As usual, when I start these things, I learn a whole bunch more than you folks ever will. Actually, it's part of the good process of learning. But I'm going to step back just for a couple of seconds here and talk about the Westminster Confession of Faith. It's been a long time since we really started this. We're already in Chapter 15, but we've been going through, what, almost three years now that we've been going through intermittently the Westminster Confession of Faith. And so let's do a little bit of historical backdrop. What are some of the major events in the 1500s? I mean, it's just chock full of events. What are some of the major ones going on? Reformation, give me some particulars there. Luther, okay. The 95 Theses, I think that's in what, 1515 or 1517, something right around there. And so, as he writes those 95 theses, at that time, he's not a Christian yet. Lots of people believe that he is disconcerted with the church and still struggling with justification and what it means. But by 1519, they figure that he has figured out or there are events in his life where he becomes Christian. What else? The Institutes of Calvin, that's in the 15, it's actually, pardon? I think 32. 32? Yeah. I think it might be just a little bit later than that, but some of the conversion numbers for him are 1539, somewhere in that area. But he writes the Institutes. Calvin is converted in the early portion of this century. And so what else? Now, what happens in England at this time? You may not be concerned with England, but what's going on in England? The late part of that century, they're going to start the civil wars. But in the early part of this century, politically, what happens is Henry VIII does what? He basically goes away from, he starts the Church of England. He does. So he politically separates the Church of England from under the rule of Roman Catholicism. I don't think that's necessarily an indication of his Christianity. I think it's more a political move. The Church owns a bunch of property. In the next few years, he will take all of that property and use that as rewards for his noblemen and for himself. What he starts out as a political movement ends up being a Reformation movement in the Church of England in the 1570s. So you have the Church of England starting to listen to what's going on over in Europe and start to reform. And so now comes, you know, in the next 30 years, civil war, right? I mean, we're gonna have a breakdown between monarchies coming in and being friendly to the gospel and monarchies coming in and being enemies of the gospel over the next decades. And it continues right through the early 1600s until finally you have a parliament that calls upon the Westminster Divines and they're going to write the WCF. It starts in 1643 and ends in 1648. They're called back to offer scripture proofs. I think that's a little bit later when they do that. Now, why was the WCF, the Westminster Confession of Fate written? To put the Bible in more It is a concise statement of what is contained in Scriptures, right? Okay, so it is that. Why else would you use it? Yeah? I don't know, but I think you're right. Yeah, I think you're right. With the events of the past century, one of the reasons to write the Westminster Confession of Faith is to distinctly pronounce what the differences are between the Evangelical Church, Reformed Church, and the church in Rome. Okay, we're going to clearly make distinctions here about what we believe, and this chapter on repentance unto life is a very big deal as far as the Roman Catholic Church is concerned. It is a, how can we put it, there is a whole bunch of additional work in the Roman Catholic Church concerned with repentance. Because if you remember now, when you go to confession as a Roman Catholic, you know, the priest absolves you. Now, that's as an officer of Christ. He does that. He doesn't do that himself. He's speaking as an officer of Christ. But what happens after he does that? What does he ask you to do? Yeah. There's a penance thing there. So part of your re-justification, and I'm going to call it that, they don't call it that, but part of your re-justification is that repentance and then a penance that is done as part of your justification, which is adding to the gospel. Now I have met people who I honestly thought were Christian Catholics. Okay, don't get me wrong there. But boy, you can really get this wrong in a hurry if you start placing the emphasis on the wrong syllable, if you understand what I'm saying. Okay, you can really get it wrong right here. Pardon? Is there still penance today? There is. Yeah, it's common for, but it's usually our fathers and Hail Marys. If you have a Roman background, maybe you know better than I do. I grew up around Roman Catholics, but Boy, I don't think they knew. I think they all took catechism classes to take confirmation at age 12, but they really didn't talk about what their church believed. They really didn't. I don't even think they carried Bibles to worship. They do not. Yeah, and it wasn't at this point in the church, scriptures were not to be read by the common man. You have to realize the printing press has come along and you have a larger group of people that can now read and have books to read instead of hand scribed on parchment. Now, I'm going to ask us a question a little bit. How do we use the Westminster Confession of Faith today? clarity and direction and confirmation. It's not scripture. It is not. It's not scripture. It summarizes and protects us from error. It does. It summarizes beliefs, codifies them, and it's very succinct language. I mean, if you look at the Westminster Confession of Faith without the scripture text, it's not very long. It's really quite short. This particular chapter is less than a page. For all the sections in here, it's less than a page long. I did run across one thing I didn't know. The OPC has written a modern language version of the Westminster Confession of Faith. It is helpful at times. I do like this better. I think you could lose some definitions and language as you move forward, and I want to be careful not to do that sometimes. Now, just sort of personal history. We had a young man in my school who was going for an Eagle Scout. Rod remembers him, Matthew Pritchard. I don't know if you remember him or not. He was going for his Eagle Scout. He invited a couple of teachers of his to come back before the scouts had gone completely left, or woke, shall we say. And he was going to have that service at a Presbyterian church not too far from my house. And it got me interested as to what that particular church believed in. And if you go on their website, They confirm that that church, PCUSA church, believes in the Westminster Confession of Faith. They say they believe it. The careful thing you have to watch out for is they have redefined multiple terms within that Confession of Faith. They've taken that and they've moved it away from their traditional definitions. That's why I like keeping the old language is because now they've put a new definition. And so one of the things when you're dealing with that, and I'm just learning this, believe me, you really have to ask people when they use a term, what do you mean by that? Okay, because their definition has changed. And so when you're dealing with something like that, it's a very helpful thing to use. Another reason why we use the WCF. As you're exposed to this, it is, I mean, it's the way you become an officer in this church. You know, they're not gonna let you be an officer unless you believe in the Westminster Confession of Faith. So when you come to this class, you know, you're sort of figuring out, do I believe everything that's in the Westminster Confession of Faith? By your conscience, can you? If you do, Now there might be one or two areas where you could take exception. Anybody know where common exceptions are taken? Sabbath day recreation is one of the ones. The church has, the PCA has some alternate views on six day creation. The Westminster Confession of Faith, as far as I've read, the divines had a myriad of different opinions as to what sixth day creation was. It was a little bit different than what we think. But a lot of times I think they're trying to insert something into language as it was spoken, and they're not directly speaking to science or to six days or what's going on there. So sometimes I think they're trying to insert that language into the divine's language. It's 121 men, I think, that wrote this. But it is a test for this. So now let's go into the Westminster Confession of Faith. It's hard to take so long doing that. We're right here now. This is the order of salvation. We're right here in conversion and faith, okay? These are listed simultaneously on my line, and that's, I didn't do it. Everything I looked at had it in together, and there's a reason why. Okay. Here is the first section for repentance unto faith. This is 15.1. Repentance unto faith is an evangelical grace, the doctrine whereof is preached by every minister of the gospel, as well as that of faith in Christ. Okay, so scripture texts, some of the main ones here, 2 Corinthians 7.10, for godly grief produces repentance that leads unto salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death, and then Luke 24, words of Christ. Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures and he said to them, thus it is written that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations beginning from Jerusalem. Now, Now, a side note on the Scripture Proofs. The first time I read the Westminster Confession of Faith with the Scripture Proofs, I was really amazed at how good the Scripture Proofs are. They are excellent. I don't know if you've read something in a Christian book and they have a Scripture text. Sometimes you go there and you think, I don't know if that really supports what the guy's talking about. That is not a problem with the Westminster Confession of Faith. It is not an issue. The scripture proofs are right on the money. They're absolutely excellent for what's supported there. And many times, what you'll see in these You know, what you'll see in the Westminster Confession of Faith is really a snippet of Scripture. They just lift out that phrase and put it here, and then they'll, the Scripture text, the Scripture proof will show you where that comes from. I've chosen two here. Now, let's talk about the words here, just sort of dice these up. Evangelical, at this time, what does evangelical mean? We have an idea what it means today. gospel-proclaimed. It's that Greek word for good news is what I understand it, and I'm not a Greek scholar, but it is the gospel. Grace. I mean, we have all sorts of common definitions for grace. Give me a good definition for grace. Oh, is that right? Okay. Grace-defined, right here, okay. I like that. unmerited favor. Yeah, undeserved favor. And so I have the proclamation of the gospel, an unmerited favor, and now there's a implication for what good pastors do. This is a necessary condition, shall we say. Good pastors, if they're a good pastor, what are they going to do? They're going to preach, they have two pieces here. They're going to preach repentance unto life, and they're going to preach the gospel. They're not going to sort of leave one part out here, right? They're going to preach both as a means by which they could be indicted on these charges if they didn't do that. I say indicted. They could be held with a, if they don't do it, there are some problems there. Now, there are some distinctions made here about this. Long story or short story? Let's see. Short story. I'm a teacher. And so I often, in the course of my work, you would discover a student that had cheated on some work of theirs. It's not uncommon, even in a Christian school that I taught in. You've had this, right, Ron? I mean, it's a common battle, and so you'd have an eighth grader that what they did, they took the file for the answers for the homework, and they sent them to their friend, and the friend put it in a weird font, and they printed out the same pages. And so they were hoping that the font would hide the comparison of the answers, right? And so, don't know who gave what, or who did what, but they both got a zero for that particular one. Now, up until the time I caught them, what was their attitude? got one over on Mr. Myers, or I just didn't have time to do it. After I caught them, what was their attitude? They were very sorry. And that is repentance of attrition. Okay, that is repentance of attrition. They saw, that's really what they're sorry about. That's really what they're crying about. They're not crying about the fact that they sinned or they did something wrong. Now occasionally I think you'd have somebody that, you know, how can I say this? Occasionally I think it went over into true repentance, but not very often. Not very often. And so that would be the type of thing that would be repentance of attrition. R.C. Spruill uses the example of, you know, the kid goes in the cookie jar and mom reaches for the spoon, she's going to get spanked. Now she's sorry, right? Now she's crying. Now, repentance of life, examples in scripture. Can you think of some good examples in scripture of repentance unto life? Paul is an amazing example, right? Woman at the well. Woman at the well, pardon? David. David. You know, and there's a sense that he has, he's gonna do that, we're gonna look at that, but his repentance unto life is often followed by the second part of this particular sermon. He repents later on too. He's a Christian, but then later he just finds his sin odious and terrible, so he's gonna continue. We have a charge to preach repentance. Now, one of the terms I liked about this was, one person called this the gospel coin. It's two sides of the same coin. The good news of the gospel, and that's heads, and tails is repent. You can switch whichever order you want to, but they're two sides of the same coin when it comes to this confession of faith. Here's 15-2. Okay, now this is where I picture David being, especially in his amazing psalm, by a sinner, out of the sight and sense not only of his danger, but also of the filthiness and odiousness of his sins, as contrary to the holy nature and righteousness righteous law of God, and upon the apprehension of his mercy in Christ to such as are penitent, so grieves for and hates his sin as to turn from them all unto God, purposing and endeavoring to walk with him in all the ways of his commandments. This is David in heart, especially in Psalm 51, as a response to Nathan the prophet. Now, this repentance unto life, these are some questions that a Christian can ask themselves and say, do I really have repentance unto life? We should be questioning our testimony every once in a while. Is it true? First off, repentance unto life starts in the heart, then it goes into outward action. Okay, there's a change in behavior after repentance into life. Now, there's lots of places anymore where you don't have to change your behavior, okay, as a Christian, right? That's not exactly. Another part, another way I heard it put, and then by the way, this is from Keith Matheson out of a February 2024 Table Talk. You can't help but repent. Okay, you've had repentance into life, you've sinned, You're sorry that you've sinned. Do you hate your sin? Ray and I have talked before about the fact that one of the great prospects of heaven is to not have any more sin. Brian and I were talking about what's the mindset of the person separated from God after death? I'm not sure that they give up their sin. I think they're in that repentance of attrition now, right? They can't truly repent from their sins. That's an awful state to be in. Awful state to be in. Reach out for a confession. I have to say that, boy, do I use the confession time in church, okay? There are occasions when I pray and I get off track, but boy, when I begin that confession, I'm on track, right? I have to say this, that I'm not going to go where my sins are, but they're there. Here's David's first part of the Psalm. I love this verse. Who can't read Psalm 51 and feel regret for sin? And I just, you know, David always switches it, okay? I love the way David does things. David does this thing where he wants God to act in faithfulness to his attributes, right? He's always calling on God's attributes to save him. Okay, so, oh, have mercy on me, God, according to your steadfast love. There's the attribute that he's claiming, your steadfast love. According to your abundant mercy, the attribute, blot out my transgressions, wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. This is wonderful scripture, right? Now, I'm Do you ever read passages and they just sort of go over the top of your head? And I've, the scripture proofs for this particular section is Ezekiel, a lot of them came from Ezekiel 36. And I've read Ezekiel 36, but for some reason it clicked this time. Oh, by the way, let's, let me go on ahead to this. Here's Ezekiel 36. This is Ezekiel, prophet in the early exilic time. And this is the Lord speaking to Ezekiel. And what I find wonderful about this is that this is the Lord speaking to Ezekiel, and he's telling Ezekiel, I'm not doing this for you. Which is sort of astounding statement, right? There is a sense that he's doing it for him, but here's what he says. Therefore, say to the house of Israel, thus says the Lord, it is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations to which you came. And I will vindicate the holiest of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations and which you have profaned among them. And the nations will know that I am the Lord their Lord, declares the Lord God. When through you, I vindicate my holiness in your eyes. And so the Israelites, the Northern Kingdom's been carried off. This is early exile. Ezekiel is there. There's still a king in Jerusalem at this particular time when he's carried off, if I've got my history right. But he's a, he's under the authority of Babylon at this time. And so the Lord is saying, I'm causing events to occur that are gonna bring you back to God, and I'm not doing it for you, it's because you are known by my name. So I'm protecting my holy name here in order to do this. Okay, I'm gonna go on down one here, hang on. These are the famous verses now. This is further down in Ezekiel 36. And I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. You will dwell in the land that I gave your fathers and you shall be my people and I will be your God. And I will deliver you from your uncleanness, and I will summon grain and make it abundant, and lay no famine upon you. I will make the fruit of the tree and increase of the field abundant, that you may never again suffer the disgrace of famine among the nations." Now, this is, his spirit's upon them. This is the earlier verse is gonna give you a clean heart, flesh made of, you know, a heart made of flesh, not of stone. It's gonna cause these things to occur. This verse caught me, okay, this one caught me. Then you will remember your evil ways. Okay, now what's just happened in the scripture here? The Lord's blessed them, brought them out of Babylon, predicting that he's gonna bring them back to the land of their fathers. Then you will remember your evil ways and your deeds were not good. and you will loathe yourselves for your iniquities and for your abominations. It is not for your sake that I will act, declares the Lord God. Let that be known to you. Be ashamed and confounded for your ways, O house of Israel." That just got to me. It can be. It's such a thing about faith, you know, a break of faith, right? The chapter right after this, when they go into this, that's the vision of the bones, right? That's the renewing of Israel, but certainly applicable to Christians today that doing this for my holy name, you're gonna be saved and I'm gonna bless you abundantly, but then you're gonna remember your evil ways and be sorry for it, which is a real true state of a Christian heart. I'll back up a couple slides here. Okay, nope. Okay, here's R.C. Sproul's quote. We see a crisis in the modern church in which cheap grace has achieved the upper hand. People are told God loves them unconditionally and that we're acceptable to God. nor matter what we have done, no mention is made of the necessity of repentance." How did early church eras differ from this? What's the psychology of the person today as far as sin is concerned? Oh, well. Okay. Does it matter? Okay. I don't think they think about sin. It's not preached. Well, and popular, not popular psychology, but psychology would say that it doesn't exist. The real problem is guilt, not sin. Okay, that's the real problem. And I think there's a philosophical mind that's sort of split. Okay, here's what I think happens. I think the philosophical mind says, in his mind he's saying, there's no such thing as sin. Okay, there's no such thing of it. I am a material atheist, right? Materialist, atheist, I don't believe in God. There's no such thing as right and wrong, okay? Now, on the other hand, he doesn't want to live like that because there's consequences for it. Okay, so he sort of says, I'll live like this in order to avoid some consequences in life, but that's what I believe. And I think there's a time at which, I hate to say this, but in modern America, I think that peace is fading away. I think that idea that I have to live in light of those consequences is actually departing from the American mind to a large extent. What was the early church like? Early church or reformed church? Or a faithful church, let's put it that way. What was the difference? Pardon? Any ideas? Could be. Puritans. Yeah. I agree, I agree. And there has been, you know, there has been in the United States a real sense of legalism about Christian faith for a large extent. I grew out of that particular faith. You know, all the things that you could do and couldn't do and some of them made good sense and some of them did not make sense at all. Yeah, I think, did the early people have a good idea what right and wrong was? Probably a better one than we do, right? I hate to say this, but I think that's lost today. I think it's been in the last 150 years with modern psychology that the idea of sin and the idea of guilt that goes along with that sin that needs confessing has just vanished. to a large extent. I don't think that was a problem, as much of a problem in the early church. Christians knew and they had lots of common understanding of what was right and wrong and what was written on men's hearts. It was not hidden, but was out in the open. Any time I think about how bad things are today, I think about the dark ages. And we're not there yet. And I agree with you. I have a better cyclical view of history than the continuous downward trend of history. There are higher points and low points. If the history of Israel is any idea, it was a constant cycle. When you think of our life in faith, it's kind of like this. The history in general seems to be doing this. And I think when Christians have a braver testimony, greater impact on those around them, I think repentance unto life would certainly lead a community to believe more in Christianity, I think. You'd be acting like it, right? Well, folks, that's all I have prepared for today. Any questions over these two? Yes. Initially, I would think it would be the repentance that comes at the moment of conversion. We definitely see our hearts change. We're broken by what we have seen in ourselves. We see God's holiness. That is a repentance unto life. But some of the verses we've looked at, like Psalm 51, Ezekiel 36, and even Paul in Romans 7, where he discusses deeply the struggle that the Christian has with sin that initial conversion. So is the confession dealing with that ongoing walk of sanctification as well? In section 2, it talks about having an odiousness for your sins, and that is the state of a Christian. They really regret their sin and are sorry for it, continuing state. And the confession will also take up perseverance. Yeah. establishes these days, it goes on to talk about perseverance for the truth. So I guess I'm asking, is this Repentance Unto Life dealing mostly in this section with conversion type things? Repentance Unto Life is with that conversion in faith. But then there is a result of that conversion unto life, and it's a sorrow for your sin that is not sorry for being caught. It's sorry for the, in the presence of a holy God, we regret that we've done these terrible, unclean things. So that two-part impact. This is, it's conversion in faith, okay, that piece, okay, justification is often placed with that simultaneously because they're about an instant apart. So they have that regeneration, the outward call, inner call, effectual call, justification, the regeneration, conversion in faith, and then growing into sanctification, right? This is where I got the children's catechism, because it's the word of repentance, because it's repentance is to be sorry for sin, to hate and forsake it, because it's the truth of God. That's precise. It is good. How many of you knew Tom Mitchell? Anybody here knew Tom Mitchell? He had a young girl in our school, Cherokee Christian School was early on, and for a while, she went to a different school. I don't know what it was. Somebody, maybe even a different Sunday school for a while, but anyway, somebody asked her what SIN was. And she gave the short catechism answer, and the person was just shocked. Okay, you really, that's really a good answer. Where did you get that? Of course, the teacher didn't know what that definition was for sin, transgression, right? Okay, I'm gonna pray, folks, then we can leave. Let's do that. Dear Lord, we do indeed thank you for these valuable lessons here. Ask Lord that we would examine our own hearts. Give us a heart that does understand that sin is anathema to you, that you won't tolerate it, and you will eventually work out your salvation and your sanctification in us in heaven to where we don't have it, but here on earth, we have to live inside of it. Help us to do so and progress in honoring you having a full understanding of your holiness and our position, but Lord, help us to trust on the gospel for the basis with which we stand before you, our union in Christ. We ask this in Jesus' name, amen.