use Mary or they might use Gabriel or they might use the Archangel Michael or all sorts of saints. And he says rarely, rarely does anybody use Jesus as their mediator in the church. They'll pray to this saint, they'll pray to that saint. But Carl makes the point, rarely would you hear of anybody using Jesus as their mediator or their intercessor. And yet when it comes to the Scriptures, God has made this provision of repentance only Then what is the purpose of this provision question 3? The purpose, again to quote the paragraph, the purpose is the preservation of believers unto salvation. The preservation of believers unto salvation. How great was the need of this provision of repentance. Again to quote the paragraph, although there is no sin so small but it deserves damnation. One sin The great need of it, and this is where the whole issue of children becomes a difficult subject. One sin, one sin is enough to send a sinner to damnation. I remember, Liam, you like illustrations, don't you? Do you want to come up here and I'll show you? I want you to stand with your head up. Anyway, I remember years ago seeing this illustration of a ruler. And the ruler representing the law of God. And if you get a ruler and you break it in the middle, or break it anywhere, you don't say, oh well the ruler is only broken in one place. You know, I can still use it. No. If it's snapped, yes it's only broken in one place. But it's become useless. The whole thing is broken. It is now useless, you throw it in the bin. And when we break the law of God, even in one place, we've broken the whole law. It's not like you say, oh well, I'll just, you know, put a bit of glue on the one place I've broken God's law. No, we've become law breakers. Another illustration of this is, go to Manchurian prison and You say, well he's a murderer, he's a robber, he's an extortioner, he's this, he hit somebody, but they're all in the same prison. They're all in the same prison. And you look into hell, and you'll see a murderer, and you'll see a liar, and you'll see someone who disobeyed their parents, someone who didn't respect their elders. Someone who didn't live for God. And they are all in the same place. They are all in the same prison. They are all under the same judgment. There is no difference. Great need for this provision of repentance. Then Romans 6.23. Maybe Colette you would stand for us and read Romans 6.23. But the way they put it is that death is the greatest tragedy of all. No, we have here compared and contrasted the covenant of works and the covenant of grace. The wages of sin is death. That's where what depending on us leads us to. But when we depend on the Lord Jesus, the result is eternal life. And finally the last part of the paragraph of paragraph 5. Yet there is no sin so great that it shall bring damnation on them that repent. So here is the contrast. Even though one sin will damn us, yet there is no sin so great that it shall bring damnation on them that repent. Which makes the constant preaching of repentance necessary. How effective Is this provision of repentance? There is no sin so great that it shall bring damnation on them that repent. Isaiah chapter 1 verses 16 and 18. Thanks Liam. Do you want to stand up and read that for us? Isaiah 1 verse 16 and 18. And then Charlotte you can read Isaiah 55 and verse 7. Wash you and make you clean. Put away the evil. of your doings, for before my eyes these things will be done. Come now, and let us read together, saith the Lord. Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. Though they be as red as crimson, they shall be as wool. I think Isaiah 55 shouldn't it? I would exhort you this week to make Isaiah 55 and verse 7 a memory verse. Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts and let him return unto the Lord and he will have mercy upon him and to our God for he will abundantly pardon. God is not a begrudging God He doesn't begrudgingly pardon us. He doesn't say, oh well, you know, like if you do something wrong on somebody and you eventually win them over and they hesitatingly almost forgive you. Oh well, I suppose I'll have to forgive you. God is not like that. He says He will have mercy upon the one who returns to Him and He will abundantly pardon. Abundantly pardon. The final question, what responsibility does this bring upon the Church of Jesus Christ? The responsibility is the constant preaching of repentance. We need to learn from the mistakes of the false religion of this land. When it doesn't make clear the doctrines of the gospel. And we need to constantly make clear the doctrines of grace, the doctrines of the gospel, the doctrine of Christ. Because that's what sets men and women free. That's what sets us free. Let us continue to preach these doctrines for the sake of His name.