(Matthew 3:1-2) “In those days John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea, and saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!”
Introduction:
John the Baptist was the last of the Old Testament prophets but unique in that he was the one who was God’s spokesman and sent by Him to announce the immediate arrival of the Messiah our Lord Jesus. Just like the Old Testament prophets John preached repentance. God was seeking to prepare the hearts of His people to receive His one and only begotten Son, Israel’s Messiah and Passover Lamb, who, by His shed sacrificial blood, would save His people Israel from their sins. By His atoning death and resurrection as the Passover Lamb sacrificed, the Messiah our Lord Jesus would also provide salvation for the Gentile nations as well (Isaiah 42:6) (Luke 2:32) (Matthew 1:21) (1 Corinthians 5:7).
When the Lord Jesus started His public ministry the first thing He preached was the need for men and women to repent. As we read; “From that time on Jesus began to preach “Repent for the kingdom of God is at hand” (Matthew 4:17).
It is clear from both Testaments that repentance was the pre-requisite needed for men and women to enter into the Kingdom of God, and that unless they repented they would not see the Kingdom of God or heaven for that matter, either in this age or in the age to come. Heaven and hell are unseen spiritual realities which the Messiah our Lord Jesus spoke about in the four gospels and are found in the letters of the apostles in the New Testament. Repentance was the key to opening the door to the glories of heaven. The Lord Jesus Himself said; “I tell you, no; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish” (Luke 13:3, 5).
The word “repent” does not mean just to feel sorry for what we have done wrong; it involves a Godly sorrow that brings about true repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly sorrow brings death, because an unsaved person can be very sorry for what they have done, but unless they express a Biblical repentance they cannot be saved (2 Corinthians 7:10).
Biblical repentance then is more than just feeling sorry for what we have done. Yes we will feel sorrow of course; however, there must also be a change of mind which the word repent in the Greek text implies. The “mind” is not just a change in ones intellect or pattern of thinking because it also involves the mind, the emotions and especially the action of the will. These three components make up a person’s soul. All of us a tripartite beings made in God’s likeness and image as He also is Triune in nature. We have a spirit, we have a soul and live in a physical body (1 Thessalonians 5:23).
An unsaved person has a soul but their inner spirit man is spiritually dead and can only be spiritually regenerated by the Holy Spirit which the Bible calls “being born again” or “being born from above” (John 3:3) (Titus 3:5) (Ephesians 2:4-5) (1 Peter 1:23).
Through this supernatural work of God the Holy Spirit, the spiritually dead inner spirit is made alive to God, and that person becomes “joined to the LORD and one in spirit with Him”(1 Corinthians 6:17). Their spirit comes alive to God and is fused together with the Spirit of God who has come to dwell in their life causing them to be saved!
They have imparted to them God’s eternal quality of life, having become partakers of the divine nature, and having become new creations in the Messiah, the old manner of habitual sinful living has gone, and the new way of Godly living has come (2 Peter 1:4) (2 Corinthians 5:17). While the one born again still has the old sinful nature it no longer dominates and controls their life (1 John 4-9; 5:18). It does not mean that one born again can no longer commit a sin, and God in His mercy has made provision for cleansing and forgiveness when we do commit a sin (1 John 1:7-9) (1 John 2:1-2).
Now we also see the word “perish” which does not imply annihilation! While it does imply physical death, it also implies metaphorically that something “is laid aside, rendered useless, given over to an eternal misery in hell, to be ruined but still exists,” hence we have numerous references in both testaments to this place of an eternal conscious torment of the soul that through physical death has been separated from the body.
Ultimately, after the great white throne judgement, the spiritually dead whose bodies have been physically resurrected to stand before the throne, will be thrown alive, body, soul and spirit into the Lake of Fire (Matthew 10:28) (Revelation 20:11-15). Unless there is a repentance leading to eternal life the spirit, the soul and the body will end up in the Lake of Fire which is the second death (Revelation 20:14).
Repentance is also not a one of spiritual experience, but a spiritual exercise we will need to do throughout our life as there will be times when we do sin and that grievously and need to repent of it and with the help of the blessed Holy Spirit seek to avoid re committing it over and over again.
When it comes to a besetting sin, and no believer is immune from this, it is a very serious matter spiritually. Some sins like this can only be driven out by prayer and fasting, as more than likely there is demonic activity involved (Mark 9:29).
Prayer and fasting takes time, but through these spiritual exercises, despite how one might be feeling spiritually, as that believer continues in them regularly and consistently, they will find that Satan’s power is weakened and the deliverance needed will come. As it is written; “Everyone who calls on the name of the LORD must turn away from iniquity” (2 Timothy 2:19). If we find ourselves in this situation, and most of us have if we are honest, then the only way out is through regular prayer, fasting, staying in the Word of God, and leaning upon and confessing those verses that tell us what the blood of Jesus does for us, and continuing to wait by faith for the deliverance to come, and it will if we do not give up!
Without repentance there can be no seasons of spiritual refreshing from the presence of the LORD as we read; “Repent, then, and turn back, so that your sins may be wiped away, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the LORD, and that He may send Jesus, the Messiah, who has been appointed for you. Heaven must take Him in until the time comes for the restoration of all things, which God announced long ago through His holy prophets” (Acts 3:19-21).
In the prophet Isaiah we see what repentance is and the spiritual benefits it brings about in our life when we do repent. There is a turning away from sin and a turning to God for pardon. Let’s briefly look at the following text which exemplifies these two aspects of a true Biblical repentance.
The Text:
(Isaiah 55:6-7) “Seek the LORD while He may be found; Call upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way And the unrighteous man his thoughts; And let him return to the LORD, And He will have compassion on him, And to our God, For He will abundantly pardon.”
Exposition:
1. Biblical Repentance is a turning away from Sin (Verse 6)
“Seek the LORD while He may be found; Call upon Him while He is near.”
To “seek the LORD” and to “call upon Him while He is near” is not a matter of coming before Him with casualness but with a determination to be delivered from the power of that sin in our life that can so easily beset us that we are struggling to overcome. If there is any desire to hang on to it or to nurture it then our prayers, our groaning and even tears are of no avail unless there is a consistent deep desire to be free from it and a continuous desire to be one that pleases the LORD.
To “seek, and to call” is “to pursue something with diligence and consistency, to inquire, to seek out, to scrutinize, and to make it the supreme desire of one’s heart” when seeking the LORD. As King David wrote; “If I regard (cherish) wickedness in my heart, the LORD will not hear” (Psalm 66:18).
As the LORD says through the prophet Jeremiah; “You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart and I will be found by you,’ declares the LORD” (Jeremiah 29:13-14a).
Our Lord Jesus also said; “Ask, and keep on asking, and it will be given to you; seek, and keep on seeking, and you will find; knock, and keep on knocking, and it will be opened to you, for everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened” (Matthew 7:7-8).
We cannot call upon the LORD at any time that suits us. There must be the convicting work of the Holy Spirit at work deep down on the inside of us driving us to come to God. King David knew this in his own experience, and after experiencing conviction went to the LORD and the relief from the guilt of his sin he so desperately desired came!
David writes; “Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man against whom the LORD counts no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit. For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. Selah Then I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity; I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the LORD, and you forgave the iniquity of my sin” (Psalm 32 1-5). Confession must be accompanied by action. As we read…
“Let the wicked forsake his way”
The word “forsake” used here is “to forsake something, to depart from, to leave it behind, to leave and to let alone.” It is to leave, abandon and to forsake a sin once we have become conscience of it accompanied with a willingness to forsake it, calling upon God to deliver us from its grip in our lives. Often we associate wickedness with the unsaved in the world, however, the propensity for wickedness lies within all of us due to our inherent sinful nature we inherited from conception (Psalm 51:5) (Romans 5:12). The wicked here is anyone guilty of sin and hostile towards God. In His Word God says that there is no peace (shalom) for the wicked (Isaiah 57:21).
Even though we have living on the inside of us the new nature in the Holy Spirit there is a constant battle between the desires of the Spirit with the desires of our fallen human nature (Galatians 5:16-18). It also needs to be said that the nature we feed the most is the one that will inevitably control us (Romans 8:12-14).
The unsaved have no battle like this. Satan is not concerned about them as he already has them in his power. The ones he is worried about are you and I who have been spiritually reborn by the Holy Spirit and have Him dwelling on the inside as those who are under new management, being new spiritual creations in Messiah, knowing that the old manner of an habitual life of sin has gone and the new eternal overcoming life of the Holy Spirit has come (2 Corinthians 5:17). In repentance a sorrow of heart over ones sin must be accompanied by a deep desire to forsake it with the help of the Holy Spirit and by faith in the power of the Messiah’s blood to destroy its grip on us.
There is a story told of a little boy in a Sunday school class whose teacher asked them if they understood repentance of sin. One boy put up his hand and answered “Sir it means that you are so sorry for what have been doing that you stop doing it!” And then we read…
“And the unrighteous man his thoughts”
Our minds are the spiritual battlefield we are in every day and every moment of our lives. Spiritual warfare is like trench warfare with hand to hand combat over barbed wire. At times we will be walking battlefields and the desires of the Spirit fight against the desires of the carnal appetites of the flesh for dominance. Our thought life can be like the rudder that steers the course of the vessel of our life.
As the Messiah our Lord Jesus said; “For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.” In other words what is in our hearts which includes the intellect in abundance will be evident in our conversation (Matthew 12: 34b). As we read in the book of Proverbs (God’s psychology book) “Keep and guard your heart with all vigilance and above all that you guard, for out of it flow the springs of life” (Proverbs 4:23).
Unless we have the mind, the thoughts the feelings and the purposes of the Messiah our Lord Jesus dwelling on the inside we will live the lives of the unrighteous, being those who do not have the righteousness from God that is received by faith in the Messiah. If we have been born again spiritually then we have the very eternal life of God’s Son being His righteous nature living in us. As it is written; “He who has the Son has the life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have the life” (1 John 5:12). So then Biblical Repentance is a turning away from sin.
2. Biblical Repentance is a turning to God for Abundant Pardon (Verse 7)
“And let him return to the LORD”
Without a willingness to turn away from and to forsake what we know to be evil or wickedness in the sight of God we cannot receive pardon for our sins. We must first acknowledge completely and without reservation what God says about our sin in His unchanging Word, to wholeheartedly agree with it and not to argue the point. It is to come back to God without any excuses but to be totally honest and transparent with Him about all of our sins which He knows about anyway. When we sin we need not to run away from the LORD but run to Him.
As the apostle John writes; “My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Messiah the righteous; and He Himself is the atoning sacrifice for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world” (1 John 2:1-2).
As new covenant born again, blood redeemed, blood washed bible believing children of our Triune God, we have someone in the royal court room of heaven, the resurrected Son of God who sits at His Father’s right hand and speaks to Him in our defence, a resurrected glorified man being totally human and totally divine and equal in eternal deity with God the Father. One who has clothed us with the garments of salvation and wrapped us around with the robe of His righteousness making us accepted in Him as the beloved Son of the Father (Ephesians 1:6).
As the prophet Isaiah proclaims; “I will rejoice greatly in the LORD, My soul will exult in my God; For He has clothed me with garments of salvation, He has wrapped me with a robe of righteousness, As a bridegroom decks himself with a garland, And as a bride adorns herself with her jewels” (Isaiah 61:10).
As the author of Hebrews also writes; “But because Jesus lives forever, He has a permanent priesthood. Therefore He is able to save completely (to the uttermost) those who draw near to God through Him, since He always lives to intercede for them. Such a high priest truly befits us—One who is holy, innocent, undefiled, set apart from sinners, and exalted above the heavens” (Hebrews 7:24-26).
This is He who upholds all things by His powerful word, as we also read in Hebrews; “God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world. And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power. When He had made purification of sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become as much better than the angels, as He has inherited a more excellent name than they” (Hebrews 1:1-3).
If we have been declared to be righteous by God through repentance and faith in His Son, have been born again from above by the blessed Holy Spirit having our sins washed away in the blood of the Messiah, then we can expect to be upheld by the powerful word of His Son which we have recorded in the Bible, and if we do sin we know who to run to.
I think one of the things that delighted God about His servant David was that when David sinned that he did not run from God but ran to him, repenting openly and honestly before Him without any excuses (Psalm 51). Indeed does not scripture also say; “The name of the LORD is a strong tower; the righteous run to it and are safe” (Proverbs 18:10).
When we do confess our sins God is faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us from all that is unrighteous in our life (1 John 1:9). Now we see the manner in which God pardons when sin is confessed with a desire to forsake it.
“And He will have compassion on him, And to our God, For He will abundantly pardon.”
Notice two things about the LORD. He has compassion and pardons abundantly. Firstly; “He has compassion.” God is love and loves deeply with tender affection for those who confess their need of Him. While He is no respecter of persons and does not show partiality when loving people, he does shower His love upon those who repent and exercise faith in Him (Hebrews 11:6). This compassion is like a physical movement of the bowels. We see this amply revealed in the Messiah our Lord Jesus who was always moved by compassion for those enslaved to sin and the devil.
As Matthew writes; “Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness. When He saw the crowds, He was moved with compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd” (Matthew 9:35-36).
The Greek word used for compassion illustrates “to be moved as to one’s bowels, hence to be moved with compassion, to have compassion” for the bowels were thought to be the seat of love and pity.
Secondly; “God abundantly pardons.” His abundance is exceedingly great and way beyond human comprehension in that His ways are far above our ways and His thoughts far above our thoughts and his compassion incomprehensible to the human mind (Isaiah 55:8). He heaps His abundant pardon upon the head and the heart of a repentant sinner. So then Biblical Repentance implies turning to God for Abundant Pardon.
In the account of the prodigal son we see this great truth of repentance and abundant pardon exemplified. This young man asked his father for his share of his inheritance and then took off to live it up in the world. He had no regard for His father. He squandered his wealth in reckless living. Eventually he lost everything due to a severe famine. In his desperation to survive he ended up feeding pigs and eating their food.
Realising his sin he decided to return home not expecting anything but with a willingness to work as one of his fathers hands. He realised that he had sinned against God and in consequence against his father and made no excuses but owned up to his own folly.
He had no other excuse but to blame himself for what he had done. He was now willing to do whatever his father said without any objection. He knew that he was wretched and sinful and a rebel against God in heaven and against his father at home.
He started on his arduous journey home with a repentant and submissive heart. He was filthy, with worn out clothes and shoes and I dare say quite smelly with hair dirty and un-kept. However, while he was still a long way off his father saw him and was filled with compassion, it was like a strong movement in his bowels. The father saw him and ran towards his son. Threw his arms around him and kissed him.
The son confessed his sin against God and his father acknowledging his total unworthiness and unfitness to even be called a son. The Father then reinstated him as a son. The father clothed him with the best robe, gave him a ring to reaffirm his sonship, and new sandals for a new walk in life. Then they had a great celebration! No wonder that the angels in heaven go wild with rapturous joy over one sinner who repents!!! (Luke 15:7).
The father exclaimed with great joy “For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and was found,’ so they began to celebrate. In this parable then we see that Biblical Repentance is a turning away from Sin and a turning to God for Abundant Pardon.
Epilogue:
Repentance is a forgotten word in many church pulpits and lecterns today and a word no longer being heralded! Just preaching ‘feel good’ sermons will not save anyone! When you read through the entire Bible repentance was preached before reconciliation to God. This was consistent with the Torah, the Hebrew prophets, the Lord Jesus and the apostles. These all gave men the law of God and their violation of it and its consequences before giving them the grace and mercy of God. Repentance unto eternal life then is the pattern of all scripture! (Acts 11:18) If unsaved men and women do not see first the depths and depravity of their sin, they will never appreciated and revel in the grace of God!
All of the preachers God has used down through Church history such as Martin Luther, John Wesley, George Whitfield, R.A. Torrey, D.L. Moody, William Booth and many others going all the way back to the apostles, they all gave both men and women the law of God before giving them the grace of God. Indeed when John the Baptist started preaching the first word out of his mouth was; “Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at Hand!”
In the time of John the Baptist the kingdom of heaven was about to be revealed in the Lord Jesus who had come down from heaven who through His incarnation was born into this world to seek and to save the lost from hell and the eternal Lake of fire, and to establish God’s kingdom in the hearts of men and women to prepare them for the world to come and after that for eternity (Luke 19:10). As we also read in scripture that the reason the Son of God was revealed was to destroy the devil’s work.
As the beloved apostle John writes; “Little children, let no one deceive you: The one who practices righteousness is righteous, just as the Messiah is righteous. The one who practices sin is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the very start. This is why the Son of God was revealed, to destroy the works of the devil. Anyone born of God refuses to practice sin, because God’s seed abides in him; he cannot go on sinning, because he has been born of God” (1 John 3:7-9).
The gospel of the kingdom was also preached by the Lord Jesus, and He, like John the Baptist, and like the Hebrew prophets before John, all preached repentance first and foremost knowing the terrible end in eternity for those who did not repent and believe. Likewise, so did the apostles as we see recorded in the New Testament.
The gospel of the kingdom is not just preaching about the life and death and resurrection of the Messiah our Lord Jesus, but also preaching about the future kingdom He will establish in the age to come after He has put down all opposition and established his Messianic Millennial reign on earth.
The bottom line is this, without repentance there can be no seasons of spiritual refreshing from the presence of the LORD! Down through the long history of Christendom the words of John the Baptist and the Lord Jesus still ring out through the corridors of apostate Christendom and into the unsaved world “Repent for the Kingdom of heaven is at hand, for unless you repent you will all likewise perish!” Selah.
