Well, if you'll open your Bibles this evening to Acts chapter 20, verse 21, and I'm going to keep you there for a moment. And you can also simultaneously take out your catechism questions. We're going to look at numbers 91 to 93. So Acts chapter 20, verse 21, and we'll get there in a moment. We'll make you wait a little bit. Okay. In 1951, Norman Dale arrived in Hickory, Indiana, a small little town, and took the position of a high school teacher and a high school basketball coach. The name of the school was Milan High School. That was 1951. Just three years later, he led this small, little, quaint high school to the state championships, and he won. The town was absolutely stunned by this achievement, and they were wondering what the secret to his success was. Well, he would tell you, and he did tell them, the secret to the success was the fundamentals. That's it. Nothing fancy, not any pump-up Nike shoes. I don't know if they still have that. That just aged me probably. I think they're Reeboks, actually. But it was just fundamentals. In fact, the first two weeks of practice, He didn't even let his team touch a basketball. All they did is focused on strength, training, conditioning. They ran lines back and forth. They practiced their position, their defense position, their offensive position. They talked about strategy, and they talked about attitude. For two weeks, didn't even touch a basketball. And the parents and the players came to him and said, when are we going to touch a basketball? He said, when you get the fundamentals down. The fundamentals are the bedrock of all successful basketball playing. Well, it was 1954. They had made it through the whole season to the championships, the state championships. And that year, they had to travel all the way to a town in South Bend, Indiana, where the state championship was going to be held. And it was in a huge gym, a gym much larger than theirs. Their gym back home only had bleachers on one side and then a big wall. But this gym had bleachers on this side and on that side and on both ends. It was a huge basketball court. And he brought them in to an empty gym. Some of you know what he did. He took out a tape measure, right? And he measured from the basketball hoop, the rim, all the way down to the floor. What was it? 10 feet. And then he measured from the basketball hoop all the way to the free throw line. Same thing. I think that's 15 feet. Yeah. And he told them, he said, see those measurements? Exact same measurements as our small, little, quaint basketball gym back home. Same measurements, same game, you need to remember one thing, the fundamentals. And it was through those fundamentals that they won the state championship. And some of you know the story that I'm talking about, right? It was made into a movie called Hoosiers, that's right. Well, as it is in basketball, much more it is in the Christian life. The Christian life is not about coming to Jesus and having that blessing, and then moving on to a higher blessing, and then a yet higher blessing, and then a yet higher blessing. You come to Jesus and that's the greatest blessing you could ever have. You come to Jesus at the foot of the cross, and the weight, as we read in Pilgrim's Progress, is dropped from your back. He frees you up. You are now saved to now live in the newness of life through the power of the Spirit. Be sanctified all of your life unto glory. Fundamentals are at the heart of everything, and I would say, along with Paul and everybody else in the 66 books of the Bible, the fundamentals can be boiled down to two things. Repentance and faith. That's it. Repentance and faith. Repentance and faith are the fundamentals to the Christian life. They're gonna take you all the way to glory. And so this evening, what I wanna talk about is those fundamentals. We wanna look at the idea that from beginning to end, repentance and faith cultivated in the soil of the means of grace is the perpetual exercise of the Christian, okay? So we're gonna look at that in three points because that's what preachers do. And the first one is, In question 91, the necessary ingredients to become a Christian. The necessary ingredients to become a Christian. So let's take our catechism questions. And I hope you're still in Acts. We're going to get there. But catechism question number 91, the catechist asks, what does God require of us that we may escape his wrath and curse due to us for sin? And we answer, to escape the wrath and curse of God due to us for sin, God requires of us faith in Jesus Christ, repentance unto life, with the diligent use of all the outward means by which Christ communicates to us the benefits of redemption. The nuts and bolts of Paul's preaching ministry and the preaching ministry of every apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ was repentance and faith. And we see it here now coming to the text, exemplified to us in one of Paul's sermons in Acts chapter 20. I'm just going to lift this text right out. He says to those to whom he's preaching, I've been testifying both to Jews and to Greeks of what? Paul, what have you been saying? What have you been telling us all about? I'll tell you, he says. of repentance toward God and of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. This is the essence, as I've said, of the Christian religion. It's not only what gets us into the faith, but it's what continues to sanctify us in the faith. That is, to make us more like Jesus. Now, what I've tried to do tonight is to start off by explaining what repentance responds to and what faith responds to, because they're not the same thing. And you could see even in the text, notice that it says, Paul says, of repentance toward what? It's in the text there. Acts 20, 21 testifying both the Jews and of Greeks of repentance toward God and of faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. Now, when we talk about repentance toward God, and we're going to unpack repentance in just a moment, a little bit more, we're talking specifically about God's law, God's expectation of what you must be in order to be brought into fellowship with him. Now, in our tradition, the reformed tradition, we have made distinctions in how the Bible talks about the law. And it's the first use of the law that Paul has in mind here in Acts chapter 2021. It's that law that says you want to come into fellowship with God. You want to be made right with God. You want to have a lasting, eternal relationship with the God who created you and redeemed you. You must be perfect. The law says do this and live. Everything that God requires, do this and live. And by live, I mean eternally. If you are going to have eternal life, you must be perfect. It is absolutely biblical and appropriate to say, to get into heaven and to be with God, you must be perfect. That is the requirement. So repentance hears that call of the law, the first use of the law, and repentance says, I confess I cannot do that. I confess that I am devoid of any righteousness in myself that can endear me to God, to make me acceptable to God. So I repent of my sins. In other words, I agree with God. In fact, the word confess, homo lageo, it means to confess the same. What it means is the same as who? The same as God. Where? In his law. So confession means to confess to God what he says about you, do this and live, and I can't. And by the way, God says that you can't as well. For all have fallen short of the glory of God. All have sinned and have fallen short of the glory of God. So repentance says, I can't do that, and I turn away from my sin. It's like making a 180 degree turn in the opposite direction. It's leaving my sin. I agree with God about what he says about this sin. It leads to death. I agree with God that this sin does not make me happy, so I repent of it. We're gonna find out in just a moment. Repentance, the Greek word, metanoia, means a change of mind. how you think about what God says about you. So once we have repented, okay, the law says do this and live, it reveals to us our guilt. We repent. Now, coming back to Acts 20, 21, repentance toward God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Repentance is not enough to save you. You could repent all day long until the cows come home. You could repent of every single sin. You could drop tears to fill an ocean over your repentance and you still would not be saved. Why? Because just to agree with God that you're a filthy, miserable sinner is not enough. You need two things. You need something to cover your sin, and you need positive righteousness that would make you acceptable in God's sight. And that's where the gospel comes in. The gospel says, in opposition to the law, do this and live, it says Christ has done it for you. This is grace, and it is your faith in the gospel after repentance to the law. These two things combined give you justification to right standing before God. So repentance is in response to the first use of the law, and faith is in response to the gospel, okay? Now, once we are saved, the law does not cease to have a place in our life. The law continues to have a place in our life, but as you see here on the board, it is no longer the first use of the law. Now it's what we call the third use of the law, and we put this in the title Evangelical Obedience. Now that you have been changed, your whole attitude to the law is not something that I don't wanna do, but because you are a new creation in Christ, you now desire to keep the law. So out of gratitude for what God has done for you in Jesus Christ, You now, when you sin, repent again and again go to Jesus for grace. So sanctification, which simply means being made more and more like Jesus, technically it means to be made holy or set apart. Sanctification is the growth of the Christian in the Christian life And it involves repentance and faith, just like repentance and faith in coming to salvation. But it's that the law now has a different function. It's not there to condemn you. It's there to be your holy guide. So this is what faith and repentance is. It not only gets us into the church, into union with Christ, but it continues to cultivate within us the holiness that God wants to see within his people now. Where do we go to constantly get that stream of grace that we need to be bolstered in our faith? Well, I spent seven Sundays talking about that in the pulpit. It's the means of grace, word, sacrament, and prayer. Word, baptism, the Lord's Supper, and prayer. So I won't belabor that point. So that's the first point, but now let's examine just a little bit more closely what faith is. So we'll examine, secondly, number two, the specs of faith. And this is question number 92 in your catechism, so let's look at that. Question number 92, the catechist asks, What is faith in Jesus Christ? And we answer, faith in Jesus Christ is a saving grace by which we receive and rest upon him alone for salvation as he is offered to us in the gospel. Now, I want you to listen to me very carefully. I hope you've been doing that anyway, but I want you to turn to Hebrews 11, verse one, and I want to say a few things about faith under this heading. I know some of you, this is old hat, But old hat is what sanctifies you, so embrace that old hat, okay? Hebrews 11, verse 1, the author tells us, now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. This word, assurance, is a very common word that the philosopher Aristotle used quite a bit. And it comes from a word that basically means what stands under anything, okay? So that which supports something. And it is our faith that supports us in what we put our faith in, our hope in, so on and so forth. Now, oftentimes, Christians are accused of having what they call blind faith. So we believe something even though there's no evidence for it whatsoever. Well, the fact of the matter is our faith is not blind in one sense because the things in which we place our faith are historical, are they not? The resurrection of Jesus Christ was a historical event. The revelation that God has given to mankind is given in historical events, whether it is through Moses or David or the Psalms. In Scripture, it's happened in history. We do not believe in fairy tales, we believe in historical bedrock incidents that point to the intervention of God in history, okay? But it is true, there are things that we believe for which there is no evidence. Can anybody give me an example? Well, we've never seen the Holy Spirit, that's true. If I say I believe in the Holy Spirit and he resigns within me, and the agnostic in the lunchroom is like, what are you talking about? I don't know that I have an analytical, empirical way to prove that. But let me give you another one. How about the second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ? Do we have any evidence for that? We have scripture that tells us that it's gonna happen, but we believe that by faith, right? Okay, it's a future event, but we believe it based on God's word, okay? This is, as the author says in Hebrews, this is the assurance of things hoped for based on the promise Jesus gave and the conviction of things not yet seen, and yet we believe it. Now, here's the question I have, and I want you to follow me tonight. Are we foolish for believing things that cannot be verified by science? If we are, then those who base all of their beliefs and convictions on science are equally foolish. Why? Because, does anybody know what science means, anybody? Scientia, from the Latin, it just means knowledge, right? There are things that science believes, I guess you could say it that way, that cannot be verified. There are things that science puts forth, that science depends upon, that cannot be verified. I'm gonna give you three examples, okay? Logic and mathematical proofs. Okay. How many of you ever use logic? You guys ever use logic? Okay. Yeah. All of you do every single day, right? Whether it's an argument with your spouse or trying to reason with your three year old where they throw logic out the window, you're still trying to perpetuate its use, right? But, uh, we use logic every single day. We use mathematical proofs every single day. Talk to an accountant. They're always using mathematical proofs to balance the books. So we recognize that logic is there, and atheists, strangely, will use logic to prove the non-existence of God. But here's the thing. This is what you ask the atheists. You're using logic to declare that God does not exist. Yes, that's absolutely what I'm saying. Why? Well, because the only things that we can believe in are things that can be proved empirically. That means mathematically, scientifically through investigation. Okay, well, Mr. Atheist, can you prove, can you verify the laws of logic? Think about that for a second. Can you verify the laws of logic? Okay, now, some of you have taken logic and you know there are things called logical syllogisms, right? So, man is mortal. Aristotle was a man. Therefore, Aristotle is mortal. Okay, that's called a logical syllogism. That is what's called a sound logical syllogism, which means it passes muster, it's true. And every agnostic and atheist is gonna use that, but you have to get behind behind the curtains of logic, how do you know that that logical syllogism, that the operations of logic itself are verified? Can you verify that? And the answer is you can't. So here's the catch. They have confidence that the laws of logic are correct and therefore they base their arguments on it. They have confidence. confidence, from the Latin confide, in English, with faith. Atheists have faith. Atheists have faith, you have faith. So if atheists, if Christians are foolish for believing things by faith, then so are the atheists. What is another thing that cannot be verified, but almost every agnostic and atheist believes it? Ethical beliefs. How do you get ethics apart from God? I talked about this a little bit this morning, but some atheists have said, well, morality is a societal agreement. So countries get together and they decide what morality is going to be for that nation. Okay, that's fine within that nation, but what about when this nation out here decides that they don't want to go according to your morality rules and they decide to take you over? And you protest and you say, but yeah, our social contract says that you can't do that. And they say, I don't care because all social contracts says that we can. Is there a universal morality that says all of you are wrong or all of you are right? Well, if you believe in God, there is. If you don't believe in God, and there is no absolute truth, and there's no top-down universality to morality, then you can't say anything about ethics. It is only a belief in God that grounds ethics, grounds morality, and makes it universal so that whether you are in the middle of the 20th century or you're in 2017, you could look back to what Hitler did and say, that was wrong. And we can say that based on a firm conviction of right and wrong. And then finally, science itself cannot be justified by the scientific method. All of science proceeds on a particular method, okay? Remember when you were in fifth or sixth grade, you did your science experiment? I don't know if you guys did it. I did it in sixth grade. I did mine on which molds faster, white bread or wheat bread? It was a hit. I mean, I didn't get first place, but it was fun. But what we were taught in that is the scientific method. It goes roughly something like this. You start hypothesis, and then what do you do? You test it, and then what? You observe the results and then you draw your conclusions to see if your hypothesis corroborates with everything that you tested and observed, right? OK. That's called the scientific method. Who determines the scientific method? How can you test the scientific method to see if it's appropriate? Well, again, atheists and agnostics assume these things, okay? So when we talk about faith, let's get one thing straight. Everybody exercises it. It's not a religious thing. It is a human thing, all right? Now, I belabored that a little bit, but let's move on here under this heading. We're still looking at faith. I wanna secondly show that faith is a saving grace. I just, I'm gonna fly past this really quick here. Your faith is not something that you conjure up by yourself. Your faith is something that is given to you by God, okay? Paul says in Philippians 1, it has been granted to you, not only to believe, but also to suffer in Jesus Christ. It has been granted to you to believe. So it's not that we get born again by believing and then get the Spirit. We get born again by getting the Spirit, being made new, and as a result of being made new, we believe. Okay, the Spirit dictates that. Faith is receiving and resting in Christ. What does that mean? This is very, very important. When you come to faith in Christ, you are receiving His person and work and resting in His person and work, which means that, and this is very, very important, your acceptance before God does not depend on what your actions look like as they come out of faith. That's important. Your life lived out of faith is important, but it is not the basis upon which God judges you. God judges you based on the work of Christ, who is the object of your faith. So if your faith is weak, but you still have a grasp on him, because by the way, he's holding you and you're not holding him, That justifies you just as much as if you're William Perkins, or Richard Sibbes, or Louis Burkoff, or whoever, Billy Graham, choose a theologian, I don't care. I don't care how weak or faith, or weak or strong your faith is, if it is genuine faith, you are saved. Faith is receiving and resting in Christ. And why is that important? Because as a result of so many abuses in our day of evangelical Christianity, people saying that they're saved and they live by what is called cheap grace, where they just kind of tip the hat to Jesus Christ or walk an aisle, people react and go to the other side and say, well, if your faith is not working as much as it should, you're not saved. I agree with the sentiment, but according to the Apostle Paul, it's not based on my works. Listen to me. Some of you may be thinking, yeah, yeah, yeah, but I need you to think through how you evaluate other people, other people, when they have weak faith, when their walk doesn't look like your walk, when they don't have as much scripture memorized as you. When they don't come to church as often as you do, when they have not read all the literature that you have, are they still saved? Yes, if they believe in Christ. If they believe in Christ. So faith is receiving and resting in Jesus Christ. Now, that being said, faith works through love, and this is not antithetical to faith alone, but complementary. Paul and James on the surface seem to have a little spat Paul says salvations by grace through faith alone in Christ alone James says in James 2 24 Faith is not alone, but it's by works Now we've talked about this for a long time as the church 2,000 years actually But let me just give you what the Reformed tradition has generally understood about that the word justify The word justify, as used by Paul and as used by James in James 2.24, one is not justified by faith but his works. can be understood in two different ways, in a forensic way and in a demonstrative way. In a forensic way, what it means is your faith gives you a declaration that you are righteous based on the object of your faith. It is a declaration of righteousness, even though you're not really righteous. It is a declaration from the court, as it were, that you are righteous. Now, when James talks about it, he's talking about how that faith demonstrates itself. And let me just give you one text to kind of show the difference, okay? In Matthew 11, verse 19, Jesus says this, wisdom is justified by her children. That's that same word in the Greek, dikayo, from which we get the word justify. Another gloss of that would be wisdom is vindicated by her children. So what James is getting at is, as he says in James chapter two, faith without works is dead. That kind of faith that has no works whatsoever, that's not a real faith. The kind of faith that justifies you demonstrates itself to be what the forensic declaration said it is, you see, okay? So James is doing something a little bit different. So there you go. In three minutes, I just solved 2,000 years of church history, okay? Now let's look finally at repentance. the specs of repentance, and this is question 93. What is repentance unto life? And we answer, repentance unto life is a saving grace by which a sinner, out of a true sense of his sin and apprehension of the mercy of God in Christ, does, with grief and hatred of sin, turn from it unto God with full purpose of and endeavor after new obedience. Let me say a few things about repentance. First, what I've already said, Repentance is our attitude to the law. It's not. It's focusing on Christ. It's focusing on what the law says about you and you get. Oh, confessing the same to God. OK. It is a change of mind. It is a change of mind. All right. If I am convinced if I am convinced. that drinking acid is a bad idea, then my actions will follow, right? I'm not going to drink acid. This is a stupid illustration, but you get the point. Repentance is necessary for salvation. It's impossible for you to be saved by only believing in Jesus Christ. Because to believe in Jesus Christ, you have to understand what the problem is, and that's what the law tells you. You can't just bypass the law and say, I'm going to Jesus Christ to be saved. Saved from what? Well, I don't know, I'm just here for the punch and cookies. No, you need to know what the problem is. And the problem is that the law says you're a miserable worm of a sinner. And if you say the same as God, when the law says do this and live and say, I'm guilty, I can't, and you repent, well then now you have a reason to believe in Jesus Christ. Like faith, repentance is a saving grace performed by God in the heart of the believer. As Pastor Ken said on Friday, it's Romans, Paul says in Romans, it's God's kindness that leads you to repentance. If you have repentance, it's because God granted it to you. It's not because you pulled yourself up by your bootstraps and became moral all of a sudden. God has given you grace. Repentance can, listen very carefully, and ought to be assessed. Turn to 2 Corinthians 7, 9, and 10. 2 Corinthians 7, 9, and 10. Repentance can and ought to be Assessed. Sankranti in 7, 9 and 10, Paul says this. As it is, I rejoice, not because you were grieved, but because you were grieved into repenting. For you felt a godly grief so that you suffered no loss through us. For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death. Paul contrasts two types of repentance here. One is a godly grief, which leads to salvation, and one is a worldly grief. What's the best way to explain this one? If you have children, you get this, and if you don't have children, you were one, and perhaps you remember. But do you remember when you got caught doing something bad, and your parents came and scolded you, and they expected you to say, I'm sorry? And maybe you said, I'm sorry, okay? Is that a godly repentance or is that a worldly repentance? Now, can I just say something very gently and pastorally as I can? May we not be hypocrites as parents who want to lead and disciple and instruct our children when we tell them, Johnny, I don't think your heart's in the right spot. I think that you need to understand that you've grieved mommy and daddy, and more importantly, you've grieved God. And so, can we reconsider your attitude as you tell me that you're sorry? If we're gonna do that with our children, then over here in the adult world, when somebody comes to us and they confront us on sin, and we said, okay, Matthew 18, fine, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, just leave me alone. Aren't we doing the same thing? Aren't we doing the same thing? And that is a worldly sorrow, that's not a godly sorrow. And oftentimes, I've seen this countless times, unfortunately, not only as a Christian, but more recently as a pastor, where people know the game in the Christian church. They know what they need to do. They know what they need to say. Fine, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Okay, okay, are we done? Are we done? But there's no genuine repentance as far as the man can tell. And genuine repentance is not going to have the crossed arms attitude of fine, I'm sorry. Genuine repentance, if I could say this metaphorically and sometimes even literally, is going to have tear in the eye. Genuine repentance like David is going to recognize against you and you only have I sinned God. And that's a huge thing. And sometimes it's not a sin that's just vertically, but it's a sin that has been done horizontally. And we need to go to those people and make what is called either reconciliation or restitution. Remember Zacchaeus when he met Jesus? Jesus spoke to him and told him what he needed to do, and Zacchaeus stood up and said, behold, Lord, half of my goods I give to the poor, and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I restore it fourfold. That's repentance. And I think sometimes what we want to do is play with this notion of cheap grace, where it's like, okay, well, if I just ask for forgiveness, God will forgive me, but I don't really need to clean things up in the relationship. Yes, you do. And if it's genuine repentance, that's precisely what you'll do. Because if you don't, beloved, what you are doing is you're being a hypocrite. I'm guilty of it, perhaps you're guilty of it, and we need to repent of our hypocrisy, okay? I am not interested, Pastor Ken's not interested, Pastor Brendan's not interested, and I hope you're not interested in this being a club. I don't want a club. I want a furnace of holy sanctification in this place. where word, sacrament, and prayer are driving us and refining us and shaping us and molding us through the tears, through the hard conversations, through the confrontation, through bringing scripture to bear upon areas in our life that we need a strobe light of interrogation on so that the sin can be exposed and we can agree with God, I am a filthy, miserable sinner. We can run to the foot of the cross and then out of the soil of what God has done for us in Christ. have a heart of gratitude that seeks to glorify God through sanctification. And that's finally what repentance does. It realizes the mercy extended to us in Christ, and it runs to the foot of the cross. So let me just leave you with this. We should think about this in the context of this church, Grace Covenant Church. I'm not talking about generic Christianity. In the context of Grace Covenant Church, we should be more critical of and concerned with our own sin than the sin of others. I am not saying. that we're not consent about the sin of others. We are. We believe in church discipline here. You've heard me preach probably ad nauseum about Matthew 18 and how you need to confront your brother and sister in sin. But ground zero of confronting your brothers and sisters in sin is looking at the mirror and letting the law do its work here and letting the law do its work here and realizing how miserable of a sinner I am and how in need of grace and mercy that I am so that If I need to go to my brother or sister, I'm coming as humbly as I possibly can. Not poking them in the eye to get that splinter out, but having taken the log out of my own eye, coming humbly, humbly, and saying, brother, sister, Christ is better, and you know that. I think you're being bewitched by sin right now. The world, the flesh, and the devil, please let me help you, please. That's what a humble servant of Christ does. And Paul sums this up perfectly in 1 Thessalonians 5.14. We urge you, brothers, admonish the idle, encourage the thank-hearted, help the weak, be patient with all. And when we do that, we are acting as a prism through which the example of Christ is shining to others. Because Christ was merciful as he condescended into the pit of scum and dirt and mud and despicableness when he grabbed us out of that pit and saved us. And we should model the same as we go to others. Let's pray. Father God, we thank you for the law, not because it saves, But that blessed tutor always drives us to Christ when you are behind it. And we pray that you would continue to do that in our body. Father, I pray that defenses and walls would fall down in this place. and that we would be transparent with one another, that we would invite the words of others as they speak the truth in love, that we would prepare our hearts and humble ourselves as we speak to others, and that you would continue to do your work of gospel-centered, Christ-exalting sanctification in our lives. We pray that you would do this for the glory of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. For it is in his name we pray, amen. Grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen. You're dismissed. Please go get your kids if you have them.