Our sermon, please turn to Acts chapter 11, the first 18 verses. Chapter 11, first 18 verses of the book of Acts. Acts 11, one through 18, and please rise if you can. Here we read these inspired words. Now the apostles and brethren who were in Judea heard that the Gentiles had also received the word of God. And when Peter came up to Jerusalem, those of the circumcision contended with him, saying, you went in to uncircumcised man and ate with them. But Peter explained it to them in order from the beginning saying, I was in the city of Joppa, praying, and in a trance I saw a vision, an object descending like a great sheet, let down from heaven by four corners, and it came to me. When I observed it intently and considered, I saw four-footed animals of the earth, wild beasts, creeping things, and birds of the air. And I heard a voice saying to me, rise, Peter, kill and eat. But I said, not so, Lord, for nothing common or unclean has at any time entered my mouth. But a voice answered me again from heaven, what God has cleansed you must not call common. Now this was done three times, and all were drawn up again into heaven. At that moment, three men stood before the house where I was, having been sent to me from Caesarea. Then the Spirit told me to go with them, doubting nothing. Moreover, the six brethren accompanied me, and we entered the man's house. And he told us how he had seen an angel standing in his house, who said to him, send men to Joppa, and call for Simon, whose surname is Peter. who will tell you words by which you and all your household will be saved. And as I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell upon them as upon us at the beginning. Then I remembered the word of the Lord, how he said, John indeed baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit. If therefore God gave them the same gift as he gave us when we believed on the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could withstand God? When they heard these things, they became silent. And they glorified God, saying, Then God has also granted to the Gentiles repentance to life. Thus far the reading of God's holy word. May the Lord also put his blessing upon the preaching thereof. Amen. Please be seated. Beloved congregation of the Lord Jesus Christ, after having covered last time the chapter on saving faith, we are now at chapter 15 of the Westminster Confession of Faith, which is titled, of repentance unto life, and I urge you to listen closely, because these are things that are often confused in the minds of Christians. You find chapter 15 in your Trinity Psalter hymnal on page 928, and I would urge you to read along and to watch along as we go through this chapter. According to the order of salvation, or what is called the order salutis in Latin, these two chapters, the one on saving faith and the one on repentance unto life, should be put after the chapter of effectual calling and before the chapter on justification. But the authors of the Westminster Confession used another order. They used the order by, they tried to glorify God by beginning with the unilateral acts of God. And then after the unilateral acts of God in our salvation are finished, then they add those in which we are to respond. I hope you understand what I mean here. When we go by the logical order of salvation, first comes regeneration and effectual calling. So we're effectually called, and after effectual calling, what happens is faith is awakened in us. And with faith, repentance. And as faith and repentance are being displayed, we're justified. So in the order of salutis, it should belong or it should be after effectual calling and before justification. But the Westminster divines in everything wanted to give God the glory. So they put all the elements of the order of salvation that God does unilaterally sovereignly without participation of us first, and then the ones by which we respond. Just so you know that the divines have not made a mistake here. By the way, we call them divines not because they were extra holy, which they were, compared to us here today, but we call them divines because that's the old name for theologians. the Westminster theologians. They had a name that sounds less theoretical and more practical. They talked not so much about theology, but about the things divine, divinity. But let us begin with the preamble that is written here in paragraph one. It's really a preamble. It says, repentance unto life is an evangelical grace, the doctrine whereof is to be preached by every minister of the gospel, as well as that of faith in Christ. So the previous chapter on saving faith stressed the importance of faith in Christ for all of life and for the life to come. And now when the scriptures speak of life, they not only speak of faith, but they also speak of repentance. And here we see that the two are somewhat always mentioned together. And from this preamble that constitutes paragraph one, we're already seeing that they're very closely connected. Faith and repentance are very closely connected. The two are very similar, but they're not the same, otherwise we wouldn't differentiate them. They are, as my former systematics professor, Dr. Morton Smith, kept saying, they are the two sides of the same coin. I think you can't say it any better. That faith and repentance are the two sides of the same coin. They are therefore inseparable, as one never appears without the other. Let us try to give a quick definition of these two again. Saving faith is the turning to and the leaning on Christ. So you turn to Christ and lean on him and repentance is turning away from something. It's turning away from sin and from the old ways. We have in the history of theology often had people who tried to draw or to drive a wedge between faith and repentance and try to separate them in a way and then ask, well, is only faith required or is repentance required too or is only repentance required? Look, They are indeed the two sides of the same coin. They never appear separately. Together, they constitute what theologians call conversion. What is conversion? It is our response to regeneration. It's our response to the acts of God. Conversion is the turning away from sin and turning unto Christ. How can you turn unto Christ without turning away from sin? How can you savingly believe in Jesus Christ without turning away from the darkness? So to drive a wedge between the two and then ask which one do we really need, they do not appear separately. Both saving faith and repentance unto life are the effects of regeneration, the renewal of the heart and will. We receive this new principle, this new disposition that now chooses eternal life rather than eternal death. As G.I. Willis put it so well, are the new nature beginning to assert itself. So this turning away from sin, turning unto Christ are the first effects of our regeneration. The new nature begins to assert itself in our life. And this is sometimes, and I get increasingly aggravated by theologians playing games and asking all these what-if questions. What if somebody is regenerated but dies before he gets converted? Is he saved? And I have to ask, are you insane? Does God make a mistake? Does God regenerate somebody? Oops, this one slipped away from me. By your question, you show your foolish pride. And it gets increasingly terrible among Reformed theologians, all these what-if questions, all these details. We want to pray into, we want to know, we have in reality, we have utilized a humanist mindset. It is the mindset that I have to understand completely or I won't believe. Or the mindset of Aquinas, Thomas Aquinas, if you don't mind me saying that, who said that I know and therefore I believe. No, we should have the mindset of Augustine, which is the biblical mindset. I believe and therefore I know. God teaches and we believe. Whether we understand or not why it is or how it is, we believe it because God says so. That's where we begin. So we're talking about repentance unto life, how it's being connected to saving faith. And these two, saving faith and repentance unto life, are requirements for justification. And yet neither one of them is a work in the sense that we earn our salvation by doing it. We read this in the first paragraph that repentance unto life is an evangelical grace. What is an evangelical grace? It's a gospel gift from God. That's what it is. An evangelical grace is a gospel gift from God. What is the characteristic of a gift? You don't earn it, you receive it. So the Westminster divines are quick to say, not that you have any wrong ideas here, it's an evangelical grace. You cannot pat yourself on the shoulder and say, wow, I was pretty good to develop faith and repentance. God gives us faith, God gives us repentance, and God requires both from us. Repentance, just like faith, is a gift from God, and we see this in our text, in which Peter reports to the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem that the gospel was now also received by the Gentiles. You have to understand, this was a completely novel concept. The Jews were racist to the core, if you want to use that language, if you ever want to use that word rightly. For them, it was race, Jewish race, and nobody else. Everybody else were the heathens, they were the goyim, the dogs. And salvation was only for those who are in the genetic line of Abraham, as we have heard in the first service. But now they are being confronted in Jerusalem with the fact that the Holy Spirit fell also on Gentiles. And this was hard for them to receive after centuries of Jewish genetic elitism. And it culminates in verse 18 of Acts chapter 11. When they heard these things, that's the brothers in Jerusalem who were still of the circumcision. They still taught you have to be circumcised in order to be saved. When they heard these things, they became silent. That's a good sign. Be silent for once and listen. And they are silent, not as their countrymen who would constantly attack the apostles, who would constantly attack Jesus Christ. When they heard these things, they became silent and they glorified God saying, then God has also granted to the Gentiles repentance unto life. They do not say they were smart enough to now. to repent. No, they say God has granted them repentance unto life. And that's why the Westminster Divines rightly say it's an evangelical grace. God grants it. It doesn't come from anywhere else. It is a gift from God. It is not a work. Let us now jump to paragraph three. And by the way, it mentioned in paragraph one that every preacher shall preach. The repentance unto life. Why do you think that is in there? What is the great temptation here? The great temptation for a preacher in the 1640s, as today, was to not call people to repentance, to not tell them that they were required to humble themselves before God with an utter disdain for their own moral state and bow their knees before the Lord Jesus Christ. Just preach along. Just preach along, assuming we are all Christians here because we're here. I've heard things like that. Don't try to convert us. We're already here. And here the Westminster Divine says, no preacher. You have to man up. You have to tell your own congregations repeatedly, without repentance, no salvation. And of course, this is one of the things that we do not hear too much. I have not heard it once in my life that I was admonished as a preacher. We want to hear uplifting sermons. We want to be uplifted. We want to be encouraged. Now, to a degree, that is right. The people of God need to be uplifted. They need to be encouraged. But not exclusively. Based on what you want to do then. The Word of God has manifold uses, and all of them we need, sometimes for uplifting, sometimes for crushing us, and then to putting us together again rightly, to correct us, to drive us to repentance. So as much as a preacher would like to be Mr. Sunshine at all times, he can't. He's not allowed to do this. I understand the desire, but we have to obey God more than man. So God has granted repentance unto life to the Gentiles. Now paragraph three. Although repentance is not to be rested in as any satisfaction for sin or any cause of the pardon thereof, which is the act of God's free grace in Christ. Yet it is of such necessity to all sinners that none may expect pardon without it. This is very important. Westminster here makes it clear that although repentance is freely given to us, it is yet required back from us for the pardoning of sin. So God gives it and God requires it. It's the same like all of our good works, right? God has created these good works, all the good works that we'll do beforehand, so we should walk in them. And yet God then rewards them. We would say, that's foolish. That's outrageous. Only God gives it and then rewards it. Only God gives repentance unto life and then he requires it. Well, we do not understand the principle of grace. We always have the inclination, we have to do it our way. We have to do it alone. But see, here's the problem. Since the fall, there's nothing we can do alone. All that we can do alone is sinful and has no glory before God. And therefore, everything that God requires, he must first give to us. This is how pathetic we are. But that's not the last word. This is how gracious God is. This is how much God has decided to love us. Who is like that among us? Nobody. Nobody is that kind. If somebody is mean to us, we're mean to them, or at least we go on silent or we avoid them. God loved us while we were still his enemies. He gives us salvation. If He wouldn't give us salvation, we would remain His enemies, and yet He gives it, and He makes us keep it. That is utter grace, and the better we understand this, the more inclined, the more motivated we will be to live according to His precepts joyfully. That's what it means to not only glorify God, but to enjoy Him once you understand His grace, that everything you bring, even your best work, is a gift from God to begin with. Then you will understand His grace, and then you will understand His love, and then you will rejoice in Him. But since we are so self-centered, even after our regeneration, even after our conversion, we always fall back into the old ways. thinking we have to do it on our own and God leaves us alone and the providence of God is not as we want it, then we become discontent and we become Mr. Grumpy Face. That's why one part of the fruit of the Spirit is joy. A joy that you can grasp by faith knowing that everything you have is from God and is good for you. So repentance is an absolute requirement for salvation, but not in a way that repentance itself causes the pardon of our sin, but as a means, as an instrument, just like faith. Faith and repentance are the instrument. Faith-pentance, you can call it, is the means that God uses. I'm not even certain if it is so good to separate the two. Why not just put them together and say the faith, the saving faith is a repentant faith? You cannot say, I believe in Jesus Christ and yet I have nothing to repent of because I'm good. No, the faith that you have is automatically by its nature. Saving faith is a repentant faith because why would you lean on Jesus Christ unless you understand that you need a savior? I'm just telling you this not to criticize Westminster. I think they did right how they did it. I just want to show you that these two are not to be separated. I can't really say it better, the two sides of the same coin. It's not a work, but a gift from God. Now, after this introduction, we now want to know how repentance looks like. How does it look like in real life? And that's paragraph two. buy it a sinner out of the sight and sense. not only of the danger, but also of the filthiness and odiousness of his sins, as contrary to the holy nature and righteous law of God, and upon the apprehension of his mercy in Christ, to such as are penitent, so griefs for and hates his sins, as to turn from them all unto God, purposing and endeavoring to walk with him all the ways of his commandments. So here you have a description of the nature of repentance. How does it look like? The sinner sees his own evil. He sees the danger of sin, how it offends the Holy God, how it offends God's holy law. That's why I said this morning, we cannot evangelize without the law. Without the law, a person doesn't see sin and its danger. We have to preach the Holy God. Otherwise, he cannot see the violation of this holiness of God through his sin. It offends the Holy God and the Christian then stirred up by the Holy Spirit, he learns to hate, to abhor the sin and turns away from it. And here we have to be careful because just like faith, repentance is not a one-time thing just to get saved and then it stops. It begins after our regeneration, after our effectual calling, but it goes on until we take that last breath. It is a lifestyle. I have no better word. It is an attitude for life. We live as repentant sinners. Otherwise, self-righteousness will develop, and that's not a fruit of saving faith. We do know at all times that even the best of our works are the grace from God, and they still fall short. We still know that we are not good enough for God, even after our conversion, and that we still, every day, every moment, every second, we need the work of Jesus Christ. Why do you think he stands before the throne of the Father, constantly interceding for us? People have asked me that. It's a good question. Why does he need to do that? Because it's still not good. It's not only the past sins that need atonement, that need the righteousness of Christ, it's the future and the present sins. We keep on sinning. It would be wonderful if somebody becomes a Christian and then he never sins anymore and now it's all him. But it's not. We're still rotten. Even the best of our works are a catastrophe. They're only considered good work because of the work of the Holy Spirit. Through Jesus Christ transforms the worst of our works into good ones. But this is something that Christians must understand because we all know that our hearts are prone to recommend themselves before God and say, well, now I have been a Christian for 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, 40 years, and I think I can be pretty content about who I am. No, absolutely not. You're just a... millimeter beside Hitler on the line of evil. And Christ's righteousness is light years away. That's how good you are and how good I am. And now think of the grace of God that he uses us to build his kingdom. We still need to live in a life of repentance. you see there's a great danger even or shall I say especially in orthodox or very truly reformed churches where the truth is faithfully preached in content. There's plenty of churches where the truth is preached pretty good and pure in content but kind of like a cold piece of business. And it's being preached like it has nothing to do with the preacher. It's like a I don't know, when I was in law school, for example, I had good and I had bad professors. I had some who were very passionate. You could tell they loved the material and they have a real passion to produce good lawyers, if there is such a thing. And then there were others who would teach. In fact, I heard of a professor once who put himself to sleep. He was sitting, he was old, he didn't stand anymore, and he would say and he would speak slowly. And then he put himself, that was a theology professor, to his shame. And his speaking would get slower and slower and slower, and then suddenly his head fell and he was snoring. This is the way how some preaching goes on. And this is not to bash preachers, this is to bemoan the state of the church in some areas. while they're erudite, and they have read all the books, and now they're dabbling into Aquinas. Maybe there's something there they can brag about. But when they're in the pulpit, boy, for heaven's sake, they cannot push themselves out of a phone booth. They're great scholars. You know, erudition has replaced unction in this country, in the pulpits, in the Reformed pulpits especially. And in many other pulpits, there is no knowledge. There's just pulpiteering. There's just showmanship. But there's a danger when you are in a church like this where a sermon is not a sermon but a Bible study or a, I should say, a theological lecture where the preacher parades his learnedness, his erudition. There's a danger that you start checking the boxes and saying, well, I'm pretty Orthodox here. That's me. And that sanctification becomes confused with ticking the correct boxes. and agreeing to the right things. And accordingly, people think over some time that to acknowledge one's sin, just acknowledge it, is true evangelical repentance. But as we have heard in the previous chapter on saving faith, and then again this morning, mere assent is not enough. That is dead orthodoxy, assenting to the truth. You can have the nicest, orthodox, Reformed congregation that reads all the right things, and it's a congregation of reprobates. And you wouldn't see it right away. because they merely assent that discussions are about who's right. Theology is just a piece of business and not life. And that is a big problem, especially, I would almost say, more than in all other circles, in Reformed circles, because we have to write theology. And it has made us arrogant or prideful. Saving faith is Fiducia is leaning on, is trusting, is being rooted and grounded in the Christ of Scripture, who is a real person, living by the Holy Spirit, burning in your heart in order to please Him. That is true faith. But mere assent, this dead orthodoxy, as one author puts it, it's religion without feeling. It's also without hope, he says. G.I. Williamson. in case you want to know. This dead orthodoxy, it's religion without feeling, it's author without hope, and the F word, feeling, we must not use in reformed circles. Is that right? My question is why? Did Adam and Eve before the fall have feelings? Every theologian would say, every theologian worth his salt would say yes. So if feelings were already existent in Adam and Eve before the fall, why do we act as if feelings were inherently bad and not part of our faith? Why not do what we do in the other faculties like mind and will? Why do we not do that in the third faculty in feelings that we say they have to be sanctified? Our faith is not a faith void of feeling, rather the opposite. Read the Psalms, read the historic books, how intensely these men and women felt when it came to their faith, when it came to their relationship with their God. It was not just checking the boxes. I've heard a few years ago, people started even in reformed circle to say, they do not pray. They don't say, let's pray. They say, let's say a prayer. I would say you save your time. You don't say a prayer, you pray. And this is the great danger in which we are. Something has to be known and felt. Scripture remains our standard, our corrective, our ruler, where we see which line is crooked. But our feelings need to be sanctified. We need to rejoice in the Lord. We need to weep with the weeping. We need to weep over our own sin. Why has it become so unbecoming to feel as a Christian and become brains on a stick, as they say, I think. It's religion without feeling. It's also without hope. Repentance unto life is a full-orbed turning away, a passionate hatred of one's own sin, and it severely offends God. Because of that, we turn away from it and turn unto Jesus Christ. In his work, Evangelical Repentance, John Colquhoun, spelled Colquhoun, explains evangelical repentance as a gracious principle and habit implanted in the soul by the Spirit of Christ in the exercise of which a regenerate and believing sinner, deeply sensible of the exceeding sinfulness and just the merit of his innumerable sins, is truly humbled and grieved before the Lord. This godly sorrow for sin and this holy abhorrence of it arise from a spiritual discovery of pardoning mercy with God in Christ and from the exercise of trusting in his mercy." End of quote. Something needs to be felt and known. Now in paragraph four, we receive an important warning. especially for those who think that they're all right and not all that bad. As it says, as there is no sin so small, but it deserves damnation. So there is no sin so great that it can bring damnation upon those who truly repent. So first we are warned that even the best or most virtues among men deserve full condemnation. We have talked about this. This is a serious warning here, that we never fall into the pitfall of saying we are actually all right. And while in our churches, in our kind of churches, I must say, nobody would say it that way. But you see, often you discover, if you look and listen closely, that we do not always really believe what we say. And you find the mindset. that people will say, I'm not all that bad. I told you this, how often I would speak to an elderly person or to a dying person, asking them if they're right with Jesus Christ, and they're actually unable to explain the hope that they should have. And then they come with all these things like baptism, and profession of faith, and Christian school, and going to church. And you realize that these people are not far from Rome, theologically. There have been, I don't know, how many generations of reform? but they don't know the gospel. And then their preachers are being told, we do not evangelize our people because they're already here. And you develop a self-supporting system of gospel-less Christianity, which of course is no Christianity at all. And you have a bunch of people who rely more on tradition than they do on Jesus Christ. And there you have a big problem. No, it says, as there is no sin so small, but it deserves damnation. Every sin deserves damnation. Keep in mind that one single sin brought death and sin into the world. There was enough for the whole world to be saturated and soiled with sin. But on the other hand, no sin is so great that it can bring damnation upon those who truly repent. I have a book at home. I cannot remember the title right now. A parishioner in one of the churches I served kindly gave it to me. And it is the story of a Lutheran chaplain during the final trials of the Nazi leaders. He was one of those Lutherans and it was back in the day when there were still very conservative Lutherans who knew the gospel, who knew salvation by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. The Nuremberg trials, right? He mentioned, he was the chaplain to those inmates. And he swears and he tells the story that some of the meanest Nazi leaders became saved in Jesus Christ. Now we hear this and our first impulse, and I'm no different, is, I don't wanna be in heaven with these guys. Really, isn't that? And that's the same thing we do when somebody falls into grave sin in our surroundings. We shake our holy hands and we make it in a way that everybody can see it. And we're really upset about this guy's sin. But you know what? As I thought more about it, I thank God for it. If there's hope for these guys, there's surely hope for me too. It shows the grace of God. We will be surprised, I think, by a few guys that we meet in heaven, and some will be surprised to meet us. There's no sin so great. And I don't care what you've done in the past. We've all have done horrific sins and things. No sin is so great that it cannot be forgiven through the gospel of Jesus Christ. But sin is still heavy, and sin is still important. Romans chapter five, verse 12. Just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men because all sin, one sin was enough. Don't think the blood of Christ washes away sin. Let's sin boldly, as Luther said. Luther meant something different. When Luther said, sin boldly, he had those in mind who have an inflamed conscience, who are constantly concerned about, have I sinned in this? Have I sinned in that? They're constantly poking around in their conscience and getting paralyzed by their fear. He says, no, sin boldly. He didn't mean go and sin. He means, look, you're never going to be perfect in this life. Do what you can. Walk forward. We have a saying, even not in German, it's in our Austrian dialect, and I cannot translate it properly because it rhymes. But it talks about an overly timid person. It says, well, I'm a very timid person. I do not move forward, and I will just hide in the corner. And if I don't move forward, I cannot fall. That's what Luther meant. He didn't mean sin boldly. He meant move forward boldly. You will sin. Try not to, but you will. But don't stop moving forward. Don't stop preaching. Don't stop building the kingdom. Don't stop evangelizing. Don't stop standing in front of abortion clinics. Don't stop witnessing just because you might make a mistake. Move forward boldly. And then paragraph five, the specificity of repentance. Man ought not to content themselves with a general repentance, but it is every man's duty to endeavor to repent of his particular sins particularly. You would say, why is this written here? That's a no brainer, but honestly, it's not. And I've mentioned this a few times from this very pulpit. that you hear in our circles often the phrase, and forgive us the multitude of our sins. And sometimes this is the right thing to say in a brief prayer, in a consistory or session room before we go out. There is no time for a 25-minute weeping prayer. We just remind ourselves. So before a meal, we thank you and we ask you for the forgiveness. There is a place for that. This is not talking about that you never can say, forgive us the multitude of our sins. He talks about the mindset because some people, that's all they ever pray and all they ever think. They stay in this sterile waiting room of, yes, I'm a sinner, but never put their hands into the dirt of their sin and bring it to Jesus Christ. I would encourage you to make it a habit in your private prayers and however much liberty you have in your prayers with your spouse or family, to bring forth specific sins. Because otherwise you might find yourself in this sterile waiting room of the true Christian life by only in principle admitting that you're a sinner, but never really, really mentioning any sin that you've committed. And if you do that, of course, that means that you have to ask others For forgiveness too. I'm sure, or at least I should say I hope, you're as surprised as I am, that not more among us ask each other for forgiveness. We're either that holy, which I doubt, or we're that hypocritical. That we sin and we rip people to shreds behind their backs and we don't even have repentance. And if we think we have repentance, we do not go to them. But if you begin to dealing with your sin in detail, only this will lead to true repentance. You need to go toe to toe with your sin. Only this way you will learn to hate them and you say, well, anger, you know, oh man, it seems like every time I pray, I have to ask for forgiveness for anger. That's a real habit. That's a pattern, I need to do something. But if all you ever say is, forgive me my sins, oh I know I'm such a terrible sinner and all of that, you never have to mention a particular sin, you never put the finger on it. You cannot repent if you don't know what. And then paragraph six, the practice of repentance that goes right into what we just talked about. As every man is bound to make private confession of his sins to God, praying for the pardon thereof, upon which and the forsaking of them, he shall find mercy. So he that scandalizes his brother, or the Church of Christ ought to be willing by a private or public confession and sorrow for his sin to declare his repentance to those that are offended, who are thereupon to be reconciled to him and in love to receive him. But you have to keep in mind that the major doctrinal opponent in the 1640s to the Puritans was the Roman Catholic so-called church. And Roman Catholicism had a very messed up view of repentance. Rome was as far off as it as it can be with their doctrine of confession and penance, in which the audible confession of all sins to a priest was required in order to receive forgiveness. And Westminster answers with scripture and says, no, our sins are to be confessed to God in secret. He is the one to forgive them, and he is the one, therefore, to ask for forgiveness. And as it says in paragraph six, upon which, and the forsaking of them, a person shall find mercy. You have to keep in mind that repentance means not only feeling sorry about something, but turning away from it. You know, and I use the, probably being, I'm gonna be accused of being engulfed in the sin, which I'm not. The sin of pornography. That's one of these examples where people think, well, every time they pray, they ask for forgiveness, get up and go to their computer again. And they think they have repented. No, you have not. You have tried to play games with God. You have tried to trick God. And that does not sit well with God. Repentance means turning away. Metanoia means changing direction. You run the other way. You turn 180 degree. Notice one of my elders keep saying, repentance is a turn of 360 degrees. 180 please. True repentance turns away 180 degrees. But there are situations when we additionally have to ask other people for forgiveness if our sin scandalizes somebody else or the church of Jesus Christ. or offends another party, then depending on the nature of the sin, we have to ask them for forgiveness. Or, if the nature of the sin is such that it is public, we have to publicly repent. I have a good friend, he's also a vanguard minister, he posted something on Facebook that turned out to be theologically not 100% clean, and somebody reminded him of it, and he does something that you hardly ever see, especially not on Facebook, he publicly made a post and said, I wrote this and that, I was wrong, please forgive me, all who have read it. And this is how it goes, public sin, public repentance. In a church where I was the pastor, a young lady became pregnant out of wedlock. And she was invited to the elders, and the elders, I have to say, tried really to approach it very kindly, and told her and said, there's no sin that cannot be forgiven, and you have to just go before the congregation and ask for forgiveness to bring shame on the name of this congregation and of Christ. And she immediately snapped back, no, I'm not gonna do that. You're all sinners too, right? Why should I do that? And there was no getting through to her. That was pretty much the last I saw of her. So this is what you see when you're dealing with a real Christian. A real Christian will not try to cover up sin or to defend sin, but to repent of it. And I really do not understand why we have such a hard time with asking others for forgiveness. It is such a liberating thing to do that. You know, I know thousands of Christians who rather go to war than admitting that they have done something wrong. It's almost impossible to get any confession out of them. And there comes the point when you have to ask yourself, am I dealing with a real Christian who has the Holy Spirit? Because this person is always right. And you can show him the evidence to their face, and they're still not wrong. There are times, and there are often, that we have to repent. You know how real revivals start? Apart from God calling His people to prayer. They start by people repenting, beginning with the leaders of churches. I have never experienced, and I was never able to get a whole session, a whole consistory, to stand before a congregation and ask for forgiveness for something they had done wrongly. Are we infallible? Is every church discipline always 100% correct? There is no repentance. Everybody's always right. And this should not characterize the church of Jesus Christ. But the rule of thumb is public sin, public repentance. James chapter five, verse 16, confess your trespasses to one another and pray for one another that you may be healed. The effective fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much. Don't forget that. These are not just hallmark slogans. We should confess to each other our trespasses. Oh, how have I hoped, wherever I went as a pastor, that the congregation would have as much trust to each other that they start sharing their burdens, they start sharing their sins. In a way, please pray for me. I'm really struggling with that. Please hold me accountable. See, the problem is not only that we do not then receive the prayer and the encouragement, But there's another thing that we then fall into, and that is a situation where we sit Sunday after Sunday in the church, where we think everyone around me is so much holier than I. Because I struggle with this, I struggle with that, I felt this past week and this and that and the other, and nobody else does. And then you have, I don't know, 90% of the people thinking the same way. And that's how Satan isolates believers from each other, making each one think he's the worst of them all, which in and of itself wouldn't be a problem. We are bad enough and we are worse than we think. But we never begin to pray for each other for these things. We never begin to bear each other's burdens. We never begin to really connect as one body and trust each other. I understand it takes some time to trust brothers and sisters in Christ and we are a young congregation, but begin to confide in your brothers and sisters. We are not the Roman Catholic Church that the only one you can speak to is the pastor in a private room and he has to shut up because nobody must learn about your sin. That's not what we're about. We all have weaknesses, we all have sins, we all have besetting sins. We need the prayers of our brothers and sisters. We need the comfort, the encouragement, and the accountability of our brothers and sisters in Christ. Let me add one thing. Those who we have wronged, they must forgive us and receive us. There's no way that a Christian can ever say, no, you just went too far. And this is a serious thing before God, that he connected to our own salvation, saying that a truly safe person will always forgive. Bitterness is a dangerous, dangerous poison. It destroys you. And people can be quite bitter. I don't know who said it, but somebody said it very rightly. He said, bitterness is like you taking a poison, hoping the other person dies. You're destroying yourself. You're harming your relationship with Christ. And you're robbing yourself of sleep. Bitterness is a dangerous, dangerous poison. This doesn't mean that when we ask somebody for forgiveness, everything will be like it was before. because there will be consequences and there will be probably broken trust. If you are a person who helps another person in financially investing for their retirement and you pull a Ponzi scheme and then you ask for forgiveness and then you say, now give me your money. Give me the money that you still have. He will say, no, I have forgiven you. But I'm not going to give you my money, because in that area, I first need to see a track record of you. That is not bitterness, that is the organic building up of trust over time. Now, what is forgiveness? I think it is a good point to explain what it is. When you ask somebody for forgiveness, and they grant you forgiveness, they promise you basically and mainly three things. They don't ever bring this sin up to you ever again. They don't bring this sin up to anybody else ever again. And they don't mull over it. That is the promise you give when you forgive somebody. And there is no, oh, show me fruit of repentance first. You're not God. God is the one who can call for this. You are the 17 times 7. You are the one who always has to forgive, and if it comes 490 times every day, you still have to forgive. Love believes all things. That is how it works. Please, if there is bitterness, and as I preach this, I pray the Holy Spirit, may open up if there is bitterness against somebody else in your heart. You need to deal with it. You're harming yourself most, and you bring shame, on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Because this is the gospel. This is the gospel that you claim to hold. You come to the Lord Jesus Christ, you come to God in Christ's name, and you ask for forgiveness, and you will be forgiven. The same way somebody else comes to you and asks you for forgiveness, you will forgive. and you will promise not to mention this sin ever again. This is, by the way, what God promises to us, that He will not think about our sin anymore. He decides to forget it and to look at the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ. That's what you have to do with your brother. I have seen so much bitterness in churches. I'm almost tempted to say I have seen more bitterness in Reformed churches than in the world. I don't know why that is. Do we sit on the edge of our seats because we take theology so well? I don't know what it is. But let Westminster not be such a church where bitterness reigns. I'm sure everyone has reasons enough, humanly speaking, to be bitter against somebody else. I'm sure there's a million people who can be bitter with worldly justification against myself. And if that is really running wild and free, I have no chance to live, and neither do you. I have to hope for the forgiveness in Jesus Christ that also my brother and sister give to me, and so do you. Let us be that congregation that displays the gospel also in relationships amongst each other. And if there is enmity with somebody inside, outside the church, in your family, do you take the first step and resolve it? And you know, if I may give you a word of advice, if you want to resolve conflict, the first thing is start asking for forgiveness for whatever you can think you have sinned. That is always a good entry. It makes it for your brother or sister easier then to repent themselves. Sadly, there is enough sociopaths running around in Christian churches that they don't even are weakened or softened by that. But as far as you are concerned, live in peace with all men. You cannot control what the other person does, but you can control what you do. Take the first step. I have counseled a young man a few months ago, He came here and complaining about this pastor and that pastor and that church and the other church. I sat down for hours and hours on end with that person and say, please, I will come with you. Let's go there. Begin with your own sin. Begin with your own sin, and that will set the course then. That will soften the other man's heart, and they will profess their sin, confess their sin, and then we can all reconcile. You know what I heard? I have done nothing wrong. Well, then it's you and Jesus Christ. I have heard consistory say, we have done nothing wrong. It's all the pastor's fault. There's a lot of saviors running around who are sinless apparently in our circles. Begin with your own sin and pray that the Lord will soften the heart of the other person. Never ever say, I have done nothing wrong because it's a rotten lie. Whatever we talk about, you always do something wrong. I know I do. In closing, let me remind you of Ephesians chapter two, verse eight, which applies to faith and repentance as the two sides of the same coin. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. May God help us to see this, to really see this. Amen and amen.