We're going to be looking at 2 Timothy chapter 2 toward the end of the chapter, the last four verses. Today's message is called Repentance, the Conscience and Assurance. It's going to be how those things are tied together. So I don't even know if I'm going to get past the first section of repentance. I mean, repentance is a great big subject and I'm going to talk about how that a lot of people convolute it. So to undo that mess might take more than today, just in the first part. So look at Second Timothy chapter two in verse 23. But avoid foolish and unlearned questions, knowing that they gender to strifes or give birth to strifes. But the servant of the Lord must not strive, but be gentle to all, apt to teach, patient In meekness, instructing those who oppose themselves, if peradventure or perhaps God will grant them repentance, give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth that they may recover themselves from the snare of the devil who are taken captive by him at his will. So today, again, we're going to be looking at repentance, the conscience and assurance. As I mentioned earlier, there's a use the word convoluted. There's a lot of confusion about the issue or the subject or the topic of repentance. The first week I was born, I was in a church and I haven't missed many days between then and now. And half of them were in false religion. But during that time, I've heard a lot about repentance and much more, I believe, is wrong on the subject of repentance than what's wrong on the subject of faith. There's a lot of wrong stuff about faith, too. So there's confusion about both. If we take our minds back to Any false conversion or conversions, plural, some of us had more than one false conversion. I know I did. In other words, in times past, we were deceived at many given points in times. Bill Parker has said before, and I think he got it from somebody else, everybody thinks they're saved before they're saved until they're saved. And that seems to be the case in most people. So in other words, there were a few times before when I thought I was saved, before I was actually saved, until when I really was. So if we could take our minds back to those experiences, I think we have to realize and submit to the fact that in our false conversion, if we had any, our faith and our repentance, what we considered faith and repentance, was not based on truth, but rather was a self-made or self-directed faith of repentance. And that's the only conclusion I think we can come to. It wasn't biblical. We defined it in our own terms. We did with it what we thought that we should do with it. And where it was directed was a misdirection. And that's what we still see among people that we talk to. I know social media has exploded this thing as far as like, people have an access to what people think, because any Joe Blow that wants to say something can say something about what they think. And most people don't think before they say. And even if they do, that's the problem. In false religion, if they think before they say, they're still spewing out wrong stuff. It's misdirected or self-directed. The first two verses there I want us to just briefly look at, and we're going to concentrate mainly on the last two of the four that we read. But the first one in verse 23, and I think we can speak from experience on being a part of this in the past, being immersed in what this is talking about. But avoid foolish and unlearned questions, knowing that they give birth to strife. They have plural here, strifes. I think most of us in the past were on that end of it, where we were the ones talking foolishly and asking unlearned questions. And here, it's talking about avoiding them, not asking them, but even participating in taking them and getting involved in them to where you just don't nip it in the bud and say, look, that's That's not the issue. Here's the issue and bringing it to a gospel issue. Because foolish and unlearned questions, they gender strife. That means they misdirect our focus and our attention from the gospel to their foolishness and their unlearnedness and a lot of spinning of the wheels. And I'm not going to list the goofy things that are popular. You guys already know them. You know, everybody always gets a laugh out of those things. Aliens, dinosaurs, babies, the guy on the desert island. She got other things to add to that list. But anyway, the counter statement here, verse 24, but the servant of the Lord now, all God's people in the local body, local church body, those have been redeemed and are in the assembly and are in unity and doctrine, our servants of Christ, our ambassadors of Christ should be preaching, witnessing, teaching, and so on in the world amongst everybody you know, as the idea goes, to promiscuously preach the gospel to every creature, every person. So this is the attitude that should be had right here. The servant of the Lord must not strive. So go back to that last verse. It says these questions, they gender strife. They produce, they birth strifes. Well, the servant of the Lord don't, in other words, don't get tangled up in that stuff. Sometimes people just divorce the context for the next verse. You know what I mean? That's why he's saying that. But, be gentle to all. So, in other words, when you talk to people, say, look, I'm not here to argue. I'm not all about strife. If that's what you're all about, you know I'm not talking to you. I don't have time. But here, Paul's letter to Timothy says, don't do it. So, in other words, we should know better. And here's a warning not to do it. But to be gentle to all, apt to teach, and be patient in doing that. Now, we're going to get into that. This is the basic topic of repentance and going to try to cover a lot of stuff here today. Like I said, I don't think we'll get through with it, even just repentance. But I want to talk about some things about repentance that most preachers don't talk about. Some of the things are going to be basic, but other things are going to be maybe challenging to get you to think about some things. Verse 25 says in meekness, instructing those who oppose themselves. Now, we've really majored on this before, how that those that are not believers, they probably think they have their best interest in mind. In that, they say, well, I'm seeking something, I'm engaged in this Bible stuff, and I think I know what I'm talking about, and I'm wanting to, you know, carry on along this journey of seeking something and getting to my final destination. So they think in their mind they're doing something that's, they're seeking after God. But you know what? They oppose themselves and they don't even know it. So therefore the foolish and unlearned questions are getting in the way of them knowing the truth, even hearing the truth. Those questions, foolish and unlearned questions are in the way. They're distracting from what we need to really get to, Christ in the Hymn Crucified. And this idea of them opposing themselves, they are totally unaware of. And therefore, we have to insert the main ingredients of the gospel, which is the offense of the cross, which is the fact that what Christ brought in by his doing and dying, on the cross is that perfect righteousness is the only acceptable way to come to God and that is what they don't understand or believe and that's what we have to get to so that perhaps per adventure perhaps God just might we know if they're elect he will give them repentance and notice this to the acknowledging of the truth now I don't want to get too far ahead of ourselves, but this idea here of repentance, as I said, most people have a convoluted idea. And if they were to read this verse, and we're going to look at some more verses that prove that repentance is a gift. This is one. We're going to repeat it toward the bottom. But it says that God will give them repentance. You know, I want to unpack the whole Armenian idea, you know, that the Armenian, the plagian, the semi-plagian, the conditional, the works, righteousness guy. thinks that they have repentance in them. It's available. It's an offer. It's there. They just have to do it, right? In other words, they think repentance is basically an opportunity that God has always has around them that they can just, whenever they decide, they can repent. That's the common idea. So they would maybe think of it in a gift that way. It's a gift in that it's there. Well, we know that's not the case. We know that's an impossibility because of the state of man's heart. I posted yesterday on social media that man, because of the state of his nature and his condition, he cannot repent. It's not that he won't. He can't. And because he can't, he won't. The can't drives the won't. So what makes the difference? The sovereignty of God and salvation. If that person is elect, in time, God will grant them repentance, notice, to the acknowledging of the truth. Now, the common person in religion would say, I thought repentance was repenting from sins. What does it say here? Repentance to the acknowledging of the truth. Now that's a head-scratcher for most religious people because I imagine a big sector of the religious pie would look at this and say, that kind of diverts from this sinner's prayer system where I got to go through these stages and steps, right? I got to confess, repent, call on the name of the Lord. And, you know, and they bunch these up in one big conditional package. And this kind of like throws a throws a stick into the spokes, so to speak. So what's this word repentance? Word repentance here is metaneia, and it means a change or reversal of mind. And it comes from another word, repent. This word is repentance, and it comes from the word repent, which means to think differently or reconsider. Now, if you do, I challenge you to do this if you have tools to do it sometime when you have the spare time. I did a word search on the word repent, repented and repentance. and added the word sin and give it a try. You're not going to find very much. And, you know, that's why we've heard people even from this pulpit that's visited saying, you know, that's that's a common idea that religious people have, but you're not really going to see that in the scriptures like people talk about it. Now, when you search for the three forms of that word, repent, repented, repentance, you'll at least see things that are related to faith in the change of mind. Now, I've talked about this in reference to maybe a model on how one would preach the gospel, and I kind of got this from Henry Mahan, and the idea of repentance is really connected to the change of mind in these three things. Number one, who God is and what he demands. Now think about as you go through here, is there anything that's going to change about that issue before compared to after one is converted? Who God is and what he demands. Of course, there's going to be a change of mind. Secondly, who we are and how that we cannot meet God's demands and who Christ is and how he alone met those demands. So all three of those things require a change of mind when one passes from darkness into the marvelous light. So let me ask this question, do all three of those things that I just mentioned, do they relate to sin in some way? Sure they do, no doubt about it. The biggest problem I see in what most people call repentance is that they view it as, and I'll explain this as I go, legal repentance, directly connected to the law, or what's related to it, something that looks kinda like Catholic penance. We know that those way out there on the opposite end of the theological spectrum believe that their repentance gives them a new heart or regeneration. It's meritorious, in other words. This of course makes repentance an actual work of man, which implies it merits regeneration by the act of repentance. Now we say it all the time, repentance is not a condition to fulfill in order to be saved. It just doesn't work that way. Faith is not that either. Faith or repentance are not conditions to be fulfilled in order to be saved. A lot of people listening to this on Sermon Audio or YouTube would just, that's enough right now. They can't even get past that. Like what? Because that's the norm out there. So connected to that, just briefly, I want to, I want to say that I believe that when God saves us, there is a, there's an order theologically or logically or biblically in how things take place chronologically. And I believe that it is regeneration first, then faith, then repentance. I could do a message on the reasons on why those things are in that order, but most of us know why. I'm not going to spend too much time on that. But I said that to just prove a person has to be regenerate first before they repent. They don't repent and or believe to get regenerated. That's a lie. That's a false gospel. So both faith and repentance, they're the immediate fruit and effect of regeneration, not the cause of regeneration. Now I've heard, and I don't know how much I kind of jokingly say I torture myself, but I mean, I really do it for an analytical exercise, and I feel that I have to keep up on certain people and what they're saying currently to be aware so I can warn people. But there are those who claim to be sovereign grace, Calvinist reform, and you'll hear them, especially on the street. They'll do the street preaching stuff. And I've heard some of them say that if you repent, God will give you a new heart. They're on the stump. I mean, they of course, they got to sit up on the they got to be up higher than everybody else for some reason, even though they get their little megaphone. They got to be up above everybody else. And I'll say that if you repent, God will give you a new heart. Or if you repent, God will put a new spirit within you. That's baloney. That is not true. That can't be done. That's a lie. How bad is that? I mean, is that something that we should make a fuss about? Well, depending on what you think about Billy Graham, I got in my notes here, that's classic Billy Graham-ism. Now, it depends on your opinion of Billy Graham, what you think about Billy Graham. I think he's a false teacher. He's a false prophet. He never preached the gospel. He wrote a book on how to be born again. That was the title of the book, how to be born again. Of course, it was conditional and meritorious by believing and repenting. Now a lot of these street preachers that would say what I just said they said, or some would be a little more quote-unquote consistent in their Sovereign Grace Calvinist Reformed theology, and they would not say that, but yet they still look at Billy Graham like he was used to win millions of souls to Christ. You're stepping in the same doo-doo. It's the same garbage. tells me a lot when people talk about who they look up to. And if somebody looks up to Billy Graham, who always was a false teacher, always preached a false gospel, then that tells me a lot about what they think about the glory of God and the cross of Christ. The offense of the cross tells me about their concern for the character of God. They have none. They have none. Bill Graham preached a different Jesus. I know because number one, the scripture, I'm not going to use my experience as number one. The scripture tells us this in so many words. But number two, I used to believe in the same Jesus. I was deceived under that garbage for a couple of decades. All right, so let's go ahead and shift gears here. The basic idea that repentance is a gift. We're gonna look at a few verses here. Acts chapter five, let's go there first. We know that faith and repentance are gifts. If you look them up, there are more, at least twice the amount of verses that talk about faith being a gift than repentance. We're going to look at a few repentance gift verses. But those gifts of faith and repentance are part of what the scripture calls spiritual blessings in Christ. It's what Christ had merited by his death that is eventually dispensed out by the Holy Spirit to his people that he died for. In other words, he actually purchased these gifts for his people by his accomplished work. You would think it goes without saying that faith and repentance again, are not offers for somebody to accept or reject. So there's the two ideas. There's the two ideas of here's faith, do you want it? So you accept or reject. Or faith and repentance are there available around you and the opportunity is always there. Two false ideas. Two false ideas. Either way, it puts the power in the sinner's hand. And I don't know how much power you guys think that sinners who are dead in their trespasses and sins have, not much power. But the truth is that God doesn't bargain or barter with spiritually dead sinners. You don't strike deals with God, especially when you're dead. And God has to have a mediator for you to deal with him. Repentance like faith is a gift of God and and that work of God is effectually worked in his sheep. So that's the contrast between what some think is an offer. It's not a gift in that it's an offer. It's a gift in that he works it in his people. Look at Acts 5 31. I just want to just give some proof texts. showing the wording in this fact or truth that repentance is a gift from God. Acts 5 31. This one God has exalted to be a ruler and savior to the right hand in order to give repentance and remission of sins to Israel. Notice it kind of I had said this in so many words that who God is and what he accomplished is in place so that he is exalted so that he can give this gift in order that he can give this gift. So in other words, this is something that he had earned. And he turns around, as I said earlier, that it's dispensed in, by and through the work of the Holy Spirit in his people. Acts 11. Let's look there in verse 18. So we're just just looking at the basic idea that repentance is a gift of God. Doesn't come from within man, neither does faith. Scripture says not all men have faith. You could just as well say not all men have repentance. Or not all men repent. Acts 11, 18, when they heard these things, they were silent and glorified God saying, then God has also granted repentance to life to the nations or to the Gentiles. God has given repentance to life to the Gentiles. Now, the one we read in Acts 5 didn't say repentance. Of something or from something just said repentance here. In other words, it didn't say sin, repentance of sin or repentance from sin. Here it says granted repentance to life. To the nations. And then then in our text. already emphasized what it said back in 2 Timothy 2.25, and meet this instructing those that oppose themselves, if perhaps God will give them or grant them, that's a gift, repentance again to the acknowledging of the truth. If we go back to our definition of a change of mind, it is a change of mind of those three things that I had mentioned earlier. And I said this is a pattern that we can use for gospel preaching. Who God is and what he demands, who we are and how we can't meet those demands, who Christ is and how he satisfied those demands. The only one that could satisfy those demands. So the acknowledging of the truth concerns those three things, at least. And then our text, the next verse, the last verse in our text is that they may recover themselves out of the snare, that's a trap, of the devil. who are taken captive by him at his will. Now, I don't wanna camp out here and spend too much time on the fact that this proves that man does not have free will. The devil's will is stronger than man's will. This verse is clear on that. Satan or the devil has unregenerate lost man captive by Satan's own will. And that might lend to this idea that we're trying to prove here that man is naturally in this trap or snare. I don't know. Some people may or may not be used to that idea of snare. In my younger days, trying to build traps, you know, a box with a stick and a carrot and string and that, you know what I mean? I've seen stuff. I've seen little leg hold traps for rabbits and different Things like that. We know about bear traps. See those in cartoons sometimes, right? See characters, people stepping in them and, you know, they say, ow, you know, bear trap, it might just take your leg off. I have a little bit of experience playing the drums. And when you hit the main drum, which is between your legs, if you have them set up, most people have it that way. The one that keeps a beat is called the snare drum. it traps you into the beat. I don't know if anybody ever thought about that, but it's what runs things. And it's pretty consistent. If you don't have a song that's like Charlene listens to jazz, it can be crazy. It's not the same all the time. But most music, it'll trap you in the same thing. If not that, it'll eventually bring you back around to where you started in reference to a trap. So repentance will, or the lack thereof, will keep you in the trap of the devil. And you don't even know it again. So what is that? And I'm going to spend the rest of the message maybe kind of saying what that trap is. And this is the part that religion, for the most part, and even Sovereign Grace Scholars Reform people are ignorant of these points of what the trap is. that causes us by nature to oppose ourselves, wherein we need repentance to acknowledge the truth and get out of this trap. So most people would just think, well, Scott, it's simple. It's just sin in general. I mean, I'm used to hearing that as a response. So let me let me just kind of start and unpack some of the things we've talked about earlier. Repentance is not the ground, the cause. or a condition for forgiveness of sins. I mentioned that repentance doesn't merit us the new birth. I already mentioned that. But in reference to sin, repentance is not the ground cause or condition to get forgiveness. In other words, let me list some things here. I've got four things. Repentance is not the propitiation for sin. Let's not rob the glory. Christ is the perpetuation. That word just means satisfaction of law and justice. Repentance is not the righteousness that God accepts. What people have done, they have swapped out the object of faith. We just gave one example. Repentance is not the perpetuation. There's the object of faith. Christ is the perpetuation. This false view of repentance is swapping out the object of faith, taking Christ out and putting something in there that we do, like repentance being the perpetuation or repentance being the righteousness. Repentance doesn't meet the standard. Repentance can't satisfy God's law and justice. Repentance is not asking for forgiveness for sins to be forgiven. It's another false idea. That's that whole invitation-alter-call system. Repentance is not confessing your sins in order to be forgiven, which those last two in most people's minds that are in that system are synonymous. Same thing. So repentance, I want to convey to you today, and most of you already know here, is your change of mind about that, what I just said, changing your mind about those wrong ideas. that we are naturally trapped in and we don't even know it. We oppose ourselves that way. So repentance are not those things. So we need to change our mind about that because the blood of Christ takes care of removing sin. Without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sins. and Christ's blood is what we're talking about. So when we bring up the subject of repentance in a evangelistic context, there seems to be a setting of the stage, so to speak, like any other subject. I mean, it's weird. I've noticed this a lot lately. When you talk about a subject, there'll be a certain group talking about it, thinking the same thing you're thinking about, and there'll be a neighboring group using the same terms, and we already sometimes can anticipate it. They're thinking about something totally different. And it's like, you can be in this group and say, watch this, watch this. And you start talking about stuff, and there they go. You can predict a trajectory. I see it all the time on social media. It's a learning process, and we shouldn't make fun of people, but it's odd how that was like, OK, watch, here it goes, you know? Because we were there. That's why. And we see in the scripture, like in our text, it's a trap. They oppose themselves. Let's watch this unfold in real time, right? We have eyes to see and ears to hear. And again, let me stress, first and foremost, it's because the scripture says, and then we experience it to be so. You know, just like the scripture said, we talked about last week, I think it was in Romans 6. It tells us all these things about the beautiful things that Christ has done for us. And then Paul says, all right, now reckon that to be so. And we do that in real life. Now, depending on who you are, and that means based on what you believe, the emphasis will be on what way, either conditions or sovereign grace. It's going to be one of the, it's going to be either a conditional thing or a sovereign grace thing. depending on who you are, which means what you believe, what way you're going to see it. You're going to understand it in what way, conditional or by God's free and sovereign grace. So then it gets to focus on, OK, you get past that. It gets to focus on then what are we even looking at as far as the meaning of repentance? Because we already talked about the convolution of weird ideas. What are we even looking at? So again, do you think there might be foolish and unlearned questions? And when we start to unpack this? Yes. And we have to weed through all that stuff. Look at a survey, some verses here that just deal with repentance. Second Corinthians seven. I want you to see this here. Verse 10. Some of us have experienced this, have had to do this, have had to gone through this. in the school of grace, 2nd Corinthians 7 in verse 10. For godly sorrow works repentance to salvation not to be repented of, but the sorrow of the world works death. Now, this would be just a message by itself. There's a lot of stuff here. So I want to hit on a few things. Notice what this implies heavily, that there is a repentance that is to be repented of. Here it says, Godly sorrow works repentance to salvation, not to be repented of, which means it implies there are some forms of repentance that do need to be repented of. Right. And it goes on to say what that is, and it uses the generic term world, and we know the word world sometimes and seemingly. I'm trying to get used to this. The word world seemingly is increasingly to me to be understood as a religious world more and more and more. I just continue to see it in scripture. And maybe it's just a debriefing from me having the wrong mindset and false religion. Thirty four years ago and that is being squeezed out of me slowly, seeing that the word world and the word flesh, things like that are referring to religion, false religion, not in every single case. But seemingly, you know, I've come across verses I haven't read in a while and I'll see world or flesh and I'll think. That's religion, that's not talking about like gross outward immorality, that's in the context is talking about religion a lot of times. So, notice here, the sorrow of the world works death. And we know that there, what's it say in Proverbs? Two different chapters in Proverbs. There is a way that seems right unto a man and the end thereof is death. Now, think about those two verses in Proverbs I just quoted. I mean, I just kind of like threw them out there. They need to soak in. There's a way that seems right into a man. Bring that into this context. The sorrow of the world works death. If there's a way that seems right into a man and the end of that way is death. What is that way? It's the way of the trap that we were talking about in our context. The way of sin got me into this thing. Obedience will get me out. The way of self-righteousness naturally. I can do something to make, I can self-reconcile. That's the way of death. It's unbelief. It is having no fear of God before your eyes. It's not having any reverence to God. It's rejecting the offense of the cross. The offense of the cross says that the only way of acceptance is perfect obedience, and that was fulfilled by Christ. That's the only way. And we always have to do only with all capitals, bolded, underlined, and highlighted. Really, we really mean only, right? Not just using that word because it's one of the five solas of the Reformation. We've seen that those solas a lot of times don't mean much to those Reformed people. Not all of them, but I'd venture to say most. They don't really mean that. But we stress that words have meanings. And we stress that when we stress them, the meaning is even more important. Let's pay attention to what words have meanings concerning. What most people consider to be repentance, again, it's legal, fear-based. It's the very thing or idea that needs to be repented of. That's the trap. I'll say that again. What most people consider to be repentance is the very thing or idea that needs to be repented of. And that's what that verse is. For godly, sorrow works repentance to salvation not to be repented of, but sorrow of the world works death. And the only thing that's gonna clue people into this problem, most people are just not even gonna take that in. But the only thing that can clue people into that problem is the gospel has to explode with its dynamite. those preconceived self-righteous biases that you had in your false religion. It's an impossibility until the spirit of God takes the gospel and changes your mind about those things. So that's why we should see that this is nothing new, really, but it's just very, very few people recognize it and are talking about it. Very, very few. There's a video, or I'm sorry, on Sermon Audio, Randy Wages, he's a member of Eager Avenue Grace Church. He did a message called Initial Repentance, and I really liked it. It kind of summed up what I might say in five or six messages, like he summed it up in 40 minutes. And I shared it with some people, and I should have expected it. Some people I shared it with, it's like, what's the big deal? You know, I didn't see it. So you toss it out there to people hoping like somebody will agree with this, because when I see that somebody agrees with this, this is when I have confidence in certain people. When I was 15, I wasn't a believer until I was 20. 21, 22. But when I was 15, I heard a message on repentance in a Baptist church. This guy was a supposedly believe the doctrines of grace. But you know how it is that some of those guys still preach repentance in the wrong way. But I heard a message on repentance. And what I concluded out of that message, I remember it clear as day because this was one of my false conversions that actually went forward and did the thing, you know, I concluded out of that message that I still sin because I still break the law. That's what his message told me. And my conclusion was, therefore, I have not repented. That's what I got out of that message. That was the heavy handed communication out of that message that I was lost because I continue to sin. So I'm 15 years old. I'm living in my own head. I have no idea what anybody else is thinking. You know, I just thought I was lacking. Everybody else must be doing pretty good, right? They're go-getters. They're getting it done. They're keeping the law. Did I hear about the righteousness of God revealed in the gospel whereby Christ satisfied law and justice and he was the law for righteousness? I didn't hear that. Didn't hear that at all. But to stop sinning is what many are implying today when they talk about repentance. Now, let me just say, should we stop sinning? We ought not sin, right? Scripture is clear on we ought not sin. But stop sinning is not repentance. That's made up. It's a pipe dream. Change your mind is what the word means. Stop sinning, again, that's not repentance. Now I've heard some of these street preachers actually say repentance means stop sinning. I heard Ray Comfort say that one time. And the reason it's brought to my attention because some of the easy-believe-ism, that'd be the Armenian Baptists, made a video and they took that I saw the whole video in its context. They took that part out and said, look, see what he's saying. He's saying he said it. Repentance means stop sinning. It doesn't. It's a lie. And that was probably brought to his attention. Ray Comfort probably doesn't say that anymore. That way, at least, even though his whole doctrine implies that. But it's what a lot of these guys think it means. But really the issue is, here's the issue about that in its context. How is sin dealt with? That's what the issue is. It's not whether or not you can stop it. It's how do you deal with it? You know what some people have done? They realize they can't stop it and what they do, they kill themselves. I've known a couple and I was, um, By God's grace, I was a help to one not to kill himself and helped him come out of the Lordship lie of salvation, quote unquote Lordship. Let's go to Romans 7. And look at some verses that are related to this. These two verses don't use the word repentance, but it's related in the context of what's going on here. Verse four. Romans 7, 4, Wherefore, my brethren, you also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ that you should be married to another, even him, Christ, who is raised from the dead. that we should bring forth fruit unto God. Now, I bring this up because of the last verse we quoted talking about death. Remember that verse? Let me go back and read it. For godly sorrow works repentance to salvation not to be repented of, but the sorrow of the world works death. OK, so look at the next verse. Verse five, Romans seven four. Notice this when we were in the flesh. When when we were in the flesh, the motions of sins which were by the law. You see two things that are equated there. When you were in the flesh, this stuff's done by the law. did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto death. So this is talking about that trap. When we were unbelievers, we had this natural idea that sin got us into this obedience to get us out. Self-reconciliation. We're going to look inside. We've got either faith and repentance is around us or we naturally have it in us. Let's bring it out. Let's do these things to establish a righteousness of our own in the flesh by and through the law and bring forth fruit in the way that seems right unto a man. Here it says it's fruit unto death. Fruit unto death. So on this issue of repentance, there can be at least two subjects discussed. And just reference of timing, I want to just briefly touch on this. There is initial repentance, and that would be considered, and I might be self-terming some of this stuff, I've used these terms in our congregation. Initial repentance, some would call it evangelical repentance, or gospel repentance. This would be what we would be talking about when we evangelize. Or, ongoing repentance, which would be in the context of our daily life of faith. After we're converted, the just shall live by faith. That's the way we're supposed to walk in the spirit, live by faith. And as we sin, as time goes on, which, by the way, is every day. I had a guy, I had a guy on social media yesterday say, if you sin every day, you need to question yourself whether or not you're saved. Well, hey, this guy, Bear with me here. This guy believed Armenians were lost. And he was a he was a reformed guy. And he even said that. When an Armenian I was talking to. And there was a witness that I've been dealing with, I said, and I wrote him, I said, see what I'm talking about. Here's the problem. I told him I was going to be preaching on this, and I think he's probably watching right now. But anyway, you have the initial repentance and the ongoing repentance. Now, having said that, some would hang the initial on the final. You see what I'm saying here? Some would hang initial repentance on final repentance. It's a wait and see. From your initial repentance and everything in between, how did you do on your repentance for final salvation? This is going on right now. And there's a lot of talk about it. And there's people that are like choosing teams. Some are jumping on, some are jumping off. And I'm here to help people jump off. Worst case scenario would be like Rome. Really, anybody that teaches you can lose your salvation. But Rome, I took some quotes from the Council of Trent. and some different things about the Rome's doctrine of justification and sanctification things. The last few weeks we talked about it. That there is this impartation of righteousness. And then it ends up pretty much, you know, you cooperate with the spirit. It's synergism. That's what that's called. And we'll see how that works and see what it looks like in the end for final salvation. So that's Rome. Now, The closest thing that I know of today to that is what's called federal vision. Some of y'all have heard that, some of you know a little bit about it, but some of the popular people in it would be N.T. Wright, Bishop N.T. Wright, or another guy that's on a lower level, but more where you might see some Calvinistic Reformed Sovereign Grace share some of his quotes. His name is Doug Wilson. Now, and as you go down, you'll see others who compromise with the federal vision people like John Piper. We already know Piper's problems. I talk about him all the time. Piper believes that on this, it depends on what you do for your final salvation. How good you do. He's got an article. It's about 12 conditions you got to keep. You're justified initially by faith alone. But there's these conditions to get to heaven. And he's got 12. It's a 12-step program. But there's that. So what I'm giving is just crazy stuff and how it tears down and gets closer to people that we know. And here recently, Jeff Durbin and James White have compromised with some of these federal vision people. And that's no surprise. I mean, James White hangs out with Dr. Michael Brown. who's in the apostolic movement, believes you can lose your salvation. He's a flaming freewheeler. James White debated him on like the whole doctrines of grace, which Michael Brown rejects. And, you know, James White's off schmoozing with him, calling him bro. So it's no big surprise. He'd probably say the same thing about Billy Graham. So all those who are like in the lordship camp and they won't call out these things as heresy, it's pretty telling that they tolerate it. Like some of the extreme things that John Piper has said. Now, so why isn't John MacArthur saying anything about John Piper? It would cut into his money. He won't get invited to the conferences. He'll be considered, he don't want to be called a hyper-Calvinist. Can't do that. So what is the heresy in a nutshell? What is it? It's this basic idea that sanctification drives justification. Sanctification ends up being the ground of salvation rather than Christ's righteousness imputed. How well do you do? How are you doing in your repentance? How's your faithfulness? Who cares about the faithfulness of Christ? How's your faithfulness? So the focus shifts. judging by the law now rather than the gospel. That's what it's all about. Judging by the law. How are you doing? And if you mess up, you got a second chance because you repent. How are you doing in your repentance? If that's not doing good, how's your desires? It just keeps going down. That's the MacArthur way. How's your desires? So the shortcut for those that are really on top of all this and really are keeping up with it is the question most often directs our thoughts to is, you get down to perseverance. Perseverance in what? Right. Perseverance in what? Like it says in Colossians 1, 21 through 23, talking about how that he made peace by the blood of his cross. And he made us those three things unchargeable. I can't remember the other two, but you know what I'm saying. There's three great things that he did for us that put us in the state of righteousness and the non-imputation of sin. Can't be charged with sin ever again. He says, you know what? Believing that is not being removed from the hope of the gospel. That's the hope of the gospel that we are not to be removed from. So that's what we persevere in, is not being removed from that hope. The other crowd is persevering in the hope that's investing in doing certain things or not doing certain things. That's what the other crowd. perseveres. And that's what they say perseverance is, that you are increasingly and progressively getting holier every day. And if you're not, you shall not see the Lord. I'm going to stop there. There's enough left to do a part two. I hope some of the stuff we've covered before, I hope I brought up some news things for you to think about. But I kind of wanted to bring everything together collectively to to think about a lot of different variations in the context of repentance, what the scripture says it is, and kind of dismantling some of these bad ideas that some of us held to in our earlier days in false religion. Any comments or questions today? Any comments or questions? For homework, you can look up Jeremiah 31. It's in there, but we'll be talking about that. Just look up the word repent or repentance. I can't remember how it's talks about God turning. Turn me and I will be turned. You hear people say just one more comment about that. You hear people say when I talk about faith the way I do, you'll hear people say, well, yeah, faith is a gift, but God doesn't believe for you. And now they'll make a division. They'll say salvation is by what Christ did. But there's also your part and your part's faith and repentance, of course. And then that's when I'll come back with say, well, faith is a gift. And then they'll say, well, he don't believe for you. You see what you see how that goes back and forth? Well, you know what they're thinking by their. foolish, unlearned questions or statements. We could say the same thing about repentance. They could and they do. I'll say repentance is a gift of God. They say God doesn't repent for you. Well, there's a verse that we're going to look at next week. It sounds like he does. And it's the one I talked about or gave you the reference. It's the closest thing I can find to it. But let me say one more thing in closing. When, especially in this last year, looking at our series and chosen in Christ, get into the election or the evangelistic part of it, looking at faith as a means connected to regeneration. I just I just keep seeing that we know there are two separate things, faith and regeneration, two separate things, but I keep seeing And I've always said they're inseparable. But this idea of this gap, it's an impossibility of a gap between the two. And I've said this, you've heard me talk about faith this way, like I've said in reference to irresistible grace. Once this thing has started, it's too late, right? If you can think of faith being in there, in that context of that statement, what I just said, You don't have any part in it. You're not doing anything with it. It's happening to you. And by the time you realize what has happened, it's done. And how much does that go against this idea of these guys talk about take your faith and do this with it? It's too late. It's too late. There's no intermediate decision that you do something by faith with faith. You see what I'm saying? I think it's an attempt to make the person or the sinner be a mediator before you actually get to the mediator. I mean, it's just bam, bam, done. And then you look at it like, what happened? Jesus said, my sheep hear my voice and they will follow me. So he didn't say that my sheep hear my voice and at some point in time, they will learn to follow me. They follow before they're called. Yeah. Yeah. The Armenian idea, the pure Armenian idea is you're brought to a place and you're given a decision and there's a time where you stop and then you make your move. That's what offer salvation does. Any of the offer stuff, that's exactly what it is. I've heard one guy, I think it was the Calvary Chapel guy, the founder, I can't remember his name. At least I know I've talked to Calvary Chapel, Vineyard, it's all the same to me. Whoever that is talking like that, one of those guys taught their people to say that God is a gentleman. He won't violate your will. He will dance you up to the door. You've seen the picture of the door before, right? You've got the handle. Christ does not have the handle on the other side. But he's knocking. He's knocking. He dances you up to it. And then there that is. There's that action. You take your faith and do this with it. And then you open the door. Yeah. So you do that as a spiritually dead person? I don't think so. So you guys get the idea. You get the idea. All right. Anything else? We're going to shut it down.