The Necessity of Repentance

Turn, if you would, in God’s Word to Acts 17. Acts 17.

I want to begin a short series on repentance. Four or five messages, we’ll see. I’m thinking about the 5th of July as well. What will the blow-in say on the 250th anniversary of this nation? So it seems appropriate that the pulpit would have something to say, and I’ve been giving some thought to that. So I trust the Lord will guide and direct. Or perhaps even summed up, we might say that the real need for America on our 250th birthday is repentance. Repentance.

Acts 17, we’re going to read from verse 22. As the apostle moves through various areas in his missionary endeavor, he ends up in Athens. I say that as if it’s not intentional, but he goes to Athens and, visiting there, waiting. And as he waits, he uses his time wisely, and God opens up an opportunity for him. And you’ll note this opportunity here of invitation to go to Mars Hill.

I’m going to read from verse 22, where he stands before this assembled congregation. Acts 17:22. Let us hear God’s Word.

“Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars’ hill, and said, Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious.

“For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you.

“God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands;

“Neither is worshipped with men’s hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things;

“And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation;

“That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us:

“For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.

“Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold or silver, or stone, graven by art and man’s device.

“And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men every where to repent:

“Because he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained, whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead.

“And when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked: and others said, We will hear thee again of this matter.

“So Paul departed from among them.

“Howbeit certain men clave unto him, and believed: among the which was Dionysius the Areopagite, and a woman named Damaris, and others with them.”

We’ll end the reading there at the close of the chapter.

Beloved, this is the word of the eternal God, which you are to receive, believe, and obey. And the people of God said, Amen.

Let’s pray.

Lord, we ask for the Holy Spirit. If the Holy Spirit is here, He will make much of divine truth. He will illuminate where we are darkened. He will work upon the conscience where necessary. And He will lead us to an understanding that our only hope is found in Christ.

We pray then that Thou wilt make this a blessing to Thy people. But especially I would ask, Lord, and collectively our burden may be expressed in the desire that those who are yet in their sin may be saved. If there be those who stand in a condition of doubt, we pray that Thou wilt please bring them to full assurance of faith.

So Lord, we’re asking for the battleground that is before us, where there’s a warfare of light and darkness, of truth and error, of Christ and Satan. We’re praying that Thou wilt come. Extend Thy kingdom, Lord. We can’t do it. We can’t do it. Show Thy power in this time around the Word. Thou knowest every heart. Craft the message each one needs to hear. I give Thee praise in Jesus’ name. Amen.

I was somewhat thrown a little off guard this afternoon when I took some time to listen in on the lecture by Dr. Juxta in the adult Sunday school. I say I was thrown off guard because I had already in my sermon a quotation by an individual that he made mention of in his address. And listen, if you are not at that Adult Sunday School, either because you’re busy with another class or you didn’t make it this morning, listen in and make it for the future weeks through the summer for both Dr. Juxta and Dr. Sidwell.

But what threw me off was the fact I had right at the beginning of my sermon a quotation from the notorious Satanist, Aleister Crowley. I thought, I never mention this man. I don’t think hardly ever, and yet here we are on the same day mentioning the same person.

Some of you will know that name, the man who began an occultic movement, a satanic endeavor to undermine Christianity, to revel in selfishness and carnality and Satanism. And the movement really was driven forward with this philosophy, these words: “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.” “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.” It’s not new to him. Man’s innate desire is to do what he wants to do.

And when Paul arrived in Athens, he found a people, though cultured, educated, in terms of comparison of other cultures of that time and period. I think they could consider themselves favored in terms of the common grace of God. And yet, with all their learning, with all their philosophy, with all their culture, there remained a dangerous ignorance, an ignorance that would permit such a philosophy as “do what thou wilt.” Erect statues to various gods. Choose the one of your preference, and here’s another one. You can make of it or fashion it however you please, an idol to the unknown God.

And Paul doesn’t flatter them. He doesn’t spend any time telling them how wonderful they are, though he does draw somewhat on things that they would be familiar with. But he does not treat their position as one in which it is acceptable to just let them carry on as they were. He confronts them. He challenges them, makes mention of the true and living God: “in him we live, and move, and have our being.” This God who cannot be fashioned with gold and silver. This God who is Lord of heaven and earth and dwelleth not in temples made with hands. It drives our mind to consider a God that cannot be fully fathomed or in any way conveyed by a statue or some other representation. A God of glory.

And he leads them, of course, to what the Lord has done through His Son, that there had been a period of ignorance, that their land, their people had done many things that would be worthy of judgment. They were not a godly or righteous people, and many things would have brought the judgment of God, but God had been pleased to be merciful to them.

Verse 30: “the times of this ignorance.” You’ve lived through ignorance. You have not been aware of what I’m about to bring to you. “But now commandeth” this God “all men every where to repent: Because He hath appointed” the day “in the which He will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom He hath ordained; whereof He hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead.”

And this, of course, is a message not just of the gospel and the glory of the person of God’s Son, but one that calls men not to be aware merely of the historical fact of the Son of God, but in this instance, in this moment, you have a responsibility that your duty is not fulfilled in coming to hear me today. Your duty is not fulfilled until you repent and believe the gospel.

Clearly, repentance is something of significance. Our Lord began and ended His ministry in the summation of the Gospels, really by outlining in His own message, calling men to repentance, and then in His message to His disciples about what they are to send into the entire world was that repentance should be preached in His name among all nations.

In summarizing the need of men, you find it through the Lord Jesus and through the apostolic message: a call to repentance, a call to repentance. And so if this summarizes, if it summarizes what the Lord preached, and if it summarizes what the apostles were commanded to preach and did preach, then we need to understand what that message entails.

Now, to help us in the outset of, as I say, just a short series here, we begin with our Shorter Catechism. Our Shorter Catechism answers the question, “What is repentance unto life?” And the answer given is, “Repentance unto life is a saving grace whereby a sinner, out of a true sense of his sin and apprehension of the mercy of God in Christ, doth with grief and hatred of his sin, turn from it unto God with full purpose of and endeavour after new obedience.”

So repentance is not just, and we’ll elaborate more on this, but repentance is not just knowing you’ve done wrong. And it is not just knowing that you’ve done wrong and even stating that you have done, even before God. Repentance, understood aright, is a saving grace whereby a sinner, out of a true sense and the apprehension of the mercy of God in Christ, doth, with grief and hatred of his sin, turn from it unto God, with full purpose of and endeavor after new obedience.

So I want you to understand from the outset, because as we get into this, one of the dangers is that I may convey specific aspects of repentance and you go away thinking to yourself, well, if I can just understand sin and turn from it, that’s enough. And it’s not enough.

Repentance is one side of a two-sided coin in which not only does it require that recognition of sin against God, but it results in the turning unto, it will be expressed in a believing upon the mercy of God found in Christ and pushing on then to endeavor to express in your life ongoing obedience to God.

Tonight we want to limit our thoughts to the necessity of repentance, the necessity of repentance, because if you’re not convinced that it’s necessary, then you will not be convinced with anything else. It will be irrelevant to you.

And so we want to understand that this is a necessary thing. It’s not one of those matters of indifference in the Bible, right, where we can discuss certain areas and talk about just how vital or how important or what views are held or so on. It’s something that is crucial.

We may differ on the timing or some of the particulars of the Lord’s return, and we’ll be okay. That won’t be devastating to our standing before God. But if we are wrong in repentance, if we deny repentance, if we have not experienced and continue in an ongoing way to be able to testify to repentance in the life, it will damn the soul.

So I’m not here on Sunday evenings over the next month to talk to you about things that are just for the curious mind or some little side issue. What does the Bible have to say about some little side issue? This gets to really the root of things.

So the necessity of repentance, please follow along as we consider this together.

First consider, its necessity is grounded in divine command. Its necessity is grounded in divine command.

You see that from our text as we’re looking at verse 30 and 31, specifically where Paul says, “And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men every where to repent.”

I have a certain appreciation for this text because it was one of the first texts I ever preached. I was a preacher—not the first one, but one of the first I ever preached. And one occasion when I had taken this text to preach it in the open air, and I had given myself three simple points to guide me through the things I wanted to say, and I had stuck in my little pocket Bible, and then the next day was the Lord’s Day, and Melanie had been invited to a mission hall, a little evangelistic effort that eventually turned into a church, but it was a little evangelistic effort on a Sunday afternoon, and she had been invited to give her testimony, to talk about how the Lord had saved her.

So we drove down there, and we went into the pre-service prayer meeting. We were praying, and the man mentions, just before the service starts, he mentions something about the fact that she’ll testify and then you’ll preach. I said, hold up, hang on a minute here. I don’t remember any mentioning of me preaching, at all. I had been there to testify, you asked whether my wife—now, I don’t know if we were married at that time—whether she would testify. And all I thought was we were coming down here for her to testify. And so in this panic, I said, what am I going to do? He said, no, you’ll preach. I thought, well, I preached this passage, Acts 17, verse 30, yesterday, and I got up and preached it in the same way in that little mission hall. So I have all these memories come back when I read this text.

What it states for us is that necessity is grounded in divine command. That God, in the first place, commands repentance unwaveringly.

The language is without any place of wiggle room, isn’t it? Verse 30: “now commandeth.” There’s a sense of, He now commands all men everywhere to repent. He stands, Paul stands before a crowd of people he is not familiar with. He doesn’t know their names. He really doesn’t fully understand all that may go on there normally. He’s here in a new city, grappling with various things that are unfamiliar with him, but he stands knowing, knowing that God issues to every man before Him this command. It doesn’t matter their background, doesn’t matter where they’re from, and He gives this command in an unwavering way.

The command from God is not advice. It comes from Him as God over all, the One in whom we live and move and have our being, the One who is Lord of heaven and earth, as verse 24 says. This is the God who gives a command, and it’s not advice to us to talk about and discuss and figure out whether or not it applies.

But you tonight are under this, confronted with the same impression of this unwavering call of God to you, commanding you to repentance. The Creator addresses the creature. The lawgiver addresses the transgressor. And you may dispute it, you may delay it, you may try to soften it and massage it and change it, you may ignore it, but you cannot make it less binding than it is. It remains, regardless what we may do of it.

The command from God also leaves no room for neutrality. It’s not advice, and it leaves no room for neutrality. You don’t get to stand in a position and say to yourselves that, well, I’m going to take the neutral place. I’m going to stand in a place where I’m not condemning, I’m not going to go against it, I’m not going to deny it, but neither am I going to commit my way to it.

And you take on that Pilate position, don’t you, in which you’re trying the best you can to apply your reason in such a way to discover a place of neutrality. That’s what Pilate did. He’s communicating with the crowd and talking to them about what to do with the Lord Jesus. And in the dialogue that extends back and forth between them, and finally he comes to a place where he’s washing his hands, His blood be upon you and your children and so on. There’s this sense of communication, all of that.

And Pilate seems to try and find this place of neutrality, but he failed. He failed. The account of God’s Word lays the blame as squarely on him as it does on anyone else. He had the power to prevent it, he had the power to stop it, and he chose not to exercise that power. Though he sought for neutral ground, he failed.

And if you seek to find neutral ground, you’re going to fail too. It’s not possible. It leaves no room for neutrality. Refusal, denial, delay, all of this is blatant disobedience.

God commands repentance unwaveringly.

God commands repentance universally. All men everywhere. All men everywhere. All men. Not just all men in Jerusalem. Not just all men in other places, but all men everywhere, including the learned philosophers of Athens. All men everywhere.

No rank exempts a man. He may be a king, and he is called to repentance. He may govern over an entire kingdom, and still repentance is required of him. You remember what happened in Nineveh, in which from top to bottom, the king of Nineveh, he comes down from his throne and he repents in dust and ashes just like everyone else, because it applied to him just as it did apply to everyone else in that city. No rank causes you to escape this.

The command reaches every person in every place. It reaches the pagan. It reaches the religious. It reaches the man in the pub and the man in the pew. It doesn’t matter. In any time, in any place, the universality of this command stands. There’s no escaping it.

No education exempts a man. Not only no rank exempts a man, but no education exempts a man. This is relevant, of course, to the company before the apostle. It was relevant to my company too. Heavy emphasis on education, learning, reading. All these things are appreciated and valued. They are here, they were there. And yet that education does not exempt them. It does not permit them to say, this does not apply to me. This is for lower classes. This is for the unread, the unlearned. No, it applied to them. Sharp minds may not cause us to find any excuse.

And really what happens when you move from various places, sin exists everywhere, the need for repentance exists everywhere, and though sin sometimes gets exercised in more sophisticated ways, it’s still sin.

You go to other nations, you see how their governments run, and I’m not gonna mention nations, but some come to mind. And if you’re aware of them at all, and you understand or you’ve spoken to some people who’ve lived in and under it, the blatant rank corruption that exists at government level, it’s brazen.

But just because it’s not as clearly expressed, whether in the United Kingdom or the United States of America or Canada or somewhere else, doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. We just become more sophisticated. We try to have branches of government to give a sense of balance and accountability, and we try to have these weights and measures to prevent corruption, but where there is a will, there is a way.

And you’re no different. All your education doesn’t make it any different. You just may become a little more sophisticated. You know how to navigate the clean side of the broad road. You know how to maintain some sense of value among your peers, appreciation, even honor. And you may look across to the other side of that road and see the scandal and see the crime and see all the awful things that go on. And you may say to yourself, I’m not like them. But you’re on the same road, going in the same direction with an unrepentant heart.

No religious privilege exempts a man. In Athens, they had sat under many, many speeches, and they were aware of different religious beliefs, different philosophical positions held to different groups and classes, sects. Here we sit under sermons. You sit under sermons.

How many sermons have you sat under? Can you start to count how many sermons you have heard in your life? Can you start to add up all the times the Bible has been opened in your presence? Maybe it would be a good calculation. Try and figure out, estimate: how many times have I heard a sermon preached? How many times has the Bible been open in my presence? How many times have I heard it read in my hearing?

And come to the frightful realization that you may not even be in four digits but five digits of exposure to God’s truth, and still you’re wanting. You have privileges. You have access to the truth. You come from a line of believers. You have been saturated in truth. You know all the lingo. You can define justification. You understand many things about God’s Word. You can dispute the Bible with Christians that you might work with.

I remember the awful surprise I had, shortly after my conversion, speaking to an uncle of mine, an uncle by marriage. And my entire childhood growing up, living not far from where they lived, I’d never known them to be churchgoers. And so I get converted, and I bump into my uncle. I talked to him, and I started angling in around to God’s Word, to the gospel. And to hear that man quote Scripture, I nearly fell through the floor. My jaw hit the floor. I was like, I can’t believe what I’m hearing.

But he was lost. Oh, he was so lost. The same sun that melts the wax hardens the clay. The same ground that brings forth wheat brings forth tares. Which are you?

And no morality exempts a man. No morality. You may be well-behaved and respectable, and yet, because of that, you are even more in danger. Because you’re leaning into this respectability, you’re content with your fig leaf religion, and you imagine that this is sufficient before God. But it’s not.

So God commands repentance unwaveringly, universally, and also, very quickly, personally. All men everywhere.

I want you to feel a sense of what Paul is pressing here, and the necessity of repentance to each man personally. You must repent. Now, there’s a place for corporate repentance. There’s a place for national repentance. And we read of these things in God’s Word.

But what Paul was pressing in this moment, and what I’m pressing, is this need to personally assess and come to terms with the fact I must repent. I must repent.

No, I want you to, I want especially the young people, but all, I want the young people to get to grips with this, because the gospel is put before you, and you have a faith, you have a belief, and you take in the gospel. You believe that the Lord Jesus is the Son of God. You believe He died on the cross. You believe He rose from the dead, and those things you believe. But this personal side of repentance—have you personally repented before God? Because that is what the apostle is after. Each one must personally repent.

My children, my repentance will not cover them. I’ll tell you better than that, my repentance does not cover me. I need Christ. We’ll see that more.

So what on earth are we thinking if we imagine that we can escape this? You must confess your sins before God.

Its necessity is hurried by coming judgment. It’s not only grounded in divine command, it is hurried by coming judgment. The apostle presses this matter more by bringing them to terms or bringing to their awareness a coming judgment. Verse 31, “Because”—here’s the reasoning, right? Reasoning, “because.”

Use that word when you evangelize. Remember that word, that word because. That’s a helpful word to remember. It’s a word of persuasion. It’s a word of argument. It’s a word intended to lead men along a path. Here is a truth and here’s why. It’s why you must believe it, why you must conform to it, whatever it might be.

“Because he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained;” “whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead.”

Now, all sorts of experiences and truths may press the matter of repentance. You go to Luke 13 for a moment. Just, some of you will remember a long, long time ago when we preached through Luke, when we came to chapter 13, you will recall this, and many others who were not there, you will still recall this language.

Luke 13. We’re told in verse 1, “There were present at that season” some “that told Jesus of the Galileans, whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices.”

So there’s a context here that we don’t have all the details of. Some believe it was a zealot uprising. And in the middle of worship, Pilate came in with a heavy hand to quell their uprising. And many of them had been killed in the midst of this, even as they were engaged in worship.

Verse 2: “And Jesus answering said unto them, Suppose ye that these Galileans were sinners above all the Galileans, because they suffered such things?” You think they were worse? You think they’re worse? So a tragedy happens and we assess it in terms of what’s behind it. Why did this occur? So we’re obsessed with, what does this mean in terms of about them? And Jesus, instead of plunging into that, He turns it: what does this mean for you? You want to understand what it means about them. But even if you have clarity there, what good does that do you? What real benefit of eternal consequence does that have?

So He doesn’t play games with them. Verse 3: “I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.”

He gives another illustration. “Or those eighteen, upon whom the tower in Siloam fell, and slew them, think ye that they were sinners above all men that dwelt in Jerusalem?” So here’s this other tragedy. It’s a little different. It’s not at the hands of a wicked man. It’s a building that falls at a certain time. People are there at the same time. Some are killed in the midst of the tragedy of it. And you think, well, here’s an act of God. Some particular matter that happens.

They must have been really bad. These are worse sinners than the rest of us. And as people talk that way, Jesus cuts to the chase. Stop being concerned about why that happened to them and realize, what does this mean to you? What does it mean to you? “Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.”

So taking that on board then, all sorts of things drive and urge at the need for repentance. Every time you hear of a tragedy, it is a sermon on repentance. Every time you hear of another passing or a funeral, it is a sermon calling to repentance.

Every time you hear of someone struck with some incurable illness, suddenly, and you’re shocked by it, and your mind starts thinking, why would that happen to them? You’re doing the same thing the Lord did not get involved in. Why would that happen to them? That’s not the question to ask. What is this saying to me? You need to repent. Because if you don’t repent, you’ll perish.

So every tragedy, every horrendous, heartbreaking experience is a sermon on repentance. But Paul has a particular direction that he wishes to go, if you go back to Acts 17, as we press this matter that necessity is hurried by a coming judgment.

In the first place, there is a day coming. There is a day coming. “He has appointed a day,” verse 31 says. There is a day coming. It’s not that a day of judgment is possible. It’s that it is inevitable. There’s a day coming. There is a day coming. Oh, a day unlike any other. What a day it will be.

Men miss appointments, but God will not miss this appointment. It is fixed. It’s a day coming. You may forget the day, but your forgetting of it will not remove it. You may mock that day, but your mocking of it will not delay it. You may be distracted or try to distract yourself from the very thought of that day because you don’t want to consider what is involved on a day of judgment.

Oh, this is what we do. We try to drown out that noise. We don’t give that truth any space. Don’t give that truth any time in my mind. I can’t bear to think of a day of judgment. So you do everything in your power to try and distract yourself and drive it away, but none of that changes. And every hour that passes brings you an hour closer to that day. There’s a day coming. And after death comes judgment.

There’s a day coming. There’s a Judge waiting. There’s a Judge waiting, because He has appointed a day in the which He will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom He hath ordained. He will judge the world by Jesus Christ. He will judge the world. He will judge the world.

Oh, what a judgment. Secret sins will be judged, you know. Secret sins will be judged. Sins that have never gone on record in this world. There’s no evidence that it ever happened. There’s no trace that it ever occurred. But there’s a record in heaven.

Every idle word men shall speak, they shall give account thereof on the day of judgment. Secret sins will be discovered. Careless words will be judged. Words spoken in anger and falsehood. Words of malice spoken under the breath, not meant to be heard by others, yet heard by God. Words spoken in jest against God’s truth. Words spoken to flatter and pull down others. God has a record of them all.

Secret sins will be judged. Careless words will be judged. Neglected duties will be judged. Neglected duties. The neglect of prayer will be judged. Men ought always to pray. Each day there should be prayer that arises from every man. The neglect of prayer will be judged. The neglect of the Word will be judged. This which God has given, this gift without price. The days you’ve gone acting like it’s not there and not important. Jesus said, search the Scriptures. Search the Scriptures. The Bereans were more noble because they went to the Word.

And our neglect of it is a sin. The neglect of worship will be judged. God issues a call to come and worship Him, to seek His face. And without good reason, we neglect that call. It will be judged. Our marital responsibilities, our parental duties, neglected, will be judged. The Lord is very tender to little ones, you know. He’s very tender to little ones. Yes, the omissions will have guilt just as the commissions.

Necessity is hurried by a coming judgment. There is a day coming. There is a Judge waiting. There is a standard established. How will you be judged? In righteousness. He will judge the world in righteousness, in the matter of righteousness. A standard that He has established. Not mine.

It’s not arbitrary. It doesn’t change with the culture. Certainly, there are some things that were taboo at certain periods that no longer are taboo, and some of those things have no basis in Scripture. But we are living in a time where we’re completely redefining morality.

We want to look at Sodom and Gomorrah and say that they were just inhospitable. That was a crime. God sent fire and brimstone out of heaven because they were inhospitable. Now, they were inhospitable, and they exercised their authority in a way that was wicked, and they took advantage of people. And there are all sorts of other sins multiplied there. So it’s not just the sin of sodomy. I mean, it would be a study in itself just to go through Genesis 19 and other passages that touch on that place, that time, and you can come up with a list of a lot of sins. But in addition to it was sexual perversion that we in this day—I say we, our nation, our time and period—want to say is not a problem.

And God’s Word says it is a problem. It’s unnatural, it’s a distortion of divine purpose, it’s wicked, it subverts humanity. God has established a standard. He will judge the world in righteousness.

Our sin has wronged God, not just man. We have violated His law. We have despised His goodness. We have resisted His authority. We have dishonored His name. And we think then that we are going to have an eternal bliss with God. He’s going to receive everyone. Universally, all will be received into heaven.

But what fellowship has light with darkness? None. If that be true of believers, the context in which it is applied there in 2 Corinthians, what fellowship of light with darkness? How can man have any fellowship holding on to all his filth and elevating all his darkness and asking God to give His blessing to it?

It’s not going to happen. It’s not an arbitrary standard that He has set. He’s going to judge the world according to the righteousness that reflects His very nature.

And there’s a responsibility delegated. A day coming, a Judge waiting, a standard established, and a responsibility delegated.

What does He say? Because He’s going to judge the world by that man whom He hath ordained. That Judge is Christ.

You know, it’s gonna be a frightful day. The fear that will enter into the heart of men, standing before Christ, realizing what is about to take place. I don’t understand all the way that’s gonna work out. I don’t get it. I just know there’s gonna be a day of judgment. I know this.

There’s gonna be a man who stands before men, and that man bears the marks of His suffering. And it’ll become immediately evident who it is. Without introduction, we will know: this is the One God ordained. He sent His Son, took our nature, lived on our behalf, suffered on the cross. Five bleeding wounds He bears, received on Calvary. Those wounds there will immediately convict, immediately bring dawn a reality upon those judged on that day, who it is that they stand before.

Finally, the necessity is urged by present mercy. The necessity is urged by present mercy.

The context that Paul presses here: “The times of this ignorance God winked at.” Again, I’ve mentioned this already. You’ve lived in a time in which you didn’t know, and therefore there has been extended to you more mercy than otherwise might be expected. But now, there’s a shift, a shift, the obligation that begins to press. Because you lived in a time when you weren’t aware, now you’re aware. You’re being given the specifics, the specifics of your sin, the specifics of your obligation, the specifics of what God has provided in His Son, and how He lived and died and rose from the dead.

So there’s the mercy of what is commanded. “But now, but now.” There’s mercy in that, isn’t there? That there’s still time. There is still time.

Paul was not there to announce to them, you’ve wasted it. Right? You’ve wasted your opportunity. There’s no more hope for you. Oh, that would be an awful thing to hear, for the apostle to stand before them and say, no more opportunity for you. The door is shut. The ark door is closed by God and you’re going to stand outside in the flood of His judgment with no refuge. He could have said that if God had so willed it, but He has not.

The “but now” gives hope, gives encouragement, gives a sense of, it’s not over, there’s opportunity. And so I must set aside my excuses. Christ has come. The gospel is put before me.

And we are in danger, men are in danger often dealing with the matter of repentance and faith as if it’s entirely in their own control, that they will repent when they’re older. They will, when a time that’s more appropriate, more seasonable, when life is easier, when business is settled, when family’s raised, when all of that, I’ll wait to another time.

But when you read this, there’s a time of ignorance, mercy has been extended, but now is inviting an immediate response. The mercy of the present. An invitation extended to men that says, act now. Don’t wait. Don’t delay. Don’t run. Don’t harden your heart. Repent now.

Don’t say to yourself, there was a thief on a cross, and he waited to the last minute, and just before his dying breath, he turned to the Lord, he repented and believed, and he was received. “To day shalt thou be with me in paradise,” said Jesus to him. But as I said recently, don’t forget there was another criminal dying beside the Lord, who did not repent, who did not believe, who was not saved. And you don’t know which one you will be, even if you have a deathbed. Some die suddenly.

So today, if you hear His voice, harden not your heart.

There’s the mercy of what is commanded. There’s the mercy of what is protected. What’s protected in this call to repentance? What’s protected? Well, what is protected is, in the first place, legalism.

God is not inviting you to try harder. He’s not inviting you to do better. He’s not inviting you to turn over a new leaf, to establish resolutions. He’s not calling you to pull yourself up by your bootstraps or whatever other expression may be given that illustrates man’s best effort to turn a corner and do better. He’s calling repentance.

I’m asking you not to go on a 12-step plan or a journey and a pilgrimage of spiritual experience, to go and isolate yourself and shut yourself away from the world and go on some kind of detox from technology and other things. Repent! No, repent.

So He protects us against any falling into legalism, as imagining that we can, in some way, do something to improve ourselves before God. He is saying, no, turn from your sin and believe. Turn today and believe. That is where life will be found.

But it also protects from license. Not just legalism, but license. The license to live how we please. To imagine that we can do what we like and there’ll be no consequences.

No, no, it’s calling. God is commanding. One is in authority, and you’re not it. And He is giving command, and He is pressing the fact that His Son will one day judge the world. He will judge you. And so you can’t live with this license, this sense of freedom to do what you like. It calls you to respond now. Don’t delay in unbelief.

So, as we close, the necessity of repentance. I hope you’re hearing me. I hope you’re hearing from God. Because what is my objective in preaching this? Well, I trust it enlightens and it helps. But if I’m going to be brutally honest with you, it is to those of you here who are living a lie or you knowingly and publicly refuse to turn from your sin and believe on Christ. And if you don’t repent, there is no hope.

I appeal to you, own your sin tonight in a free confession before God. You have sinned in ways that only God knows and you’ve forgotten. So there’s no such thing as a perfect and entire repentance. That’s what I meant earlier when I said that I can’t lean upon the perfection of my own repentance. None of us repent perfectly. But there is a Spirit-birthed repentance in which a man comes to terms with the awfulness of his own sin, and with that understanding, turns that sin in confession to God, acknowledging it however deep he senses it to be, and however it is expressed in your life.

Secret sins that only you and God know, or other public sins of drunkenness and uncleanness and dishonesty and profanity and cruelty, adultery. You bring these matters, you confess them before God, you own it for the horrendous thing that it is, that it’s this, it’s actions like this that caused Christ to suffer. Sin took Him to the cross, brought the suffering.

And in turn, for you to enter into life eternal, to know life eternal in the heart, He asks not that you go and grovel and go on an entire year-long introspective examination of every wrong you’ve ever done before. At the end, you come to Him. No, no. No, He says, but, but no, but no. Even the language of it is inviting an immediate response. It is fighting against the tendency to delay. It is putting before you that this can happen now, immediately.

And for some there before Paul, it did. “Certain men clave unto him, and believed.” Immediately they responded. Immediately they passed from death to life, from Satan to God. And the same can happen to you tonight, this very night.

Young person, have you repented? Have you really repented before God? Do you know repentance unto life?

Let me quote the Catechism one more time, and then we will close our meeting. What is repentance unto life? “Repentance unto life is a saving grace whereby a sinner,” as all of us, “out of a true sense of” his “sin, an apprehension of the mercy of God in Christ,” doth—you know your sin, you know the solution, it’s found in Christ, you know that. You then, “with grief and hatred of” your “sin, turn from it unto God with full purpose of and endeavor after new obedience.”

I’m not gonna live this way anymore. Tonight, I become a Christian. May God help you.

Let’s bow together in prayer.

I will be at the door. If God is speaking to you and you need some help, you have questions, fears, concerns, you come and speak to me. We’ll go to my office, we’ll go to someplace a little quieter, somewhere where we can discuss the matters that relate to your soul.

God now commandeth all men everywhere to repent. That command is just as true, relevant, this very night as it ever was.

Lord, please be merciful. Be merciful.

Oh, what a happy day this would be when one here tonight finds themselves no longer in that tension of unbelief, of fighting the truth of God, but with resignation and wholehearted intention, say, tonight’s the night. I’m no longer going to harden my heart. I’m no longer going to run from the Lord. It’s the time to be saved.

Lord, let it be so. Save, save graciously. Give deciding grace. Do a work, O God, do it now, we pray. Thank You for Your mercy and thank You for the clarity of Your Word. Help us. Help us all to hate what You hate and love what You love. Give strength to Your church for this week, the infilling of the Holy Ghost with power. May the grace of our Lord Jesus, the love of God our Father, and the fellowship of the Spirit be the portion of the people of God, now and evermore. Amen.