Is there any emotion more painful than shame? It just has this way of sticking to your soul like a stain that you can't scrub out. It nags you with the thought that you are what you did, or you're defined by your past mess-ups. Shame doesn't end just because time passes, or because you try to forget. But it can end. Shame dissolves when there is true repentance. Repentance, that's the way out of shame. And that's such a big deal. That's why Jesus spoke so much about repentance. In fact, the Bible says that Jesus' entire ministry is summed up by this phrase, repent for the kingdom of heaven is near. Numerous times, that's the summary of Jesus' whole message. He was all about repentance because he wants us to be free from guilt and self-loathing and nagging shame. And more than that, he wants us to be able to draw near to God, and the pathway to do that is repentance. And so the Bible commands all men everywhere, it says in Acts 17, to repent. God commands us all to repent, not just to feel sorry, but to truly turn back to God. And if you've ever wondered how to do that, or if you've ever wondered if your repentance is genuine enough, valid, if it's adequate, or if you find that just shame and self-loathing are just pulling you back away from God, well, today's podcast is for you. It's going to give us a clear step-by-step guidance from Scripture on how to help you walk in real freedom from guilt. six steps of true repentance. I'm D. Richard Ferguson, and in my 25 years of pastoral ministry, I don't know if I've ever learned more in a preaching series than I learned from my study through the gospel of Mark. And so I pray that this sermon excerpt today from Mark 6 will take you one step closer to deep intimacy with God this week. Welcome to the Food for Your Soul podcast, where we apply the Word of God to the hearts of men and women to stoke the fires of your delight in Christ. Here's your host, Dr. D. Richard Ferguson. We've already seen two facets of his glory. We saw Jesus the prophet, and now Jesus the power source. Let's look at a third one, Jesus the preacher. This passage really shows us how important preaching was to Jesus, shows the primacy of preaching. It's the most important thing. It's been the primary activity of Jesus from the word go all the way through this book. It's the main thing he did. He went around preaching. He said, that's why I came. And now, and that's what John the Baptist did, that's what Jesus did, and now he sends out the 12, and verse 12, it says, they went out and preached. That's the primary method. There are a lot of different methods of ministry, books and videos and one-on-one at a coffee shop and conversations and small groups and letters and blogs and whatever. All kinds of ways to minister the word of God to people, but the method that God designed to be the most effective in bringing people to repentance and changing people's hearts is preaching. And I tell you that so that if you have a spiritual struggle in your life, listen to preaching. Find good sermons on that subject and listen to them. That'll move your heart. That's one of the most important ways God will bring grace into your life, through preaching. All right, so Jesus sends them out to preach, but to preach what? What was their message? They can't preach about Jesus' death and resurrection like we preach today because that hasn't happened yet, right? They don't even understand about that. They can't preach that, but what they can do is they can preach the thing that John the Baptist preached in order to get people ready for that gospel message, which is what? Repent. That's what John the Baptist preached, that's what they preached. They went out and preached that people should repent, verse 12. That's what Jesus has been preaching, John the Baptist, everyone, that's the message. Salvation is a free gift, right? Nothing you can ever do to earn it. Nothing you can do to deserve it. You can't work for it. However, if you want that gift of salvation, you must receive it. That's what the Bible says. Use the word receive. You have to open up your empty hands and receive the gift. And the way to do that is with the posture of faith. Okay? This is just basic understanding of what the gospel is. Faith. You trust God. A heart that trusts God is the only kind of heart that can receive the gift of salvation. And the number one thing faith does in your life is it makes you repent of your sin. That's how you know if you have faith. You will repent when you sin. Where there's no repentance, there's no faith, which means there's no salvation. So they went out and they preached that people should repent. So it's the same thing Jesus preached. Believe and repent. So let's talk about repentance, what it is. Repentance is very simple. It's turning away from sin back to God. Okay? That's what repentance is. You cannot receive the gift of salvation while your arms are still wrapped around some cherished sin. You have to let go. And you can't receive God while your back is still turned to Him. You have to turn back to Him, away from sin, back to God. See that? And if you do that, if you repent, if you turn, He will forgive your sins. All your sin, any sin, He'll forgive it. One writer said, it's not falling in the water that drowns, but staying in it. And in the same way, it's not falling into sin that damns the soul, it's staying in it and not repenting. God will forgive any sin, but only if we repent. Now, we don't have time this morning for a huge, full-blown study of repentance, but let me just give you a quick summary. I'm going to give you six ingredients for true repentance so we can get a picture of it, so we understand what these guys are preaching. I'll just run through them pretty fast here. Number one, awareness of sin. Awareness of sin. This comes from the story of the prodigal son in Luke 15. Remember in Luke 15, the prodigal, he goes out, and it's a beautiful picture of repentance, what happened to this guy when he came back to his father, but what was step one, the very first thing he did? It says he came to his senses. He came to his senses. Repentance begins when you come out of the fog of deception of sin and you awaken to the fact of the sinfulness of your lifestyle, how evil it really is and what you're doing is wrong. So that's part of it, awareness of sin. Number two, sorrow for sin, sadness. Not all sadness is repentance. Some people are sad about their sin, but they're not repentant. But if you have true repentance, you're gonna be sad. James 4.8 says, wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Grieve, mourn, and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. That's what repentance is. Repentance is painful. True repentance is painful. It hurts. Psalm 38.4, my guilt has overwhelmed me like a burden too heavy to bear. Thomas Watson commented on this in his book, The Doctrine of Repentance, such a great book, back in the 1600s. He said, the truly repentant person finds more bitterness in repenting of sin than he ever found sweetness in committing it. But then he goes on to say, the more bitterness we taste in sin, the more sweetness we will taste in Christ. The more bitter the whole repentance process is, the more sorrow you have, the sweeter it is when He forgives you. How much happier our lives would be if we wept more over our sin? Deep sorrow is important because it results in deep love when you're forgiven. The more sorrow you have, then when God forgives you, the more love that comes out of your heart after He forgives you. See that? He who has been forgiven much loves much, Luke 7 47. But that increased love doesn't come until he lifts us out of the agony of true repentance. When a person's repentance is shallow, then he might confess his sin, but it has no effect on him, right? It runs out of his mouth like water through a pipe. It doesn't do anything to him. True confession leaves heart-wounding impressions on the soul, and it changes you. Which brings us to number three, confession. This is the third part of true repentance. It means actually articulating, saying what you did and the severity of it, confessing your sin. Repentance is a force. It's an internal force that will come out. It will vent itself through the eyes by weeping and through the mouth by confessing. Watson said, the confession, I thought this was interesting, kind of a rough image, but he says, confession is like the vomit of the soul. It expels the poison taken in in such a repulsive way so that you're not likely to consume it again. The prodigal son came to his father and he said, Luke 15, 21, Father, I've sinned against heaven and against you. I'm no longer worthy to be called your son. He was confessing. The humble sinner passes judgment on himself through confession. 1 John 1.9 says, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and will forgive us. He'll forgive us only if we confess. But it goes on to say, if we don't confess, then we deceive ourselves and we make God into a liar. The repentant heart will confess both to God and even to people where appropriate. James 5.16, confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. Confession gives glory to God, it humbles the soul, it relieves the troubled, gives release to the troubled heart, it purges sin, it endears Christ to the soul that is in need of atonement, and it makes way for His forgiveness and mercy. It does all that. So confession. Number four, shame. Shame for sin. The color of repentance is blushing red. Listen to Ezekiel 9.6. Oh my God, I am too ashamed and disgraced to lift up my face to you, my God, because our sins are higher than our heads and our guilt has reached the heavens. If Jesus suffered shame when he took my sins on him, how much shame should I have when I commit them? Number five, hatred for sin is another part of repentance. Psalm 36 too, in his own eyes, the wicked man flatters himself too much to detect or hate his own sin. We get so much self-esteem, we get so puffed up that we can't even see the sin in ourselves and we certainly can't hate it. But part of repentance is you hate your sin. Watson said, until sin be bitter, Christ will not be sweet. And then the last one, number six, and this is the most important one, turning from the sin back to God. And if you don't do that one, you haven't done anything. Lots of people give up sins, but if you just give up the sin, you don't turn back to God, you haven't repented, you haven't done anything, you've got to turn back to God. That's the whole point of it. The prodigal son, remember, he went back to his father. That was the whole story, going back to his father. That's what we do after we sin. When you sin, you crave If you have true repentance, you crave restoration of closeness with God the Father. That broken relationship, you want it restored. And so you move toward God. If your sorrow makes you move away from God, that's not repentance. That's godless sorrow, that's worldly sorrow. True sorrow will make you move towards God and seek to restore that intimacy with Him. Okay, so all that is a quick summary of repentance. That's what they were preaching. And I'll tell you folks, that is not a popular message. You go around preaching that, people aren't going to like it. Because when you tell people you need to repent, what does that imply? You're in sin, right? You're doing something wrong. You need to change. You need to make major, massive changes. And you're not right with God right now. You're shut out from God. In order to be close to God, you have to make a change. Well, people don't want to hear that. They don't want to hear they're doing something wrong. They don't want to hear that they're not close to God. They don't want to hear that God is angry with them. and that they have to give up the stuff they're doing. That's not a message that's going to be welcomed by very many people. And so Jesus was getting these guys a very difficult assignment. Very hard assignment. So at the beginning of that sermon clip, I made the point that preaching is the primary way that God designed for us to receive grace from him. Nothing has more power to bring the changes in your life and in your heart that you need. Nothing has more power than passionate, powerful, expository preaching. And when I say expository, I mean preaching that exposes the Word of God to you, not preaching that comes from the pastor's own head or something he learned on vacation or from reading a book or his own ideas. Preaching that shows you this is what the Word of God says, this is what it means, and these are the implications for your life. That's expository preaching, and that's what will change your life. I'll tell you a little story. About 18 years ago, I planted a brand new church, and I served as the preaching pastor of that church for 10 years. Things were going great until a catastrophe happened. A staff pastor fell into serious sin. There was a major blow up. The whole thing was a mess. The church completely fell apart. And I was blamed for the whole thing, even though I had nothing to do with it. In fact, I'm the one that exposed it and discovered it and all that. But anyway, long story short, the whole thing collapsed. Everything fell apart. And after devoting my whole adult life to pastoral ministry, it was suddenly over. And the wreckage of that whole ordeal, just watching the impact it had on other people's lives, on my life, it was devastating to me. It was devastating to my faith. And that was new, that had never happened to me before in my life. I've had some tough times in my life, I've gone through some painful things, but it never affected my faith. I was always able to trust God. In fact, trusting God has always come fairly easily to me. I always thought that was a spiritual gift that God gave me, because no matter how hard things got, I was always able to trust him. But this time was different. something was different. I had it in my head somehow that God's Word promised that if a pastor is faithful to preach God's Word and pray and to devote himself to the things that Scripture calls us to, that the church will be healthy and it won't die and all that. Now, it wasn't long after I realized, no, the Bible doesn't promise that anywhere, that was just in my own head. But even though I knew in my head it wasn't promised in Scripture, Still, my heart just couldn't seem to get the memo, and it felt like God did something wrong, that He was unfaithful. even though that's a ridiculous idea, and I knew it was ridiculous. Still, it rattled my faith, so much so that I just, it was hard for me to believe anything in the Bible. I would read my Bible every day, and everything I read just seemed like a fairy tale. Nothing seemed true. And I knew the answer, I mean, I've been to seminary, I knew the answers to all the objections and the doubts that would come up. I could shoot them down one right after another, but as soon as I would shoot them down, they'd come right back into my head. And I couldn't shake the doubts. That went on for a couple of years. And the only thing that turned it around, well, two things. One was prayer. I begged God every day, every day, begged God, restore my faith, restore my faith. That was one thing. And every time anyone asked for a prayer request, I said, oh yeah, that's easy. Pray that God restores my faith. So prayer was one thing, but the other was the preaching of God's Word. Every day I listened to good, solid, biblical preaching. I pulled up sermons from various different pastors, and I would pull up sermons on passages that talk about faith and everything, and I just listened and listened and listened with an open heart, with as soft a heart as I could, and that is what turned things around. That's what restored my faith. And I would commend that to you. Whatever obstacle you have, especially if it's guilt or shame, but any spiritual struggle, any spiritual struggle, if you need grace from God to change, listen to preaching, really good, solid preaching. Now, in the show notes, I have a link to a blog post that I did. wrote about, I think, the seven websites that I go to for really good sermons. And you go to these websites, there's thousands of sermons, and they're good, solid, expository, reliable preachers, and you can pull up a topic, or a Bible passage, or whatever it is you need, and just listen. I would urge you to do that. Get in the habit of doing that, whatever it is, wherever area of your life you need to change, Listen daily to good, solid, biblical, expository preaching and God will pour grace into your life and change your heart. Thank you for listening. If you found today's episode edifying, why not share it with a friend? A simple post on social media can change a person's day. This season, the Food for Your Soul podcast features excerpts from our sermon series on the Gospel of Mark. Over 130 expository sermons covering every verse. You can find those and hundreds of other sermons for free download on drichardferguson.com. Until next time, rejoice in the Lord always, and set your mind on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.