Grace Chapel Bible Ministries
Worship Call 1161 Believing and Repentance - 2024/10/14
(soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) Welcome to worship call of the Bible teacher Buzz Leve. Buzz is the pastor of Grace Chapel Bible Ministries located in Duncan South Carolina. This ministry is dedicated to the verse by verse teaching of God's word and discipleship programs aimed at strengthening the faith of God's people. Now here's today's message. (soft piano music) From A.W. Tozer pursuing God. God at the center. He built there in altar and called the place El Bethel because there God appeared to him. After Jacob's first memorial encounter with God in the wilderness he called the place Bethel which means the house of God. Many years later after he had suffered and sinned and repented and discovered the worklessness of earthly things he renamed the place El Bethel. Literally that God of the house of God. Thus Jacob had shifted the emphasis from the second place to the God he had met there. God himself now took the center of his interest. We need to consider that many Christians never get beyond Bethel. God is in their thoughts but he has not been given the first place. Faithfulness to the local church is a good thing. But when the church becomes so large and important that it hides God from our eyes it may become a good thing wrongly used. Always God must be first. And we all never forget that church has never intended to substitute for God. What is our primary interest? Is it Bethel or El Bethel? Is it my church or my Lord? Is it my creed or my Christ? Father in Heaven we thank you another day and we want to have a first place. We want you to have the first place in our lives. We love the doctrine that you give us but we recognize that doctrine is not our God. We thank you. We love the church that we assemble with in our fellow believers. We also recognize that the building and its pews and its pulpit and it's not our God either. But it is you and we pray Heavenly Father that you open up our hearts in a personal relationship with each and every day draws near to the Heavenly Father. That nothing else compares and it drowns out everything and makes everything in every person relationship at best second but never first. Open up our hearts and thank you for another week that you've been us. Thank you for your grace, your mercy, your kindness. Open up our hearts to things that we're about to study and continue to study and we pray these things in Christ's name. Amen. All right another fine day in the Lord we're going to pick up right where we left off. I hope you had a great great weekend and we are in Acts. Let's start with Acts 3.15. This is a verse that we left off Friday and I hate to leave and move on from there. So today might be a little bit of a review. It says therefore repent and return so that your sins may be wiped away in order that the times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord. There is a contextual part of this verse as well as a principle. The context that we understand is that Peter is talking to the nation Israel. He's talking to Israelites. They are already believers. He's not telling them how to believe. He's not telling them to turn back to or he's not telling them the unsaved that they need to get saved. Remember that we've got a strange area here. We've got believers that come up to the cross. He's talking to those believers that once believed that Jesus Christ is the Messiah. That he is the Messiah. That he is the one point to Daniel that this one was going to as the men on the road to Emmaus had said that this one was going to give us relief. The one was going to be the one. But now Jesus had at that point they had believed. At that point they were at one point they believed and then the next point they were not believing. They believed when they were saying, "Hoseanna, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord." These were believers. So after they ended up saying, "Crucify him, crucify him." Now do we turn around? Does salvation get yanked away from them? No, no, no. Once you have it you ain't getting rid of it. Then you have the principle here that it's not about one's own personal sense. And repentance is for the unbelieving believers. Again, I'm going to say that again. Repentance is for unbelieving believers. The word for belief is "pistus." In a sense for faith, it's a word used for faith. It is a word used for belief. It's a word for use for trust. So rather than say, "I'm believing believers," let's say, "I'm faithful believers." Those who are saved. Repentance is for those who are saved. Those who will not lose their salvation. But as it were that these Jews who yelled for the crucifixion of Jesus who rejected him, who sent him to the cross, as Peter points out. Now he says, "Return to back to where you believed before." You see repentance takes us back to where we believed before. And so they once put the trust in Jesus when they welcomed the son of David as the king into Jerusalem, riding in on a donkey. They, as believing Jews, when in the pattern of Abraham, they believed the promises of God. And being accredited to their account, but they stopped believing. And Peter here is called for repentance. So they once believed Jesus, and now Peter is calling for the people to change their minds back to the believing state. Look at some points of doctrine here with me. Let's see. Where are we? I wish we could. Did I lose it? Just a minute. Here we go. We're back. All right. Point number one. The call for repentance is not for the unsaved. That may go against everything you've been ever taught. But when you go to a gospel, when you go to a gospel meeting, when you go to a revival, they say you don't repent. Tell God what you did. You can feel sorry for it, but, you know, and there are those that will bring, will bring, to bring your heart into the shame, into the sorrow, and that you are a sinner. Hey, we are, as I so love to say, an apple tree produces apples, an orange tree produces orange, the lemon tree produces lemon, but a sinful tree produces sin. We sin because we are sinners. And at best, it is a symptom that something is wrong. For the unbeliever, it's a symptom that that's who he is. He's a sinner. For the believer, it means that he's walking according to the flesh. So the call for repentance is not for the unsaved. Point number two. The call for repentance is not for the one to regret or feel sorry for one's bad decisions, i.e. for our sins. I'm so sorry, as an unbeliever saying, "Oh, I'm so sorry for my sins, Lord. I'm so sorry that I'm this and I'm that." You didn't belong to the Lord anyway at that point. You were the sons of disobedience. And what I'm saying here is that for the unsaved, sin is not the issue, and some may take great issue on that, but that's the deal. Number three. The call for repentance to the Jewish believers is to turn back to what they once believed. To turn back. It wasn't for them to call, "Lord, I'm sorry that I rejected you. I'm sorry that I'm sorry for that." For being one who shouted to crucify you, please forgive me for that. No. And again, these are already believers. The gospel message. For the unsaved, it's not about repentance. For the unsaved, it's about belief. It's about faith. You see, faith and faith alone is not faith and repentance to get you saved. It's faith and faith alone in Christ alone. I still believe in that. Look at these passages. Romans 10 and 9. That if you confess with your mouth, Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. John 3 16. For God to love the world, that he gave his only begotten son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. Again, we're not dealing with repentance here. Notice, pay particular attention, but what is it to bring you into salvation? Believe. Believe. John 3 36. He who believes in the son has eternal life, but he who does not obey the son will not see life but the wrath of God upon abides on him. It's not up here, but remember all the way back in Genesis chapter 15. I think Genesis 15 6, if I remember right. Abraham believed the promise of God, and it was credit to him for righteousness. John 6 40. For this is the will of the Father that anyone who holds the son and believes in him will have eternal life, and I myself will raise him up on the last day. Somebody tell me where you see repentance in these verses. And if you come up with some, let me know. If I'm wrong here, let me know. John 11 25 26. Also for the unbeliever, for the unsafe. Jesus said to her, I am the resurrection of life. He who believes in me will live even if he dies. And everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this? So it's not about the sin. The sin is the consequence for a screwed up relationship with the Lord. And we all have a relationship, by the way, we all have a relationship with the Lord. It's either a right relationship or a wrong relationship, but nonetheless there is a relationship. And it is the faith that brings us into that relationship with him. So it is faith, not repentance from one sin. And that brings us to salvation. And again, this will bring the Calvinists out of their seats and say, yeah, but you have to repent. You have to repent of your sins. That's not the issue. The repentance comes later in the life. Your major issue is not that you're a sinning sinner. The issue when you're unsaved is just that. You're unsaved. You have no relationship with the Lord. You have no relation with the Lord. You have no orientation to the authority. You're in obedience. This is why Ephesians chapter 2 caused the unsaved the sons of disobedience. They're only doing the will of their father to devil. It's about the changing of the allegiance. Sin is but a symptom of a lost condition. And we sin because we are sinners. It is absolutely not how you feel about your sin. It is about believing the gospel. And the gospel is trusting in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ for something that you cannot do for yourself. And some will accuse me this morning of saying that, well, we could get saved and do anything and everything that we want. No, we're not because now we are under the authority. We've changed our allegiance. We are now children of God. And if we think we can get away with everything that we want, our salvation is guaranteed. But we can't get away with our continuing to sin because there is divine discipline. And you're hell on earth. Even though you're going to heaven, your hell will be on earth through the discipline of God. But he disciplines his own. Now let's discuss the role of the believer in regard to repentance. So here at this line, you've trusted in the Lord Jesus Christ for eternal life. I have believed in him. Why are you saved? I hope you can articulate it. I say, so you're a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ. Let me ask you today and approximately wherever you're sitting at right now. You are a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ. Why? What makes you safe? Let's just say, what makes you safe? And the answer should be through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, or however you articulate by believing in the Lord Jesus Christ, as Scripture has said, by trusting in him to do what I cannot do for myself, to bring me into a relationship with him. It's his work. You see, even our, we can even call our repents. But now that you're saved, now that you've crossed that line, now that you walked through that door, the moment that you walked through that door, you are a new creature. Old things have passed away. New things have come. Amen. Amen. Amen. There is a relationship and you can't get more purified. You cannot become more purified and more clean and more saved. You can never get more saved than what you are the moment that you trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. You can't get, you are there. And at salvation, you have confessed with your mouth. You have believed in your heart that Jesus Christ is Lord, and the word for Lord is curious. You've bowed the knee. You changed your allegiance. You can't get more purified than that. You believe it. But then, all of a sudden, you find yourself in sin. The moment you sin, it may be 30 seconds. It may be less than 30 seconds after you've been saved. And you sin, and you step outside of the relationship. You walked out the garden, per se. And you have believed, and now you walked out. Now, at this point, you become an unfaithful believer. And I said more, "Pistus and Pistus." You could say, "I'm believing believer." But a unfaithful believer, "Ah, Pistus." You believed here, and now you don't believe. Or you were faithful here in your allegiance, and now you're unfaithful as you are walking now in the, by means of the flesh, in carnality. You could change that real quick, and you ought to, by naming that sin, and returning back to the Lord. This is where repentance comes in. Repentance is for the believer, those who have believed. And we talk about principle here. It's not what Peter is talking about specifically to those Jews to turn back to their belief in Jesus. But the principle still applies to us as church-age believers. When we are walking in darkness, we are unfaithful believers. We are unbelieving believers, and repentance means to turn back. Still, it's not about sin. Still, it's not about what we do. Now, we do confess our sins as the first John says. We're laying them on the docket. We're laying them, bringing them to the judge. With full confidence in our minds, why do we confess the sins? Not only for God's benefit, for our benefit. Because when I acknowledge, when I confess my sins, I am acknowledging not only to God, not only to creation, not only to myself, but that those sins have been judged already at the cross. The Lord takes a look at them. We're both, God is looking at this cross. I'm looking at the cross. It's a covenant as the covenant back in Noah where God looks at upon the clouds. We look upon the bow, and we look upon the bow. But when I'm looking at the cross, when I confess my sins, I'm acknowledging them. The Lord is looking at them. We're both looking at the work of Christ upon the cross. That's where the covenant is sealed for the forgiveness of sins and I'm cleansed. The repentance is not for the unsaved. The repentance is for the believer to go back and stop their unfaithfulness and turn and change your mind and come back to where they had left. They started in a right position, but they left that to repent, to come back, to change your mind. So the Jews' believers were unfaithful to the truth, which they had for a short time belief that Jesus of the Nazarene was the Messiah. In carnality, a child of God is no longer faithful in the truth. What is the truth that Jesus Christ is courier? He is the Lord. And when we sin, we are essentially making a statement that he's no longer in charge of my life. We have rejected the truth that initially saved us, that Jesus Christ is the Lord. Let's come back to Romans chapter 10 verse 9. That if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, again that word for Lord, bring it up on Lou and I to hear, Lord means a title for God and for Christ. One who exercises supernatural authority over mankind, Lord, rule, one who commands. Prior to our salvation, we were under the dictates of Satan, the cognitive system, the demonic agencies, our old sin nature. We are ruled by everything but God. But when we are saved, again we changed our legions to Jesus Christ as our Lord. And now repentance comes into the picture with regard to the unfaithful believer. And still it is not about the repentance in the sense of sorrow over our wrongdoing. It is not about remembering our sins, it is about remembering that those sins were judged and paid for on the cross. So the matter of repentance is turning back to the belief that initially saved us. And so our spiritual status, Brian, your dad said one time I first heard, our spiritual life isn't predicated on our self determination not to sin. And avoidance of sin and moving away from sin, again it is a controversial statement. And I have learned in my life the more that it is like wrestling with a pig. You wrestle with a pig in the mud after a while you find out that the pig likes it. And that is like wrestling with sin. As you are wrestling with sin you are not going to overcome your sin nature if you are wrestling with it by your self determination. There is no way to get up in the morning and say today I resolved not to sin. You can be sinned before you get out the door. I promise you that. And you are going to be frustrated. Many people give up because they can't overcome their sin nature. It is just who I am. And it is not about to say well God is Jesus died of my sin. Jesus died from my sin. I am what I am says Popeye. That is what I am going to always be and you leave out your home with the full conclusion that you are going to sin so therefore you are going to rebound. That is also a hogwash. Yes God is faithful and just forgive you for your sin. But you are not going to grow one spirit and you are going to be walking in darkness most of your life. The key is to abide in Christ. The key is to remain with Christ. As James has drawn near to the Lord. So once you are focused is right upon Christ. Once you are walking with the Lord. Once you are locked up with Him and once you resolve not to leave that environment which you are walking with the Lord. You are going to find out that those things that you struggle for have been. And that is love. Remember what I remember in 1 Corinthians 13 when I was a child. I thought like a child. I put away childish things and I have grown up. How do we grow up and I walk with the Lord. Your self determination is works. Your self determination is dead works. It does not count for nothing except for this to be determined to walk with the Lord. To walk with Him day by day. Galatians 5 16. But I say walk by the Spirit and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh. It takes some situation awareness. It takes where am I. When you are in a rut, when you are down, when you are even when you know that you are in the darkness, when you are going for Christ, the question is where am I. Why am I where I am. Because of my stupid mistakes, no your stupid mistakes is just the fact that you are in a stupid place. Where are you in your walk with the Lord? Repentance means come back to where you depart from. Romans 13 14. But put on the Lord Christ and make no provision for the flesh and regard to its lust. All right, we talked this morning about a much about the principle that Peter lays out in 13 verse 19. And coming back to context, but the Jewish context, the Israelites, therefore repent and in Acts 13 19 where we will turn back and we will pick up tomorrow morning. Therefore, will and spirits guiding. Therefore, repent and return so that your sins may be wiped away in order that the times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord. There is a condition here. There is a condition. If you do this, and when you do this, and as you do this, there is going to be something that comes. There is times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord. There is still also a principle or a context which deals specifically with the Jews. But there is also a present reality and principle for the believer and the Lord Jesus Christ. And I hope you with me tomorrow on that. Let's close it out. Father, in heaven, thank you for this opportunity. It's more of a fellowshiping in your word. And we pray and we ask Heavenly Father to open our hearts to these truths. If anyone within the sound of my voice has never received Christ, they can do so right now. It doesn't matter what you've done as an unbeliever. It doesn't matter what has tripped you up and what has tied you down. It doesn't matter. Jesus Christ sets you free. And He will set you free the moment that you trust in Him for eternal life. He took every one of those sins for you on the cross. And for those that may be walking in carnality, it's not about being rebaptized. It's not about being saved again. It's about repentance turning back to where you left. And I pray Heavenly Father, that hearts will be open to these truths that we may correctly assess ourselves in where we are to turn back to the, or turn to the, and to bow in need to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Thank you for this lesson this morning. We pray these things with Christ's name. Amen. All right. That's another fine day and no more. Keep your armor on. Keep fighting a good fight of faith. Lord will burn God after a penny. We'll be back here at the A.M. You can hear this message again as well as previous lessons. And get note by visiting us online at www.gchapel.org [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO]
for those who are unsaved Repentance is not the issue for one cannot return where he never has been.