How You Make Repentance Too Easy

Welcome to ClearCast. ClearCast is a ministry of Clearnoat Church in West Indianapolis. I'm your host, Tim Dukeman. I'm here with our producer, Martin, and, of course, Pastor Dave. What are we talking about, Tim? So, today we're going to talk about repentance and specifically what that looks like. We've all heard the word, and we want to take some time and think in a little more detail about what that looks like. Famously, in the first of Martin Luther's 95 Theses, he says, When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, repent, he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance. Pastor Dave, what does that mean? What does it mean? Well, technically or formally, repentance is a turning away from sin, a stopping.

turning away from something and turning toward something else. It's not just a stopping, but it's a starting. You're stopping a particular sin. You're starting or replacing it with an obedience or a practice that honors God as opposed to the sin that doesn't honor God. On paper, repentance is really simple. You should repent. If you're convicted, you should repent. The question is, what is repentance? I think that repentance is, when I think of repentance, I just kind of groan on the inside because I just, because my initial reaction is that is so painful. But there's also a relief. That's my, that's the, you know, the second wave is after the like, oh, it's like, yes. You know, it's like having a tight muscle and something like, you know, isn't your wife, you know, your kid rubs your back and you're like, oh, it hurts. And then they push a little more and you're like, oh, and then the muscle relaxed and you're like, oh, I feel so much better now.

That's what repentance is. It's a turning away. But there are things that precede repentance. And I don't think that repentance is largely something that emanates from your brain, being convinced or knowing, have a knowledge that something is wrong. It comes from your heart being convicted that what you're doing or have done or have said or whatever is offensive to God. I think repentance is something that has been whittled down to, I think we only tend to think of repentance in terms of offending other people. We don't think of it in terms of offending God. You know, when David killed Uriah and was confronted about his sin in Psalm 51, he says, against you and you alone, O Lord, have I sinned. But he's talking about having killed Uriah. So he sinned against Uriah and he sinned against Bathsheba.

And we could probably enumerate other people if we thought about that were affected by or harmed, Uriah's parents, siblings, what have you. Like, he sinned against a lot of people. But then in the psalm, as a part of his repentance, he says, against you alone, O Lord, have I sinned. And that doesn't mean that he didn't sin against the other people, but it meant that David understood something about repentance that we don't even take for granted, we're just unaware of. That however other people or we ourselves are keeping track of sins, And against, you know, that we've committed or have been committed against us, God's keeping track as well. And knows and sees and remembers those things. And so, you know, whenever you talk, you sit and think, people are going to object to this. Does God keep track of our sins? Yes. Yes. Until they're forgiven by Christ, he has a record of them. He has a perfect record of them. And you don't get to, you don't get editorial.

over the list to agree or disagree or amend. He's just judge of the earth and he keeps track of our sins. We want that to be, that he keeps track of the really, really bad things, mostly that other people do. Yeah, yeah. You're right. Yeah, I mean, it's like, I can see you could object to it and say, but don't we have freedom in Christ? And I'm like, yes, in Christ. But even then, there was a record of all of the sins that you have yet to commit. that will have been paid for and he doesn't remember them anymore in judgment against us because they've been satisfied but there's still a you know you think of being in the courtroom and the judge reading off you're charged with 26 counts of you know crimes you know and they and they read they say here's the thing not guilty here's the not guilty like there's a record and they're not held against you anymore and so i think there's a way of of taking

the grace of god and abusing it to undercut or do away with the necessity of repentance it's like grace mean jesus coming and dying and god's grace being poured out means that like he threw away the book and there's no there's no account of it anywhere and that's just not true right and it's interesting that even with ourselves, like there's this, I can't remember who it was one time. I was Oprah or something like was talking about loving yourself and forgiving yourself. There's a lot of talk about Christians heading that direction. Like we need to forgive yourself. And I'm just left being like, the Bible doesn't ever say a word about having to forgive yourself. Like you need to be concerned with whether primarily whether God's forgiven you and you need to pursue peace with all men, the ones you sinned against that they would forgive you. But when it comes to like, forgiving yourself. I just don't see anywhere in scripture where that's even an idea. You need to repent yourself, but forgiving yourself just, it doesn't make any, it doesn't make any sense to me. Yeah. It makes me think that repentance is often the thing that we do other things to avoid having to do. Say it. I don't know what you mean. Say it again. So, so we do other things instead. Like I think about, there are a lot of people who

One of the reasons a lot of people get into political activism is, even good political activism, is because they have guilt over their sin. There are a lot of people who, we've talked about this before, with even some of the people who do activism surrounding trying to get rid of abortion, that what they're actually trying to do is compensate for sin that's in their lives. The ways in which they've failed. Well, I know I failed on these things, but if I can succeed in stopping abortion and I can work toward that end, then that will make up for it, right? But it doesn't. Yeah, keeping a tally of good and bad. We do good to offset the bad. Or we do good because we did bad. Penance. Penance and repentance are not the same thing. We do it with the people we love. You know, bring flowers home instead of saying I'm sorry. Right.

Yeah, repentance is a... Draw out the distinction between penance and repentance for a second. I mean, repentance is an acknowledgement of... When I think of repentance, I think the only time you actually repent is when you've given up hope of there being any other resolution to the problem. You're just like, okay, I tried stopping. I couldn't. I tried feeling bad about it. It didn't matter. I saw what it caused, the trouble it caused the people who were affected by it. No change. I'm about to lose my job. I still can't get rid of it. I'm going to redefine it. Still feel bad at night. Like there's just all of this stuff. I'm going to do penance. I'm going to try to, you know, put my thumb on the scales of just of my conscience. And in the end, it's like it doesn't work. Yeah. You don't find relief. You don't find rest. And so penance, even that is still a paying for a trying to.

You're still in the game. You're still trying to affect change. And repentance says, okay, I'm lost. I'm lost. I screwed it up. It's over. I need mercy. That's all I can have. The only solution here is mercy. I don't deserve mercy. And I think that's a huge thing is that even sometimes when we ask for mercy, we feel entitled to it. But we're not entitled to mercy. Not real mercy. No. God doesn't. Are people like, we're not, people don't say, as a general rule, they don't say, oh, I owe you forgiveness. On what basis? We're here talking because of all the things you've done wrong, not all the things you've done right. You've not earned good stuff. You've earned bad. You've earned judgment. You know, when people are upset with us for the sins that we commit, they're often right to be upset with us. Even if we think that they shouldn't be upset with us. Right.

And so how can we expect them? We presume upon them, well, you need to be gracious because you're a Christian. And yes, okay, they're sinners too. But this idea that repentance is a transaction or a negotiation is just wrongheaded. Repentance is when all that other stuff has failed. And sadly, it often all that other stuff has to fail first, where we get scared enough. of the consequences of our sins to actually turn away from them. That we actually see that this thing is going to, this sin will, is going to plant me in hell. That's the way scripture talks about it. Well, otherwise it's just a negotiation. Like it's not, repentance is not us saying to God, okay, if you will do this for me, I'll do this for you. Right. Yeah. There's no negotiating with God. I remember when I became a Christian, I got myself into such a mess. This is how I became a Christian. I got myself into such a mess that I thought I've ruined my life. I've ruined my life. And I prayed to God and asked, if I won't get what I deserve, and I knew what I deserved, if I won't get what I deserve, I will never commit that sin again. I will not do it again. Because I mean, remember, I didn't grow up in the church. I hadn't been taught all these, you know, the right way to pray. I was just scared.

And so all I knew was to say, please, Lord, don't let me get what I deserve and I won't do this anymore. And it was sincere. I really didn't want to do this anymore. And I finally had rest and I finally did put to death that sin. And it was painful for me, for people around me, but God was merciful. And I tried managing it. I tried. Negotiating, you think, well, tomorrow, tomorrow, and never today. And repentance finally was like, okay, it became clear to me that as I became a Christian and was processing through repentance and was untaught, and it's not like I'd read the whole Bible, what became clear to me, just by the work of the Holy Spirit, I guess, was when you make your own decisions, you destroy everything around you.

yourself, the people around you, like you are just going to make an absolute mess of everything. That is the, that's the honest testimony of your actions. You don't mean to, you wouldn't say I'm trying to ruin my life and everyone else's. But when you, if you were to just look at like, you made this decision and these are the, this is the cost of that decision. Oh, you did it again. Oh, you did it again. Oh, a fourth time, you know, it's like, When you strip away like, oh, but he didn't mean to, or oh, he didn't have a dad, or oh, poor kid, which all those things were true. But when you strip all that away and you're like, yeah, but that guy's immoral. He's making moral decisions that have real consequences. I was just like, when I do what I want to do, it's just destruction. And part of my prayer that the Lord would forgive me initially was to say, Tell me what to do. I'll do what you say. I want to do what you say. I wish I did more of what he said to this day. But that was my sincere heart's desire was to say, I want to do what God says. Because I've had my cup full of doing what Dave wants. And it's just, I've sowed the wind and I've reaped the whirlwind. And I see it by God's grace. Lord, help me. And that meant that everything in my life had to change.

Like, what I spent my time doing, I went from being in the gym three or four hours a day and being in a pool hall four or five hours a night and working 10 hours a day, not sleeping much, to no more pool, no more exercising, helping with a youth group, and going to small groups in a church. And so, like, the people, none of the people overlapped. Whole new groups of people. Like, the gym rats and the pool hall junkies, swap them out for... the youth group kids and these christian singles in the small group that i was in a complete shift like that it was just that quick it wasn't like oh well we're gonna try to like it was clear to me like i can't continue doing this like those things i'm involved in are are so intertangled with my sins i have to be i just have to be done with them i just have to quit and i wanted to and so i did and this is i mean i'm saying i did i did you know but this was god's

conviction but also his power in my life to say this is going to change yeah and and no one told me what repentance was it was just like and so instead of talking about well this is the process of repentance and these are the steps that take place like repentance is the is what happens when you see your sin for what it is And you're not making excuses for it. And you're not turning away. You're not self-medicating with entertainment or food or alcohol or whatever other form of, whatever other sin. You say, this is what it is and this is what I am. Then you say, ah, I want to get away. I need to get away from this. That's what repentance is, is that response after you've seen the mouth of hell open up for you. Yeah, it makes me think of, I saw this online where this person was late to work, and they asked, like, why are you late? And the response was, because of who I am as a person. And in a way, that's terrible. And in another way, it's actually really great. Because repentance, like a crucial part of repentance is starting to understand that the sin that you committed,

It's not this thing that's outside of you that besieged you from the outside and you were overcome. It comes from within you. That's what James says is that our desires, we are carried away by our own temptations and desires we have. It's not something that happened to us. It's something we did because of who we are. And to actually repent of the sin in an important way means becoming a different kind of person. Yeah, and for that to happen, you have to get rid of all of the excuses and justifications that are acceptable in our society. Like if there was ever a perfect candidate for like poor you, it's me. I grew up poor. I grew up an only child. I grew up with no father. I met my dad when I was in my 20s for the first time. He left when I was like six months old. My mom never remarried. My mom worked two full-time jobs until I could start contributing financially to the house.

when i was like 14 i ran around with i was we lived in a poor neighborhood i ran around with the other kids whose parents didn't care where they were my mom was sleeping so i could do what i wanted and like oh he's made bad life he's he's got a bad life because he was dealt a you know a bad hand like i'm the person everybody could be like well what are you gonna do he never had a dad what are you gonna do like he was poor what are you gonna do he barely got through high school Which is true of me. My senior year, my mom asked, are you actually going to graduate? I was like, yeah, I'm going to graduate, mom. I'm not going to graduate with a real good GPA. But the classes that I'm failing, I don't need to graduate. I failed my share of classes in high school. Failed one of them twice. Same class. Took it twice. Failed it twice. Not because I was too dumb to figure it out. I just didn't. I'm going to do the work. And so, but everyone would be like, oh, well, poor guy. Oh, well, he's this kind of guy because he didn't have a dad.

I find a lot of Christian men, like the fact that they didn't have a perfect dad being the excuse for like the justification for every struggle they have in their life. And I'm here to tell you, not having a dad is awful. And it is a destructive thing. But at some point you have to own up and say, but I did that. I did that. And it's my mess. I made it. And I can have the dignity of trusting God and repenting and cleaning it up. You know, serving God. But I can't, I never can do that if it's always, well, I never had a dad to teach me. I get it. I didn't. And. There's a difference between an explanation and an excuse. Yeah. I mean, yeah, you can say, okay, these are the propensities that this guy's going to face because he didn't have that sort of training, that sort of instruction, that sort of help growing up. But at some point it's like, but you, you've, you've.

been shown another way and now you're rejecting it and that's a lack of repentance and so i think repentance requires that you take moral responsibility for your actions and as long as you tell other you've got it in your head that what i do is not my fault or i didn't mean for that to happen i didn't mean to hurt those people i didn't mean for that bad thing to happen that's just an excuse Of course you didn't mean, like, what are you, like, what kind of person would you have to be to mean to do that, cause that kind of destruction? It doesn't change the fact that you did cause that sort of destruction though. Right. And so you have to say, okay, I did that. Right. Meant to or not, I did it. Yeah. And what am I going to do with that reality? And with that, I mean, the other thing I would think is that often, like, you can say, oh, I didn't really mean for that or I didn't mean it. But you actually did. In a lot of cases, you actually did.

Like, if you said that mean thing to your wife, like, you actually meant it. You were mad. Like, and that's what you said when you were mad. Yeah. I mean, repentance just requires ownership, that you did the thing. Whether it was good, bad, whether you did it in the heat of the moment or whether you were plotting and scheming for weeks, you did what you did. And you didn't have to do what you did. So much of the time, the justification is, well, I didn't have any other choice. That's not true. You either didn't have a choice that you were aware of because of your ignorance or your impatience or some other thing, or you didn't like the other choice. And so you chose, you're like, I can either continue in sin or I can get out of sin like this, but here's the cost. I want a third choice where I can get out of sin, but without the cost, without having to pluck out my eye, without having to lose the relationship, without having to go through the pain.

And that option's not often on the table when it comes to real repentance. Repentance is just humiliating. I don't know how else to describe it. And what we wish is that if we would repent of our sins, we think it's just this transaction. Well, I repented of that, so I don't have to deal with it anymore. Maybe in God's providence, you'll have a season of reprieve. But we think of our sins as being like just having roots that grow just in the surface. But like the roots of our sin go down so deep, they spring back up in other places. And if I were to describe my own life, it's like there's, I don't know that there's any sin in my life that it's like, well, I just don't have to deal with that anymore. It's changed the way that I have to deal with it, the way that it expresses itself, like the battles, the areas of pressure have shifted. But it's like, oh, well, I just don't deal with it.

anger anymore i've told i was telling eric earlier this week about what i was like in high school i said the thing is none of you guys i mean i didn't live in indiana i lived in chicago i didn't know i don't have any touch point from my childhood that i'm still in contact with today other than family and i'm like dude you don't know what kind of guy i was when i was like you i mean i have my sins now but you're experiencing a really different person than i was then And I told him stories and he's just like, you did what? And I'm like, yeah, that's what it was like. And I can see now what it was, but I couldn't see it then. And so a repentance comes after a breaking of your heart toward God. I don't know that you can repent toward other people if there's not a strong element of repentance toward God as well. Because what do you replace it with? You have to replace it with renewed.

pursuit of obeying God and realizing it's still going to be a struggle. It's still going to be a fight. And so when Luther says, you know, that when our Lord said that when he said repent, he meant that our Christian life would be a life of repentance. Like the best we can hope for as Christians in this life is grace sufficient to continue to repent and to fight against our sins until we die. I know that's not how people talk about repentance or the Christian life, and they're not like, oh, and that's the thing. Sign me up. But that's because you've been sold a bill of counterfeit goods is the other option. The other option is judgment, is still misery, is still pain, is still uncontrolled sin. And then at the end of it, during the process, no growth. And then at the end of it, hell. That's the other option. This idea that...

Sin can just – you can go away and you can have a good, easy, comfortable life as the world sees it or would weigh it out. It doesn't exist. Not for the Christian. Something I think about as it relates to repentance is that I think we have this unstated expectation that if you have to repent, you shouldn't have to do it very long. And like one of the ways this plays out, there's the Revoice Conference and the heresies that they teach surrounding homosexuality. At the bottom of it is people who, like some of them, like honestly tried to stop having homosexual desires and were not able to quickly resolve that and just gave up. And I think that that's – and so what ends up happening is if you – persist in a sin long enough, you either have to decide that you are willing to keep fighting this sin over and over and over again, maybe for years and years, or you have to tell yourself that your sin's okay. And I think everybody reaches that point if you have a besetting sin that you've struggled with long enough. And so, I don't, like, hearing you talk, like, I think about my own sins and some of the ones that I've had for a long time.

And I hear what you're saying about repentance, and I know that that's what I need to do, and I also do not feel like I have the ability to do that. And what would you say to someone who is hearing this and they are tempted toward despair, they're tempted to throw their hands up and say, woe is me. What can we do? What would you say to that person? Well, it's hard to talk to that person because you don't feel like you can say anything hard or ask any more probing questions. The first thing I'd ask is, what do you want people to say about you when you're dead? What do you want the testimony of your life to be? From the people who know you and who love you and who are going to come to your funeral, what do you want them to have believed to be true about you? They're going to know what your sins were because they were your family.

they were in your house, you know, what do you want them to say? Because what, the reason I would ask that, I asked that question is because of what you want to say is you just want to relieve the pressure somehow. And it's like, I don't know that I've got pressure relief. Like I don't have easy pressure relief for you. I don't have five steps and then it's easy. And so I think some, if you really are a more downtrodden, melancholy, type of personality, like my expectation, what I'd say to them is, I don't think you should expect to be a cheerful, like a, something you're not. Exuberant, yeah. Yeah. Like you're going to, you're, from your vantage point, life is like this. That doesn't mean you can't honor God and that you can't grow with the gifts and the strengths and the weaknesses and sins that you have, but it's not going to look the same as this exuberant person.

I think we tend to idolize the people who have different sins than us. And we think that's what being a Christian is like. I'm just this Eeyore of a person who's always like, oh, it's so bad. It's not fair. And it's so hard no matter how much I do. And if I could just be more like that person over there who's carefree and who's the life of the party and who's fun and who's pretty and doesn't have any problems, is what we think, then I would be a Christian. But it's like, But you could go talk to that person, and they've got a whole bunch of problems too. They're just different problems. And so I don't think I'd say to the person who's temperamentally downcast, you just need to – there's a simple fix for that. This is the background of your struggle with sin. And I want to see you make progress. I want to see you grow. I believe God can help you. But I think one of the things I would tell them is that this is a weakness that you have.

I have different ones. I don't tend to be that guy, that downcast, like, oh, you know. But what I would tell them is God loves sinners. And you don't have to clean yourself up before God will love you. And you don't have to be most of the way clean. Like, you don't have to have made a good faith effort to get cleaned up first before God will love you and will care for you and will accept you. And so it really is just the gospel to them. But then it does mean the fruit of that gospel is that they would want to respond to the love of God with love for him in return. And what I think of is that if you're still trying to get away from your sin through your own effort, then you still haven't repented. That your repentance is incomplete until you've given up on conquering that sin by your own power.

And you just throw yourself at the mercy of God. Oh, God, please change me. Purge me with hyssop. Better to say that they haven't – like that's obviously steps of repentance. The person begins by trying to flee their sin. Yeah. But they have – some point have to come to grips with the fact that they can't do it in their own strength. They're doing it poorly. If they do it well, then they're proud of the fact they did it well. Like, oh, well, I took care of my sin now. And the quote that you opened with, the Christian's life should be a life of repentance, is the idea that this isn't something that we did five years ago or 10 years ago or 30 years ago and like, oh, now it's taken care of. It's that the moment of repentance reveals something about who we are in our character. And then we're going to be working out through our lives moving forward, oh, this is who I am.

And if not for the grace of God, I will continue to be that person. Like, without the continue, the ordinary means of grace. Right. We've been talking about the church. Like, without the church in my life, like, that's what my life looks like without Jesus. Like, right now, if God stepped away from me, if the Holy Spirit was removed from me, like, that's the person I am. Like, that's the mess that I make. Yeah. I remember in college. Like early on in my college years, I had a problem with pornography and I was able to overcome that and be free of that. And that was like mildly scandalous because all the guys around me were like, how did you do that? That's supposed to be impossible. And so like I'd have some conversations and what I often would ask them is like, okay, are you praying? Are you reading the Bible?

what I would tell them is, I've never seen anyone be addicted to pornography who reads 10 chapters of the Bible a day. It just doesn't happen. And that's because, one, because the Word empowers us to defeat sin, and two, because it takes a long time to read 10 chapters. And that's time you're not spending building up temptation or putting yourself in a bad situation or whatever it is. But even that, it's... When you say that, there's so many ways repentance can be systematized where you're like, well, if you just do this, then that'll solve the problem. If you just get covenant eyes. Yeah. If you just do this, if you just do that. And it's like, you can do all of those things and there not be repentance. Right. What I hear people when they talk about covenant eyes, the protection on their devices, is, well, if you want to get around it, you can get around it.

And it's like, yeah, but the problem is, what's the point of putting it on your phone if you're intent on getting around it? Then what you're really saying, in other words, is, I don't want to repent of this. What we'll often say to men in that situation is, you need to call somebody. You need an accountability partner. You need someone that will pray with you. But you need to know when temptation arises, and you need to actually fight those things. If you won't call somebody and tell them what's going on and pray with them and get together and then say, yes, I will get away from whatever, you know, put my phone in the other room. Okay, I'm done. Like if you won't make a plan with them because you want to repent. I mean, if you come to me on, you know, a week later and you're like, yeah, I had a bad week or this and that and the other. And I'm like, well, what did you do to fight the sin? Like you had a stretch of three bad days, but you didn't do anything to get out of it.

I'm sorry. I really am sorry. That's a grief. You're coming to me because you're grief stricken. But in the moment, you did what you wanted. And what you wanted was not to repent. One of the first men's Bible studies. One of the first men's Bible studies that I was here, the scripture lesson was, the scripture that we're studying was, how shall he go and keep his way pure? And I remember what you said to us. You said, like, we're not mind readers. The elders here are not mind readers. If you're struggling with sin, you need to call us. Call somebody. Tell somebody that you're struggling. And I remember one of the elder elders said, I've gotten phone calls in the middle of the night to somebody saying I'm struggling with temptation. And the person that had called him said that was me. They called him at 2 o'clock in the morning to say, I'm battling pornography right now, and I need your prayers. And I've had longer conversations with that person, and they described the steps of grace that God used with John.

through John as one of our elders to help them. And it was essentially saying, it's not going to be something you just lay here and wallow in your filth and just say, well, thank God, He forgives me and grace covers. It was steps of Scripture memory, but they were all predicated on the idea of genuine accountability, of actually repenting and then confessing to other brothers in Christ to help you to help you overcome that sin. Yeah. And so I think repentance, while it's not formulaic, it does have an element of you do have to make a plan. Yeah. Like one of the things I'll often ask men, if there's a recurring sin in their life, say, okay, well, when is that most tempting to you? Like, and what I'm asking is like, when should you expect these temptations to come? Right. Because what we want to do is be fighting the, it's, it's like, If you lived in Florida, the goal is to get the plywood up over the windows before the hurricane hits. So you need the weather report so that you have time. So you have to learn, you know, to read the weather and say, you know what? It's time to get the plywood out. Right. And because it can get too late. Right. And literally speaking, I think that one of the best pieces of advice for.

especially young men is that generally speaking, it's like, there's the old saying that like nothing good happens after midnight. And like, I would, I would add to that. Nothing good happens on the internet after midnight. Like just do not use the internet late at night. It's not a good idea. And, and like, basically we ought to like what you're talking about. We ought to be able to think about the times in which we're going to be stronger and the times when we're going to be weaker. And just, if you're, if it is, if it's going to be a week period, Just don't expose yourself to the temptation during the weekend period. You can't get away from the temptation forever, but you can limit it. Yeah, I think it's helpful because you're talking about preventative all in the front. And I'm like, but that's not repentance. Repentance is what you do after you screw up. And I'm like, but the goal of repentance is to screw up less. So the way to screw up less is to be taking steps of repentance beforehand.

Not that you're repenting of sins you haven't committed, but that part of your repentance from past sins is working to prevent that environment from happening again. Those set of temptations. And what's that mean? Well, I don't know. The Bible tells us you should cut off your hand. You should pluck out your eye. You should run away screaming like Joseph did. Run away from Potiphar's wife. Costly stuff. He got thrown in prison. You wonder, was Joseph ever tempted by Potiphar's wife? Probably. I mean, I don't know why. I mean, I'm like, okay, you know, if man, you know, if I can't, if Jesus is tempted in all ways like as we are, I can only imagine what temptations any other man would face if, you know, Pharaoh's wife was keen on you. It's like, so I think he probably was like, I fear God or I'm going to satisfy my flesh. And he ran away. Like, and so.

You have to fight ahead of time. You have to be continually fighting. And so it's not this. Repentance is not just the beginning of life. It's not just the repent for big sins. There have been times I've had conversations and I come away and I'm like, I overspoke. I said more than I should have. It was slander. It was gossip. I was angry or whatever. And what am I supposed to do? Just like, well, the initial reaction is like, well, I'll just be sure not to do that again. But then I'm left with like, if I had the conversation with you, you're left with like, well, Pastor said, Dave said, blah, blah, blah. I taught you that that's something to say. That's the way to say it. It's okay to say it. So no, I have to come back to you and I have to say, that thing I said was wrong. I shouldn't have said that. It was not your business or it was uncharitable or whatever the problem was. And you have to go back and fix it.

I don't mean fix it and make up for it, but acknowledge it and say, this was wrong. I shouldn't have said this. This was sin of me. And if it's someone you regularly interact with, you're going to get to know that this is a common temptation. This is a regular, and hopefully you get to the point where your brother says to you, hey man, you're doing it. The last thing I was thinking of as it relates to repentance is that this is a time for us to just trust God. Like, let's do what we can. Let's make the effort. Let's put ourselves in a good situation. Let's not make provision for the flesh. Let's read our Bibles and pray and have fellowship and have accountability and confess our sins to our elders. Like, these are all good, important things. Like, we want to try to be spiritually strong. But at the end of the day, it's going to be just believing that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion.

And whether in this life or in glory, our sins will be destroyed. And we can hope in that and trust in that. And what we need to do is we need to despair of ourselves and look to Christ because he has defeated sin. Yeah, I think you just said something that made me, the connection between confession and repentance, that it's an essential part of. And confession is an essential part of, like you said, well, you just go and you confess your sins. And I'm like, no, they don't. No, I don't. No, that's not the thing I'll do. I want to separate the two and say, well, I will repent without ever confessing my sins to God or the people I sinned against. I'll just do better. And confession, and I think part of the reason we do that is largely just because of shame. We're just ashamed and we don't want to admit what we did. And pride. Yeah. Yeah, pride. And also pride. Yeah.

Yeah. What will people think of – like, it'll ruin their image of me. It'll – I don't know if that's what you mean. That's what I'm thinking about. Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. Well, and it's humbling to us. Like, it's embarrassing, and it's one of my – like, just a beautiful moment with Jaron last year. We'd been attending the church for a few months, maybe six months or something, had family worship, and then I was going back to tuck the kids in and give them their goodnight hugs. And walked by the bench that's in our foyer. And Jaron was curled up on the bench. And it was evident that he was emotionally, like, he was upset about something. And I said, what's going on, buddy? And he just started sobbing and said, I lied. And I said, when did you lie, buddy? He said, lots and lots of times. Well, come to find out, he had been, I would, he'd gotten old enough. He's my oldest. And he would.

something would happen. One of the kids would be upset. And I would come in and ask what happened. And the girls would say, Jaron did this. He hit us or he threw this or whatever. And I would say, Jaron, did you do that? What happened here? And his reply would be, oh, I didn't do that. And he would come across like so sincere and so serious that I would trust his answer. So he's confessing this, crying, and he wants to pray. And what he told me in that, it was really the very first time this had ever happened for him. He's at that point, I think, seven. And he said, well, he said, I would do this, you know, I've been doing this in line, and I would say I was sorry to God, but I knew that I should confess my sin, not just to God, but to somebody else. And I talked to his Sunday school teacher, I talked to Gabe.

on Sunday. And I knew the way he said it, I'm not getting the words exactly right, but it sounded like something like he had learned an exact phrase, like confess your sin to God and to someone else. And he was just sinning constantly, doing this over and over again. But because he wasn't coming to me and confessing and saying, dad, I lied, I'm sorry. He was just falling back into the exact same thing over and over again. And it was this big, like a watershed moment for him to realize that repentance was not just a a momentary, oh God, I'm sorry. But to turn from his sin, he needed to find somebody to confess, to have accountability, to humble himself, because that was the issue. My son is very proud. I'm sure he didn't get it from me, but he didn't want to humble himself. And that moment of humbling himself and admitting his sin then was a turning point for him in his life. And I've noticed the fruit of that.

moving forward, like the difference. He still sins, he still struggles with things, but God has given him increasing victory and help in these areas that he's been willing to humble himself and confess. Pete Yeah. And so, repentance is just a humbling act of obedience to God. Repentance is something God commands. And you're not gonna live your life as a Christian without a regular helping of repentance, of acknowledging your faults, saying, I'm sorry, and you're gonna repent. of the thing you've committed. When Jesus was asked, how many times do we have to forgive our brothers? You realize there's some repentance going on there. But we would never want to call it repentance because it's like, but it was so many times. And Jesus was like, uh-huh. Keep forgiving them. As long as they come to you, keep forgiving them. Why? Because that's how God is with us. Because that's how we are. We keep sinning and sinning and sinning. We need the grace of God. We need mercy. We need to be reminded and reassured of,

of our sins being forgiven, but we're going to, our Christian life is going to be, if it's supposed to be a life of repentance, like Luther said, then it's going to be a life of humility. It's going to be a life of acknowledging our faults and asking God to be merciful to us. So it's one of the reasons that in church each week, we have a prayer of confession. It's probably one of the things that's strangest. And one of the other things people notice when they come to church is they say, that's really weird. Like you kneel and you have a prayer of confession. And we go, well, we're sinners. We're sinners coming into the presence of a holy God, so it only makes sense that we would repent of our sins. You know, when we have the Lord's Supper and I fence the table, one of the last things I'll say is I'll say if you're living in any sin against your knowledge or conscience, you need to confess your sins and repent of them. And if the person, if you're convicted of sin in the, you know,

I'm not just telling you you should pray a quick prayer before you come up. I'm saying as you come up in line to receive the Lord's Supper, you should just make eye contact with the elder who's serving it. And it doesn't take much for them to realize you want to talk to them and just tell them, confess your sins to them, pray with them. I remember I saw it happen a few weeks ago. Someone was in the line. I'm like, nobody's going to be upset if you delay the line. They'll just go over the other line. Like, it's just don't worry about that. Because it's simple little things like that. Well, that would be embarrassing.

It's like, well, but you're struggling with sin. Do you not want to be forgiven of your sins? I know you want to be forgiven of your sins, so just ask. No one's going to be discouraged. If they see you talking to an elder, they're going to say, okay, this is what's important right now. I can wait. I can go another line. There's no problems. But it doesn't take much to dissuade us from repentance. We'll do it later. Well, I'll do it when no one's watching. I'll do it when it's less embarrassing. I'll do it if I commit the sin again. I'll do it anytime, but right now. So repentance is a humbling work. We should be about it. What we don't see with repentance is the freedom that's on the other side. When Jesus said, come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, you kind of have to ask, what are you all weary and heavy laden with?

Probably all the commands of... All the sins. Well, yes. And all of the commands of the Pharisees that you've not been able to keep up with. And now all of a sudden you're just worn out and Jesus says, come to me and you'll find rest. And so if you want rest, then repentance is the way there. Yeah. And welcome back. Cheesiest way to say that. Gotta do better. Not quite as cheesy as saying, I want everybody under the sound of my voice. Yes, you got to stop saying that too. All right, fine, fine, fine. I'm waiting for it with every head bowed and every eye closed. Come on. I'm a Baptist. I see that hand. Your Baptist is showing. Everyone under the sound of our voice. I hope you're enjoying this. I'm going to say it three times in this episode just to irk you. And I'll cut it out for. Oh, man. Just because you say it doesn't mean anyone's going to hear it.

He's going to be the only person in the sound of your voice. He has the power. All right.