More on Repentance

Isaiah 47:10-11
10 You felt secure in your wickedness and said, 'No one sees me,' Your wisdom and your knowledge, they have deluded you; for you have said in your heart, 'I am, and there is no one besides me.' 11 But evil will come on you Which you will not know how to charm away; And disaster will fall on you For which you cannot atone; And destruction about which you do not know Will come on you suddenly.

Thus says, the LORD!

How easily we can dwell secure even in the midst of our sin. How easily we justify our sins, saying in our hearts, "My actions are not like those of others. I have reason to act or be this way. No one else understands or knows." And, as the LORD said through the prophet Isaiah above, the unrepentant person says, "I am, and there is no one beside me."

What a dangerous place to be found! What frightful words are these, "I am, and there is no one beside me." The unrepentant person sees himself in the place of God. For it is the LORD Himself who said,

Isaiah 45:6
That men may know from the rising to the setting of the sun that there is no one besides Me. I am the LORD, and there is no other...

It absolutely sickens me to think how many times I place myself in the position of God. "O LORD, forgive my hard heartedness, my pride and delusions of grandeur. Make me a humble and useful servant."

Charles Spurgeon exhorted:

Clasp that cross! Backsliding Christian, go at once to the cross! There, and there only, can you get your spirit quickened. No matter how hard, how insensible,how dead you may have become, go again inall your rags and poverty. Clasp that cross!

Again, I pray: "Keep me O Lord, from presumptuous sins. Let me not be deceived by sin, satan or self, into thinking that I have the ability to "charm away" the evil that I might willinging engage in so as to escape the consequences. For there is no escaping the consequences of open rebelliousness and there is no atonement that I can offer. Give me a proper hatred, a genuine fear and an earnest resolve against sin. Oh, how I fear I have been duped by sin! Oh the aching of my heart when I think of how callous I have become, how complacent I am and how dull is my heart. Let me turn away from sin and draw near to You, my God. Let me forsake the ways and wiles of sin and learn to walk in the same manner as of my Lord Jesus. I plead for Your mercy, for Your grace and for the deliverance from sin. Keep me, O Lord, from presumptuous sins. Let them not rule over me.

Teach me, empower me, enable me to offer the members of my body, everything I am, my heart, my soul, my mind, my all, as a faithful, obedient slave to righteousness. Let me be known as a child of righteousness. Let people see the righteousness of Christ in me and say as they go, "There goes a child of righteous; a bond-servant of the Lord Jesus Christ who lives out, 'Not my will, but Your will be done.'"

Lord, teach us the meaning of repentance, of turning away from idols to serve the living God.

Repentance is a deep, radical, fundamental, lasting change; and you will find that, whenever you meet with it in Scripture, it is always accompanied with sorrow for past sin. And rest assured of this fact-- that the repentance which has no tear in its eye, and no mourning for sin in its heart, is a repentance which needs to be repented of.

In such false repentance, there is no evidence of conversion, and no sign of the existence of the grace of God. The man who knows that his sin is forgiven, does not cease to mourn for it. No, brethren, his mourning becomes deeper as his knowledge of his guilt becomes greater. His hatred of sin grows in proportion as he understands that love of Christ by which his sin is put away.In true believers, mourning for sin is chastened and sweetened, and, in one sense, the fang of bitterness is taken out.

But, in another sense, the more we realize our indebtedness to God's grace, and the more we see of the sufferings of Christ in order to effect our redemption, the more do we hate sin, and the more do we lament that we ever fell into it.The man who has led the purest life, when he is brought before God by the humbling influence of the Holy Spirit, is the man who almost invariably considers himself to have been viler than anybody else. Repentance is to leave the sin we loved before, and show that we in earnest grieve by doing so no more.

Charles Spurgeon

Soli Deo Gloria,

Pastor Ed